There are a bunch of sicko neoliberals and insufferable redditors there, yes, but there are also some normal libs and a few comrades, and it seems like a good way to encourage lemmy generally to re-embrace leftism.
I've been using an alt to talk on there and it's honestly not that bad. It's a little bad, but not that bad. I think if we just try to patiently explain ourselves, we have a reasonable chance of reaching people and shifting the general political alignment.
Those of us who aren't up to dealing with ghouls (I am frequently included in this group) can just stay at home here and that's just fine.
Anyway, just an idea. I would appreciate feedback.
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Yes, but the world in which that could exist outside of a very very small local council would look very different from what we have today. There is a large exploited underclass of Spanish speakers in the US, they should have political power and therefore representation. I would not say, "no you should not hold office because you cannot pass my poll tax".
Within a nation-state, the challenges of having multiple languages should be resolved by eduxating everyone in at least one common language, not suppressing the power and voice of large minorities.
Many absolutely are and feel this way, yes. But they don't tell the Gringos this most of the time, as those Gringos are very racist.
Though the situation is somewhat different. The US is a settler-colonized country and its Spanish speakers, due to racist immigration laws, are primarily fairly recent immigrants (last 50 years or so). Ukraine had much longer-established Russian-speaking regions, regions where it is the majority language. Or maybe I should say it did, because it won't be getting Donbas back. There are neighborhoods in the US where Spanish is the norm, but not cities or states. Oppression of Spanish speakers in the US is really oppression of Latinos and immigrants, themselves fleeing the consequences of US imperialism or the children/grandchildren of those immigrants. The oppression is there but its cultural embedding is somewhat different. Less stable. Less regionally coherent.
There are many schools that teach in Spanish, though they are all, to my knowledge, geared towards transitioning each student to learning in English.
Much smaller.
The US doesn't actually have an official language, technically speaking, though it is and has been plenty racist enough to use language (etc) as a weapon of oppression. Go back 200 years. What languages were predominant in what is now the United States?
The UA government was using policy to suppress Russian culture and language and has only accelerated this. Ukraine has had a large Russian population for a very long time - Ukrainian nationalism itself developed at the same time as there were ethnic Russians in Donbas (and Lenin himself promoted it!). Their actions are from the toolkit of cultural genocide. I'm not sure why they can be justified simply because they are the actions of a state.
Incorrect. Education is often compulsory and it is generally necessary to have a good life. The education we are talking about is predominately that of children, who have no autonomy. In addition, education is not something you can simply drop by a store and purchase easy-peasy. There are not a large array of affordable alternatives.
It is? Try not working for a few years, don't takr any debt, and tell me how great your life is.
What does this have to do with the systematic repression of ethnic Russians in Ukraine?
Yes, and per this discussion, that is the treatment Ukraine has not received by Russia *yet". To be honest, I originally thought Russia would use those same tactics. I was very surprised when they did not. I am relieved that they have not yet done so. I think that if NATO powers escalate, the RF will eventually do such things as a way to end the war more quickly given that diplomacy is taken off the table. It is imperative that we work against escalation, against extending the war, and demand peace negotiations from Ukraine and western powers.
UA hasn't been a sovereign state since Euromaidan. There was a coups and an EU-friendly, anti-Russia politician was placed there instead. If there is a recent "start" to all of this, it is Euromaidan. You can hear Victoria Nuland personally talking about which leader they would be picking for Ukraine, there is an audio recording.
In terms of negotiations, Russia wanted talks days into their invasion and they began shortly after. These were blown up by Boris Johnson, who of course is working with the US. If the US wanted UA to nefotiate with the RF they would have told Boris off and the talks would have resumed. The UK is not particularly powerful or important when it comes to these talks, they are just a representative of the NATO bloc.
The UA is now a complete dependency of the NATO bloc. In addition to all the Euromaidan fuckery, all of their material support comes from the NATO bloc. They don't have de facto independent diplomacy. They haven't had their scheduled elections and Donbas hasn't been part of them since 2014. They've banned many opposition parties. All signs point in the same direction.
Continued fighting just means more losses. More dead people, more destroyed infrastructure, more poisoned or mined soil, more territory lost. They're not getting Donbas back. No Wunderwaffe is going to make things better, a RF that retaliates gloves-off will make UA like Iraq in the 90s. The only reason any of it continues is because the imperialist bean counters believe they can still hurt Russia more and bring EU countries into greater US dependency.
in UA?
More specifically, UA has a neonazi problem. This actually extends very far up the ranks, with a federal attempt to rehabilitate Bandera, an anti-semite Nazi collaborator Ukrainian Nationalist that facilitated pogroms and the Holocaust against Jewish Ukrainians. Part of Ukrainian neo-Nazism is the merging of nationalist sentiment that they tie to Bandera with more openly German Nazi ideologies and symbols and texts. Ukrainian neo-Nazis, ethnically, would have been treated as lesser Undermenschen by German Nazis, but define themselves as a special kind of Ukrainian ethnicity superior to other slavs, especially Russians. The Russophobia in Ukraine is symbiotic with these neo-Nazis, they are often the enforcers on their eastern front.
But it is often very simple. Heil Hitler salutes, reading Mein Kampf for inspiration, antisemitic remarks, creating literal national socialist parties with Nazi insignia. Azov is an offshoot created by a member of a Nazi party, it uses a Nazi rendition of the Wolfsangel in its logo. Its older logo had a Sonnenrad that was designed by Himmler, it has no non-Nazi history ot meaning.
The neo-Nazis have important military positions, they are the most ideologically committed against Donbas separatists, most willing to shell civilians
This is why Nazi insignia are so ridiculously common in photos of Ukrainian soldiers. It I'd both distressingly popular and they enjoy an elevated position within the propaganda apparatus (and other efforts) directed against ethnic Russians and separatists.
Yes, in fact most of the southwest should be returned to Mexico or handed over to the indigenous nations who survived the genocide
Also your analogy is based on a faulty premise, bilingualism wasn't an issue in Ukraine until neo-nazis couped the democratically elected government in 2014 and activity waged war against Russian speakers who objected to that crime
You think the state that has rebuilt the Ukrainian military at least four times, while managing and coordinating the entire Ukrainian intelligence and communications services has no say is Ukrainian politics? I mean, obviously you know better, but it's still funny watching people like you claim to have no knowledge or understanding of concepts like "power" or "leverage" lmao
Did that nerd really try to use Spanish as a counter to your other post? lmao