8 ms·

War of memes: Why Z-war won't end with peace

90 points by boffinism 4y ago

boastful2 4y ago
[dead]
- bitcuration 4y ago
  Read through your article, can't help thinking you may find and conclude the same from a similar "analysis" of North Korea. Rather than an "improvement", it'd be a nice supplement. The point is, OP's article is much enlightening to audience who's not familiar with that part of world, or as much of medieval European history. The breadth and width is much more above and beyond you've scratched.
eimrine 4y ago
As someone who consumes most information from Russian language I can confirm this is true. Even truer than we Ukrainians learn about us and about Russia on our history lessons in school.
- eimrine 4y ago
  There is a real war between upvoters and downvoters of that comment. Upvoters are slightly winning, but so strange to see number of my karma different on every reload!
  - baybal2 4y ago
    I lived in Russia since early childhood till 2007. When I tell foreigners abroad that Russia has an aggressive, militarist culture in a way an unrepentant Germany was, I am often called a nazi, and a rusophobe. https://i1.kknews.cc/n5Oypu_Nfn50D-QnkvdGWfn3-eO-QmoGHwXkVNY/0.jpg https://i1.kknews.cc/n5Oypu_Nfn50D-QnkvdGWfn3-eO-QmoGHwXkVNY...
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      Welcome to Finland, where being in good graces ("neutral") with the Soviet Union and Russia was turned into a state-level art form. For nearly a century speaking ill of the Big Angry Bear Next Door was forbidden - not by law, of course - it just wasn't a thing you did and also kept your political career.
simonh 4y ago
Very interesting taken alongside this strategic analysis of Russian thinking by a former Finnish intelligence officer, from 2018. He's approaching the topic from a bit of a different angle, but coming to very similar conclusions. There are subtitles in multiple languages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw
coolhoody 4y ago
(I'm Russian). This war was started by a single madman. If not him, it would never happen. Even his spy chief was fucked up [0] when he realized what's going to happen. Yes — at least 70% support whatever he does — and I tried hard to disprove this painful fact to myself. But couldn't. The only excuse is the 20 years of hardcore TV brainwashing — but it's not too great of an excuse. Better than in nazi Germany, but not enough. All that cultural banter the article mentions never caused any actual sense of war — it was more like a Texan joking about a Canadian. I don't know how to live with this shame. Can't even post in Russian, at local forums. All those stupid faces in the 'do you support the war' Youtube steet interviews… Yes, there are others — Navalny was poisoned, and is now behind the bars. Nemtsov was murdered in front of Kremlin long before the war. Kasparov, Nevzorov condemned this crime. Hundreds of thousands of IT left the country — unable to fight unarmed. But still… Trying to drown myself in English, jokes, work to keep the sanity. Doesn't work half of the times. Jokes clumsy, work fucked. Ukraine is now a moral leader of Europe. It will be restored — every single broken window. And people will live free and proud. It's my only bright cloud now. [0] Fucked up spy chief — https://youtu.be/ucEs0nBuowE https://youtu.be/ucEs0nBuowE
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Keep your head up, people like you are the only chance for Russia to improve itself. But I wouldn't blame you if you decided to move away, sometimes the evil is too strong for individuals to bear.
  - coolhoody 4y ago
    In Latvia.
  - cft 4y ago
    Unfortunately people like him have been leaving Russia in droves since 1917, then in 1990, etc. The popular support for the war is arguably the result of this negative selection.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
pydry 4y ago
It's an interesting take but I think it makes a common error of confusing the propaganda used to justify going to war with the actual reasons. This is critical because the propaganda reasons are slaved to the real reasons and wont figure much if at all in peace talks. Caspian report has a good video on the geographical and political imperatives behind the war: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkrLUFAcjH0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkrLUFAcjH0
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  While I agree with your point, it is still quite useful to understand the cultural and historical aspects that are constantly evoked, even by Putin himself who puts much emphasis on these points, and they are spread by the media. It's not so easy to see and understand them from outside.
- simonh 4y ago
  There are different kinds of reasons. There are reasons why do anything at all, reasons for doing it now, and reasons for doing this particular thing this way.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
bayesian_horse 4y ago
Sources inside Russia claim that even the military and intelligence service didn't see the war coming, and they certainly performed like it. Maybe a few days before it started, but certainly not for weeks or years.
- simonh 4y ago
  That’s all about timing though. It was obvious Russia hadn’t finished messing with Ukraine over Donbas, and even well beyond just that. What nobody knew was exactly what Putin would choose to do about it and when.
- frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  The only way that could be true is that if the “military and intelligence services” of Russia were as wholly compromised and counterproductive as they clearly are in the west. Putin specifically has been talking about the unacceptable nature of NATO expansion in violation of the agreement not to expand east since at least 2008 and the Russian state has been warning about it and aware of it happening at least from the mid 90s. How the military and intelligence services of the Russian state could not have seen this coming is beyond the credible for anyone that has paid attention to anything for the last 30 years. Not that it would have really made any significant difference that there were only verbal agreements, since America’s track record and credibility of keeping treaties is approaching zero, but it was agreed following and as an negotiated component of the unraveling of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand east. It genuinely baffles me that so many in the general low information public are frequently just sucked in by the very same vortex of manipulation by the US government in particular, regardless of their formal education level. It’s just one “unforeseeable” event after another, and yet it’s always preceded by people loudly trying to warn against it. What concerns me, as someone who is involved in having an interest in knowing what is actually going on in the world regardless of the propaganda of any interested party and who has a very good track record of accuracy over decades; is that this is all being orchestrated and a consequence of intensely irrational and emotionally disturbed people having taken over in the west in general. Forget climate change, kids, if you survive the fallout at all, the climate warming will be the least of your problems the way things are going and are being pushed right now. All it takes is a single miscalculation on the part of the western central planners and the west has proven itself singularly competent at miscalculations; even if they are often deliberate and intentional, the most obvious examples of course being Iraq and Libya. Let me put it this way, folks, things are way more of the rails than people think, and not in a good way, regardless of all the “mean girl” empire propaganda about how the Russian military and intelligence services didn’t see it coming, that is more about filling a competency and intelligence gap through projection. The Russian military has wie literally been preparing for the confrontation of the belligerent USA and those who control it for decades now and they’ve been talking about it for decades now. Just because people haven’t paid attention or want to ignore that, doesn’t change reality. America is the belligerent in this over many decades now and they forced Russia’s hand in order to claim victim/self-defense status. A phrase describing extreme manipulative and abusive behavior while decrying the consequences of one’s actions comes to mind. It’s been Americas MO for many decades now because another unspoken pillar of American might and even global financial control, is the ruse of American benevolence and morality, when in reality it is a very psychopathic, manipulative, and abusive national psychiatric profile that has dominated America for many decades, way before anyone alive today. Just look at American history, America keeps oddly finding itself being victimized into reluctant warfare? Poor little America, always seemingly finding itself being pressed into war where after the fact there is always at best the strong indication that something is extremely not right. We, all of humanity, are dealing with a psychosis of National Münchhausen Syndrome to garner the attention that feeds the American machine of manipulation. It is actually a very run of the mill toxic and abusive relationship the current form of America has with humanity. However, as with all toxic and abusive relationships, the people in such relationships have an extremely difficult time recognizing it, let alone escaping it.
baybal2 4y ago
I'm a Russian citizen. My late parents sent me off to Singapore when it became clear that Russia is done for as a country in 2007. What they told me "you can't stay human if you will live in Russia."
- bitcuration 4y ago
  Your parents are some of the smartest on this planet. You're very fortunate.
he0001 4y ago
It may explain why there are some Russians that are expressing such blind hatred towards Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a people. Just referring to some of the media personalities that express this frequently.
- simonh 4y ago
  Blind hatred based on the fact that they’re really exactly the same as ‘us’. It’s bizarre.
bluetomcat 4y ago
It's the uniform culture of Eastern Orthodox countries. The state pushes a "one and only" historical narrative in the nation-wide educational system. That narrative is internalised by most of the population as hard objective truths, rather than seen as just a subjective view. The notion that a sub-community may evolve and try to self-identify and govern itself is inconceivable when "history" tells us that they were us, so there must be some decadent external influences affecting them.
willnonya 4y ago
goatsneez 4y ago
I do not find these kind of rants very informative regardless which direction they come from. I can give many such examples featuring similar uprooted emotional selectivists, even hateful stories marginalizing (or extolling) entire cultures/nations from nearly any country (most being familiar with Palestine, Israel, Poland, Slovakia, Czech, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, US, and few others). If one wants to cherry-pick on atrocities one-against-the-other for the above examples there are libraries and archives which, I guarantee, will break any sane person's heart. Those are real things that happened and they are just as well lessons to us, individually, of what any of us is capable of doing under the "wrong" circumstances. And we have to guard our humanity, individually, against indiscriminate hate -a poison that corrodes the soul - no matter how noble the perceived goal]. However, the weight of my comment is to be put somewhere else. I observe that in majority of such opinions (that serve its function as an outlet, but nothing more) there is simply no actual conceptual understanding (at least as reflected in the articles) of culture, society, state in relation to the individual as a process. This lack of concepts just digs a proverbial hole for the speaker/persuator from one cannot asses the past-present relation properly from principled laws of organization. Then we have over-emotional individual reactions to propaganda (on either side) which invites to such unstructured one dimensional banal analyses. There is no acknowledgement on limits of knowledge and validity of simply having different opinion on the matter, no distinction of what is personal, what is political, what is bureaucratic, what is a comment, opinion, what is propaganda, instead just thrown everything into one big flux, the antithesis of what intellect needs. No lessons, just brute misplaced hate, almost as if to confirm ones own feelings looking into the mirror; exemplified in the silly conclusion: ... that "Russians hate that Ukraine exists" ... (such sounds are produced also by the archetypal propagandists)
- simonh 4y ago
  I agree you can always find nutcases in any country that will talk crap about other nations and ethnic groups. However, when a head of state says that a neighbouring nation isn't a real country, and this opinion is broadcast repeatedly and discussed in depth on state media to justify an ongoing invasion of that nation, it's interesting to try to understand why they are saying that and why anyone would believe it. I hesitate to invoke Godwin, but when Hitler talked dirt about jews and folk identity in a beer hall in Munich that was one thing. When he was doing so as Chancellor and his ideology was official state policy, it was something else.
twoquestions 4y ago
This guy's insight has been enlightening, and highlights how alien Russian Authoritarian thought is compared to Western Individualist thought. One thing that's been especially shocking is the relatively low status the military has, which seems insane to us here in the West. Here, it's "Thank you for your service!", there it's a very low-status thing. It makes more sense once you realize the military represents a coup risk for a dictator, and has to be kept politically weak to preserve the State. Our military's undying loyalty to our civilian governments is something we here in the West take for granted, and is severely underrated. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1502673952572854278.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1502673952572854278.html
- greedo 4y ago
  Kamil has done an excellent job, both in his descriptions of how the military is viewed, with how the Kremlin manipulates and controls the other regions. How the corruption isn't just a new thing, but that it's more of a continuous power struggle in the Russian empire that has persisted since the time of Catherine.
  - moistly 4y ago
    [Edit: As Kamil describes it] the Russian power apparatus is thuggery. It’s a biker gang with nukes. And while Western Democracy hasn’t nearly lived up to the hype, at the very least it is one hell of a lot more lawful. I believe we are at the crux of an existential dilemma. Law or lawless? Provided rights by an imperfect constitution, held accountable by an imperfect judiciary, and progressing forward through imperfect politicians … or held hostage to a cartel of lawless and largely incompetent gangs of thugs and the mafioso who run the show?

90 points by boffinism 4y ago

boastful2 4y ago

[dead]

bitcuration 4y ago
Read through your article, can't help thinking you may find and conclude the same from a similar "analysis" of North Korea. Rather than an "improvement", it'd be a nice supplement. The point is, OP's article is much enlightening to audience who's not familiar with that part of world, or as much of medieval European history. The breadth and width is much more above and beyond you've scratched.

eimrine 4y ago

As someone who consumes most information from Russian language I can confirm this is true. Even truer than we Ukrainians learn about us and about Russia on our history lessons in school.

eimrine 4y ago
There is a real war between upvoters and downvoters of that comment. Upvoters are slightly winning, but so strange to see number of my karma different on every reload!
- baybal2 4y ago
  I lived in Russia since early childhood till 2007. When I tell foreigners abroad that Russia has an aggressive, militarist culture in a way an unrepentant Germany was, I am often called a nazi, and a rusophobe. https://i1.kknews.cc/n5Oypu_Nfn50D-QnkvdGWfn3-eO-QmoGHwXkVNY/0.jpg https://i1.kknews.cc/n5Oypu_Nfn50D-QnkvdGWfn3-eO-QmoGHwXkVNY...
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    Welcome to Finland, where being in good graces ("neutral") with the Soviet Union and Russia was turned into a state-level art form. For nearly a century speaking ill of the Big Angry Bear Next Door was forbidden - not by law, of course - it just wasn't a thing you did and also kept your political career.

simonh 4y ago

Very interesting taken alongside this strategic analysis of Russian thinking by a former Finnish intelligence officer, from 2018. He's approaching the topic from a bit of a different angle, but coming to very similar conclusions. There are subtitles in multiple languages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw

coolhoody 4y ago

(I'm Russian). This war was started by a single madman. If not him, it would never happen. Even his spy chief was fucked up [0] when he realized what's going to happen. Yes — at least 70% support whatever he does — and I tried hard to disprove this painful fact to myself. But couldn't. The only excuse is the 20 years of hardcore TV brainwashing — but it's not too great of an excuse. Better than in nazi Germany, but not enough. All that cultural banter the article mentions never caused any actual sense of war — it was more like a Texan joking about a Canadian. I don't know how to live with this shame. Can't even post in Russian, at local forums. All those stupid faces in the 'do you support the war' Youtube steet interviews… Yes, there are others — Navalny was poisoned, and is now behind the bars. Nemtsov was murdered in front of Kremlin long before the war. Kasparov, Nevzorov condemned this crime. Hundreds of thousands of IT left the country — unable to fight unarmed. But still… Trying to drown myself in English, jokes, work to keep the sanity. Doesn't work half of the times. Jokes clumsy, work fucked. Ukraine is now a moral leader of Europe. It will be restored — every single broken window. And people will live free and proud. It's my only bright cloud now. [0] Fucked up spy chief — https://youtu.be/ucEs0nBuowE https://youtu.be/ucEs0nBuowE

inglor_cz 4y ago
Keep your head up, people like you are the only chance for Russia to improve itself. But I wouldn't blame you if you decided to move away, sometimes the evil is too strong for individuals to bear.
- coolhoody 4y ago
  In Latvia.
- cft 4y ago
  Unfortunately people like him have been leaving Russia in droves since 1917, then in 1990, etc. The popular support for the war is arguably the result of this negative selection.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago

pydry 4y ago

It's an interesting take but I think it makes a common error of confusing the propaganda used to justify going to war with the actual reasons. This is critical because the propaganda reasons are slaved to the real reasons and wont figure much if at all in peace talks. Caspian report has a good video on the geographical and political imperatives behind the war: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkrLUFAcjH0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkrLUFAcjH0

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
While I agree with your point, it is still quite useful to understand the cultural and historical aspects that are constantly evoked, even by Putin himself who puts much emphasis on these points, and they are spread by the media. It's not so easy to see and understand them from outside.
simonh 4y ago
There are different kinds of reasons. There are reasons why do anything at all, reasons for doing it now, and reasons for doing this particular thing this way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

bayesian_horse 4y ago

Sources inside Russia claim that even the military and intelligence service didn't see the war coming, and they certainly performed like it. Maybe a few days before it started, but certainly not for weeks or years.

simonh 4y ago
That’s all about timing though. It was obvious Russia hadn’t finished messing with Ukraine over Donbas, and even well beyond just that. What nobody knew was exactly what Putin would choose to do about it and when.
frankfrankfrank 4y ago
The only way that could be true is that if the “military and intelligence services” of Russia were as wholly compromised and counterproductive as they clearly are in the west. Putin specifically has been talking about the unacceptable nature of NATO expansion in violation of the agreement not to expand east since at least 2008 and the Russian state has been warning about it and aware of it happening at least from the mid 90s. How the military and intelligence services of the Russian state could not have seen this coming is beyond the credible for anyone that has paid attention to anything for the last 30 years. Not that it would have really made any significant difference that there were only verbal agreements, since America’s track record and credibility of keeping treaties is approaching zero, but it was agreed following and as an negotiated component of the unraveling of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand east. It genuinely baffles me that so many in the general low information public are frequently just sucked in by the very same vortex of manipulation by the US government in particular, regardless of their formal education level. It’s just one “unforeseeable” event after another, and yet it’s always preceded by people loudly trying to warn against it. What concerns me, as someone who is involved in having an interest in knowing what is actually going on in the world regardless of the propaganda of any interested party and who has a very good track record of accuracy over decades; is that this is all being orchestrated and a consequence of intensely irrational and emotionally disturbed people having taken over in the west in general. Forget climate change, kids, if you survive the fallout at all, the climate warming will be the least of your problems the way things are going and are being pushed right now. All it takes is a single miscalculation on the part of the western central planners and the west has proven itself singularly competent at miscalculations; even if they are often deliberate and intentional, the most obvious examples of course being Iraq and Libya. Let me put it this way, folks, things are way more of the rails than people think, and not in a good way, regardless of all the “mean girl” empire propaganda about how the Russian military and intelligence services didn’t see it coming, that is more about filling a competency and intelligence gap through projection. The Russian military has wie literally been preparing for the confrontation of the belligerent USA and those who control it for decades now and they’ve been talking about it for decades now. Just because people haven’t paid attention or want to ignore that, doesn’t change reality. America is the belligerent in this over many decades now and they forced Russia’s hand in order to claim victim/self-defense status. A phrase describing extreme manipulative and abusive behavior while decrying the consequences of one’s actions comes to mind. It’s been Americas MO for many decades now because another unspoken pillar of American might and even global financial control, is the ruse of American benevolence and morality, when in reality it is a very psychopathic, manipulative, and abusive national psychiatric profile that has dominated America for many decades, way before anyone alive today. Just look at American history, America keeps oddly finding itself being victimized into reluctant warfare? Poor little America, always seemingly finding itself being pressed into war where after the fact there is always at best the strong indication that something is extremely not right. We, all of humanity, are dealing with a psychosis of National Münchhausen Syndrome to garner the attention that feeds the American machine of manipulation. It is actually a very run of the mill toxic and abusive relationship the current form of America has with humanity. However, as with all toxic and abusive relationships, the people in such relationships have an extremely difficult time recognizing it, let alone escaping it.

baybal2 4y ago

I'm a Russian citizen. My late parents sent me off to Singapore when it became clear that Russia is done for as a country in 2007. What they told me "you can't stay human if you will live in Russia."

bitcuration 4y ago
Your parents are some of the smartest on this planet. You're very fortunate.

he0001 4y ago

It may explain why there are some Russians that are expressing such blind hatred towards Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a people. Just referring to some of the media personalities that express this frequently.

simonh 4y ago
Blind hatred based on the fact that they’re really exactly the same as ‘us’. It’s bizarre.

bluetomcat 4y ago

It's the uniform culture of Eastern Orthodox countries. The state pushes a "one and only" historical narrative in the nation-wide educational system. That narrative is internalised by most of the population as hard objective truths, rather than seen as just a subjective view. The notion that a sub-community may evolve and try to self-identify and govern itself is inconceivable when "history" tells us that they were us, so there must be some decadent external influences affecting them.

willnonya 4y ago

goatsneez 4y ago

I do not find these kind of rants very informative regardless which direction they come from. I can give many such examples featuring similar uprooted emotional selectivists, even hateful stories marginalizing (or extolling) entire cultures/nations from nearly any country (most being familiar with Palestine, Israel, Poland, Slovakia, Czech, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, US, and few others). If one wants to cherry-pick on atrocities one-against-the-other for the above examples there are libraries and archives which, I guarantee, will break any sane person's heart. Those are real things that happened and they are just as well lessons to us, individually, of what any of us is capable of doing under the "wrong" circumstances. And we have to guard our humanity, individually, against indiscriminate hate -a poison that corrodes the soul - no matter how noble the perceived goal]. However, the weight of my comment is to be put somewhere else. I observe that in majority of such opinions (that serve its function as an outlet, but nothing more) there is simply no actual conceptual understanding (at least as reflected in the articles) of culture, society, state in relation to the individual as a process. This lack of concepts just digs a proverbial hole for the speaker/persuator from one cannot asses the past-present relation properly from principled laws of organization. Then we have over-emotional individual reactions to propaganda (on either side) which invites to such unstructured one dimensional banal analyses. There is no acknowledgement on limits of knowledge and validity of simply having different opinion on the matter, no distinction of what is personal, what is political, what is bureaucratic, what is a comment, opinion, what is propaganda, instead just thrown everything into one big flux, the antithesis of what intellect needs. No lessons, just brute misplaced hate, almost as if to confirm ones own feelings looking into the mirror; exemplified in the silly conclusion: ... that "Russians hate that Ukraine exists" ... (such sounds are produced also by the archetypal propagandists)

simonh 4y ago
I agree you can always find nutcases in any country that will talk crap about other nations and ethnic groups. However, when a head of state says that a neighbouring nation isn't a real country, and this opinion is broadcast repeatedly and discussed in depth on state media to justify an ongoing invasion of that nation, it's interesting to try to understand why they are saying that and why anyone would believe it. I hesitate to invoke Godwin, but when Hitler talked dirt about jews and folk identity in a beer hall in Munich that was one thing. When he was doing so as Chancellor and his ideology was official state policy, it was something else.

twoquestions 4y ago

This guy's insight has been enlightening, and highlights how alien Russian Authoritarian thought is compared to Western Individualist thought. One thing that's been especially shocking is the relatively low status the military has, which seems insane to us here in the West. Here, it's "Thank you for your service!", there it's a very low-status thing. It makes more sense once you realize the military represents a coup risk for a dictator, and has to be kept politically weak to preserve the State. Our military's undying loyalty to our civilian governments is something we here in the West take for granted, and is severely underrated. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1502673952572854278.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1502673952572854278.html

greedo 4y ago
Kamil has done an excellent job, both in his descriptions of how the military is viewed, with how the Kremlin manipulates and controls the other regions. How the corruption isn't just a new thing, but that it's more of a continuous power struggle in the Russian empire that has persisted since the time of Catherine.
- moistly 4y ago
  [Edit: As Kamil describes it] the Russian power apparatus is thuggery. It’s a biker gang with nukes. And while Western Democracy hasn’t nearly lived up to the hype, at the very least it is one hell of a lot more lawful. I believe we are at the crux of an existential dilemma. Law or lawless? Provided rights by an imperfect constitution, held accountable by an imperfect judiciary, and progressing forward through imperfect politicians … or held hostage to a cartel of lawless and largely incompetent gangs of thugs and the mafioso who run the show?