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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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These are not anti-imperialists who were committing to not associating with imperialism at personal cost, these are drawing from passively supportive imperialists who are only not associating with imperialism because it risks a personal cost... and who, if safe from that cost, have no history/credibility that they won't just go right back to vaguely supporting russian imperialism, only from inside the border territories where they could serve as a casus belli.

This sounds like an example the more-general problem of determining whether people fleeing a place wrecked by bad policies are more likely to oppose them (because their last home was wrecked by them) or support them (because those policies had support in their old home and they may not have made the connection.) I admit the example that comes to mind is "Californians fleeing to redder states" but whether one approves of that example or not, I think it at least suggests that often it's not so easy to distinguish which is which as it may be in this mobilization case.

Pretty much, only instead of needing a majority dynamic (the issue of California idea exports wouldn't matter much if most Californians fleeing didn't share them), the nature of security threats is that they're disproportionate in impact to their population number. Even just a 5% over Russian sympathizer rate would be a major pool for Russian influence operations to be run from, and through.