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If this is true, I don't understand the actions of Russia's government in recent years. I doubt their goal is to be universally reviled, so what's their real o
by CoastalCoder 2y ago
If this is true, I don't understand the actions of Russia's government in recent years.
I doubt their goal is to be universally reviled, so what's their real objective?
As much as I'm tempted to think they're just being full-on assholes, I assume they're being more strategic than that.
- baq 2y agoThey sow chaos and then unleash the bots criticizing whoever is currently in office; then they unleash bots criticizing those bots and hope to drag in normal people. Basically the idea is to erode trust in the western system. They don't try to hide it anymore and seems it doesn't matter - it's quite effective anyway.
- netcan 2y agoYeah but this is more like "plan a minor disturbance of a high profile event. Get caught and galvanize the public to arm your enemies." It doesn't erode trust in the western system.
- baq 2y agoThis one was exceptional in every way. There are tens if not hundreds of examples in which they managed to not be so completely drunk to fail multiple times.
- mistermann 2y agoHow do you distinguish between ones that are actually Russia and ones that are only asserted or implied to be Russia? Or do you?
- baq 2y agoSometimes the authorities find out, especially if it's a big fire of an ammo depot or a nerve agent wet job. Sometimes there is only circumstantial evidence. Sometimes you get used to it and you know it's them again.
- mistermann 2y ago> Sometimes you get used to it and you know it's them again. You are using the colloquial versions of "know", and "is".
- baq 2y agoYes, of course. You're taking what I've written out of context.
- mistermann 2y agoThe context: I asked you a precise question about your claim, you answered it in the way you chose to. You are welcome to clarify if you'd like.
- baq 2y agoWon’t be doing your googling for you today, I’m very sorry.
- mistermann 2y agoI believe this is in play: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Shifting-of-the-Burden-of-Proof https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Shiftin... Do you disagree?
- toyg 2y agoThe "get caught" part often doesn't happen. And even if they do get caught, as long as the main objective is achieved, it can be promoted as a show of strength so that next time the victims will play ball even before force is applied. It's the mafia style, everyone knows who whacked whom.
- netcan 2y agoI don't see how this shows strength.
- toyg 2y agoNot everyone can pull off "a massive attack on a large scale to paralyse the TGV network" (literal quote from the rail operator). It's brutish, but it's a form of strength - like a mafia bully burning down your flower shop because you refused to pay.
- Modified3019 2y agoWhich is fine and expected, the goal here isn’t to impress you. You have to look at this from the perspective of deeply broken people, full of malice and hardcore narcissism. Even if sabotage fails, they pat themselves on the back, rejoicing that they’ve increased paranoia and confusion, and start planning the next attack. And if it provokes a response from their would be victims that results in Russian goals somewhere being ruined, they cry crocodile tears for pity and make themselves out to be martyrs, and plan the next attack. There are many humans in this world with thoughts and motivations that are completely alien to others.
- lesuorac 2y agoI mean if you gave an American the option between say NK and USA they'll probably chose USA. However, if you just omit a comparison and ask them if they trust the USA they'll probably say no. That's the cleverness of this. You aren't trying to convince them that Russia is better. You're just trying to convince them that USA is failing compared to its previous self. https://news.gallup.com/poll/508169/historically-low-faith-institutions-continues.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/508169/historically-low-faith-i...
- consumer451 2y agoAccording to their history of attacks on individuals, grand strategic logic often lags behind their desire for petty revenge. The government of France denied Russia's standing in this Olympics. This is simple reprisal.
- anonym29 2y ago[flagged]
- ljlolel 2y ago[flagged]
- anonym29 2y agoI'm not a bot, but nothing I say can convince someone who isn't open to new information or critical thinking.
- dvfjsdhgfv 2y agoYeah, the anagram part almost got me convinced.
- jcranmer 2y ago> That 'senator' is an anagram for 'treason' is no coincidence. One is a Latin word, the other is a French word? And when you say it's "no coincidence", that means that someone intentionally made it so. Which word do you think was designed to be the anagram? Given that 'senator' is the direct Latin word that predates 'treason' (in its modern English spelling) by thousands of years, it has to be the latter, so do you think some philologist is sitting around going "ah yes, we should spell traïson as treason so that it's a perfect anagram to use as a pun for an office that won't exist for another few hundred years"?
- laughingcurve 2y ago>That 'senator' is an anagram for 'treason' is no coincidence. That is literally the definition of a coincidence. Get off Hacker News and go to Reddit. Low information comments like this belong there.
- anonym29 2y agoA paragraph of accurate historical details about government atrocities is undone by a single rhetorical remark at the botttom to drive the point home? TIL.
- worldsayshi 2y agoI'm a bit puzzled by this as well but I assume that the goal here is to project power and scare people into submission. Making themselves seem more powerful than they are by attacking an event that is in the public spotlight.
- dotancohen 2y agoDifferent cultures, this seems a very Russian way of projecting power. Though I personally can think of at least two other actors who are just as likely to blame. At least this wasn't a "hurt people" power projection. Western civilization, including most of the infrastructure, assumes good intentions of those around. How many times have teenagers independently realized the chassis they could cause just by pushing a waiting pedestrian into traffic? Trains have always been noted as an easy target.
- rjzzleep 2y agoYou should be puzzled. You should always be puzzled when people say "witnesses told us", "anonymous intelligence officials said". It's what got us into plenty of wars we didn't need to be in. Especially when the authors are known to be in collusion with said intelligence agencies. > An extraordinary email uncovered under freedom of information laws raises serious questions about whether Bellingcat, the “open source” collective widely cited by mainstream journalists and loved by the CIA, collaborates directly with Western intelligence agencies. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/30/bellingcat-collusion-western-intelligence/ https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/30/bellingcat-collusion-west...
- jdietrich 2y agoPot, meet kettle: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzone-russia-iran-support/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzon...
- rjzzleep 2y agoDid you even read the article you linked? Wyatt Reed worked as a Freelance journalist, like so many other journalists. It was always public knowledge. There was no "hacked email" here. The WaPo issued a tiny correction on this smear piece at least: > correction > A previous version of this article incorrectly said that leaders of the online news site Grayzone had received payments from Iranian media, according to recently unearthed documents. The documents show that only one of the site’s editors received such payments. The article has been corrected.
- surfingdino 2y agoThere is no objective other than to destroy the West and democracy and then rule with as much brutality as the conquered nations will bear. If they cannot achieve that objective they want to go down in flames with the rest of the world. If you want to know how the Russian peace looks like read up on the partitions of Poland (economic exploitation, violent anti-semitism, deportations to Siberia, confiscation of property and land, russification, etc.) or the history of countries in Eastern Europe who found themselves inside the borders of Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. Persecutions, mass deportations, mass murders, torture, economic exploitation. I really pity the African nations who got convinced to kick out Americans and the French. They will now get a taste of Russia and it will not be pretty.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago> If they cannot achieve that objective they want to go down in flames with the rest of the world. I think this level of unserious analysis is deeply unhelpful. You know people in Russia have their lives and goals, they are not suicidal maniacs. At least read some Russian media with google translate
- immibis 2y agoThey are talking about the Russian state, not people in Russia.
- surfingdino 2y agoPeople in Russia are indoctrinated and their thinking and worldview is heavily influenced by Russian propaganda. They have never enjoyed freedom of thought or legal protection from the intrusive, corrupt, and murderous state. Their lives belong to the state just like their goals. The concept of personal freedom or privacy doesn't exist in Russia. Even those who travel abroad don't seem to change their behaviour and thinking no matter how often and how long they visit other countries. They have become the scourge of the tourist resorts that will still take their money. Europeans don't want to go there anymore. It's all vodka, loud parties, and being absolute assholes to others. They are quickly becoming the Sentinelese of Europe. I will not read Russian media, I had enough of it in my early years when it was compulsory. Russians pillaged my country of birth and continue to be an existential threat. Russians also lied to everybody after 1989 and used the time, the trust, and the money to arm themselves and start invading and killing neighbours. There is zero truth in what Russians say. They can keep their ballet and Dostoyevsky.
- jltsiren 2y agoThey could be embracing the North Korean model. You don't have to be competitive as long as you are untouchable. The elites get wealth and power, and the rest don't matter.
- surfingdino 2y agoWhat wealth? Their wealth comes from the natural resources, which they now cannot openly sell at market prices. Give it a few years and the next meeting of the Russian oligarchs will be held on a wooden bench behind the foreign currency exchange kiosk next to the Moscow's Luzniki stadium.
- jltsiren 2y agoPrivate wealth, not national wealth. Despite the poverty of his country and decades of isolation, Kim Jong Un is a billionaire who lives an extremely comfortable life. If you are untouchable, don't care about the people, and can keep the people in check, the economy doesn't matter. You can live in wealth and comfort, while your people face famine and poverty. And the situation can be stable for many decades.
- surfingdino 2y agoKim is a billionaire who cannot enjoy his wealth in the same way western billionaires can. He is untouchable because of the cost of removing him, not because he is so well protected.
- hiatus 2y agoIf terrorist organizations can sell their natural resource plunder on the black market at profit why can't the Russians? For instance https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-isis-uses-oil-to-fund-terror/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-isis-uses-oil-to-fund...
- grugagag 2y agoToo little and too slow for Russia’s current needs.
- jackstraw14 2y agoDestabilization. You can usually count on it if Russia is involved.
- energy123 2y agoThey didn't want to get caught. They want to create chaos, which leads to disillusionment, nihilism, infighting and isolationism and a breaking up of the West's unity. Relevant, from the CBS this week: > The FBI announced it disrupted a Russian AI-enhanced social media bot farm, which was designed to be an influence operation. Some of the fake profiles from bots purported to be Americans. Some other examples: - https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook... - https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-covert-influence-operations/ https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_Black_Lives_Matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_Black_Lives_Matter It's probably quite effective, but we don't know how effective because it's impossible to re-run the last 10 years without this and see what would have happened.
- aga98mtl 2y agoPoisonings, people falling out of windows, arsons, it all make sense if you consider that it is a state captured by a mafia clan. John McCain famously said that Russia is ‘A Gas Station Run by a Mafia That Is Masquerading as a Country’
- ekianjo 2y ago> that it is a state captured by a mafia clan most countries are captured by a mafia clan, this isn't a thing specific to Russia. When you have powerful intelligence services sooner or later they end up taking over.
- crabbone 2y agoBut there are differences. For example, Asian theocracies understand their mission as a state and its government as furthering whatever bizarre ideas they gleamed from the scripture. They are often clan-ish in organization, but this only reflects the history of how they came to be that way, that isn't the goal. When it comes to the European politicians, they may be very corrupt lying scumbags, but in order to get elected they need to put on a show pretending to act in the interest of the country they want to rule. When it comes to Russia: they are simply criminals. They don't need to pretend to want to make their country better off. Not in the sense the same corrupt lying European politician would. In prison terms, they try to prove themselves as the higher cast. As those who are allowed (and even required) to humiliate the lower cast. It's highly unlikely that Russian intelligence service is anything special. But they aren't the ones calling the shots that's for sure. They are just a part of the country-sized prison.
- Modified3019 2y agoThe reality of living in Russia is the perfect example of the false equivalence of the sentiment that “a government is just a mafia”. Magnitude matters.
- ifyoubuildit 2y agoIt's just like how the terrorists hated us for our freedoms and were hiding weapons of mass destruction. The war machine isn't just gonna keep itself running.
- crabbone 2y agoTo understand anything Russian government does, you need to understand that they aren't a government in the way Western democracies / republics / monarchies understand the function of the government. For someone with largely humanistic outlook on life, the function of the government is to try to make sure that what's being governed prospers. Prosperity may be understood as "more riches for the rich" or "redistribution of wealth" or anywhere in between. But the basic idea is to make things better, at least for some sub-group of thus governed subjects. Russia is operated by straight-up criminals. And I don't mean white-collar corrupt politicians. They are literally people who committed often very violent crimes. For instance, Putin is implicated in a number of "hits" on law enforcement officers, investigators etc. He was not the one executing the "hits", but he was likely directly involved in the crime. A lot of his associates have done often long time behind bars. For example, his puppet assigned to rule over Ukraine (the one who was deposed in the "revolution of dignity" which set in motion the present conflict) started his career as a gang robber: he, with his friends broke into an apartment, tortured the owners while taking their belongings. These people have a mental model of the world defined by the prison lore. They have a bizarre set of rules which define what honor is: "honor" (the prison kind of) is the central value / virtue in this system. In this model, the world is divided into "suckers" and "men". "Men" are allowed to humiliate the "suckers" in whatever way they want. In fact, if they don't, they might as well join the "suckers". In this system, anyone who shows any kind of compassion to the "suckers" is him/herself a "sucker". Europeans or anyone who wants to live in a society that values any human life thus is automatically a "sucker". This is why Russians think and treat Europeans with contempt and disdain. They don't think it to be immoral to steal from a European, or to assault one etc. It's also "honorable" to accept the risks associated with humiliating the "suckers". To prove how much of a "man" someone is that is. It's actually better to die while proving your place is among "men" than to surrender and live like a "sucker". So, they don't care about international consequences of their sabotage in France today. At least not in the sense how another European country might've cared, should they engage in something similar.
- Mikhail_K 2y ago> For example, his puppet assigned to rule over Ukraine (the one who was deposed in the > "revolution of dignity" which set in motion the present conflict) started his career as a Deposed by the maidan's "revolution of dignity" president of the Ukraine Yanukovich had not been "assigned to rule over Ukraine", but elected in competitive voting, that OSCE certified as democratic and "organized in a transparent manner." You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.
- Tade0 2y agoI think you have to be Russian to fully grasp the motivations behind this. I've got a lot of mileage out of the assumption that every such act is supposed to send a message both to Russia's enemies and citizens. The message being "we are everywhere". Should anyone try to start working with the enemy, like the helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov, they will be found and executed. EDIT: Navalny's return to Russia raised eyebrows in the west. I think he was aware that he would be targeted anyway, so might as well have it happen on his own terms.
- neom 2y agoI think about this quite a lot. I presume people at that level are at least TRYING to be strategic in some manner. The two thoughts I used to try and frame it are: the cold war never really ended, it just changed, and, begrudging-capitalist subscribing societies have highly intelligent people in them just like capitalist societies. If nation states are indeed competitive, then a relatively decent strategy would be presume automation is going to rapidly allow for an alternative systems in societies, and while that shift is happening, cause as much problem as you can for the folks unable/unwilling/unknowing, while you start shifting behind the scenes. Marx literally articulated deeply, the idea that socialism, and eventually communism, would arise as a natural progression from capitalism. We may or may not want to accept that, but Marx spelled it out, and lots of people follow Marx as their philosophy. I try hard to avoid getting conspiratorial in my head, so I tend to leave the thought around that point, after all, it's just a thought. :)
- Juliate 2y agoSowing chaos is always a good strategy, when you need/want to disguise your action behind or among distractions. As to be reviled, some don't care, as long as they're feared.
- marcosdumay 2y agoThe goal is to get some fact they can use in propaganda internally to show how the country is great or succeeding against its enemies. And yeah, everybody that complains about them is an enemy.
- mrguyorama 2y agoRemember that Russian citizens are explicitly told they are "At war with NATO".
- beretguy 2y agorussia’s ultimate goal is to spread misinformation to destroy democratic countries from within and then invade these countries’ land. Because they stand no chance fighting fare and square.
- beretguy 2y ago[flagged]
- racional 2y agoI doubt their goal is to be universally reviled, so what's their real objective? Believe it or not -- their initial goal was simply to gain respect. They actually thought the Ukraine invasion would be a walkthrough, and that of course Western countries would whine and moan about of a -- but ultimately they would respect Russia for its audacity and boldness, that Russia would emerge with greatly enhanced stature over its historic rivals, and a new era of Russian gravitas and self-assuredness would begin. So yes - it was all definitely quite strategic, in theory. But things didn't go as they planned of course, so now they're fighting like a cornered animal. Except now the fight isn't for "respect", and it certainly isn't about Ukraine -- but rather their own physical and political survival.
- tim333 2y agoMy take is they think they are a great power entitled to rule over their neighbours including the former soviet union and thus are entitled to attack all who oppose that by whatever ways including dumb things like disrupting the olympics and funding anti vaxxer and far right folk and the like. Not that I know that much - I'm kind of confused myself. Here's Keir Giles, who wrote a related book, talking a bit. https://youtu.be/j8wVuHMAEHg?t=688 https://youtu.be/j8wVuHMAEHg?t=688