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Americans’ views on the war reveal a striking generational divide

143 points by ptr 4y ago

philipov 4y ago
pay walled
- stuxnet 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/btVtx https://archive.ph/btVtx
  - rossdavidh 4y ago
    never loads, for me
- drewcoo 4y ago
  It's strangely appropriate that someone would need to tear down that wall to let everyone read about this particular generational divide. The first time I've appreciated a paywall.
- WithinReason 4y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
- guntars 4y ago
  Turning off Javascript on the Economist website also shows the full article. I'm using uBlock for this. Besides the paywalls, I find that turning off JS improves the user experience on the vast majority of news sites.
  - asdff 4y ago
    A lot of sites will just break without JS. I just tried with my ublock origin and cnn.com with javascript disabled, and only the site map on the footer loads.
Miner49er 4y ago
The graphic is important I think. It's not a binary. While the younger generation showed more support for Russia, most of the difference between the generations was due to the younger generation giving an "unsure" answer.
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  Excellent point. If the younger generation were not more often "unsure" about a foreign policy question, that would mean either: 1) they have spent a lot of time studying foreign policy questions (unlikely with any generation when young), or 2) they just accept whatever their elders tell them 56% of young people supporting Ukraine, is a result we would consider a crushing victory for either party in modern presidential elections, and that's when there's a lot fewer "unsure". There is a generational difference, sure, but it's a lot less dramatic than most of the posts here are suggesting.
dwringer 4y ago
A lot has changed in the three weeks since they took their poll, I'd be very surprised if some of these numbers hold true today (for instance, this claims only 47% under 30 believe Russia has intentionally targeted civilians)
- NoOn3 4y ago
  I think there's no point for Russian forces intentionally target civilians.
  - archagon 4y ago
    There's "no point" in organized war atrocities, and yet they happen anyway. Which is to say there actually is a point: terror, demotivation, channeling the anger and frustration of your troops into a "soft" target, etc.
lalaland1125 4y ago
Another possible explanation is that younger people tend to rely more on far right or far left media, which tends to be much more pro-Russia than mainstream media (sometimes organically, sometimes through paid sponsorship like https://twitter.com/bamnecessary/status/1499162014895296516 https://twitter.com/bamnecessary/status/1499162014895296516). Hasan Piker for example, the #1 politics streamer on Twitch, is quite far left and is much more pro-Russia than say CNN.
- Miner49er 4y ago
  > Hasan Piker for example, the #1 politics streamer on Twitch, is quite far left and is much more pro-Russia than say CNN. I don't think Hasan is even remotely pro-Russia. What makes you say that?
  - lalaland1125 4y ago
    Hasan talks on his show about how he thinks Russia was right to annex Crimea: https://clips.twitch.tv/ElegantTemperedApplePicoMause-VCY99fPs8hKewayQ https://clips.twitch.tv/ElegantTemperedApplePicoMause-VCY99f...
    - Miner49er 4y ago
      But he also used his stream to raise $200k for Ukranian relief efforts.
      - ffwszgf 4y ago
        I mean his is the quintessential “both-sides” take that pushes (younger) people to be “unsure” about who they support, no? Russia is bad, but so is Ukraine and NATO, too. Russia is bad but Ukraine does have a Nazi problem. People like him are probably the greatest contributors to the large amount of Gen Z who are unsure as to who they support.
        idiotsecant 4y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
I think one of the big reasons is that this generation came of age during the Iraq War. They saw how the whole media and US military and intelligence community could push a story that was designed to inflame people and push for war. And we saw the huge cost of that. Fool me once…
- ericmay 4y ago
  Yea but it would also be a mistake to just assume that this is the case yet again, especially given that the United States has adamantly refused to put troops in Ukraine and has sought diplomatic solutions from the start. The US government has really pushed against inflaming the US population toward war. If recognizing atrocities, however, pushes people toward war than there isn't much you can do about that besides continue to do what the US has done which is not get into the war. I went to Iraq. The war was probably misguided (although there is still a democratically elected government in Iraq... so... idk) - Ukraine is quite unlike Iraq and if this generation (which I think includes me?) is drawing comparisons than it's because of a lack of thought and education around world events.
- rcpt 4y ago
  Fool me once... shame on... shame on you. You fool me you can't get fooled again!
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  This is sort of the Chomsky syndrome: Assuming that government A is always lying, and that therefore the opposite claim by government B has to be right.
- Proudmuslim 4y ago
  Precisely. We don't trust the government or the media at all anymore, and we aren't willing to go fight the elite's war for them.
emerged 4y ago
I visit some fringe political forums once in a blue moon just to take a pulse. I was surprised to see a sizable pro-Putin sentiment which is basically a result of the whole “Russia Russia Russia” thing. Boy who cried wolf is a real thing.
- long_time_gone 4y ago
  > a result of the whole “Russia Russia Russia” thing. Can you explain who the "boy" was and how they "cried wolf"? Did you read the Senate Intelligence report? PBS: Senate panel finds Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election [1]. "The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, details how Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers." [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-russia-interfered-in-the-2016-us-election https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-rus...
  - sfblah 4y ago
    That second quote you gave is just really slanted. The right framing here is Trump is not a smart man. Sure, his folks talked to Russian operatives. That's for two reasons: 1. They're stupid and easy to manipulate. 2. They urgently wanted negative stories to publish about Hillary. Yes, Russia was trying to influence our election. But, no, Trump isn't some clever Manchurian Candidate taking over our country on behalf of another country. The right framing here is that famous SNL sketch about Reagan from the 80s, where Reagan acts like a bumbler but then when the doors close suddenly becomes some kind of genius mob figure. That skit was funny, because the "mob boss" version of Reagan was obviously just not true. Same thing for Trump. Turning to American media. Sure, they can dig up stuff about Trump's behavior with Russia. Along the same lines, there are tons of stories across decades painting the Clintons as pretty terrible people. The difference here, and this is important, is that outlets like CNN do have a massive bias in favor of Democratic candidates. That's where the "Russia Russia Russia" narrative by Trump supporters is actually right. Mainstream media's treatment of events like the Russia story, Jan 6, BLM protests, etc. is absolutely biased. That's where the suspicion comes from. The solution is for mainstream journalists to reduce their bias. Easy places to start: * Tell the truth about the relative propensity of a white versus black suspect to be shot by police. * Investigate political candidates in an evenhanded way, and be as honest as possible about errors on stories like Hunter Biden's laptop.
howmayiannoyyou 4y ago
"If we just...." Young Americans, in general, do not understand or internalize national security or great power competition; and instead project high ideals and generosity to countries whose _leadership_ does not share the same view of their nation or the world. With Russia, using OP example, there was & probably remains the very serious risk of food & energy dominance by Russia at the expense of democratic nations - none of whom can make the transition to so-called green tech in-time to avoid that outcome. There remains the risk of a Sino-Russian alliance that would result in a very different world from today's somewhat free & open societies. I could go on at length, but will sum it up by saying the world doesn't work the way we wish it would, and we have to face reality head-on and not wish it away.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  This is very true. I think for young people it's very difficult to appreciate that we live on the knife's edge of peace. Peace is not the natural human condition, and vast numbers of people are ready and willing to commit incredible violence and atrocities in the name of their tribe. Absolutely nothing about human nature has changed since the uncountable wars we have fought since our very first moments as a species. Peace exists only in the liminal space between great violence and terrible powers.
  - hyperdimension 4y ago
    > knife's edge of peace This phrasing reminded me of a comment I favorited a while ago, so I went through my favorited comments and found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5847789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5847789 "It took thousands of years of human civilisation before we got relatively benign governments. Power structures are not inherently benign; they must constantly be pressured to prevent malignant people using them to leverage their actions. A non-authoritarian government is an historical anomaly. It's a ball balanced on top of a hill, pushed there by the deaths of millions, and kept there by the vigilance of those who care. Please start caring."
    - dougmwne 4y ago
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
[flagged]
- akimball 4y ago
  Support for Russia is not antiwar. Boomers were famously opposed to US involvement in Vietnam.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    > Support for Russia is not antiwar. I didn’t say it is? > Boomers were famously opposed to US involvement in Vietnam. Then the 80s happened.
  - asdff 4y ago
    Not all boomers were opposed to the US involvement in vietnam, plenty drank the koolaid and were happy to enlist.
- _haoa 4y ago
  Hit the nail on the head. Boomers grew up in an age without the internet, where government propaganda was spoonfed to them straight through their brand new living room television sets and doorstep newspapers. Just imagine: the only bastion of information was your local library. Granted, information in libraries is curated and of substantially higher quality than the unfiltered garbage that you can encounter on the internet... but who was really going to libraries that often back in the day? Information was sparse, and that was exploited to manipulate people to an uncanny degree.
  - redmen 4y ago
    And now rather than being spoonfed, propaganda requires just a click or two. Even worse imo. Makes you feel like you are in control of the content you find when for the vast majority of people you are not.
    - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
CoastalCoder 4y ago
IIUC, the poll's questions used the term "Russia", which implicitly lumps together the following groups: - the Russian government - the Russian military leadership - Russian career soldiers - Russian conscripts - regular Russian citizens If I were taking the survey, my answer to all 3 questions would depend on those distinctions.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  Yep. I am observing this interesting gap in political correctness for a long time now. When Russians are concerned nobody (in my perception) is using a politically correct formulas (formulae?) like "a Putin-paid disinformation campaign", usually it's "a Russian disinformation campaign". Since all gaps in political correctness are (in my humble perception) deliberate, I've always wondered why it exists.
  - cbg0 4y ago
    Saying that anything bad that Russia is doing is Putin's fault is very reductive.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      It also makes people pretend like understanding the conflict is just a matter of doing amateur psychology with the image they get of Putin through the television as a James Bond-style bad guy. Every time some plain old person tells me what Putin thinks or what Putin wants or what Putin can't stand, I have to leave or change the subject. The way they talk about the Ukraine conflict has no actual physical references. It's like they're telling fairy stories about an evil wizard.
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      Anything? Ok, let’s look at a couple of examples. 1. Stealing and publishing DNC correspondence. A team of security experts, doing a magnificently fast work named exactly two culprits: a) Russian military intelligence, b) Russian political intelligence. Both these entities are directly under Putin’s control. Still it was “Russian interference in elections”, not “Putin’s interference in elections”. The latter is both correct and politically correct, and in no way reductive. Why not use it? 2. Placing Facebook ads during the election campaign. The official indictment named Prigozhin’s media company (forgot its name) as a culprit. Prigozhin is the closest buddy of Putin. So blaming Putin was not reductive in this case. Still, “Russian meddling” was used, not “Putin’s”. Any idea why?
V__ 4y ago
I wonder whether 18-29 year olds have more pressing problems to care about and are therefore more apathetic?
- vippy 4y ago
  College debt and housing costs are killing the 30+ crowd.
  - whymauri 4y ago
    I'm vouching for this comment, because it's an entirely reasonable thought that crippling debt and housing costs lead to apathy (graphs 3 "Do you care who wins?"). I do not believe it leads to supporting Russia, though.
    - V__ 4y ago
      Yeah, I wish these polls would also ask "null-hypothesis"-questions (for a lack of a better word). Like "Do you care about the war in Ukraine?" and then get more specific.
ffwszgf 4y ago
Most younger people are quite skeptic of mainstream media so they don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them.With the elderly it’s the opposite. Further, most of the elderly lived at a time when the USSR was the clear and obvious enemy of “freedom”, so it’s not hard to fathom Russia being back into its usual shenanigans. Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) so they’re less willing to blindly support US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations. Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention. Gen Z has thus mostly understood this conflict through the propaganda wars that play out in social media and thus have conflicting and/or “both-sides” takes.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  >Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) An irony, considering that Russian imperialism is the one that actually performs land grabs and ethnic cleansing without even trying to cover it up.
  - huragok 4y ago
    Just as more than one thing can be bad, you can be against imperialism, stand with oppressed peoples and deeply question the official American story.
    - ncallaway 4y ago
      Agreed that you don't have to accept the official American story. You can not be "anti-imperialist" and tolerate this war, however. This is a war of Russian imperialism. American imperialism is bad, I agree with that. But Russian imperialism is also bad. As was British imperialism. If you're an anti-imperialism, you must be against the Russian invasion.
dougmwne 4y ago
I am a pro Ukraine millennial. I also came of age during our middle east forever war and saw all the lies that went into supporting that boondoggle. The irony is not lost on me one bit. Goat herders yesterday, babuskas today. The great powers play their games and we pay.
- vippy 4y ago
- PyWoody 4y ago
  I'm in the same age group and mindset as you. In fact, none of [the] poll results tracks anything I've encountered since the war started. I do not know a single person who sympathizes with the Russian aggression. If the polling numbers are representative of larger groups outside of my social circles, then it is every disconcerting. > barely half of those under 30 said they care who wins... Yikes.
ComradePhil 4y ago
Boomers were brainwashed with cold war propaganda all their lives and don't see Russians as people. Even millenials were exposed to the same propaganda as kids. Younger Americans are more balanced so far... and newer propaganda is not as effective to anyone other than the laziest... because anyone interested can look for the information from other points of views just as easily because of democratization of media and information.
- redmen 4y ago
  "Younger Americans are more balanced" It doesn't have much to do with laziness. It has to do with your ability to filter and discern what is going on, your ability to hold multiple and opposing ideas in your head at once, etc etc. Laziness is one factor.
- grumple 4y ago
  > Boomers were brainwashed with cold war propaganda all their lives and don't see Russians as people. Even millenials were exposed to the same propaganda as kids. What...? We absolutely do see Russians as people. We also see this as a unilateral war of aggression created by a corrupt autocrat which has resulted in the unjustifiable murder, rape, and destruction of Ukrainian people. > Younger Americans are more balanced so far... and newer propaganda is not as effective to anyone other than the laziest... because anyone interested can look for the information from other points of views just as easily because of democratization of media and information. I'd love to see what information justifies the rape of 25 women in a basement [1]. Or the widespread destruction of civilian areas, rampant rape and murder. 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61071243 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61071243
  - ComradePhil 4y ago
    > I'd love to see what information justifies the rape of 25 women in a basement [1]. Or the widespread destruction of civilian areas, rampant rape and murder. Any modern war is an information war more than anything... and I mean everything from the first world war. You linking to a BBC website is very interesting because they were the first successful mass propaganda machine distributed all around the world via radio. Even more intersting bit what the BBC doesn't report. The same things have happened in every war where the western forces and allies have been involved, and the real information only comes out, if ever, after it becomes irrelevant. If it comes out while it is relevant, we know exactly what happens to those who are responsible... look at Manning and Assange.
lordnacho 4y ago
Wow I'm an old man. With the youth I'd say this generation is more affected by any other by the sheer noise of modern media. It's also one of the first where there was less emphasis on indoctrinating people towards the government's view on the cold war, the first to grow up with a government that lied to them about a significant non-cold war war (Iraq), and the first that actually has the means to cheaply find other views on things. So maybe it's not so strange that young people think this way. I mostly blame the Iraq war. Yes, the west has done a lot of bad things in the past. But in recent memory Iraq stands out as where we blew any pretense of moral superiority. (It does happen now and again, but the Cold War is a really good excuse for a LOT of bad things). People would have seen this and seen that whatever our governments say, you gotta take it with a grain of salt.
- _bohm 4y ago
  Adding to this, young Americans have never seen anything gained from war. The war in Afghanistan lasted 2 decades and cost trillions of dollars, yet we have next to nothing to show for it.
  - 8note 4y ago
    When is the last time America has seen benefit from going to war? The 50s with a stalemate in Korea?
    - _bohm 4y ago
      Arguably the first Gulf War. The US successfully protected it's economic interest and expanded its military establishment in the region.
      - reducesuffering 4y ago
        And liberated the Kuwaiti people from scud missiles, invasion, and occupation from a brutal Saddam regime? That's a pretty important benefit to miss, but maybe you're just limiting it to benefits for a US citizen. (of which selfless ones would consider it a benefit)
nerdjon 4y ago
TBH I don't really know how to take this. I am 31 so my age group is not represented at all by this graph. I am curious why they left out 30 to 64. At least within my friend group (which I don't think any are younger than 29... not that I really talk about age often) we are universally against the invasion of Ukraine and want them to survive. I don't feel like even at my age that I have experience or other events that are impacting my opinion. I also don't get most of my news from major news organizations. So I am very curious why this is the case.
kodah 4y ago
I appreciate the other threads here on this. My viewpoint may be a minority, but I fought in a war and live with the aftermath so I think my perspective might be of some value. I'm going to try to be careful with my wording but please realize this is a bit emotional even a decade later. I fought in Afghanistan. Real authoritarians with a very real tyrannical streak that's comparable to cartels, with tactics to boot. I watched the Obama administration lie about how well the war was going. We were getting reports of Marines being shot in the back by their counterparts continually. We were finding posts abandoned. Our bases were getting attacked while understaffed, our patrols were minimized, and our ROE was changed such that we had to be shot at directly to return fire. I watched national rhetoric coalesce on "they signed up for these injuries" when veterans needed help the most, culminating in people comitting suicide outside of hospitals. I will never for those reasons support sending another soul down range.
- fhood 4y ago
  This is a crucial and under-represented perspective. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion, but it is hard to ignore the inherent callousness of arguing over a conflict that will have no direct impact on me or my family.
- baq 4y ago
  The difference is, Afghanistan was of negligible importance in comparison. Stakes here are different. Just listen to Putin and take his words literally, because he means them. Either way, Ukraine needs weapons and bullets. They don’t need more soldiers.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    This comment is weird. Who cares about the stakes? Dead people are dead people. Unless you want to get into a "realist realpolitiks" analysis, which coincidentally can also be used to justify the russian war of aggression. I've seen this take pretty often and to me it boils down to "ukraine is in europe and ukrainians are europeans so it's different and it makes this war so much worse" which to me sounds extremely... problematic? Like the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan still make those wars and the Civil wars they caused much much more destructive than what's happening in ukraine. It's not a competition, for sure, but it's important to keep that in mind before dismissing or downplaying the consequences of American policy and the enthusiastic support for those wars of the American public .
asciimov 4y ago
Eh... without a breakout of their numbers it is hard to trust this poll. That said, I think its fair to say half of 18-29 year olds have no interest in geopolitics and 65+ people have been around long enough to have some opinion on it.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Those seem an odd selection of questions, which made me immediately suspect they asked many other questions then skipped over them to generate a story. Similar to how pharma companies have to pre-register research questions, do these polls have to publish their full methodology somewhere?
rank0 4y ago
Obviously I don't actually know whats going on over there, but I find it hard to believe that the Russian military as a whole is "deliberately targeting civilians". From the first estimate I found searching the web: On April 10: > Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 4,232 civilian casualties in the country: 1,793 killed and 2,439 injured. <2000 civilian deaths in a full-scale invasion of a country with ~44 million citizens seems FAR too low to declare that targeting civilians is a goal. Mariupol is currently fighting to the bitter end, despite being surrounded for weeks and even bisected by Russian forces. This is a city that had a population of >400k at the start of the war. If the goal was really to kill everybody in sight, the Russians would've just carpet bombed their targets day 1 and killed hundreds of thousands. It seems like everyone has forgotten what war is. There's no "humanitarian" way to commit war. It's always awful and always creates unintended death. Again, not an expert here nor do I believe any statistics to be 100% accurate.
- keewee7 4y ago
  You deliberately omitted the part saying "OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher". Most of the civilian deaths are still under rubles or in mass graves like Bucha. Many of them are also in areas still controlled by Russia.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  > OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Popasna (Luhansk region), and Borodianka (Kyiv region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.
- dash2 4y ago
  "deliberately targeting civilians" is not the same as "going out to murder everyone". Obviously, Russia could just nuke Ukraine. They haven't done that. However, they have verifiably used cluster munitions in cities; abducted, raped and murdered civilians in areas they control; bombed hospitals; shot and shelled civilians trying to flee; and so forth. All of this is very much what they have form for in Syria. Is it not getting reported in the US? It is in Europe.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Just as Russia is complex, so is Ukraine. The blame-throwing game can go on for quite some time by cherry-picking memes. I hope the war ends soon.
1970-01-01 4y ago
The title is backwards. There is a striking generational divide, and it extends into views of war.
sudosysgen 4y ago
The difference isn't that many more are supporting Russia. The difference is that many more don't have clear-cut sympathy for any side. I personally are much more sympathetic to Ukraine on different principles than most, but I definitely understand why many are not willing to trust the main media line on this. We went from hearing about how Ukraine was a deeply corrupt country, barely a democracy, to immediately hearing about how they are only being attacked because of how democratic and amazing it is and that Putin is scared Russians will want to live like Ukrainians. Media started glossing over Nazi imagery on the very pictures of soldiers they spread, not even mentioning it. There were many more narrative flips that I won't get into as a matter of time. Because of this, people that are less informed or that have a more traditional understanding of the morality of conflict will naturally get skeptical and decide that they don't want to sympathize with anyone.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  > We went from hearing about how Ukraine was a deeply corrupt country, barely a democracy, to immediately hearing about how they are only being attacked because of how democratic and amazing it is and that Putin is scared Russians will want to live like Ukrainians. Can't forget the regime change—excuse me, anti-corruption protests—in 2014 directly after the old regime chose economic partnership with Putin over closer integration with the EU. Much of the civil conflict within Ukraine, which Putin ostensibly invaded to pacify (remember, lying to justify a war isn't a US-only skill), is due to their residents/leadership not recognizing the results of the 2014 governmental changes.
- max599 4y ago
  >Media started glossing over Nazi imagery on the very pictures of soldiers they spread, not even mentioning it. I think they genuinely didn't know what it was. Even on r/ukraine, they were promoting those picture at the beginning. It doesn't look like any of the more common nazi symbols and and it doesn't have any text on it that you can google. It was quite interesting to see journalists using those pictures in their articles talking about how there was no nazi problem in Ukraine.
incomingpain 4y ago
18-29 is 1993 or younger. They we born during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. They were 7 years old or younger when they briefly experienced no war in 2000 and GWBush and 9/11 in 2001 they saw the Afghanistan war start and not end until only months ago. 20 years of war and a loss! They only know war. Can you imagine their war exhaustion? Can you imagine how much they don't care about a war happening on the otherside of the world that the usa aren't officially involved in? The USA is still officially involved in somali, yemen, and syria. These young americans are probably more concerned with those 3 and you didn't even ask them? You don't need to ask. You know they'll universally say to stop being in all these wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Important to mention that not only have we been at war their entire lives, but that they've been absolutely pointless wars of aggression that ended in a whimper for the US, and absolute devastation for the countries invaded. And as you said, we lost all of them. Not only that, but we've been too ashamed to declare them. No one wants to take responsibility, just reap the profits. Young people are cynical about war because it wasn't inculcated into them as a religion like it was for Boomers. Young people are cynical about war because they look at it, see its products, and see its profiteers. They lack the poetry to breathlessly admire the beauty of our weapons.
- mkaic 4y ago
  Sidenote as someone who's a member of Gen Z -- I... didn't grow up knowing nearly anything about the USA's wars of aggression other than that we were fighting someone in the middle east. I knew there was fighting, but I didn't (and honestly still don't) understand what for. It was never explained to me and I never thought about it enough to go looking. Not trying to disprove your point, just sharing my own anecdotal experience.
  - incomingpain 4y ago
    >Sidenote as someone who's a member of Gen Z -- I... didn't grow up knowing nearly anything about the USA's wars of aggression other than that we were fighting someone in the middle east. I knew there was fighting, but I didn't (and honestly still don't) understand what for. It was never explained to me and I never thought about it enough to go looking. I know many Chinese Nationals and even people from Hong Kong and none of them know about Tiananmen Square. I bet you heard of Tiananmen Square massacre. I bet you didn't know that the Chinese military killed all those people at Tiananmen over capitalism.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Younger people are so far removed from actual war that they have the luxury of being ambivalent about it. It's become easy to believe that war is simply a thing of the past and Americans won't ever experience it again. Ukraine is just pictures on a screen, nobody is going to drive tanks into America or fire missiles at our hospitals.
- Gollapalli 4y ago
  Which war did you fight in?
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Desert Storm. You?
    - Gollapalli 4y ago
      I didn’t. But I had to check that you weren’t talking out of your rear. It was a damn condescending comment. “Young people don’t agree with the established foreign policy position, it must mean they’re weak,” kinda thing. I mean the greatest generation didn’t support ww2. Hell, the Americans of the early 1900’s didn’t support ww1. Both times presidents were elected on the promise of keeping America out of war. Could you attribute that to being “detached from war”? They fought when they were called to do so. And until congress votes for war, I’m going to keep on saying that supporting Ukraine is a poor decision and outside the interests of America. I’m a zillenial for context.
- mkaic 4y ago
  Anecdotal counterexample (I'm Gen Z) -- Ukraine is pictures on a screen, and that's what brought my attention to it! I want Ukraine to win the war and I think what Russia is doing is extremely wrong and heinous, and I also wouldn't have become nearly as invested in the conflict were it not for the fact that this is the first major war to be broadcast on social media. I've seen video clips that made me angry, sad, and horrified, and have catalyzed me to make a firm stance on the issue instead of being ambivalent. Also anecdotally, every other person I know in my age group is also very pro-Ukraine and not ambivalent, perhaps as suggested by one of the other comments the poll is outdated?
peppustimbus 4y ago
spamizbad 4y ago
Spoke with a young person who had an interesting take: He says he sympathizes with Russians because he feels like they're also getting dragged into pointless wars by their government. (memories of Iraq and Afghanistan)
- mkaic 4y ago
  I agree! I'm Gen Z and I sympathize with the "good Russians" because I know a few. I've talked to people living in Russia right now who are furious with Putin for the awful evil things he's doing. I want Ukraine to win the war, but I don't think the Russian people are evil, I think Putin is evil. I'd wager that many pro-war Russians are victims of propaganda and lies and would change their minds if they had access to verifiable sources of truth, but they don't. Putin is horrible though and I want him and his cronies to be punished to the fullest extent of international law for their crimes against humanity.
renewiltord 4y ago
Young people are the Cheng Xin of this world. In the past, we did not know the lies that the mainstream media was attempting to broadcast as part of large scale population unification and pacification. Without control of that process, lots of these lies are now visible and faith has deteriorated in public sources of information. It's like how everyone knows the NIAID is useless today. Unfortunately, another casualty of all this is truth. This is the problem with lying for what you think is the greater good. At some point, the fact that you lied ruins the future entirely and poisons the info well. If even the guys we chose to help us are going to bullshit us, we must live in a world of perpetual information mistrust. This, plus, it's worth remembering that 16% of people have an IQ less than 85.
_Nat_ 4y ago
PDF of cited poll: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/l8ynsbxwgl/econTabReport.pdf https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/l8ynsbxwgl/econTabReport.pdf Cited figures from Table-14, on (PDF/printed)-page-55. Looks like they polled 4 age-groups: 18-29; 30-44; 45-64; and 65+. The results for 30-44 were pretty close to those for 18-29, and the results for 45-64 were pretty close to those for 65+. In fact, if we combine the two younger groups and two older groups, such that it's 18-44 vs. 45+, then the reported-results really don't change much. Tangentially, it's really weird for news-articles to not link their sources.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Gollapalli 4y ago
  This should be pinned.
arbitrary_name 4y ago
Young person here: aren't you the dolts who lied to us about Afghanistan and Iraq, then just got chased out with your tails between your legs? Why should we believe a single thing you have to say about going to war?
- erdos4d 4y ago
  Some questions: 1) Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine? 2) Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The bully or the victim? To me, these two questions and their answers determine my sympathies. You were lied to about Iraq and you are right to mistrust the US government, but the world media is not the US government. If you see reports from multiple news sources about mass graves and such, you should believe them.
  - Gollapalli 4y ago
    >Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine? Who cares? Not our fight. >Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The bully or the victim? Such infantile moralizing displays a profound case of arrested development in the moral faculties. Geopolitics is not a marvel movie.
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      Not our fight? Have you heard of Chamberlain? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement
      - Jensson 4y ago
        The fact that Ukraine now defends itself means that we are in a very different situation. None of the countries Hitler annexed during the appeasement actually defended themselves, he got them for free through diplomacy. If they did defend themselves instead of joining the German side then Germany wouldn't have been threat, and there would be no need for an alliance against them and Germany wouldn't have been the biggest threat in WW2. That is the situation we see today, Ukraine is defending itself, there is no way Russia can continue invading like that, they can't afford it, so the WW2 scenario has already been averted.
beefman 4y ago
Insightful episode of South Park on this recently...
deepsun 4y ago
I was anti-military and anti-gun ownership, until I happened to be in Ukraine at the time of attack, and until I happened to be in Belarus at a time of dictatorship. PS: although I think organization and coordination is thousands times more important than weapons.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
flatearth22 4y ago
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
The headline is very revealing of the incredibly slanted way the Ukraine war has been covered in "Western" media. When I read the headline, I immediately thought to myself, "which war?", until I saw the article was from the Economist and I knew they were referring to Ukraine. Just the use the term "the war" implicitly implies that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the only war (or at least the only war worth mentioning by "western media") raging. In fact, there are numerous wars raging right now. As a US citizen and close observer of our foreign policy and actions around the world, I have been floored by the hypocrisy and double standards in the coverage of the Ukraine war (despite hypocrisy and double standards being the norm). This is not an endorsement of Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine but an indictment of "western media" and "western" governments in general. For example, we (the United States), illegally invaded Syria a decade ago. A war of aggression just as illegal under international law as Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There were no indignant outcries on NBC or CNN or by any of the pundits who are today absurdly crying about the "disruption of the post world war 2 order". Our troops are illegally occupying Syria, today. Over 350,000 people have died there since the war started a decade ago. We bombed (and continue to bomb) civilian infrastructure with absolutely no military value in Syria. How can politicians and pundits (not to mention my fellow citizens) cry about the depravity and the crimes of Russians when our own country is engaged in the same crimes, right now, today? Many will exclaim this is "whataboutism" to explain away their cognitive dissonance. But it's about universal standards, credibility, and hypocrisy. If we condemn Russia for their illegal war while at the same time prosecuting illegal wars of our own, we expose ourselves at liars and hypocrites who don't oppose illegal war, just Russia. It is quite sickening when our so-called leaders stand up and give sanctimonious speeches about defending "democracy and human rights" while prosecuting our own illegal wars and propping up the most vicious dictatorships in the world, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, where democracy and human rights are completely absent. Again, this is not a defense of Russia's illegal war, although it will be taken as such by people consumed by the blanket propaganda saturating our society. This is a defense of universal standards, truth, morality and objective reality. If we want to be able to credibly condemn the wrongdoing of others and claim the moral authority to mete out justice, then we need to lead by example and actually earn the moral authority that we falsely claim. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam....
ratsforhorses 4y ago
I picked up this comment from a HN user in another thread but it got no traction, seeing Germany drag it's feet on sending arms and Zelensky's recent comments about blood money I think it's especially relevant... "seeing as we're heading into spring, seeing Germany has quite a wealthy economy and QOL, that many if not most workers get 5 weeks of holiday, the chip shortage is leading to slowdowns in the automotive industry etc... why doesn't the government just go cold turkey, give people a month or 2 free holidays while drastically reducing public lighting, telling businesses to stop heating their premises at night etc etc... I mean we had a dress rehearsal 2 years ago with the onset of Covid, this would be better ,for a good cause, probably give a boost to domestic spending and send a f...U to the rest of the world saying we too can think outside of the box :-)" I know it may seem naive, but how so?

143 points by ptr 4y ago

philipov 4y ago

pay walled

stuxnet 4y ago
https://archive.ph/btVtx https://archive.ph/btVtx
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  never loads, for me
drewcoo 4y ago
It's strangely appropriate that someone would need to tear down that wall to let everyone read about this particular generational divide. The first time I've appreciated a paywall.
WithinReason 4y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
guntars 4y ago
Turning off Javascript on the Economist website also shows the full article. I'm using uBlock for this. Besides the paywalls, I find that turning off JS improves the user experience on the vast majority of news sites.
- asdff 4y ago
  A lot of sites will just break without JS. I just tried with my ublock origin and cnn.com with javascript disabled, and only the site map on the footer loads.

Miner49er 4y ago

The graphic is important I think. It's not a binary. While the younger generation showed more support for Russia, most of the difference between the generations was due to the younger generation giving an "unsure" answer.

rossdavidh 4y ago
Excellent point. If the younger generation were not more often "unsure" about a foreign policy question, that would mean either: 1) they have spent a lot of time studying foreign policy questions (unlikely with any generation when young), or 2) they just accept whatever their elders tell them 56% of young people supporting Ukraine, is a result we would consider a crushing victory for either party in modern presidential elections, and that's when there's a lot fewer "unsure". There is a generational difference, sure, but it's a lot less dramatic than most of the posts here are suggesting.

dwringer 4y ago

A lot has changed in the three weeks since they took their poll, I'd be very surprised if some of these numbers hold true today (for instance, this claims only 47% under 30 believe Russia has intentionally targeted civilians)

NoOn3 4y ago
I think there's no point for Russian forces intentionally target civilians.
- archagon 4y ago
  There's "no point" in organized war atrocities, and yet they happen anyway. Which is to say there actually is a point: terror, demotivation, channeling the anger and frustration of your troops into a "soft" target, etc.

lalaland1125 4y ago

Another possible explanation is that younger people tend to rely more on far right or far left media, which tends to be much more pro-Russia than mainstream media (sometimes organically, sometimes through paid sponsorship like https://twitter.com/bamnecessary/status/1499162014895296516 https://twitter.com/bamnecessary/status/1499162014895296516). Hasan Piker for example, the #1 politics streamer on Twitch, is quite far left and is much more pro-Russia than say CNN.

Miner49er 4y ago
> Hasan Piker for example, the #1 politics streamer on Twitch, is quite far left and is much more pro-Russia than say CNN. I don't think Hasan is even remotely pro-Russia. What makes you say that?
- lalaland1125 4y ago
  Hasan talks on his show about how he thinks Russia was right to annex Crimea: https://clips.twitch.tv/ElegantTemperedApplePicoMause-VCY99fPs8hKewayQ https://clips.twitch.tv/ElegantTemperedApplePicoMause-VCY99f...
  - Miner49er 4y ago
    But he also used his stream to raise $200k for Ukranian relief efforts.
    - ffwszgf 4y ago
      I mean his is the quintessential “both-sides” take that pushes (younger) people to be “unsure” about who they support, no? Russia is bad, but so is Ukraine and NATO, too. Russia is bad but Ukraine does have a Nazi problem. People like him are probably the greatest contributors to the large amount of Gen Z who are unsure as to who they support.
      - idiotsecant 4y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

I think one of the big reasons is that this generation came of age during the Iraq War. They saw how the whole media and US military and intelligence community could push a story that was designed to inflame people and push for war. And we saw the huge cost of that. Fool me once…

ericmay 4y ago
Yea but it would also be a mistake to just assume that this is the case yet again, especially given that the United States has adamantly refused to put troops in Ukraine and has sought diplomatic solutions from the start. The US government has really pushed against inflaming the US population toward war. If recognizing atrocities, however, pushes people toward war than there isn't much you can do about that besides continue to do what the US has done which is not get into the war. I went to Iraq. The war was probably misguided (although there is still a democratically elected government in Iraq... so... idk) - Ukraine is quite unlike Iraq and if this generation (which I think includes me?) is drawing comparisons than it's because of a lack of thought and education around world events.
rcpt 4y ago
Fool me once... shame on... shame on you. You fool me you can't get fooled again!
formerly_proven 4y ago
This is sort of the Chomsky syndrome: Assuming that government A is always lying, and that therefore the opposite claim by government B has to be right.
Proudmuslim 4y ago
Precisely. We don't trust the government or the media at all anymore, and we aren't willing to go fight the elite's war for them.

emerged 4y ago

I visit some fringe political forums once in a blue moon just to take a pulse. I was surprised to see a sizable pro-Putin sentiment which is basically a result of the whole “Russia Russia Russia” thing. Boy who cried wolf is a real thing.

long_time_gone 4y ago
> a result of the whole “Russia Russia Russia” thing. Can you explain who the "boy" was and how they "cried wolf"? Did you read the Senate Intelligence report? PBS: Senate panel finds Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election [1]. "The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, details how Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers." [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-russia-interfered-in-the-2016-us-election https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-rus...
- sfblah 4y ago
  That second quote you gave is just really slanted. The right framing here is Trump is not a smart man. Sure, his folks talked to Russian operatives. That's for two reasons: 1. They're stupid and easy to manipulate. 2. They urgently wanted negative stories to publish about Hillary. Yes, Russia was trying to influence our election. But, no, Trump isn't some clever Manchurian Candidate taking over our country on behalf of another country. The right framing here is that famous SNL sketch about Reagan from the 80s, where Reagan acts like a bumbler but then when the doors close suddenly becomes some kind of genius mob figure. That skit was funny, because the "mob boss" version of Reagan was obviously just not true. Same thing for Trump. Turning to American media. Sure, they can dig up stuff about Trump's behavior with Russia. Along the same lines, there are tons of stories across decades painting the Clintons as pretty terrible people. The difference here, and this is important, is that outlets like CNN do have a massive bias in favor of Democratic candidates. That's where the "Russia Russia Russia" narrative by Trump supporters is actually right. Mainstream media's treatment of events like the Russia story, Jan 6, BLM protests, etc. is absolutely biased. That's where the suspicion comes from. The solution is for mainstream journalists to reduce their bias. Easy places to start: * Tell the truth about the relative propensity of a white versus black suspect to be shot by police. * Investigate political candidates in an evenhanded way, and be as honest as possible about errors on stories like Hunter Biden's laptop.

howmayiannoyyou 4y ago

"If we just...." Young Americans, in general, do not understand or internalize national security or great power competition; and instead project high ideals and generosity to countries whose _leadership_ does not share the same view of their nation or the world. With Russia, using OP example, there was & probably remains the very serious risk of food & energy dominance by Russia at the expense of democratic nations - none of whom can make the transition to so-called green tech in-time to avoid that outcome. There remains the risk of a Sino-Russian alliance that would result in a very different world from today's somewhat free & open societies. I could go on at length, but will sum it up by saying the world doesn't work the way we wish it would, and we have to face reality head-on and not wish it away.

dougmwne 4y ago
This is very true. I think for young people it's very difficult to appreciate that we live on the knife's edge of peace. Peace is not the natural human condition, and vast numbers of people are ready and willing to commit incredible violence and atrocities in the name of their tribe. Absolutely nothing about human nature has changed since the uncountable wars we have fought since our very first moments as a species. Peace exists only in the liminal space between great violence and terrible powers.
- hyperdimension 4y ago
  > knife's edge of peace This phrasing reminded me of a comment I favorited a while ago, so I went through my favorited comments and found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5847789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5847789 "It took thousands of years of human civilisation before we got relatively benign governments. Power structures are not inherently benign; they must constantly be pressured to prevent malignant people using them to leverage their actions. A non-authoritarian government is an historical anomaly. It's a ball balanced on top of a hill, pushed there by the deaths of millions, and kept there by the vigilance of those who care. Please start caring."
  - dougmwne 4y ago

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

[flagged]

akimball 4y ago
Support for Russia is not antiwar. Boomers were famously opposed to US involvement in Vietnam.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  > Support for Russia is not antiwar. I didn’t say it is? > Boomers were famously opposed to US involvement in Vietnam. Then the 80s happened.
- asdff 4y ago
  Not all boomers were opposed to the US involvement in vietnam, plenty drank the koolaid and were happy to enlist.
_haoa 4y ago
Hit the nail on the head. Boomers grew up in an age without the internet, where government propaganda was spoonfed to them straight through their brand new living room television sets and doorstep newspapers. Just imagine: the only bastion of information was your local library. Granted, information in libraries is curated and of substantially higher quality than the unfiltered garbage that you can encounter on the internet... but who was really going to libraries that often back in the day? Information was sparse, and that was exploited to manipulate people to an uncanny degree.
- redmen 4y ago
  And now rather than being spoonfed, propaganda requires just a click or two. Even worse imo. Makes you feel like you are in control of the content you find when for the vast majority of people you are not.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago

CoastalCoder 4y ago

IIUC, the poll's questions used the term "Russia", which implicitly lumps together the following groups: - the Russian government - the Russian military leadership - Russian career soldiers - Russian conscripts - regular Russian citizens If I were taking the survey, my answer to all 3 questions would depend on those distinctions.

MikePlacid 4y ago
Yep. I am observing this interesting gap in political correctness for a long time now. When Russians are concerned nobody (in my perception) is using a politically correct formulas (formulae?) like "a Putin-paid disinformation campaign", usually it's "a Russian disinformation campaign". Since all gaps in political correctness are (in my humble perception) deliberate, I've always wondered why it exists.
- cbg0 4y ago
  Saying that anything bad that Russia is doing is Putin's fault is very reductive.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    It also makes people pretend like understanding the conflict is just a matter of doing amateur psychology with the image they get of Putin through the television as a James Bond-style bad guy. Every time some plain old person tells me what Putin thinks or what Putin wants or what Putin can't stand, I have to leave or change the subject. The way they talk about the Ukraine conflict has no actual physical references. It's like they're telling fairy stories about an evil wizard.
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    Anything? Ok, let’s look at a couple of examples. 1. Stealing and publishing DNC correspondence. A team of security experts, doing a magnificently fast work named exactly two culprits: a) Russian military intelligence, b) Russian political intelligence. Both these entities are directly under Putin’s control. Still it was “Russian interference in elections”, not “Putin’s interference in elections”. The latter is both correct and politically correct, and in no way reductive. Why not use it? 2. Placing Facebook ads during the election campaign. The official indictment named Prigozhin’s media company (forgot its name) as a culprit. Prigozhin is the closest buddy of Putin. So blaming Putin was not reductive in this case. Still, “Russian meddling” was used, not “Putin’s”. Any idea why?

V__ 4y ago

I wonder whether 18-29 year olds have more pressing problems to care about and are therefore more apathetic?

vippy 4y ago
College debt and housing costs are killing the 30+ crowd.
- whymauri 4y ago
  I'm vouching for this comment, because it's an entirely reasonable thought that crippling debt and housing costs lead to apathy (graphs 3 "Do you care who wins?"). I do not believe it leads to supporting Russia, though.
  - V__ 4y ago
    Yeah, I wish these polls would also ask "null-hypothesis"-questions (for a lack of a better word). Like "Do you care about the war in Ukraine?" and then get more specific.

ffwszgf 4y ago

Most younger people are quite skeptic of mainstream media so they don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them.With the elderly it’s the opposite. Further, most of the elderly lived at a time when the USSR was the clear and obvious enemy of “freedom”, so it’s not hard to fathom Russia being back into its usual shenanigans. Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) so they’re less willing to blindly support US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations. Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention. Gen Z has thus mostly understood this conflict through the propaganda wars that play out in social media and thus have conflicting and/or “both-sides” takes.

KptMarchewa 4y ago
>Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) An irony, considering that Russian imperialism is the one that actually performs land grabs and ethnic cleansing without even trying to cover it up.
- huragok 4y ago
  Just as more than one thing can be bad, you can be against imperialism, stand with oppressed peoples and deeply question the official American story.
  - ncallaway 4y ago
    Agreed that you don't have to accept the official American story. You can not be "anti-imperialist" and tolerate this war, however. This is a war of Russian imperialism. American imperialism is bad, I agree with that. But Russian imperialism is also bad. As was British imperialism. If you're an anti-imperialism, you must be against the Russian invasion.

dougmwne 4y ago

I am a pro Ukraine millennial. I also came of age during our middle east forever war and saw all the lies that went into supporting that boondoggle. The irony is not lost on me one bit. Goat herders yesterday, babuskas today. The great powers play their games and we pay.

vippy 4y ago
PyWoody 4y ago
I'm in the same age group and mindset as you. In fact, none of [the] poll results tracks anything I've encountered since the war started. I do not know a single person who sympathizes with the Russian aggression. If the polling numbers are representative of larger groups outside of my social circles, then it is every disconcerting. > barely half of those under 30 said they care who wins... Yikes.

ComradePhil 4y ago

Boomers were brainwashed with cold war propaganda all their lives and don't see Russians as people. Even millenials were exposed to the same propaganda as kids. Younger Americans are more balanced so far... and newer propaganda is not as effective to anyone other than the laziest... because anyone interested can look for the information from other points of views just as easily because of democratization of media and information.

redmen 4y ago
"Younger Americans are more balanced" It doesn't have much to do with laziness. It has to do with your ability to filter and discern what is going on, your ability to hold multiple and opposing ideas in your head at once, etc etc. Laziness is one factor.
grumple 4y ago
> Boomers were brainwashed with cold war propaganda all their lives and don't see Russians as people. Even millenials were exposed to the same propaganda as kids. What...? We absolutely do see Russians as people. We also see this as a unilateral war of aggression created by a corrupt autocrat which has resulted in the unjustifiable murder, rape, and destruction of Ukrainian people. > Younger Americans are more balanced so far... and newer propaganda is not as effective to anyone other than the laziest... because anyone interested can look for the information from other points of views just as easily because of democratization of media and information. I'd love to see what information justifies the rape of 25 women in a basement [1]. Or the widespread destruction of civilian areas, rampant rape and murder. 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61071243 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61071243
- ComradePhil 4y ago
  > I'd love to see what information justifies the rape of 25 women in a basement [1]. Or the widespread destruction of civilian areas, rampant rape and murder. Any modern war is an information war more than anything... and I mean everything from the first world war. You linking to a BBC website is very interesting because they were the first successful mass propaganda machine distributed all around the world via radio. Even more intersting bit what the BBC doesn't report. The same things have happened in every war where the western forces and allies have been involved, and the real information only comes out, if ever, after it becomes irrelevant. If it comes out while it is relevant, we know exactly what happens to those who are responsible... look at Manning and Assange.

lordnacho 4y ago

Wow I'm an old man. With the youth I'd say this generation is more affected by any other by the sheer noise of modern media. It's also one of the first where there was less emphasis on indoctrinating people towards the government's view on the cold war, the first to grow up with a government that lied to them about a significant non-cold war war (Iraq), and the first that actually has the means to cheaply find other views on things. So maybe it's not so strange that young people think this way. I mostly blame the Iraq war. Yes, the west has done a lot of bad things in the past. But in recent memory Iraq stands out as where we blew any pretense of moral superiority. (It does happen now and again, but the Cold War is a really good excuse for a LOT of bad things). People would have seen this and seen that whatever our governments say, you gotta take it with a grain of salt.

_bohm 4y ago
Adding to this, young Americans have never seen anything gained from war. The war in Afghanistan lasted 2 decades and cost trillions of dollars, yet we have next to nothing to show for it.
- 8note 4y ago
  When is the last time America has seen benefit from going to war? The 50s with a stalemate in Korea?
  - _bohm 4y ago
    Arguably the first Gulf War. The US successfully protected it's economic interest and expanded its military establishment in the region.
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      And liberated the Kuwaiti people from scud missiles, invasion, and occupation from a brutal Saddam regime? That's a pretty important benefit to miss, but maybe you're just limiting it to benefits for a US citizen. (of which selfless ones would consider it a benefit)

nerdjon 4y ago

TBH I don't really know how to take this. I am 31 so my age group is not represented at all by this graph. I am curious why they left out 30 to 64. At least within my friend group (which I don't think any are younger than 29... not that I really talk about age often) we are universally against the invasion of Ukraine and want them to survive. I don't feel like even at my age that I have experience or other events that are impacting my opinion. I also don't get most of my news from major news organizations. So I am very curious why this is the case.

kodah 4y ago

I appreciate the other threads here on this. My viewpoint may be a minority, but I fought in a war and live with the aftermath so I think my perspective might be of some value. I'm going to try to be careful with my wording but please realize this is a bit emotional even a decade later. I fought in Afghanistan. Real authoritarians with a very real tyrannical streak that's comparable to cartels, with tactics to boot. I watched the Obama administration lie about how well the war was going. We were getting reports of Marines being shot in the back by their counterparts continually. We were finding posts abandoned. Our bases were getting attacked while understaffed, our patrols were minimized, and our ROE was changed such that we had to be shot at directly to return fire. I watched national rhetoric coalesce on "they signed up for these injuries" when veterans needed help the most, culminating in people comitting suicide outside of hospitals. I will never for those reasons support sending another soul down range.

fhood 4y ago
This is a crucial and under-represented perspective. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion, but it is hard to ignore the inherent callousness of arguing over a conflict that will have no direct impact on me or my family.
baq 4y ago
The difference is, Afghanistan was of negligible importance in comparison. Stakes here are different. Just listen to Putin and take his words literally, because he means them. Either way, Ukraine needs weapons and bullets. They don’t need more soldiers.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  This comment is weird. Who cares about the stakes? Dead people are dead people. Unless you want to get into a "realist realpolitiks" analysis, which coincidentally can also be used to justify the russian war of aggression. I've seen this take pretty often and to me it boils down to "ukraine is in europe and ukrainians are europeans so it's different and it makes this war so much worse" which to me sounds extremely... problematic? Like the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan still make those wars and the Civil wars they caused much much more destructive than what's happening in ukraine. It's not a competition, for sure, but it's important to keep that in mind before dismissing or downplaying the consequences of American policy and the enthusiastic support for those wars of the American public .

asciimov 4y ago

Eh... without a breakout of their numbers it is hard to trust this poll. That said, I think its fair to say half of 18-29 year olds have no interest in geopolitics and 65+ people have been around long enough to have some opinion on it.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Those seem an odd selection of questions, which made me immediately suspect they asked many other questions then skipped over them to generate a story. Similar to how pharma companies have to pre-register research questions, do these polls have to publish their full methodology somewhere?

rank0 4y ago

Obviously I don't actually know whats going on over there, but I find it hard to believe that the Russian military as a whole is "deliberately targeting civilians". From the first estimate I found searching the web: On April 10: > Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 4,232 civilian casualties in the country: 1,793 killed and 2,439 injured. <2000 civilian deaths in a full-scale invasion of a country with ~44 million citizens seems FAR too low to declare that targeting civilians is a goal. Mariupol is currently fighting to the bitter end, despite being surrounded for weeks and even bisected by Russian forces. This is a city that had a population of >400k at the start of the war. If the goal was really to kill everybody in sight, the Russians would've just carpet bombed their targets day 1 and killed hundreds of thousands. It seems like everyone has forgotten what war is. There's no "humanitarian" way to commit war. It's always awful and always creates unintended death. Again, not an expert here nor do I believe any statistics to be 100% accurate.

keewee7 4y ago
You deliberately omitted the part saying "OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher". Most of the civilian deaths are still under rubles or in mass graves like Bucha. Many of them are also in areas still controlled by Russia.
formerly_proven 4y ago
> OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Popasna (Luhansk region), and Borodianka (Kyiv region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.
dash2 4y ago
"deliberately targeting civilians" is not the same as "going out to murder everyone". Obviously, Russia could just nuke Ukraine. They haven't done that. However, they have verifiably used cluster munitions in cities; abducted, raped and murdered civilians in areas they control; bombed hospitals; shot and shelled civilians trying to flee; and so forth. All of this is very much what they have form for in Syria. Is it not getting reported in the US? It is in Europe.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Just as Russia is complex, so is Ukraine. The blame-throwing game can go on for quite some time by cherry-picking memes. I hope the war ends soon.

1970-01-01 4y ago

The title is backwards. There is a striking generational divide, and it extends into views of war.

sudosysgen 4y ago

The difference isn't that many more are supporting Russia. The difference is that many more don't have clear-cut sympathy for any side. I personally are much more sympathetic to Ukraine on different principles than most, but I definitely understand why many are not willing to trust the main media line on this. We went from hearing about how Ukraine was a deeply corrupt country, barely a democracy, to immediately hearing about how they are only being attacked because of how democratic and amazing it is and that Putin is scared Russians will want to live like Ukrainians. Media started glossing over Nazi imagery on the very pictures of soldiers they spread, not even mentioning it. There were many more narrative flips that I won't get into as a matter of time. Because of this, people that are less informed or that have a more traditional understanding of the morality of conflict will naturally get skeptical and decide that they don't want to sympathize with anyone.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago
> We went from hearing about how Ukraine was a deeply corrupt country, barely a democracy, to immediately hearing about how they are only being attacked because of how democratic and amazing it is and that Putin is scared Russians will want to live like Ukrainians. Can't forget the regime change—excuse me, anti-corruption protests—in 2014 directly after the old regime chose economic partnership with Putin over closer integration with the EU. Much of the civil conflict within Ukraine, which Putin ostensibly invaded to pacify (remember, lying to justify a war isn't a US-only skill), is due to their residents/leadership not recognizing the results of the 2014 governmental changes.
max599 4y ago
>Media started glossing over Nazi imagery on the very pictures of soldiers they spread, not even mentioning it. I think they genuinely didn't know what it was. Even on r/ukraine, they were promoting those picture at the beginning. It doesn't look like any of the more common nazi symbols and and it doesn't have any text on it that you can google. It was quite interesting to see journalists using those pictures in their articles talking about how there was no nazi problem in Ukraine.

incomingpain 4y ago

18-29 is 1993 or younger. They we born during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. They were 7 years old or younger when they briefly experienced no war in 2000 and GWBush and 9/11 in 2001 they saw the Afghanistan war start and not end until only months ago. 20 years of war and a loss! They only know war. Can you imagine their war exhaustion? Can you imagine how much they don't care about a war happening on the otherside of the world that the usa aren't officially involved in? The USA is still officially involved in somali, yemen, and syria. These young americans are probably more concerned with those 3 and you didn't even ask them? You don't need to ask. You know they'll universally say to stop being in all these wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police

pessimizer 4y ago
Important to mention that not only have we been at war their entire lives, but that they've been absolutely pointless wars of aggression that ended in a whimper for the US, and absolute devastation for the countries invaded. And as you said, we lost all of them. Not only that, but we've been too ashamed to declare them. No one wants to take responsibility, just reap the profits. Young people are cynical about war because it wasn't inculcated into them as a religion like it was for Boomers. Young people are cynical about war because they look at it, see its products, and see its profiteers. They lack the poetry to breathlessly admire the beauty of our weapons.
mkaic 4y ago
Sidenote as someone who's a member of Gen Z -- I... didn't grow up knowing nearly anything about the USA's wars of aggression other than that we were fighting someone in the middle east. I knew there was fighting, but I didn't (and honestly still don't) understand what for. It was never explained to me and I never thought about it enough to go looking. Not trying to disprove your point, just sharing my own anecdotal experience.
- incomingpain 4y ago
  >Sidenote as someone who's a member of Gen Z -- I... didn't grow up knowing nearly anything about the USA's wars of aggression other than that we were fighting someone in the middle east. I knew there was fighting, but I didn't (and honestly still don't) understand what for. It was never explained to me and I never thought about it enough to go looking. I know many Chinese Nationals and even people from Hong Kong and none of them know about Tiananmen Square. I bet you heard of Tiananmen Square massacre. I bet you didn't know that the Chinese military killed all those people at Tiananmen over capitalism.

rootusrootus 4y ago

Younger people are so far removed from actual war that they have the luxury of being ambivalent about it. It's become easy to believe that war is simply a thing of the past and Americans won't ever experience it again. Ukraine is just pictures on a screen, nobody is going to drive tanks into America or fire missiles at our hospitals.

Gollapalli 4y ago
Which war did you fight in?
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Desert Storm. You?
  - Gollapalli 4y ago
    I didn’t. But I had to check that you weren’t talking out of your rear. It was a damn condescending comment. “Young people don’t agree with the established foreign policy position, it must mean they’re weak,” kinda thing. I mean the greatest generation didn’t support ww2. Hell, the Americans of the early 1900’s didn’t support ww1. Both times presidents were elected on the promise of keeping America out of war. Could you attribute that to being “detached from war”? They fought when they were called to do so. And until congress votes for war, I’m going to keep on saying that supporting Ukraine is a poor decision and outside the interests of America. I’m a zillenial for context.
mkaic 4y ago
Anecdotal counterexample (I'm Gen Z) -- Ukraine is pictures on a screen, and that's what brought my attention to it! I want Ukraine to win the war and I think what Russia is doing is extremely wrong and heinous, and I also wouldn't have become nearly as invested in the conflict were it not for the fact that this is the first major war to be broadcast on social media. I've seen video clips that made me angry, sad, and horrified, and have catalyzed me to make a firm stance on the issue instead of being ambivalent. Also anecdotally, every other person I know in my age group is also very pro-Ukraine and not ambivalent, perhaps as suggested by one of the other comments the poll is outdated?

peppustimbus 4y ago

spamizbad 4y ago

Spoke with a young person who had an interesting take: He says he sympathizes with Russians because he feels like they're also getting dragged into pointless wars by their government. (memories of Iraq and Afghanistan)

mkaic 4y ago
I agree! I'm Gen Z and I sympathize with the "good Russians" because I know a few. I've talked to people living in Russia right now who are furious with Putin for the awful evil things he's doing. I want Ukraine to win the war, but I don't think the Russian people are evil, I think Putin is evil. I'd wager that many pro-war Russians are victims of propaganda and lies and would change their minds if they had access to verifiable sources of truth, but they don't. Putin is horrible though and I want him and his cronies to be punished to the fullest extent of international law for their crimes against humanity.

renewiltord 4y ago

Young people are the Cheng Xin of this world. In the past, we did not know the lies that the mainstream media was attempting to broadcast as part of large scale population unification and pacification. Without control of that process, lots of these lies are now visible and faith has deteriorated in public sources of information. It's like how everyone knows the NIAID is useless today. Unfortunately, another casualty of all this is truth. This is the problem with lying for what you think is the greater good. At some point, the fact that you lied ruins the future entirely and poisons the info well. If even the guys we chose to help us are going to bullshit us, we must live in a world of perpetual information mistrust. This, plus, it's worth remembering that 16% of people have an IQ less than 85.

_Nat_ 4y ago

PDF of cited poll: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/l8ynsbxwgl/econTabReport.pdf https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/l8ynsbxwgl/econTabReport.pdf Cited figures from Table-14, on (PDF/printed)-page-55. Looks like they polled 4 age-groups: 18-29; 30-44; 45-64; and 65+. The results for 30-44 were pretty close to those for 18-29, and the results for 45-64 were pretty close to those for 65+. In fact, if we combine the two younger groups and two older groups, such that it's 18-44 vs. 45+, then the reported-results really don't change much. Tangentially, it's really weird for news-articles to not link their sources.

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Gollapalli 4y ago
This should be pinned.

arbitrary_name 4y ago

Young person here: aren't you the dolts who lied to us about Afghanistan and Iraq, then just got chased out with your tails between your legs? Why should we believe a single thing you have to say about going to war?

erdos4d 4y ago
Some questions: 1) Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine? 2) Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The bully or the victim? To me, these two questions and their answers determine my sympathies. You were lied to about Iraq and you are right to mistrust the US government, but the world media is not the US government. If you see reports from multiple news sources about mass graves and such, you should believe them.
- Gollapalli 4y ago
  >Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine? Who cares? Not our fight. >Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The bully or the victim? Such infantile moralizing displays a profound case of arrested development in the moral faculties. Geopolitics is not a marvel movie.
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    Not our fight? Have you heard of Chamberlain? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement
    - Jensson 4y ago
      The fact that Ukraine now defends itself means that we are in a very different situation. None of the countries Hitler annexed during the appeasement actually defended themselves, he got them for free through diplomacy. If they did defend themselves instead of joining the German side then Germany wouldn't have been threat, and there would be no need for an alliance against them and Germany wouldn't have been the biggest threat in WW2. That is the situation we see today, Ukraine is defending itself, there is no way Russia can continue invading like that, they can't afford it, so the WW2 scenario has already been averted.

beefman 4y ago

Insightful episode of South Park on this recently...

deepsun 4y ago

I was anti-military and anti-gun ownership, until I happened to be in Ukraine at the time of attack, and until I happened to be in Belarus at a time of dictatorship. PS: although I think organization and coordination is thousands times more important than weapons.

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flatearth22 4y ago

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

The headline is very revealing of the incredibly slanted way the Ukraine war has been covered in "Western" media. When I read the headline, I immediately thought to myself, "which war?", until I saw the article was from the Economist and I knew they were referring to Ukraine. Just the use the term "the war" implicitly implies that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the only war (or at least the only war worth mentioning by "western media") raging. In fact, there are numerous wars raging right now. As a US citizen and close observer of our foreign policy and actions around the world, I have been floored by the hypocrisy and double standards in the coverage of the Ukraine war (despite hypocrisy and double standards being the norm). This is not an endorsement of Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine but an indictment of "western media" and "western" governments in general. For example, we (the United States), illegally invaded Syria a decade ago. A war of aggression just as illegal under international law as Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There were no indignant outcries on NBC or CNN or by any of the pundits who are today absurdly crying about the "disruption of the post world war 2 order". Our troops are illegally occupying Syria, today. Over 350,000 people have died there since the war started a decade ago. We bombed (and continue to bomb) civilian infrastructure with absolutely no military value in Syria. How can politicians and pundits (not to mention my fellow citizens) cry about the depravity and the crimes of Russians when our own country is engaged in the same crimes, right now, today? Many will exclaim this is "whataboutism" to explain away their cognitive dissonance. But it's about universal standards, credibility, and hypocrisy. If we condemn Russia for their illegal war while at the same time prosecuting illegal wars of our own, we expose ourselves at liars and hypocrites who don't oppose illegal war, just Russia. It is quite sickening when our so-called leaders stand up and give sanctimonious speeches about defending "democracy and human rights" while prosecuting our own illegal wars and propping up the most vicious dictatorships in the world, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, where democracy and human rights are completely absent. Again, this is not a defense of Russia's illegal war, although it will be taken as such by people consumed by the blanket propaganda saturating our society. This is a defense of universal standards, truth, morality and objective reality. If we want to be able to credibly condemn the wrongdoing of others and claim the moral authority to mete out justice, then we need to lead by example and actually earn the moral authority that we falsely claim. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam....

ratsforhorses 4y ago

I picked up this comment from a HN user in another thread but it got no traction, seeing Germany drag it's feet on sending arms and Zelensky's recent comments about blood money I think it's especially relevant... "seeing as we're heading into spring, seeing Germany has quite a wealthy economy and QOL, that many if not most workers get 5 weeks of holiday, the chip shortage is leading to slowdowns in the automotive industry etc... why doesn't the government just go cold turkey, give people a month or 2 free holidays while drastically reducing public lighting, telling businesses to stop heating their premises at night etc etc... I mean we had a dress rehearsal 2 years ago with the onset of Covid, this would be better ,for a good cause, probably give a boost to domestic spending and send a f...U to the rest of the world saying we too can think outside of the box :-)" I know it may seem naive, but how so?