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Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.

Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.

On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Yesterday's discussion post.


  • Wertheimer [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    We Should Say It. Russia is Fascist, by Timothy Snyder

    That didn’t last long. In 1939, the Soviet Union joined Nazi Germany as a de facto ally, and the two powers invaded Poland together. Nazi speeches were reprinted in the Soviet press and Nazi officers admired Soviet efficiency in mass deportations. But Russians today do not speak of this fact, since memory laws make it a crime to do so. World War II is an element of Mr. Putin’s historical myth of Russian innocence and lost greatness — Russia must enjoy a monopoly on victimhood and on victory. The basic fact that Stalin enabled World War II by allying with Hitler must be unsayable and unthinkable.

    Sounds like Professor Snyder needs @Thomas_Dankara to reeducate him.

    • LeninWeave [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Nazi speeches were reprinted in the Soviet press

      OH MY GOD, THE PRESS REPORTED THE NEWS? LITERALLY 1984.

      Smartest liberal.

    • YuriMihalkov [comrade/them,any]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I thought I recognized that name and yeah, this guy's whole project as a "historian" is to minimize Nazi crimes by casting them as nothing out of the ordinary compared to what the Soviets did, and all just part of a single system of violence.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands

      the worst kinds of anticommunist lib academics eat this shit up - here's a review of his book from Anne Applebaum that's revealing:

      "Snyder's original contribution is to treat all of these episodes—the Ukrainian famine, the Holocaust, Stalin's mass executions, the planned starvation of Soviet POWs, postwar ethnic cleansing—as different facets of the same phenomenon. Instead of studying Nazi atrocities or Soviet atrocities separately, as many others have done, he looks at them together. Yet Snyder does not exactly compare the two systems either. His intention, rather, is to show that the two systems committed the same kinds of crimes at the same times and in the same places, that they aided and abetted one another, and above all that their interaction with one another led to more mass killing than either might have carried out alone."

      Yeah he totally doesn't compare them, just says they were basically, qualitatively the same and that Nazism and communism are symbiotic and lead to the same results

      And it's worth noting that probably the foremost historian on Nazi Germany, despite also being quite lib, finds his methodology and understanding of both Nazism and the Soviet Union under Stalin to be shit:

      https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n21/richard-j.-evans/who-remembers-the-poles

      • LeninWeave [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        The book was awarded numerous prizes, including the 2013 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought

        lmao

      • Wertheimer [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yikes. Thanks for the context. I remember his name popping up all the time after Trump was elected, I guess to coincide with the publication of On Tyranny, but haven't read anything of his other than this stupid op-ed. Thanks for Evans's review, too. I'll read that now.

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Never have I ever heard a liberal talk about what went before the German-Soviet pact of non-agression. Not a word about how the British blocked any attempts at an anti-Hitler pact, that effort might as well never have happened if you are to believe western historiography. Not a word about how the western imperialist nations carved up Czechoslovakia and gave the parts to Germany and Poland in the Chamberlain-Hitler pact.

      Nor do they ever say a word about what happened afterwards, not a word about how the USSR fought the hardest and made the greatest sacrifices to rid the world of fascism.

      It's all Russia Bad, Communism Bad and nothing else with that lot.

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]M
      ·
      2 years ago

      Stalin enabled World War II by allying with Hitler

      SOMEBODY TELL THE FUCKING CZECH IT WASN'T THE ANGLO-FRENCH'S FAULT!

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat... you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi régime. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude... we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road... we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting". And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

      England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame, and will get war.

      Churchil on the Munich Agreement.

      • kristina [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

        england

        lol