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A good tactic would be to point out to Russians that their government is censoring political things for them. They like to think they are free and above the hyp

A good tactic would be to point out to Russians that their government is censoring political things for them. They like to think they are free and above the hypocrisy of the west. But the key thing is the West allows it's citizens to criticise itself. The Russians do not have that freedom. It's basically becoming like China in the way of censorship and lack of freedom, to protect it's citizens and the fatherland. To sacrifice for the country. In the west we can say "my government is bad" and give examples of a number of terrible and true and shameful things. In Russia or China they cannot even admit truth. One tactic that we see from China and Russia is to criticise the chaotic nature of protests in the West and (again) to emphasise the hypocrisy on how the West deals with protests of the Left vs Right. The thing is that there IS a lot of truth here. But the key thing is that these protests occur nonetheless. In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. You cannot have hypocrisy in how you deal with political protests if you do not have political protests!

throwawaygjdbsj 5y ago
[flagged]
dshpala 5y ago
Heh, "point to Russians". I have several friends in Moscow, and up until the last few days they were in complete denial about Putin's intentions or troops buildup. There were memes, jokes, etc. The propaganda inside Russia is very strong. Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering (economically or otherwise). And then maybe they'll wake up.
- skybrian 5y ago
  How much have they changed their minds in the last few days?
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    How much have they changed their minds in the last few days? Enough that there are protests in most major Russian cities against the invasion of Ukraine. Just yesterday, Moscow police arrested over 1,000 protesters. They can only keep up that pace for so long.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      The protests won't last long. Any protester risks getting a few years sentence going out every time, and russian prisons are hell on earth.
    - throw7 5y ago
      Really? non-democratic regimes have proved again and again that the plebes can be contained.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      This can't be true, because this thread started off with > In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. You cannot have hypocrisy in how you deal with political protests if you do not have political protests!
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        They are arrested wholesale.
    - vkou 5y ago
      150,000 people in Washington, DC, protested the Iraq war when it was getting started. It, uh, didn't accomplish much. I'm not sure that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is any more inclined to listen to protests than the Department of State was.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Not until there are more protestors than the police can conceivably arrest will it make a real difference, but there is some chance of that happening.
    - nomel 5y ago
      > They can only keep up that pace for so long. Sorry, do you mean the protestors can only keep it up for so long, or the police can only keep arresting for so long?
  - NoOn3 5y ago
    I'm Russian and It was clear that this could happen at any moment based on negotiations between the parties and other events, although the media laughed a little at this...
- gruez 5y ago
  >The propaganda inside Russia is very strong. Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering (economically or otherwise). And then maybe they'll wake up. What makes you sure that it won't cement their position even more? Western countries hurting russia's economy via sanctions basically confirms the "evil westerners" narrative.
  - MrYellowP 5y ago
    - dave_sullivan 5y ago
      No good side, but one is better than the other.
      - pessimizer 5y ago
        Which one? It's not obvious.
        MrYellowP 5y ago
        So you say that a country, which keeps putting itself into war over and over again, killing millions of people mostly based on lies they tell us, isn't evil?
    - slashdev 5y ago
      Evil is a pretty strong word to toss around like that. The Nazis were evil. How is the West evil? Western countries do a number of bad things, but they're not evil.
      - z3c0 5y ago
        Drone assassination programs are pretty evil. Oh wait, did you mean evil to us, or evil to everybody else?
- ivan_gammel 5y ago
  Denial doesn’t mean they were influenced by propaganda. Invasion just didn’t make any sense and even among the opposition there was a belief that Putin is evil but rational.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    So now the conclusion is he's not rational. Now what? A non rational dictator sitting on a very large number of nuclear weapons is not a good thing for the world.
    - ivan_gammel 5y ago
      Now it’s just scary. Let’s hope Ukraine will be able to resist long enough to force Putin to negotiate peace and to forget about any attempt to reach his goals along the Western borders of Russia by military means. It’s too bad that our hope is that enough Russian soldiers will die for Russian public to notice that war is in their house. There’s no popular support for the war, but the pain of war is not yet felt. Unfortunately there’s no other options left. Sanctions are not a short term deterrent.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        > Now it’s just scary. And getting worse. > Let’s hope Ukraine will be able to resist long enough to force Putin to negotiate peace and to forget about any attempt to reach his goals along the Western borders of Russia by military means. I hope with you but the force asymmetry is large. But so far they have been doing much better than could have reasonably been expected. > It’s too bad that our hope is that enough Russian soldiers will die for Russian public to notice that war is in their house. This will be one of the most carefully controlled statistics, there is no way that official channels will get close to communicating these numbers. I've been wondering if this isn't one of those areas where the tech world could really assist. > There’s no popular support for the war, but the pain of war is not yet felt. And likely won't be for weeks or even months. > Unfortunately there’s no other options left. Agreed. > Sanctions are not a short term deterrent. Also agreed, but they are a message, especially if those sanctions hurt the EU as well. I would be happy to shut down the heat here if that's what it took to get the EU completely disconnected from Russian gas. It would be very annoying but we'd live, my grandparents went through far worse than that. And I've been trying to figure out how I can really help Ukrainian refugees.
- throwawayay02 5y ago
  I do not believe you know any Russians at all, from my experience.
- FpUser 5y ago
  I am not in Russia and I did not believe that Putin will attack. I did not expect him to be that kind of retard. >"Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering" When you talk like this about whole nation I am not even sure what to call it. Well actually I do but I did not yet have enough of HN.
  - nomel 5y ago
    I'm not the parent, and I consider the people of Russia to be a separate entity from their government. But, how do you see Putin getting pushed out of power, other than by the Russian people? If it is required that the Russian people push him out, is it not logical that they must be motivated, with the assumption that sanctions would not be required if they were already motivated enough? I'm trying to understand all of this, and I appreciate your opinion/perspective.
    - FpUser 5y ago
      Putin has huge internal security apparatus backing him up. He does not give a flying fuck about what people think and will not hesitate to suppress any potentially threatening activity with overwhelming force. If you think that you can sanction / starve Russia to the point that simple people will organize, revolt and depose Putin I think you live on a different planet. The only force that can really depose him are some competing elites assuming they have backing from enforcement agencies / military. I am not sure how you can sanction / bribe those into action. Personally I think the West had quite a few years to sort things out between Russia and Ukraine. I think it was possible. I do not have any real proof but I suspect that instead of trying to find some meaningful compromise they were playing hard ball and are now reaping a "reward". What to do now - I have no frigging clue as the situation is out of control. As for the subject of "suffering" - purposely starving the whole nation and keeping people hostage I think is what scumbags do / advocate.
      - nomel 5y ago
        I see. Do you think a hit to the economy could motivate any of the elites? Or are they mostly decoupled from any fluctuations in the Russian economy (foreign investments for example)?
trasz 5y ago
> In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China "The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8,700 "mass group incidents" in 1993[1] to over 87,000 in 2005."
- reaperducer 5y ago
  Those numbers are 17 years old. I think we need newer data than that to come to a conclusion. The number of protests in Hong Kong has plummeted in the last two years. Even annual events have been cancelled because of the new laws that can land people in jail for even being near a protest site, or a historically/politically significant location at the wrong time.
- toxik 5y ago
  You have left out the part of that article that says that these protests are only about local issues and do not worry or concern the CCP.
qiskit 5y ago
- emptysongglass 5y ago
  Many of your points aren't true at all. You appear to be trying to make a false balance (a term I learned today) by casting doubt on the censorship and brutal repression of protests we know China performs. We have a bounty of evidence that WeChat is heavily monitored and censored. You can in fact test it today. We know that the recent anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre was heavily censored and dissidents detained and silenced. We also know that public figures who speak out against the regime are disappeared. Of the very many, I will mention Peng Shuai who spoke out against her sexual abuse by a senior Party member. So you don't appear to be making much of an argument at all, as even a cursory glance in the history books of the last year will reveal your false balance to be as empty as your accusation of its absurdity.
  - qiskit 5y ago
    - witrak 5y ago
      >> We have a bounty of evidence that WeChat is heavily monitored and censored. > Amazing. All social media is heavily monitored and censored everywhere. We can argue degrees but it's all censored. Well, similarly we could argue is a real difference between firecrackers and thousand pounds bombs.
    - darkarmani 5y ago
      > Amazing. All social media is heavily monitored and censored everywhere. We can argue degrees but it's all censored. Nope. On WhatsApp, no message I've ever sent has been censored. I haven't heard of anyone being censored on whatsapp. (the example being wechat which i believe is equivalent). > Like that chinese tennis player right. Or jack ma? Disappeared and then reappeared. Like magic. You aren't making the point you think you are. You are confirming that they were disappeared for a LONG time by the gov't.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
> They like to think they are free and above the hypocrisy of the west. This statement shows you have no idea what Russians like to think. Better stop embarrassing yourself further with such opinions. Source: I'm actually Russian.
- witrak 5y ago
  You seem to believe strongly that the fact that you are Russian makes your opinion of what Russians think (or not think) absolutely true.
  - alexryndin 5y ago
    ofc the fact that I'm Russian don't make me think that my opinion is true, and yet I strongly don't like when someone describes the opinions and thinking of all Russians without exception, sometimes don't even trying to study and understand the roots of the problem between our countries.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Well, he is at least speaking for himself, likely has a good idea of what friends and family think so you can take it as a datapoint. And I would put more stock in that than in someone who isn't Russian.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  Enlighten us then.
  - alexryndin 5y ago
    I like to think that peaceful EU and USA continue to pump Ukraine with weapons in this fratricidal war. I also like to think that in recent days many countries have blocked a number of Russian media while continuing to pretend that they are actually fighting for freedom of speech. Source: I'm Russian too.
    - 5y ago
throwawayay02 5y ago
What a ridiculous take. Yes the Russian govmt censors a lot of things. The west also does it. And more than plain censoring, which happens mostly in China, what happens the most is just building a narrative: only show what you need to be shown, diminish opposing views, augment yours, shape the narrative by building a fake opposition. These are basic strategies done since before world war 2. The russians by and large know very well not to trust the government. But who will work best in their interest instead, will NATO? Would the US trust Europe to fix their two-party "democracy" and lack of healthcare?
deleted 5y ago
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throwawaygjdbsj 5y ago

[flagged]

dshpala 5y ago

Heh, "point to Russians". I have several friends in Moscow, and up until the last few days they were in complete denial about Putin's intentions or troops buildup. There were memes, jokes, etc. The propaganda inside Russia is very strong. Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering (economically or otherwise). And then maybe they'll wake up.

skybrian 5y ago
How much have they changed their minds in the last few days?
- reaperducer 5y ago
  How much have they changed their minds in the last few days? Enough that there are protests in most major Russian cities against the invasion of Ukraine. Just yesterday, Moscow police arrested over 1,000 protesters. They can only keep up that pace for so long.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    The protests won't last long. Any protester risks getting a few years sentence going out every time, and russian prisons are hell on earth.
  - throw7 5y ago
    Really? non-democratic regimes have proved again and again that the plebes can be contained.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    This can't be true, because this thread started off with > In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. You cannot have hypocrisy in how you deal with political protests if you do not have political protests!
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      They are arrested wholesale.
  - vkou 5y ago
    150,000 people in Washington, DC, protested the Iraq war when it was getting started. It, uh, didn't accomplish much. I'm not sure that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is any more inclined to listen to protests than the Department of State was.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Not until there are more protestors than the police can conceivably arrest will it make a real difference, but there is some chance of that happening.
  - nomel 5y ago
    > They can only keep up that pace for so long. Sorry, do you mean the protestors can only keep it up for so long, or the police can only keep arresting for so long?
- NoOn3 5y ago
  I'm Russian and It was clear that this could happen at any moment based on negotiations between the parties and other events, although the media laughed a little at this...
gruez 5y ago
>The propaganda inside Russia is very strong. Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering (economically or otherwise). And then maybe they'll wake up. What makes you sure that it won't cement their position even more? Western countries hurting russia's economy via sanctions basically confirms the "evil westerners" narrative.
- MrYellowP 5y ago
  - dave_sullivan 5y ago
    No good side, but one is better than the other.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      Which one? It's not obvious.
      - MrYellowP 5y ago
        So you say that a country, which keeps putting itself into war over and over again, killing millions of people mostly based on lies they tell us, isn't evil?
  - slashdev 5y ago
    Evil is a pretty strong word to toss around like that. The Nazis were evil. How is the West evil? Western countries do a number of bad things, but they're not evil.
    - z3c0 5y ago
      Drone assassination programs are pretty evil. Oh wait, did you mean evil to us, or evil to everybody else?
ivan_gammel 5y ago
Denial doesn’t mean they were influenced by propaganda. Invasion just didn’t make any sense and even among the opposition there was a belief that Putin is evil but rational.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  So now the conclusion is he's not rational. Now what? A non rational dictator sitting on a very large number of nuclear weapons is not a good thing for the world.
  - ivan_gammel 5y ago
    Now it’s just scary. Let’s hope Ukraine will be able to resist long enough to force Putin to negotiate peace and to forget about any attempt to reach his goals along the Western borders of Russia by military means. It’s too bad that our hope is that enough Russian soldiers will die for Russian public to notice that war is in their house. There’s no popular support for the war, but the pain of war is not yet felt. Unfortunately there’s no other options left. Sanctions are not a short term deterrent.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      > Now it’s just scary. And getting worse. > Let’s hope Ukraine will be able to resist long enough to force Putin to negotiate peace and to forget about any attempt to reach his goals along the Western borders of Russia by military means. I hope with you but the force asymmetry is large. But so far they have been doing much better than could have reasonably been expected. > It’s too bad that our hope is that enough Russian soldiers will die for Russian public to notice that war is in their house. This will be one of the most carefully controlled statistics, there is no way that official channels will get close to communicating these numbers. I've been wondering if this isn't one of those areas where the tech world could really assist. > There’s no popular support for the war, but the pain of war is not yet felt. And likely won't be for weeks or even months. > Unfortunately there’s no other options left. Agreed. > Sanctions are not a short term deterrent. Also agreed, but they are a message, especially if those sanctions hurt the EU as well. I would be happy to shut down the heat here if that's what it took to get the EU completely disconnected from Russian gas. It would be very annoying but we'd live, my grandparents went through far worse than that. And I've been trying to figure out how I can really help Ukrainian refugees.
throwawayay02 5y ago
I do not believe you know any Russians at all, from my experience.
FpUser 5y ago
I am not in Russia and I did not believe that Putin will attack. I did not expect him to be that kind of retard. >"Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering" When you talk like this about whole nation I am not even sure what to call it. Well actually I do but I did not yet have enough of HN.
- nomel 5y ago
  I'm not the parent, and I consider the people of Russia to be a separate entity from their government. But, how do you see Putin getting pushed out of power, other than by the Russian people? If it is required that the Russian people push him out, is it not logical that they must be motivated, with the assumption that sanctions would not be required if they were already motivated enough? I'm trying to understand all of this, and I appreciate your opinion/perspective.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    Putin has huge internal security apparatus backing him up. He does not give a flying fuck about what people think and will not hesitate to suppress any potentially threatening activity with overwhelming force. If you think that you can sanction / starve Russia to the point that simple people will organize, revolt and depose Putin I think you live on a different planet. The only force that can really depose him are some competing elites assuming they have backing from enforcement agencies / military. I am not sure how you can sanction / bribe those into action. Personally I think the West had quite a few years to sort things out between Russia and Ukraine. I think it was possible. I do not have any real proof but I suspect that instead of trying to find some meaningful compromise they were playing hard ball and are now reaping a "reward". What to do now - I have no frigging clue as the situation is out of control. As for the subject of "suffering" - purposely starving the whole nation and keeping people hostage I think is what scumbags do / advocate.
    - nomel 5y ago
      I see. Do you think a hit to the economy could motivate any of the elites? Or are they mostly decoupled from any fluctuations in the Russian economy (foreign investments for example)?

trasz 5y ago

> In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China "The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8,700 "mass group incidents" in 1993[1] to over 87,000 in 2005."

reaperducer 5y ago
Those numbers are 17 years old. I think we need newer data than that to come to a conclusion. The number of protests in Hong Kong has plummeted in the last two years. Even annual events have been cancelled because of the new laws that can land people in jail for even being near a protest site, or a historically/politically significant location at the wrong time.
toxik 5y ago
You have left out the part of that article that says that these protests are only about local issues and do not worry or concern the CCP.

qiskit 5y ago

emptysongglass 5y ago
Many of your points aren't true at all. You appear to be trying to make a false balance (a term I learned today) by casting doubt on the censorship and brutal repression of protests we know China performs. We have a bounty of evidence that WeChat is heavily monitored and censored. You can in fact test it today. We know that the recent anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre was heavily censored and dissidents detained and silenced. We also know that public figures who speak out against the regime are disappeared. Of the very many, I will mention Peng Shuai who spoke out against her sexual abuse by a senior Party member. So you don't appear to be making much of an argument at all, as even a cursory glance in the history books of the last year will reveal your false balance to be as empty as your accusation of its absurdity.
- qiskit 5y ago
  - witrak 5y ago
    >> We have a bounty of evidence that WeChat is heavily monitored and censored. > Amazing. All social media is heavily monitored and censored everywhere. We can argue degrees but it's all censored. Well, similarly we could argue is a real difference between firecrackers and thousand pounds bombs.
  - darkarmani 5y ago
    > Amazing. All social media is heavily monitored and censored everywhere. We can argue degrees but it's all censored. Nope. On WhatsApp, no message I've ever sent has been censored. I haven't heard of anyone being censored on whatsapp. (the example being wechat which i believe is equivalent). > Like that chinese tennis player right. Or jack ma? Disappeared and then reappeared. Like magic. You aren't making the point you think you are. You are confirming that they were disappeared for a LONG time by the gov't.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

> They like to think they are free and above the hypocrisy of the west. This statement shows you have no idea what Russians like to think. Better stop embarrassing yourself further with such opinions. Source: I'm actually Russian.

witrak 5y ago
You seem to believe strongly that the fact that you are Russian makes your opinion of what Russians think (or not think) absolutely true.
- alexryndin 5y ago
  ofc the fact that I'm Russian don't make me think that my opinion is true, and yet I strongly don't like when someone describes the opinions and thinking of all Russians without exception, sometimes don't even trying to study and understand the roots of the problem between our countries.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Well, he is at least speaking for himself, likely has a good idea of what friends and family think so you can take it as a datapoint. And I would put more stock in that than in someone who isn't Russian.
chinathrow 5y ago
Enlighten us then.
- alexryndin 5y ago
  I like to think that peaceful EU and USA continue to pump Ukraine with weapons in this fratricidal war. I also like to think that in recent days many countries have blocked a number of Russian media while continuing to pretend that they are actually fighting for freedom of speech. Source: I'm Russian too.
  - 5y ago

throwawayay02 5y ago

What a ridiculous take. Yes the Russian govmt censors a lot of things. The west also does it. And more than plain censoring, which happens mostly in China, what happens the most is just building a narrative: only show what you need to be shown, diminish opposing views, augment yours, shape the narrative by building a fake opposition. These are basic strategies done since before world war 2. The russians by and large know very well not to trust the government. But who will work best in their interest instead, will NATO? Would the US trust Europe to fix their two-party "democracy" and lack of healthcare?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]