6 ms·

Your enemy is not the people of the country you hate, it’s the government. If you believe it’s the people then you are a victim to propaganda, or some other sou

Your enemy is not the people of the country you hate, it’s the government. If you believe it’s the people then you are a victim to propaganda, or some other source of highly biased information. Think about what war really is, it’s almost always a bunch of powerful people who have a disagreement with a bunch of other powerful people, who then have to trick a bunch of less powerful people to fight on their behalf. If you feel like fighting you’ve been tricked. When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.

phyzome 9mo ago
It's a combination. Here in the US, a large chunk of the population supported Trump, knowing full well what kind of things he would do. And another large chunk of the population are trying to stop him. You can't blame the population as a whole. But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments.
- magicalhippo 9mo ago
  > But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments. However, that sentiment is shaped by the media available to the citizens, and in places like Russia, that means primarily by the government itself. So it's not so clear cut what the sentiment would have been had it not been for the governments propaganda.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - phyzome 9mo ago
    Yeah, it's absolutely tangled up in the way you describe. (In the US we have the same overall situation, but the propaganda seems to mostly be driven by rich people who own media companies...)
    - bilbo0s 9mo ago
      Make no mistake, it's the same in Russia. Globally, it's pretty much oligarchs all the way down.
- thyristan 9mo ago
  In a democracy, "We The People" is the sovereign. It is in the hands of the voters, and it is their responsibility to choose leaders wisely and shape their overall legal system. In democracies, the population doesn't get to use the "but its just our evil leaders" excuse. Only in other less democratic forms of government. And yes, this means that in a democracy, the opposition's voters are screwed because they share in the responsibility, even if they were right. Why? Because they were unable to convince the majority of the wrongness of the majority vote.
  - scns 9mo ago
    I'm baffled, this is one of the worst comments i've read on HN. It's hard to answer without using insults. Seems i'm really triggered by Blaming The Victim.
  - vintermann 9mo ago
    Is supposed to be the sovereign/source of all legitimate authority. But it's not as a practical matter in the US, or even in legalistic practice. Most legalistic factions in the US plainly treat the constitution itself (and/or its authors) as the source of its own authority.
    - thyristan 9mo ago
      > We the People of the United States [, in Order to ...,] do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. That is the literal first paragraph of the US constitution. I cannot imagine a valid legalistic argument that ignores that. When first establishing the constitution, it also didn't appear in a vacuum, the pre-existing states and confederation were already democratic for some time. So all authority/validity/legitimacy the US constitution has comes from the population, back then. And through continuing use, participation and broad acceptance until present. And of course, as a practical matter in a representative democracy, between elections, the people do have far less of an influence. They can basically only voice their opinions, threaten to vote differently in the next election, or start a revolution. But that doesn't absolve them of their responsibility on election day.
TiredOfLife 9mo ago
Russia has behaved the same way under 4 radically different forms of government.
- bilbo0s 9mo ago
  I have to admit, I've never been persuaded by this western idea that if you get rid of Putin, everything will be better. I'm not sure what part of Russian history, or contemporary Russian society, gives people confidence in this idea? I'm not being anti-Russian here either. I feel the same way about our nation here in the US. Even if we were to rid ourselves of Trump for instance, we would still have serious issues with a large body of people who support Trump-like policies. A wise Europe would still be obliged to be on guard against us. Every nation has belligerent elements. Russia is no different. While, say, Putin, may be an expression of that belligerent element, I'm unconvinced that he is the belligerent element itself. I think it's foolish, potentially fatal, to make that assumption.
  - lostlogin 9mo ago
    > I have to admit, I've never been persuaded by this western idea that if you get rid of Putin, everything will be better. I’m mangling a quote from someone, but extreme environments breed extreme leaders. To rise, Putin had to be better than his rivals. Presumably they were ruthless, clever, calculating etc. I’m not sure we want to hear from his successor.
    - breppp 9mo ago
      In this kind of regimes the failed rivals usually disappear due to unnatural circumstances and the leader is surrounded by less impressive people. E.g. Stalin's successors
  - Gibbon1 9mo ago
    My learning experience was when Idi Amin was overthrown people thought that now he was gone things would get better for Uganda. Did not.
  - 9mo ago
btilly 9mo ago
No, it can be both the government, and the people. The government for all of the reasons you say. The people because they have fallen for and accepted propaganda. Thereby leading them to support the government and its toxic narratives. I base this opinion mostly on seeing how Russian propaganda has poisoned my mother-in-law's mind. Many media reports and various other sources have verified that she is not an isolated example, most Russians accept the same propaganda narratives.
- TFYS 9mo ago
  There's plenty of propaganda on our side as well. Let's, for the sake of argument, say that the west was orchestrating regime change in Ukraine with the end goal of regime change in Russia, knowing it would lead to war. We would never know about it. The organizations in the west that handle geopolitical issues are not that different from those of Russia. They're not transparent or democratic, yet we rely on them for our information. They can probably steer us the way they want as easily as they do in Russia. The free media does not have access to the information it would need to truly inform the public.
  - wiseowise 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - TFYS 9mo ago
      You're missing my point. I'm not saying the west did anything wrong. I'm saying that if it did do those things, nothing would be different, and therefore we are just as much pawns of our leaders as the russians are.
    - anticodon 9mo ago
      People living in Ukraine now clearly don't like that Zelenskiy cancelled the elections and don't want to sign peace agreement. Why they don't go to the streets and protest?
      - 9mo ago
BatteryMountain 9mo ago
To add to this, culture can be changed significantly in a short period. See how the USA has changed in the past 20 years, the culture has changed 2 or 3 times now with vastly different values & attitudes between each. What does each period have in common? Thick gobs of propaganda being push in every nook & cranny. And lack of critical thinking on the individual level. If country X wants to change, it is very possible, its just a matter of time, persistence & brain washing. Brain washing the youth is the easiest path, especially if in the opposite direction than what their parents/elderly want.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  > See how the USA has changed in the past 20 years I’m not sure we will ever know the complete answer, but some of this change seems to involve Russia too.
  - fragmede 9mo ago
    Russia or not, somehow, team Red and team Blue picked cards on who's on which team, and we're not allowed to have differing opinions about who should be on what side.
nkmnz 9mo ago
As a German, I must insist that your statement is absolutely wrong. The people of a country can be your enemy. A Government like Nazi-Germany or current day Russia cannot exist without plenty of support by its people in the first place.
- fkdk 9mo ago
  Interesting thought. In the end, this is an ethical question: How much pressure is justified to put on the general population for supporting their leaders? My feeling is that your perspective, likely shared by people like Bomber Harris or Netanyahu, does not match most peoples intuition nowadays.
  - nkmnz 9mo ago
    I beg to differ. Accepting that tens of millions in Germany supported Hitler frenetically, thus declaring themselves enemies of everyone who was a Jew, a Democrat, a Citizen of any neighbouring country etc.pp., doesn’t mean that bombing cities to the ground is morally or legally justified, as long as there are other alternatives (and there have been, both for Harris, and for Netanyahu). The point really is: most Germans saw themselves as enemies of Freedom, Equality, and Peace. Both inside and outside of Germany. You cannot treat someone as a friend who’s violently proving the see you as the enemy.
- vintermann 9mo ago
  I don't for a moment believe that German people as a group, or Russian people as a group, or British people as a group etc. are morally superior to any of the others. If one can, through specific circumstances, end up supporting bad things, then so would the others in that circumstance. So it doesn't matter if the Russian people is the enemy in the sense of supporting their mafia government. They're not doing anything you wouldn't have done. Condemning them is condemning yourself and does no one any good.
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    I don't agree with that. There were good Germans. There were also Germans that pretended not to notice and then there were bad Germans. The ones in the middle are collectively just as guilty because they allowed the bad ones to do their thing. You don't get to stand by while such stuff unfolds and then claim innocence. Right now, inside Russia there are Russians who are putting their lives on the line to help stop this war before it consumes their country. Their the 'Good Russians'. And then there are those in the middle - and plenty who have fled abroad - who pretend this isn't their problem. But they're enabling the rest and should be rightly condemned for it. It took Germany a generation or more to really get it (and even now, some don't get it but that seems to be a factor just about everywhere, the bad will always attempt to take root again). The country that I'm from still hasn't properly accepted the mountain of skulls and the rivers of blood that our wealth is founded on. In that sense Germany is now ahead, but with the afd it remains to be seen whether they can maintain that lead for much longer.
koonsolo 9mo ago
Ask any Russian if Crimea belongs to Ukraine. None of them will give you the internationally accepted answer. So yea, it's not just the government.
- ithkuil 9mo ago
  Things can be more complicated than that. Crimea is a special situation. I won't reiterate its complex history here since there is plenty of written here, but I'd like to point out that one could have a view where Crimea is Russian and yet decry the invasion of Ukraine as illegitimate. If anything for practical reasons: only 7% of its population is Ukrainian. It would be very a source of continuous ethnic tensions. Hard Russian nationalism is much more than that Such people claim that the entirety of Ukraine is just Russia and they mock them for otherwise being Polish. This narrative is an explicit outcome of an Imperial mindset
  - koonsolo 9mo ago
    So the 2014 annexation was OK but the 2022 invasion not?
    - ithkuil 9mo ago
      My personal opinion is that the 2014 annexation wasn't ok but the reason wasn't that Crimea is not Russian but because I value the stability and peace produced by the idea that we shouldn't change borders through force. But that's the reason why using this "who does Crimea _belong to_" framing of the question is misleading. You will find many people who will say Russia and yet not necessarily subscribe to the imperialistic stance that Russia is employing.
      - koiueo 9mo ago
        > say Russia and yet not necessarily subscribe to the imperialistic stance Contradiction right there
        9mo ago
finebalance 9mo ago
It can be both, I think? Politicians/powerful people take advantage of divisions in society, but often those divisions do exist in a fully-fledged or nascent form for them to exploit.
tremon 9mo ago
Whether people become my enemy through choice or through effective propaganda makes no difference to me, they're still my enemy.

phyzome 9mo ago

It's a combination. Here in the US, a large chunk of the population supported Trump, knowing full well what kind of things he would do. And another large chunk of the population are trying to stop him. You can't blame the population as a whole. But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments.

magicalhippo 9mo ago
> But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments. However, that sentiment is shaped by the media available to the citizens, and in places like Russia, that means primarily by the government itself. So it's not so clear cut what the sentiment would have been had it not been for the governments propaganda.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- phyzome 9mo ago
  Yeah, it's absolutely tangled up in the way you describe. (In the US we have the same overall situation, but the propaganda seems to mostly be driven by rich people who own media companies...)
  - bilbo0s 9mo ago
    Make no mistake, it's the same in Russia. Globally, it's pretty much oligarchs all the way down.
thyristan 9mo ago
In a democracy, "We The People" is the sovereign. It is in the hands of the voters, and it is their responsibility to choose leaders wisely and shape their overall legal system. In democracies, the population doesn't get to use the "but its just our evil leaders" excuse. Only in other less democratic forms of government. And yes, this means that in a democracy, the opposition's voters are screwed because they share in the responsibility, even if they were right. Why? Because they were unable to convince the majority of the wrongness of the majority vote.
- scns 9mo ago
  I'm baffled, this is one of the worst comments i've read on HN. It's hard to answer without using insults. Seems i'm really triggered by Blaming The Victim.
- vintermann 9mo ago
  Is supposed to be the sovereign/source of all legitimate authority. But it's not as a practical matter in the US, or even in legalistic practice. Most legalistic factions in the US plainly treat the constitution itself (and/or its authors) as the source of its own authority.
  - thyristan 9mo ago
    > We the People of the United States [, in Order to ...,] do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. That is the literal first paragraph of the US constitution. I cannot imagine a valid legalistic argument that ignores that. When first establishing the constitution, it also didn't appear in a vacuum, the pre-existing states and confederation were already democratic for some time. So all authority/validity/legitimacy the US constitution has comes from the population, back then. And through continuing use, participation and broad acceptance until present. And of course, as a practical matter in a representative democracy, between elections, the people do have far less of an influence. They can basically only voice their opinions, threaten to vote differently in the next election, or start a revolution. But that doesn't absolve them of their responsibility on election day.

TiredOfLife 9mo ago

Russia has behaved the same way under 4 radically different forms of government.

bilbo0s 9mo ago
I have to admit, I've never been persuaded by this western idea that if you get rid of Putin, everything will be better. I'm not sure what part of Russian history, or contemporary Russian society, gives people confidence in this idea? I'm not being anti-Russian here either. I feel the same way about our nation here in the US. Even if we were to rid ourselves of Trump for instance, we would still have serious issues with a large body of people who support Trump-like policies. A wise Europe would still be obliged to be on guard against us. Every nation has belligerent elements. Russia is no different. While, say, Putin, may be an expression of that belligerent element, I'm unconvinced that he is the belligerent element itself. I think it's foolish, potentially fatal, to make that assumption.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  > I have to admit, I've never been persuaded by this western idea that if you get rid of Putin, everything will be better. I’m mangling a quote from someone, but extreme environments breed extreme leaders. To rise, Putin had to be better than his rivals. Presumably they were ruthless, clever, calculating etc. I’m not sure we want to hear from his successor.
  - breppp 9mo ago
    In this kind of regimes the failed rivals usually disappear due to unnatural circumstances and the leader is surrounded by less impressive people. E.g. Stalin's successors
- Gibbon1 9mo ago
  My learning experience was when Idi Amin was overthrown people thought that now he was gone things would get better for Uganda. Did not.
- 9mo ago

btilly 9mo ago

No, it can be both the government, and the people. The government for all of the reasons you say. The people because they have fallen for and accepted propaganda. Thereby leading them to support the government and its toxic narratives. I base this opinion mostly on seeing how Russian propaganda has poisoned my mother-in-law's mind. Many media reports and various other sources have verified that she is not an isolated example, most Russians accept the same propaganda narratives.

TFYS 9mo ago
There's plenty of propaganda on our side as well. Let's, for the sake of argument, say that the west was orchestrating regime change in Ukraine with the end goal of regime change in Russia, knowing it would lead to war. We would never know about it. The organizations in the west that handle geopolitical issues are not that different from those of Russia. They're not transparent or democratic, yet we rely on them for our information. They can probably steer us the way they want as easily as they do in Russia. The free media does not have access to the information it would need to truly inform the public.
- wiseowise 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - TFYS 9mo ago
    You're missing my point. I'm not saying the west did anything wrong. I'm saying that if it did do those things, nothing would be different, and therefore we are just as much pawns of our leaders as the russians are.
  - anticodon 9mo ago
    People living in Ukraine now clearly don't like that Zelenskiy cancelled the elections and don't want to sign peace agreement. Why they don't go to the streets and protest?
    - 9mo ago

BatteryMountain 9mo ago

To add to this, culture can be changed significantly in a short period. See how the USA has changed in the past 20 years, the culture has changed 2 or 3 times now with vastly different values & attitudes between each. What does each period have in common? Thick gobs of propaganda being push in every nook & cranny. And lack of critical thinking on the individual level. If country X wants to change, it is very possible, its just a matter of time, persistence & brain washing. Brain washing the youth is the easiest path, especially if in the opposite direction than what their parents/elderly want.

lostlogin 9mo ago
> See how the USA has changed in the past 20 years I’m not sure we will ever know the complete answer, but some of this change seems to involve Russia too.
- fragmede 9mo ago
  Russia or not, somehow, team Red and team Blue picked cards on who's on which team, and we're not allowed to have differing opinions about who should be on what side.

nkmnz 9mo ago

As a German, I must insist that your statement is absolutely wrong. The people of a country can be your enemy. A Government like Nazi-Germany or current day Russia cannot exist without plenty of support by its people in the first place.

fkdk 9mo ago
Interesting thought. In the end, this is an ethical question: How much pressure is justified to put on the general population for supporting their leaders? My feeling is that your perspective, likely shared by people like Bomber Harris or Netanyahu, does not match most peoples intuition nowadays.
- nkmnz 9mo ago
  I beg to differ. Accepting that tens of millions in Germany supported Hitler frenetically, thus declaring themselves enemies of everyone who was a Jew, a Democrat, a Citizen of any neighbouring country etc.pp., doesn’t mean that bombing cities to the ground is morally or legally justified, as long as there are other alternatives (and there have been, both for Harris, and for Netanyahu). The point really is: most Germans saw themselves as enemies of Freedom, Equality, and Peace. Both inside and outside of Germany. You cannot treat someone as a friend who’s violently proving the see you as the enemy.
vintermann 9mo ago
I don't for a moment believe that German people as a group, or Russian people as a group, or British people as a group etc. are morally superior to any of the others. If one can, through specific circumstances, end up supporting bad things, then so would the others in that circumstance. So it doesn't matter if the Russian people is the enemy in the sense of supporting their mafia government. They're not doing anything you wouldn't have done. Condemning them is condemning yourself and does no one any good.
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  I don't agree with that. There were good Germans. There were also Germans that pretended not to notice and then there were bad Germans. The ones in the middle are collectively just as guilty because they allowed the bad ones to do their thing. You don't get to stand by while such stuff unfolds and then claim innocence. Right now, inside Russia there are Russians who are putting their lives on the line to help stop this war before it consumes their country. Their the 'Good Russians'. And then there are those in the middle - and plenty who have fled abroad - who pretend this isn't their problem. But they're enabling the rest and should be rightly condemned for it. It took Germany a generation or more to really get it (and even now, some don't get it but that seems to be a factor just about everywhere, the bad will always attempt to take root again). The country that I'm from still hasn't properly accepted the mountain of skulls and the rivers of blood that our wealth is founded on. In that sense Germany is now ahead, but with the afd it remains to be seen whether they can maintain that lead for much longer.

koonsolo 9mo ago

Ask any Russian if Crimea belongs to Ukraine. None of them will give you the internationally accepted answer. So yea, it's not just the government.

ithkuil 9mo ago
Things can be more complicated than that. Crimea is a special situation. I won't reiterate its complex history here since there is plenty of written here, but I'd like to point out that one could have a view where Crimea is Russian and yet decry the invasion of Ukraine as illegitimate. If anything for practical reasons: only 7% of its population is Ukrainian. It would be very a source of continuous ethnic tensions. Hard Russian nationalism is much more than that Such people claim that the entirety of Ukraine is just Russia and they mock them for otherwise being Polish. This narrative is an explicit outcome of an Imperial mindset
- koonsolo 9mo ago
  So the 2014 annexation was OK but the 2022 invasion not?
  - ithkuil 9mo ago
    My personal opinion is that the 2014 annexation wasn't ok but the reason wasn't that Crimea is not Russian but because I value the stability and peace produced by the idea that we shouldn't change borders through force. But that's the reason why using this "who does Crimea _belong to_" framing of the question is misleading. You will find many people who will say Russia and yet not necessarily subscribe to the imperialistic stance that Russia is employing.
    - koiueo 9mo ago
      > say Russia and yet not necessarily subscribe to the imperialistic stance Contradiction right there
      - 9mo ago

finebalance 9mo ago

It can be both, I think? Politicians/powerful people take advantage of divisions in society, but often those divisions do exist in a fully-fledged or nascent form for them to exploit.

tremon 9mo ago

Whether people become my enemy through choice or through effective propaganda makes no difference to me, they're still my enemy.