Russia’s problems lie in the attitude of the overwhelming majority of its people, not in the lack of access to information.
They make a conscious and fully informed choice to be genocidal imperialists and embrace authoritarianism.
“they”?
what happens to dissidents in Putin’s Russia? It’s easy to criticize a repressed population when you’re not risking anything.
were all U.S. citizens responsible for the invasion of iraq? In U.S. where you don’t disappear for criticising the government and it’s choices, what difference did that freedom of speech make for Iraqis?
Where in the so called “west” do people keep buying from Putin’s Russia through cloaked trade?
while we’re on the subject of “genocidal imperialists embracing authoritarianism”, who are the greatest sponsors of one of the longest running apartheid regime? Is “the attitude of the overwhelming majority of its people” the cause of this genocidal apartheid?
nuances! “Overwhelming majority” is just trying to get by. Most people are not power hungry psychopaths. If Putin, Netanyahu and some more of their ilk died today, world would be a better place tomorrow.
fuck this! it’s time to go offline and read a decent book.
What about so called russian “dissidents”? Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).
The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.
We are not discussing US right now! The US did not annex Basra state, steal all the local children, force everyone to speak English and send anyone caught talking Arabic to a torture chamber; all with support of somewhere between 65% to 85% of their population.
The overwhelming majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists. They support invasions of foreign countries, annexations, attempts at elimatining local language and culture and setting up mass torture camps for anyone opposed to the yoke of russian degeneracy.
The “trying to get by” pitch is a ruse. Both qualitative and quantitative research (different methodologies, including ones that attempt to account for preference falsification) show this is not true and that on an outcome basis, the overwhelming majority of russians are indeed genocidal imperialists.
Fuck off with your xenophobia-biased opinions.
If you actually spent any amount of time communicating with people in Russia, you’d realise the overwhelming majority are not genocidal imperialists.
The overwhelming majority of Russians I’ve spoken to do not support the ongoing war, and would prefer if Ukraine was left alone.
I’d be interested in seeing where you’re pulling these extrapolated statistics from, including the demographics of the people who were surveyed.
If 7/10 Texans oppose abortion, does that mean 70% of the country believe the same thing?
You do understand that anecdotal findings don’t mean anything, right? I’ve lived in russia for a decade; the three russians I still speak to are anti-war. That’s not how any of this works!
I’ve posted links and reference to various research works previously in this thread. You can start by looking at polling from Levada (lots of age group information), Russian Field and a paper by LSE that uses list experiments (URL in one of my comments in this thread).
Even qualitative research by russian academics is damning for russian society. They find that even among those who don’t actively support the invasion, a majority still want to see their army win (i.e. annexation Ukrainian territories, steal children, bomb children’s cancer hospitals). This was a recent project done in a small town (15K) in Siberian russia, released just last month.
A strong majority of russian are most definitely genocidal imperialists (including the 19-29 age group, although it may be more of a regular majority than a “strong majority”). You’re really ignorant (of practically all quantitative and qualitative research as well as of history) and/or you are naive and not willing to ask yourself difficult questions.
The US did not annex Basra state
Of course not. But the US is actively funding a genocide in palestine and many similar atrocities around the globe. This empire has a long history of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery, racism, war, etc. The overwhelming majority of USAians are also genocidal imperialists. Just listen to NPR. Just look at the presidential candidates.
I’m not saying the alt-empire is any better. I’m saying that empire is the same everywhere. All of these politicians are extremely privileged hanging out together at the UN, dinner parties, etc. regardless of what brand of state they serve. It’s all the same system and same people. Every state and all empire is trash.
So when did senior US politicians call for extermination of Gazan identity, banning arabic in Gaza and annexing Gaza as a new state?
You do understand that the term “genocidal imperialist” has actual meaning, right?
The overwhelming majority of russian are genocidal imperialist because they support russia full scale invasion and they have always supported the annexation of Crimea.
We can have a conversation about the bad and good things done by the US, but I don’t see what this has to do with the topic at hand?
Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).
Not really: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/opinion/how-to-punish-putin.html ; this is just days after the annexation. I’m no fan of Navalny for various reasons (his nationalist views, xenophobic comments and narratives, etc), but he was very much against all Putin’s shenanigans in Ukraine, and vehemently anti-war.
The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.
What are you on about? Name one of them who supported the war. Most of them were jailed due to their anti-war positions.
The NYT article is aimed at western audiences, of course they are going to present a more humanistic pitch.
English language content from the russian “opposition” is often misleading.
In russian, Navalniy initially clearly stated that “Ukrainians, you should forget about Crimea” and that “Crimea is not a ham sandwich, you can’t just give it back!”
He later did a PR pass on his position with a call for an “independent referendum”; a typical russian imperialist mindset. The Ukrainian constitution only allows for national referendums on such matters.
Navalniy own head goon even confirmed that they supported the annexation of Crimea because the vast majority of russian are imperialists:
https://time.com/6162889/navalny-ukraine-russia-leonid-volkov/
He was most definitely not anti-war. The russian invasion of Ukraine began with the annexation of Crimea; which was supported by Navaliy and his team.
One of Yashin’s responsibilities as a deputy in 2018 was conscription. Russia has been at war with Ukraine since 2014.
Now I understand for Yashin the “real” war started in 2022 and he was just “looking to promote democracy by taking part in municipal politics”.
But that’s irrelevant if you are from Donbas and your family was forced to leave in 2014. Or if you language and religion are being prosecuted In Crimea.
Kara-Murza went a tired rant about how we sanctions need to be weakened
Pivaovarov stated opposition minded Russians shouldn’t donate to the AFU. Imagine dissidents of the Nazi regime (who took part in a prisoner exchange) stated that opposition minded Germans shouldn’t be supporting the war effort against Nazi Germany.
