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The difficulty with this approach is that whilst it can work, it requires a high degree of intellectual honesty, meaning that you have to go in open to the poss

The difficulty with this approach is that whilst it can work, it requires a high degree of intellectual honesty, meaning that you have to go in open to the possibility that the person you're talking to is correct and it's you yourself who is wrong. Because the person you're talking to, of course, believes they are right and you are wrong. If you aren't open to that possibility at all why would they bother trying to persuade you of what they believe? It's only by trying to explain that, and then losing an honest debate, that the truth can be revealed. The belief that "Ukraine needs to be liberated from the Nazis" comes from the fact that whilst Zelensky himself may not himself be a Nazi, he employs people who definitely are Nazis in his military and relies on them apparently quite heavily. Apparently he doesn't have a problem with this. This has been true for many years, i.e. the Ukrainian government has been sending Nazis to kill the "pro Russian separatists" in the east (whoever they truly are or who supports them doesn't matter much for whether this claim is true or not). So if you try and stop a Russian person believing the Ukrainian government is allied with Nazis you'll probably fail, because the claim is true on its face. The better angle is probably to go with arguments like these? a. Is it ever morally right to start a pre-emptive war against a potential future adversary? Here you'll probably get something about the Iraq wars and it may be required to admit the US was at fault here, if you want to take that angle, or at least not morally superior. b. Are the fighters in the Russian military of the same level of threat as the original Nazis, just because they wear the same symbols etc? Or is this comparison overblown, for domestic propaganda purposes? c. Is this Putin's real motivation or just a handy excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway?

marcusverus 5y ago
I think we are generally on the same page, but your arguments seem problematic in that they are neutral and abstract enough that, even if you chased that line of argument down to bedrock, you might find yourself having a discussion about philosophical opinions, which are not subject to the undermining attack I’ve got in mind. If my ‘opponent’ responded in the way you suggested, I’d be in good shape. I would observe that employing a single militia of people with abhorrent views hardly makes Ukraine at large in need of liberation. Since there is an implied expectation that Ukraine should spurn the help of these Nazis, I would ask whether, when the US found itself at war with the Nazis, it had a moral obligation to spurn the aid of the Soviets, who themselves had quite an evil record on matters of human rights. And, of course, I would ask to be educated on the nature of these Nazi militias. Are they members of a party? Is the militia exclusively made up of Nazis? What proportion of the armed forces are they? I’d be interested to learn more, because an officially Nazi institution is quite difference than an institution which has a few known skinheads in its membership, and the difference seems material.
- native_samples 5y ago
  "I would observe that employing a single militia of people with abhorrent views hardly makes Ukraine at large in need of liberation." My guess is they would then respond by observing that it's not a single group, there is at minimum Azov, Svoboda, and Right Sector, probably more. Azov has rather notoriously been officially integrated into the Ukrainian military so it's unclear if it even makes sense to talk about it as if it were an entirely separate group now. And they would argue that if you indeed thought it was only a single militia then it'd be you under the influence of propaganda, not them, so this would probably backfire. Now, does this justify 'liberation'. That's indeed a more fruitful ground for discussion. Highlighting the USA/Soviet alliance is maybe a good tactic, albeit it may backfire (perhaps this Russian hated the Soviet Union, a lot did). And it takes you down the more philosophical road, which I recommend, because the actual details of Ukraine are so messy that debating it may not result in the clean outcome you seek. "I would ask to be educated on the nature of these Nazi militias. Are they members of a party? Is the militia exclusively made up of Nazis? What proportion of the armed forces are they?" I'm not an expert, have just read a few articles about this (pre 2020). But to answer your questions: 1. Yes, it's called Svoboda. Also, after the 2014 revolution/coup/whatever it was, many were directly appointed to the government by the new president. "After the coup, the neo-Nazis were awarded for their effectiveness. When "Yats" took power with US support, he appointed neo-Nazis to 4 ministries in his govt. Andriy Parubiy, a founder of Svoboda, and a commandant of the 2014 coup’s "self-defense forces," became the national security chief. Right Sektor and the Azov Battalion were incorporated into the National Guard of the military. Poroshenko, who succeeded Yatsenyuk, praised them as "great warriors" and dispatched them to fight the ethnic Russians and separatists in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine." https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/03/27/msm-cover-up-of-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/ https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/03/27/msm-cover-up-of-neo-... 2. Militias like Azov are entirely Nazi, it seems, but are an integrated component of the wider Ukrainian military, which is not. Though I suppose we may wonder how non-Nazi they really are if they fight alongside them. 3. This I'm not sure about. A relatively small overall part of the military but their most effective and motivated fighters by far, seems to be the general consensus.

marcusverus 5y ago

I think we are generally on the same page, but your arguments seem problematic in that they are neutral and abstract enough that, even if you chased that line of argument down to bedrock, you might find yourself having a discussion about philosophical opinions, which are not subject to the undermining attack I’ve got in mind. If my ‘opponent’ responded in the way you suggested, I’d be in good shape. I would observe that employing a single militia of people with abhorrent views hardly makes Ukraine at large in need of liberation. Since there is an implied expectation that Ukraine should spurn the help of these Nazis, I would ask whether, when the US found itself at war with the Nazis, it had a moral obligation to spurn the aid of the Soviets, who themselves had quite an evil record on matters of human rights. And, of course, I would ask to be educated on the nature of these Nazi militias. Are they members of a party? Is the militia exclusively made up of Nazis? What proportion of the armed forces are they? I’d be interested to learn more, because an officially Nazi institution is quite difference than an institution which has a few known skinheads in its membership, and the difference seems material.

native_samples 5y ago
"I would observe that employing a single militia of people with abhorrent views hardly makes Ukraine at large in need of liberation." My guess is they would then respond by observing that it's not a single group, there is at minimum Azov, Svoboda, and Right Sector, probably more. Azov has rather notoriously been officially integrated into the Ukrainian military so it's unclear if it even makes sense to talk about it as if it were an entirely separate group now. And they would argue that if you indeed thought it was only a single militia then it'd be you under the influence of propaganda, not them, so this would probably backfire. Now, does this justify 'liberation'. That's indeed a more fruitful ground for discussion. Highlighting the USA/Soviet alliance is maybe a good tactic, albeit it may backfire (perhaps this Russian hated the Soviet Union, a lot did). And it takes you down the more philosophical road, which I recommend, because the actual details of Ukraine are so messy that debating it may not result in the clean outcome you seek. "I would ask to be educated on the nature of these Nazi militias. Are they members of a party? Is the militia exclusively made up of Nazis? What proportion of the armed forces are they?" I'm not an expert, have just read a few articles about this (pre 2020). But to answer your questions: 1. Yes, it's called Svoboda. Also, after the 2014 revolution/coup/whatever it was, many were directly appointed to the government by the new president. "After the coup, the neo-Nazis were awarded for their effectiveness. When "Yats" took power with US support, he appointed neo-Nazis to 4 ministries in his govt. Andriy Parubiy, a founder of Svoboda, and a commandant of the 2014 coup’s "self-defense forces," became the national security chief. Right Sektor and the Azov Battalion were incorporated into the National Guard of the military. Poroshenko, who succeeded Yatsenyuk, praised them as "great warriors" and dispatched them to fight the ethnic Russians and separatists in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine." https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/03/27/msm-cover-up-of-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/ https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/03/27/msm-cover-up-of-neo-... 2. Militias like Azov are entirely Nazi, it seems, but are an integrated component of the wider Ukrainian military, which is not. Though I suppose we may wonder how non-Nazi they really are if they fight alongside them. 3. This I'm not sure about. A relatively small overall part of the military but their most effective and motivated fighters by far, seems to be the general consensus.