I am genuinely confused by hexbear's opinion on the Ukraine war
What I have learned:
- Russia has already won the Ukraine war
- Which NATO started
- A lot of people in the West think that Ukraine should surrender
- Also Ukraine was the world's main provider of CSAM
- Also Ukraine is exploited by the West but if they can unite with Russia then their economy and everything else will finally be alright
It's literally like a bizarro world and everyone is over there agreeing with it. I'm genuinely confused by, who even are these people (what is the mixture of Russian bots / Russian-aligned ordinary people / confused Westerners / some other explanation.)
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4726124Open linkView original on mbin.grits.dev269
Comments206
There is no coherent ideology over there besides "America/the West/capitalism should be destroyed." Dudes would rather Pol Pot be in charge than Joe Biden.
Last part is true and even more insane/sad because these people are all terminally online gossip mongers that Pol Pot would have immediately executed.
You own a computer? You don't work in the fields? You wear glasses?
Yep, literally executed.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, my estimate in the modern day would be that "ACAB I saw a bad video on Youtube, we need communism" would turn into "oh my god what the FUCK they literally came in my house because I said the wrong thing online and SLAMMED ME ON THE GROUND and now they're NOT LETTING ME OUT OF PRISON this is literally SO BAD LIKE THEY'RE NOT ALLOWED TO DO THIS".
But yeah, the general principle that they don't have any degree of connection to reality with what they're saying, I'll agree with you on.
This is satire, right? Nobody over there glorifies or likes Pol Pot.
Not even remotely satire, and you might notice I never said anyone over there "glorified or likes Pol Pot." Back in my early Lemmy days I spent way too much time on Hexbear trying to understand, and repeatedly was told that any communist dictator, no matter how heinous, from any time in history would be preferable to any US president. They twisted in knots denying any atrocities by communists while at it. They were clear they don't particularly like Putin, Xi, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc, but would prefer their leadership in every case over US leadership
I recently had a stray gradbear challenge me to show them any link that said Pol Pot was the shit (then he'd quit the fediverse)
They have this theorem on 'actual real world communism' where you're the weakbear if you like book communism but dare to speak ill of said regimes
You should post that! if it's good
This is just.. not representative of any opinion on Hexbear in it's entire history. But feel free to lie.
Lmao hello from the future
Seethe about it
It absolutely is. You can search up pol pot here in the community.
That's.. a single post, without the user or even vote count shown.
you can search it up yourself then, but we both know you won't care
More than once I have seen the same person express both "America is evil and the whole system needs to be destroyed" and also "Joe Biden is bad for the country and I can't support him", and asked the person, well if you think America is bad and Biden is harming the country, doesn't that mean you should support him being in charge, so he can do more damage to this evil thing?
No, they know that Donald is worse for the country. They want Donald in there so America collapses faster. They want China and Russia to expand.
I don't even think they are accelerationists at this point. I think they are all either information warfare operatives or useful idiots. The hexbear admin has essentially admitted to this.
Source? I wanna see their exact words
It won't be admitting shit. They're a professional, damnit.
Source: No source, because all this shit is always made the fuck up.
Boy that would sure be convenient for your narrative wouldn't it?
And what's the complete lack of a source for a notable claim do to yours, lol?
The latter. The former are likely all deployed on social media sites with a bigger market share than the fediverse.
I'm not on Facebook but I assumed they just continue the flow of the Core Discussion we have here?
I would not be surprised in the slightest.
And Hexbear gets really awkward when you call them out on wanting the Donald.
How so? Because they don't want Donald Trump either.
The worst I've seen them say is that Trump is as bad as Biden.
I've seen people claim Trump is better for Palestine.
Palestine, TX
There is no rhyme or reason. Misinformation preys on what it can, it is an opportunist. The beliefs do not have to agree with each other so long as they affirm one's bias.
It's just so... weird.
Like it seems like they genuinely believe it. I can't see that it's useful to have a whole server of propaganda-bots all just talking to each other; it seems like probably some decent number of them are real actual people.
I feel like I have a pretty good handle at this point on why people hold weird political opinions on the internet, but the whole "Russia's the best, Russia's totally winning the war, anything and everything in the Western media is lies, RT and SCMP are the only things you can trust" viewpoint is still a mystery to me. The best thing that I can come up with is that it's a sort of little self strengthening propaganda-box like some authoritarian religions -- like "every source that doesn't agree with me is lying, don't believe them" and a few other key principles that make it hard to break your way out of once you're in it. But I don't know. Like I say I can't figure it out.
That's about the size of it.
World defederated from them months ago. Save yourself the psychic damage and block the instance if your instance hasn't defederated.
Or have fun and ask exactly what NATO's end game was after they "encircled" Russia and when exactly they planned to invade. Or how if Russia's goal was to prevent nato expansion, why are there 2 more NATO countries than before the war started. Or ask them to explain how the holodomor was actually not that bad and the millions of people that died deserved it.
Tankies are a mess.
It's like a sore tooth, I can't keep from poking at it.
I also learned just now that the collapse of the USSR and and its former constituent countries in the 1990s is an example of how great communism is, because when the communism went away, everything got worse. It's flawless logic; I can see no counter argument.
Oh the worst part you may have noticed is they'll use US atrocities to excuse other atrocities. Like they did it so why don't you care about that instead of tens of millions dead under stalin/Mao etc.? While failing to realize the actual correct position is all of that was bad. Best of luck in your adventures.
Or "you think CHINA's justice system is bad, have you heard about the police in AMERICA?"
Yeah, the holodomor lol.
I had a hex person once tell me that actually the holodomor happened because of Nazi agents sabotaging agricultural production in Ukraine.
You know, in 1932 and 33. When the Nazis were putting all their resources into street fighting, barely eeking out a substantial amount of electoral power, Hitler becoming chancellor due to a compromise... you know largely before they had large numbers of party members or massive control of the state... yep they just secretly managed to sabotage the agricultural system of another state.
This person's source was literally 'I heard that...'.
I asked them for an actual source and they retreated into "Wow, way to ruin my good faith conversation attempt."
Its like they'd never actually been responsible for anything in their life, and just assumed that gossip and hear-say are totally on par with like... an actual idea with any kind of evidence.
The utility is that they use hexbear and .ml as intro exercises before they promote the trolls to Facebook or reddit.
Take a bunch of citizens, destroy their engagement as voters over generations, keep their political knowledge on both local and international stages at the lowest level possible, then have the internet happen.
Generally you get two things: a massive increase in knowledge, critical thinking ability and empathy or hexbear.
Makes sense to me. "I know more than Bill who is a waiter, and Joe who does tree work, and those are my only two friends. Therefore, I guess I am a genius. The world must know my wisdom."
The same thing happens when people get to college sometimes.
They do genuinely believe it until and unless they are challenged on it in a way they cannot refute and also simultaneously does not anger them.
If it angers them, they all become screaming sarcastic trolls.
If you manage to do it politely they will act as if they have an extremely nuanced opinion and well we basically believe the same thing with minor differences.
In short, they basically have late stage irony poisoning which has legitimately caused many of them to become delusional and extremely aggressive if correctly agitated.
If you are enough of a leftist to know their more grounded ideas and the lingo / meme culture, you can fit in well until you trigger them with a verboten question or idea.
You are correct that many of the psychological traits are basically the same seen in other cults of personality. Self reinforcing bubble.
Also lets be real, a whole lot of these people are also chronic weed smokers. Sure, in moderation that shit is fine, but use it consistently to the point that you need it to cope with reality and ... well long term hallucinogen use kind of warps most people's sense of reality.
Yeah. There's this culture of lemmy.ml, too, that's elevated arguing in bad faith to this sort of "this is the way" status. Like if you're calmly citing sources and asking questions, that is "sealioning" which is a bad thing to do, but hurling abuse at someone who you don't agree with is fine. Also, I've noticed a common thread of behavior which is telling other people what those people believe and then disagreeing with it. Like hey, you disagreed with some ludicrous thing that I said, so that means you're a "centrist" and you support establishment Democrats and Israel, and so now I'm gonna go HAM about telling you how wrong you are for supporting the Democrats and Israel even though you never said those things or anything even roughly similar to them. It's like a little one-man band of internet debate. The other person doesn't even really need to be involved in the process at all beyond showing up and saying a couple things enough to be branded as the enemy.
At one point I thought it was bots. Like they're programmed with this pattern of general hostility pushing a certain viewpoint, that doesn't even need to have anything to do with what the person they're talking to is saying, and that's why it's so bizarre in the flow of conversation. But now I'm not real sure about that. IDK. Maybe it's not worth time trying to figure out, but it is a mystery to me that I wish I could know the answer to.
Basically just look up EthanIsOnline on youtube or twitter and there's your average terminally online, drama queen, any slight association to anything I don't like mandates guilt by massive unfounded leaps, always correct no matter how much of a hypocrite or just factually wrong they are kind of leftist person.
I have known people like ml and hex tankies in real life. The ones I knew were extremely erratic and manipulative, explosive personalities.
The sort of weird conversation style that works on comment threads and streams on the net has kind of broken their brains, as when you see a person doing this IRL its basically a 30 minute rant of them either screaming at you, or having a complete suicidal depression breakdown after any particular thing sets off them off.
If you were an unbiased observer who was just observing most of the interactions these people have it'd be clear that they are emotionally abusive cry bullies.
My experience was so bad that I've given up doing mutual aid and helping those who were at the time less well off than me.
I can be the person actually doing the thing, spending all my time actually assisting the downtrodden, and none of that means anything because I laugh when my roommate says oh China's former president just got whisked away during a very public party meeting, surely he's been put into witness protection to save him from threats on his life!
A month later I am homeless because roommate was angry and decided to spread a bunch of rumors about me.
Awesome!
No no no I don't want to
My experience is, honestly, pretty limited, but that makes sense to me. Some of the super-left people I have known IRL have been illogical in this very particular "and of course I am right about everything, that goes without saying" way that largely tracks with what you're describing.
It's a fucking shame, because I am feeling right now that I should be getting involved with some kind of left organization for progress, because without that the US and the world are in mortal danger of some very bad things. IDK. Maybe the way to go is to get involved with unions and electoral politics and leave the harder core of communists to their own devices for the time being.
Generation grew up on with us or against us, then purity poisoned themselves into insanity
My pet theory/explanation is that, the more people see things go wrong in society (or, rather, believe them to), the more they tend to become contrarians. They look for views and beliefs that are opposite to what people in authority say. It seems to be built into us, like a tribe of stone age people will question their leaders' methods and decisions after a row of bad hunts and then desire to hunt in a new place, at a different time, using different techniques.
Modern information warfare appears to use that idea centrally. The far right has been indoctrinated to believe that the "establishment" they rebel against is left wing and that a hard turn towards right wing politics is needed. After Trump won in 2016 and they were officially in power, they splintered a bit until they found a new lore: "actually, we're still being ruled by the left, they're the deep state, the cabal, etc." to rekindle the contrarian / siege mentality and come together again.
I see all that in tankies, too. Society feels like it's going wrong, so they sponge up any reason they see to hate the "establishment," which is where the already running information warfare provides them ample facts to blame liberals and hate western powers, etc.
Also, on the hostility... yeah. These echo chambers seem to almost intentionally breed a nastiness that shuts down any useful discussion. Try to defuse anger and you're "whiteknighting," try to point out that something decent is good and you're "virtue signaling." When these communities erupt into other spaces, they quickly drive out anyone discussing in good faith. Survival of the nastiest.
A lot of minor social media sites got created by groups unwelcome to larger sites. Lemmy in general has a tankie pedigree. At least tankies aren't fascist, but they can still be insufferable.
They're extremely authoritarian. Like they prefer authoritarianism to leftist economics. What is the practical difference between their brand of authoritarianism and fascism? They want nominally leftist authoritarianism with selectively harsh law enforcement.
Yeah, they are extremely authoritarian against people they don't like. They just don't punch down.
I'm just comparing them to fascists.
Fascists and "red" fascists are so similar in practice that even though they're adjacent, own ideologies, it just usually doesn't matter a lot
Listen, I'm a chronic chronic smoker (lol), don't blame us for this bullshit I'm in here complaining about them right along with you!
Hey fair enough! Plenty of people who are chronically hitting the chronic can handle it and are super nice and chill.
I've known many people like that as well =)
Lol I was just foolin' around I didn't really take it personal! Tbf I've known plenty who can't handle it myself, too!
No harm in being polite and cordial.
Makes me feel like a decent, dare I say good person from time to time haha.
Also I'm autistic and take most statements extremely literally. =P
What the fuck kind of weed have you been smoking?
Weed is mildly hallucinogenic, this has been widely known for a while.
While CBD has a calming, pain reducing and anti psychotic effect, THC often causes hallucinations in higher doses.
Do you need me to list the literal hundreds of studies on this?
You clearly don't have a good handle if you can't even work out the very obvious fact that nobody there thinks "Russia is the best".
Would you agree or disagree with the bullet points I listed in the body? Follow-up, would you agree or disagree that those are consensus views in the comments I linked to?
Hexbears can't answer the question "is it ok to kill civilians" without asking "Palestinian or Ukrainian?"
Somehow, if you say that killing children is bad regardless of religion, country or skin color, you're a racist and a Nazi.
They don't care too much for Uyghur people either.
Had one guy claim the Uyghur concentration camps didn't exist. He posted a wall of random articles claiming there was a lack of evidence.
When asked why China is not allowing journalists near these camps and they locked it all down I got no response.
Yeah, I have seen mostly claims that the camps don't exist and there is nothing going on.
And then they—the ones who claim to be so socially enlightened—say that the idea of cultural genocide is fake and doesn't exist and that erasing a culture by forcibly assimilating it is Good Actually.
#westernpropaganda #makerussiaussragain
This is just plain not true. Cool strawmanning.
As with every single time this comes up. "Hexbear would TOTALLY say this" "Oh really, any examples?" "NO BUT THEY WOULD I BET PROBABLY"
I have long blocked the instance due to that behavior, didn't need that toxicity in my life.
Cool cries though
Hexbear is generally confused by everything, so it makes sense that nothing they say makes sense.
It’s best to think of them like this:
Imagine The_Donald, but instead of it being a cesspit of right-wing ignorance, it’s a cesspit of communist ignorance.
There are some Americans, who upon learning that the US is not the mythological good guy it's propaganda portrayed it as, are dealt such severe psychic damage that the only way their fractured mind is able to cope is to just assume the opposite worldview must be true.
The key takeaway is that they're not capable of thinking for themselves. They require others to tell them what to think, and that's either going to be US or Russian propaganda.
That first paragraph is poetic
There are loads of people who think that about their own country. There are also loads of people who think that any country at all can be perfectly good or perfectly evil, or that in a conflict, one must always be right and the other wrong.
People love to shit on the US for it's aggressive meddling in other countries, but somehow forget that China and Russia do the exact same, you just hear about it less.
And that other countries do it just on a smaller scale.
There's actually a name for that in politics. It's the rubber band effect and it's entirely human.
The opposite kind of is true. But the enemy of your enemy isn't necessarily your friend and it's hard to say if the US and Russia are even truly enemies when they both bend to capital.
Block hexbear. No good comes from Hexbear, only ill.
You can block them, but there are tons of them that have lemmy.world accounts- and post regularly in the political communities.
You’ll know them when you see them.
Yep like the account sootius in this thread, 3 month old account and 90% of the comments are just defending hexbear. Buddy really has nothing better to do with their time apparently, pathetic.
Have you seen the people posting nothing but anti-Biden propaganda and telling people they shouldn’t vote?
100%
Add Lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml to that list too.
These people are not socialists. It's all just right wing agitprop. It's extremely obvious.
The echo chamber they isolated themselves in after chapotraphouse got banned from reddit but before the great migration did not do them any favors. It's a cesspit of self ratcheting extremism.
I agree, they simply put all the blame on the West for the world's problems no matter what it is and to be fair I often agree with those statements.
It's just purely idiotic to support another country going the same thing and denying facts such as Russia invaded Ukraine.
I'm a socialist, somewhat left of a standard social democrat in the EU, but fuck, these guys are giving the whole ideology a bad name. There are still some recent movements that are good such as solarpunk, degrowth, minimalism, third spaces and tool libraries. I hope the Gen Z and Alpha get in on those so they can vote out our generation of rampant consumerism and privatisation.
slrpnk.net seems to have some genuine socialist / communist ideology without the tankie flavor. They have a couple of users who I think are pretty effective "and that's why Emma Goldman would be okay with letting Trump come to power!" shills, but for the most part it's just the good stuff. IMO.
Slrpnk.net leans anarchist, and historically there has always been a vocal subset of anarchists who advocate abstaining from electoral politics on principle. The upcoming US presidential election is the perfect storm for this stance to thrive and still it is a minority position even among the most anarchist instance on Lemmy, so I'm pretty happy with the diversity of opinion expressed there. I think it's important we hear those minority voices and a bit unfair to call them shills.
Oh no, I wasn't talking about the general "don't vote" contingent on slrpnk -- that seems fine; just like you're saying, it seems authentically arrived at. I was just saying that there are a couple of users there that seem to have a particular and very specific focus on this exact election and specifically on not voting in this election, and not much interest in anarchism beyond its application to parts that would be generally applicable to someone who was trying to engineer a result for Trump in the election.
I mean, what the hell, no one needs my permission to say whatever they feel like saying. But to the extent that my opinion on it matters, I don't think slrpnk overall or its general "fuck the system and yes that includes the voting system" vibe that it has are indicative of anything shill related, no.
I know we've had our run ins about this but it's really about this election because Biden is doing egregious stuff. It's not this election for no reason. And the shills that are just trying to make people never want to vote again are getting a ton of ammunition.
Have we had run-ins?
IDK, other than his absolutely war-criminal support for Israel I'm not aware of all that much about Biden that is real ammunition. (Not that that's a minor issue 😢) Pretty much everything else has crumbled into weird half-truths and propaganda when I've been poking at it, I think; what were you thinking of when saying he's doing egregious stuff?
I also don't think that refusing to vote for Biden is going to make anything any better. If someone is doing direct action to change things, or an influence campaign to try to push him to the left, that all sounds frickin fantastic. Just committing to not voting doesn't really make sense to me though -- it's functionally the same as saying you'll vote for Biden no matter what; i.e. basically no pressure at all to change his policy (but with the added horrifying danger of maybe electing Trump.)
Oh you're not horrible or anything. You've just been on the other side of some of those conversations. Also as far egregious stuff he just dropped an EO on immigration that's sure to get the ACLU fired up. Which doesn't really spark joy in my life.
You can join the conversation here where I talk a little more about the background of that decision -- because it came up over there, I looked it up, and migrants are currently waiting years for their cases to be heard (just to put some facts behind what I was saying in that comment).
Oh then they're getting that entirely wrong. You're not supposed to check out of the system and never vote. You're supposed to withhold your vote, that you normally use. Those are numbers they can see and run polling to figure out how to better represent people, (in a good faith system). If you just never engage then you never get represented. And if you never get represented then you're just watching the country walk away from you.
Yeah they're good 'uns
r/antiwork was that at one time. Then it got swallowed by the reddit hivemind.
On Lemmy the thing I keep running into is they're either tankies or anarchists, nothing in between. And while anarchy has some great ideas for making our lives better it's not a state we're ever going to achieve in a good way.
Sorry, I know you meant state as in "state of being" and not "political state", but I found it too funny to pass up.
Lmao yeah. It's just kind of hanging there isn't it?
you will not find a non-deranged communist forum because: 89% of all users will be shills… the remaining 11% will be beaten down, ridiculed, and/or banned for saying anything not deranged….
i’ve asked in person, lifelong activist/leftists and they all say the same thing: online forums are so infiltrated and fucked it’s not worth the aggravation.
i don’t think it’s worth giving up on entirely, but even if you make a no-tankies/ direct russian propaganda repeating, they just pivot to FUD, forum sliding, concern trolling…
even totally sane, reasonable accounts can be fake just so they can get inside the next level or take over moderation…
I came across raddle.me a few months ago and spent a few nights trawling it without finding anything questionable - though I might just be too ignorant of parts of history to pick up where they fail. It's very anarchist-flavored so while that might not be your preferred brand of communism I think it avoids descending into "deranged". In any case, their faq/about page should give you a better idea than whatever I could write here.
Is raddle federated?
I don't think so, no.
I've heard horror stories about the USSR but I've also heard meh stories where life wasn't the best but their needs were taken care of- not having luxuries but socialized healthcare and housing so don't live in fear like I do currently in the US of being one medical hiccup from being in a world of hurt or one interaction with a cop and the legal system from destroying my life. Will my kids say they have this generational trauma too?
Uhhhhh
I have bad news for you about the USSR
Every system has good and bad, and the US is so bad at so many things that most industrialized countries do for their citizens no problem, that I would never be the one to say it doesn't need radical improvement. And I really do (truly) get what you mean about living in a non-capitalist society and the wonderful things about the system just taking care of you (which it doesn't in the US). But at the same time, "needs were taken care of" and "don't live in fear" are two things that are very very far away from what was the stable reality of living in the Soviet Union.
I assume hexbear is just the russian troll factory.
I can read Russian and I sometimes read Russian media and it uses almost exactly the same topics for their people. There is a new one that they started to repeat recently and it's that Zelensky is an illegitimate president, because his term has ened.
I really don't get any of those. It's like a whole made up language that I don't understand.
iirc they don't allow downvotes, plus dunking on someone is the entire point, and also the icons rendering there is different (significantly smaller) than the giant versions that they render as elsewhere. And yes, the made-up language aspect as well.
Useful idiots and shills, they are.
This thread makes me laugh.
They're getting their knickers in a twist thinking that Biden is escalating and would be the cause for a nuclear war, conveniently forgetting that:
My sides
Cool, this is one of the most upvoted comments:
Like yeah ok if the US was trying to annex Mexico and Russia started supplying the latter with weapons and discussing the ROE, then yeah
I'm sure 'DankZedong' would like the 'Mexinazis' to keep their Russian missiles strictly south of the border in such a scenario
I mean I do think that somewhere in the crazy is a valid point on that specific score. There's actually a moderately close analogy in Nicaragua, which the US was actively attacking, and then they started sourcing fighter jets from Russia purely to try to defend against our air force actively fucking them up inside their borders, and the whole of the US political spectrum freaked the fuck out, took it to the UN, escalated the war, there were all these editorials about what a crisis it was, etc etc, and that was barely even on the same continent as us.
This was all during the 1980s, when I actually think that US foreign policy was quite a lot closer to Russia's current foreign policy than not. I think we've mellowed somewhat since then, although we're still fine with killing civilians the world over when it serves our purposes. But yes, the US has a few data points worth of history of freaking out completely over "threats" from foreign alliances that are not even on the same continent (or hemisphere if you want to go back to the 70s) as us. I think the difference is that Russia has been antagonizing its neighbors on the west so thoroughly now that almost 100% of them actively want to gear up for real war with Russia, which I'm sure would make any country nervous regardless of how it got to be that way.
Yeah so their point sure is valid as long as you think the US was right to attack Nicaragua and they shouldn't have tried to defend themselves
Er
Well, yes 🙂
Consistency isn't their strong suit I've noticed
I completely forgot I blocked Hexbear. Looks like I made a good decision.
Glad I'm not the only one. My feed is smarter for it.
thank you for succinctly articulating an echo of my experience recently on lemmy.ml
They are very ...passionate... about their ideals I guess.
It seems that tankies support Putin.
That is the power of an echo chamber. My favorite post by a hex was when he tried to convince me that the Tiananmen Square massare was fake. He had a comprehensive list of over 20 links prepared, with bangers like "Actually, the massacre wasn't happening on Tiananmen Square, but next to it. Checkmate globalists". I'd love to link it here, but shame on @goat for deleting that post and sending them to the Tankie corner, because now I can't find it anymore, not even in the mod log.
Oh god yeah, all the freaking time. I feel my brain turn to Jello when someone goes all-in on the "massacre was fake" bullshit, often insisting that no pictures exist, pretending it's just the Tank Guy pic. Someone references the notorious bike pic, they pretend you're talking about a similar bike pic that's a LITTLE less clear about tank treads crushing human bodies. You link them the actual bike pic, they either pretend they don't see the slaughter (best I heard was "they're not dead or run over, they're just taking a nap") or they start saying "well those were the violent people and China saved the peaceful protestors from them"
It makes me want to vomit
That one's true. There's probably been some deaths on the square itself but the bulk was in side-streets blocked by Peking locals in solidarity with the students, once the army fought itself through that and arrived at the square it issued an ultimatum and the students caved. Eleven of the withdrawing students were later killed away from the square by a stray tank crew. The tank man picture was taken the day after.
Don't get into fights with tankies over such things. Rather ask why the CCP was stomping Dengists -- which is what the students were.
I think I saw a version of that. Also featured a celebration of Tank Man, because it was a sign that the Chinese forces were being very humane about it because he felt empowered to show his resistance and the tank stopped and didn't want to run him over, see, they didn't mean any harm!
One version that was puked over me was "the west lies that he was ran over by the tank, when it reality he was shot , then they moved the corpse to the side and then the tank moved".
Of course some others say he just walked away (got bored I guess?) and had a long and happy life.
Well that was just the Barbara Walters interview with Zemin. I think the official stance on who he is/was and what happened to him is just a big '¯_(ツ)_/¯'.
Brigading with burner accounts really undermined the veracity those screenshot threads might've had.
what post are you referring to? I haven't been on the site for almost a year dude
Oh, you forgot the "Ukraine is 90% nazis" part
These takes are pretty hot with QAnon conservatives in America too. Wonder why. 🤔
I mean they feel for a rando on the Internet claiming to be an FBI Agent giving the internet the real story. If I was in info ops I'd target them too!
Whoa, I should not have hit that link.
Those guys are loons, and now I feel like I'm on a list for seeing that conversation, haha.
Trying to make tankies make sense is a losing vocation mate. bizarro world is right.
Stupidity is easy to see and trying to understand it is pointless.
Unfortunately propaganda works. And the Russians have been working at it for a long time. To be fair, so has the West. There are absolutely Russians out there who believe in conspiracy theories we've spread.
The problem of course is that propaganda like this is self serving and generally impedes the progress of civil society. We can't recommend a change in our government without getting called a dirty commie and lumped in with these guys. Russians can't do it either, not without being called a Western traitor and arrested. And yes I realize those are two different outcomes, the point is the problem is just as hard to get around.
The amount of cognitive dissonance is massive. they proudly present their pronouns, completely ignoring that doing so would get them on the russian shitlist superfast. Also, just like with the OG nazis, the enemy is simultaneously strong and weak, stupid and cunning.
It's kinda sad. after the wall fell and russia started cooperating economically with the rest of europe i was a bit of a fan, but what Putin and his cronies have done to the country and their neighbours is inexcusable.
It's weird that those forums are in English, reading the insane takes and rhetoric. I also noticed many of the accounts are just prolific posters, making the community seem small to me. Also saw an account with a trans flag, which is surprising they would accommodate such a person or such a person would have those weird views on lemmygrad.
Tankie 'thought' is very simple: US bad.
that's it. that's all you need to do.
I really want to ukraine to win and retake all of its territory back but some of its points do make sense in a way, russia is turning to wartime economy, backed by china starting to plug flaws that we laugh at them year ago.
they news that russia able to strike ukraine infrastructure that ukraine has thwarted a while back means theyre facing critical shortage of anti missile and uav arms.
ukraine also facing manpower problems, zelensky lowered the drafting age requirement but i doubt its still enough, the likelihood of concession in ukraine favor is unlikely in current time but i hope with lifting of target bans from newly supplied arms from the west could tip that in the future
OP, the link is to lemmygrad.ml but you keep citing lemmy.ml in this thread; are you mixing up the 2 without realizing it or do you intend to mean both?
I haven't seen much of anything on lemmy.ml that reaches grad.ml's level of what you describe. Then again, I stick mostly to somewhat-niche interest subreddits that receive a decent amount of participation from other federated servers.
In my experience even hexbear users are surprisingly (for the internet) good and decent to others, as long as you can avoid provoking their "the capitalist US empire is the current hegemony that's killing the planet and ourselves, and we don't punch down, therefore our vitriol is a uni-directional torrent" mode of operation that others in this thread have mentioned.
Obviously, the classical "cult" approach resembles that as well (love-bomb anyone not explicitly an enemy, close ranks against any potential discrediting of the movement). In my books most of them are ordinary people, from whom (legitimate) despair of the current state of the world has leeched all desire for compromise.
I don't have a less patronizing way of saying it, but they remind me of someone who, after years of abuse by their partner, finally snaps and gravely injures said partner. In some sense, it's on the rest of us to not have intervened beforehand, and at the same time their lashing out really doesn't help things.
Oh, and this probably reads as hippy anar-kiddy logic to them, which is part of why I personally stay away from most of their politics-related communities.
I have interacted with lemmy.ml people a decent amount, so most of what I'm saying in the comments is referencing them. I have some level of difficulty in even interacting with lemmygrad or hexbear people, either a block or some kind of federation issue, IDK, so they form sort of a unified maybe-unfair stereotype view in my mind. But certainly to me the linked thread makes them seem wildly misinformed and super-confident and condescending about the truthfulness of their misinformed view.
Usually my experience is that if you have to edit your viewpoints to conform to what someone wants to hear, or else they will attack you, that person's worth avoiding interacting with.
Not trying to be unkind about it (esp since specifically where hexbear is concerned I have basically no firsthand experience at all interacting with them) but that's my feeling.
The part that I don't get about that is the support for some of the actors that are primary engines of death and destruction in the current state of the world.
I had this really disorienting experience when I first started interacting on Lemmy, like "the world is fucked" "I know!" "the American system is pure poison" "yeah preach" "it's authoritarian and violent and police state and unjust wars and no real freedom" "you're so right brother" "and that's why we have to support Russia!" and that was the point where I had to sort of gingerly prod at what were their views and why, and everything I found from that point on was hostile counterfactual condescending insanity.
That's not lack of compromise, that's just being wrong and proud of it.
IDK man. Maybe. Like I say I'm not trying to be unkind. They read more to me though like a person fleeing abuse from one partner, and then self-destructively choosing a partner that's 10 times worse (or maybe more accurately starting a pen-pal relationship with a convict who if they got out and interacted with them would literally do 10 times worse or kill them.)
I think your home instance,
sh.itjust.works(whoops, that's this community's instance, not your home) (mbin.)grits.dev, defederated from both of them.My own, jlai.lu, hasn't, so I see some of their posts crop up in my "All" timeline.
Huh, that's not what I was expecting. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
This might be a question of personal tolerance to types of interaction (similarly, not trying to be unkind). I see it as selectively choosing when to engage (and on what to engage with), but I can totally understand if to you that is me editing my viewpoints to conform to what they want to hear. For the record, I don't often engage at all with grad and hexbear, not even up- or down-votes; I'll read what they have to say if the post title I come across sufficiently grabs my attention. There are a number of lemmy.ml communities that I do directly interact with regularly, mostly tech-related.
Given how sometimes aggressively apolitical most of the fediverse tech spaces are, there is a part of the discussion that I value around current events that I have had a hard time finding outside of lemmy.ml. The best I've found are awful.systems and slrpnk.net (notably the permacomputing community at the latter). The scope of the first is intentionally limited to cathartic deconstruction of bad things, and the second I find lacking too much substance to suffice. There's raddle.me, but as they're not federated with the wider 'verse it doesn't really fit the bill either.
I don't have the energy or know-how to be the change I wish to see, but if there was an instance outside of these three (.ml,grad,hexbear) that provided a place for the construction of good things (admittedly, following my personal definition of good) in place of the bad, I could see myself blocking them after one too many full-on tankie posts cropping up in my feed.
Actually, now that I think about it, mostly what I get from the hexbear and grad posts are a less-substantive form of the catharsis that awful.systems provides but on a broader range of topics. It is, sadly a coin toss on whether that catharsis will be ruined by everything you so rightly are put off by.
My experience lines up with yours, except for me not even attempting to prod at all.
I think there's being wrong and proud of it, and there's being so scared and whip-lashed by the obvious contradictions of the West's purported values and it's geopolitical impact on the rest of the world over the past few centuries that you lose any sense of truth. That's maybe me being a bit melodramatic. On the other hand, I see it as akin to how a person's drowning "reflex" is to pull whoever comes close down with them - to the point that lifeguards need specific training (and a flotation device if I'm not mistaken) to be able to save a drowning person without endangering themselves as well.
That's probably closer to the mark. It doesn't help that the former partner has friends all over the world that are very dismissive of any allegations. When I talk about the onus on us to intervene, I mean it more in the sense that we should be finding people that we can train and employ to be internet lifeguards.
On one hand, I don't think they deserve to be written off as heavily as what I often see expressed in the rest of the fediverse. You don't solve someone's trust issues by ragging on their poor follow-up choices. On the other hand, this is online social media, not an irl group of friends and acquaintances. I don't exactly expect any specific person to do the work to reach them via these spaces.
Thanks in any case for trying to productively engage with me on this. This exact conversation is tiring on the best of days.
If this is a honest question I will try to give some honest context, I do not represent a Hexbear, so these are just some views that I have that make me sceptical of the narrative that currently exists.
After the cold war there were calls to establish a common security structure including Russia to try to ensure peace in Europe. Instead the US (with pressure from past satellite states of Moscow, Poland, Czechia, etc) chose to maintain NATO and on top of that invite everybody except Russia, many foreign policy experts already warned that this was a recipe for war, but wether it was malice or incompetence they were ignored.
Fast forward to 2008 the US suggests inviting Ukraine (and Georgia) to NATO, and Russia makes extremely clear that this would not happen, that this was a red line for them. Now you can disagree with Russias right to say anything about the military alliances of its neighbours, but the fact that Russia is a military regional power with nukes is something you need to deal with. Again wether it was incompetence or malice is hard to say but the next 14 years are basically a chain of escalatory actions by the US combined with a series of stronger and stronger warnings from Russia that this would lead to war.
During the events themselves it is hard to judge as a civilian what exactly is happening in geopolitics, the US has a very clear trackrecord of treat inflation or simply lying about its true intentions or the truth on the ground. It could of course be that this is one of those rare cases where the US are truly the Good Guys™️ or it could be that this is a ploy to weaken a rival with the only price being the destruction of a country they don't care about and the death of hundreds of thousands of military age males they don't care about.
For OP: This above is the Russian talking points light, presented as a reasonable timeline. It glances over so much important stuff.
Hexbear is a group of useful idiots steered by the Russian MOD. Anything that destabilized their adversaries is good. This als means feeding a wide array of victim blaming, feeding competing narratives and generally making people question if there actually is a truth.
Shut up about NATO expansion
The link you have provided with that title and thumbnail (written "Deal with it") is no better than the Hexbear or Russian MOD propaganda you are belittling. Sounding cool or assertive while "shutting up" a (main) discussion point will only resonate with the same type of right-wing nationalist people in your own circle, while you are criticizing the same group albeit in another circle.
I wonder if you ever considered the same adjectives can be applied to you from others' perspectives at a glance.
Note: Not implying any stance here on my part. Just pointing out what can be drowning the discussions while everyone points fingers at someone.
The title is antagonistic, the content is well reasoned though. I don't have any control over the title.
And about the NATO thing, what do you think would happen if Mexico and Canada tried to join a military alliance with China?
I’m not victim blaming, I’m blaming the US and Russia for playing cynical geopolitical games and destroying a country along the way.
If Canada or Mexico wanted to make ties with China that's their perogative.
America doesn't get to dictate the affairs of it's neighbors.
I wouldn't dedicate my free time to screeching 'death to Canada' and being a dipshit to everyone who doesn't share a carbon copy of my faulty perspective.
I’m not asking what you want the US to do, I’m asking what do you think the US would do.
Let me check my crystal fucking ball.
Ffs you're dense.
Just saw this thread, sorry for chiming in.
The US would do like Russia or China does, act as a reactionary. They're all untrustworthy and aggressive.
It both makes sense that Russia is afraid of countries joining NATO and that he countries are joining because of Russia.
Ngl the US would react quite pissed just like it reacted during the Cuba crisis.
Placing nuclear warheads in range of enemy cities is OK, but when the enemy wants to place their nuclear warheads in range of my cities as a reaction it's a cause for nuclear war.
And the US has overthrown quite a lot of governments for their own interests (starting with the banana wars and later extending to anti-communism and oil), so toppling the Mexican / Canadian government to get them back on track actually isn't far fetched.
But I agree with your last point. Even tho I don't like the US I'd never make opposing the US at all cost even if I have to side with literal fascists & mass murders my main purpose of life. Out of China, Russia, Iran and the US, the US is the lesser evil (at least for now... Idk what MAGA is up to)
I would think it would be like when Canada and Mexico did not break ties with Cuba after the Cuban revolution during the cold war. You know that time when the USSR and USA tensions where way higher then today? So political rumblings?
This is such destructive rhetoric, everything you disagree with is Russian propaganda. Yes of course Russia is trying to influence western opinion with war propaganda, because that is what countries at war do. But the US has shown so clearly in the past that they can not be trusted to be the single source of truth, because spoiler alert: they are also a country (de facto) at war.
No, even remotely trying to provide justification for the Russian campaign of terror and atrocities against Ukraine is destructive rhetoric.
RUSSIA IS THE BAD GUY. No if's and's or but's about it. There was no existential threat to Russia, there was/is no plan to invade Russia, there are no Nazis ruling Ukraine.
Every day we see in the newspapers new examples of the barbarism the Russians show towards their Ukranian neighbors. Russia steals children, actively targets civilians, civilian infrastructure and even first responders. It armed terrorists with an advanced Anti air system and shot down a passenger airliner.. the list of bad guy things is endless.
And the whole "disagreeing with the narrative because there is more to it" is just propagating Russian talking points and helping them muddy the water. Russia joining NATO would have been the death of nato. And in turn the structure for keeping Russia in check would have been gone.
All former Soviet states lived under the brutality of Moscow and know first hand that they cannot be trusted. It is good they where believed.
The US has done everything you (correctly) accuse Russia of in Iraq, Vietnam, and South America (either directly or via proxies). What does that make the US?
Imperialist states do imperialist things, the least we can do (coming from a European perspective) is to try to maintain peace by a combination of international law and pragmatic ad hock peace deals where international law is unattainable.
Ad hoc peace deal with Russia where had, yet here we are.
And whataboutiam doesn't help here. I'm not defending the US im arguing Ukraines right to sovereignty.
You are defending US foreign policy.
Again, the reason we are here is because of Russian foreign policy and Ukraine not bending the preverbial knee.
The fact that Ukraine did not want to bend the knee and felt strong enough to do so only due to support from the EU and the US says something about the weight of the Russian diplomatic gorilla.
War is just diplomacy by other means. And Russia cannot accept a free and prosperous neighbor that had enough natural resources to actually be a financial threat to Russia while having close enough ties in culture and language to show the average Russian that there is an alternative to Putin's cleptocracy.
You are defending Russian and Chinese foreign policy.
So it's equally as bad or it's okay.
What point are you making with this whataboutism? Two things can be true at once ffs.
This is not a whataboutism, I’m saying two imperial states are destroying a country as part of their power politics, as a counter argument to Russia are the bad guys and the US can be trusted.
Ukraines interests are supported by the US and the EU and many other countries after their democratically elected government goes on a worldwide tour pleading for help against an invasion.. totally the same thing.
If the police end up storming your house after a couple of armed criminals take over your house.. their interest are also aligned with yours. Their motivation differs from yours though.
Sure does. Like the 8-year long shelling civilians campaign that Ukraine was undertaking on Donetsk and Luhansk, solely on the basis that it wanted to deny them a vote on their own autonomy.
They had a vote.. in the 90s and wanted away from Russia. Afterwards Russian proxies in the Donbas started a war.
Two quick questions: How many combatants and how many non-combatant civilians were killed in this shelling campaign over the course of the whole 8 years?
And also, if Chechnya wanted to vote on their own autonomy from the Russian Federation, what do you think would be Russia’s reaction? Just purely as a hypothetical.
The bastard Admitted to being a Hexbear troll. Don't waste your time.
I notice he's not real eager to answer either question 🙂
You mean the civilians who shot down a civilian airplane?
Yeah civilians able to source a BUK air defence system from the Russian army through direct calls with Russian MOD personell.
John Mearsheimer among others, were do you get your views from?
Who are the others?
I think John Mearshimer’s analysis of the situation is extremely accurate on the whole, but what he says is very different from what you’re saying.
From which respected academic did you get the idea that the West was provoking Russia on purpose by expanding to include countries Russia was attacking or threatening (which presumably then weren’t themselves the driving force wanting NATO or EU membership)?
I’m not trying to represent all of Hexbear, my views differ from the norm (just as yours seems to differ from the lemmy.world norm).
Second, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m certain on everything. It just seems very clear to me that the current narrative is dangerous and risks leading to escalation beyond Ukraine and has already caused a lot of suffering, (I think in this I echo Mearsheimers views, see the recent interview on the Spectators Americano podcast). Wether it was intentional or accidental I purposely left open in my original comment because, like I said, it’s very hard to judge at this point. But given the US trackrecord it’s probably a healthy dosis of both overconfidence in their power as well as cynical intent.
To me it’s hard to imagine that after Russia put their army on the border and explicitly said, Ukraine stays neutral or war, that the US wasn’t aware of the consequences. Clearly Ukrainian lives were not on the forefront of their decision making process at that point. So then the question is what was.
But these are my personal opinions, and I’m happy to be convinced otherwise (but calling me a Russian bot is not very convincing I find).
I would say it's all the shelling and rocket attacks and bombings, not so much the narrative.
In general I think trying to talk and understand the world is not a hostile act. If you're trying to deliberately distort honest conversation to justify something, then that's a bad thing, but just saying that some sincere narrative right or wrong can be a dangerous thing all on its own, I don't agree with.
Bro
What if I put a couple of my friends on the border of your house, and explicitly said, hey if you try to do X Y or Z then I might have to kill you. What's your reaction? What's fair in that scenario? If you ask for some allies to come over because you plan on doing X Y and Z anyway and fuck the border-standers, does it all of a sudden become the allies' fault that any of that happened? What you're saying is just a very weird allocation of blame to me.
Like I say, what Mearsheimer says on this issue actually makes a good deal of sense to me, but what you're saying here is very different from what he says about it, as far as I know. I think one of the critical issues is whether the whole thing was a "ploy" by the West -- he definitely doesn't think that, that I'm aware of. Where did you get that idea? It definitely doesn't seem to me that fighting between Russia and various former-USSR states needed any additional help in order to develop, although I'm sure the US is happy it's happening and happy to help it go badly for Russia.
I think it's relevant what the Ukrainians think. Are you saying that rejecting Russia's orders for what they were and were not allowed to do, knowing that Russia might attack them as a result, was not their decision but someone else's? What do you think they think about it?
Here's a little excerpt, somewhat related, from "Sky Above Kharkiv" by Serhiy Zhadan:
"And I'd like to make another point. I was rather skeptical of the current government. I was struck by one particular thing. The elections of 2019 brought a lot of young people to power -- not my peers (I'm a far cry from being young) but a bunch of political youngsters who didn't belong to dozens of parties or hadn't worked for all kinds of shady cabinets of ministers. 'But why do these young people,' I thought, 'act like old functionaries from the Kuchma era? Where did their childish urge to make a quick buck and flaunt it come from? Why aren't they trying to be different?' Thing is, I personally had the chance to do what I still consider rather constructive, useful things with a lot of them -- everyone from ministers to mayors and governors. Nonetheless, I'd look toward the Parliament building and ask myself, 'Why aren't you trying to be different?'
"Now [in wartime] with the naked eye you can see them trying to be different. Advisers, speakers, ministers, negotiators, officers, mayors, and commanders -- these forty-year-old boys and girls whose generation has been dealt the cruel lot of having to stand up for their country. And this applies no less (and possibly even more) to the millions of soliders, volunteer fighters, and just regular people pitching in, people shedding the swampy legacy of the twentieth century, like mud falling off new, yet well-chosen combat boots. Young Ukrainian men and women -- that's who this war of annihilation is being waged against. And then, in contrast, are the heads of Russia, Belarus, America, and Germany. The first two are old delusional geezers from the past century who look a lot like old Russian armored vehicles, but they're old. And they're Russian, which, in itself, does little to recommend a vehicle. Then there are the latter two -- they're cautious office clerks, retired capitulators who aren't brave enough to admit that they, too, are involved in what's going on."
What do you think started, and kept WWI going, narrative. Every party believed or was sold that they could win this thing if they just kept climbing the escalation ladder. With the result that an entire generation of boys and men was gone for basically nothing.
For a start I would not do X, Y and Z, this is the whole idea of realism, accept the world as is. Threats work, I'm sorry. If your response is to call the police, there is no police in the world of international politics, you have to play the hand you're dealt.
And in the case of Ukraine this was sadly a very bad hand, that is why I don't blame Ukraine for much. You could of course blame Ukraine for being lured by the power of the US, and that they could thus safely ignore dire warnings from Russia. But as they say, with great power comes great responsibility, so I choose to put the blame at the hands of Russia and the US.
I mean… not really. Surely, at the time, the “dangerous” narrative was anything against the war. To me, allowing a freer flow of ideas would have helped to resolve the war sooner, and deciding that certain narratives were dangerous and should be stayed away from (leading to difficulty in understanding what was happening) was a factor that made things worse, not better. No?
I am glad that you are not involved in the foreign policy of either Ukraine or any country I care about. There is realism, sure; the world is not always a comic book where being righteous is enough. Then, also, there is cowardice, and then beyond that there is saying that someone else who is rejecting cowardice is to be blamed (along with anyone who gives them assistance in standing up) for danger they find themselves in as a result.
Ukraine seems likely to be able to hold on to a significant chunk of their territory and self determination, after deciding to pay a heavy heavy price for it, in homes and cities and money and lives and anything else. You can take your condescending stuff about realism and whose decision that was, and what kind of lives under Russian rule they should be resigning themselves to instead, and shove it up your ass.
that line of reasoning essentially makes every single US invasion ok. and every single oppression okay. Because threats work and fuck you for being weaker.
Why would Joe Biden provide tools of narration to all those WW1 powers
Mearsheimer, Morgenthau and similar "political realists" are the main reason why the world is in such a messy state.
They dehumanise entire societies into poker chips to be traded between the superpowers, disregard their national interests and ignore history and non-european states when convenient.
You switch cause and effect, realism tries to describe the word as is and not as it should be and then bases policies on that. Of course basing your policies on realism changes the world, but US policy has mostly been based on liberalism for the last 30 years, and yet the world is still made up of poker chips and superpowers.
Of course the policies you choose based on realist principles can be used to increase your power as a country (and thus use poker chips cynically) or it can be used to build a prosperous and peaceful world (given the limitations of the natural anarchic state of international politics).
As a Dutch person I accept that the US can decide to turn the Netherlands into a nuclear testing ground whenever it wants and there is nothing we can do about that, but given this fact we should still try to create a peaceful world.
It's less of a linear relationship and more of a feedback loop. The more politicians buy into this political theory, the more effect it has on the world and vice versa.
Iran is a good example of being neither. There are also a bunch of non-state actors who challenge the status quo. Realism fails to explain Al Qaeda, Taliban and ISIS joining the poker table.
Commercial actors are also become more and more powerful and their interests often do not align with those of the state. Google and Meta have a higher revenue than several countries and is capable of influencing public opinion.
Realism fails to explain how all superpowers fall apart from within or from outside forces eventually. Where is the British Empire? Where is the Dutch Empire? Where are the Romans?
It can also be used to lose your power, destroy your credibility and sabotage your economy. Realism also doesn't take soft power into account. You can easily trade your soft power for hard power but it is very difficult to get soft power back.
But international politics are governed by international law and various treaties. Just because some countries can break international law and get away with it, doesn't mean that the law itself is meaningless.
You can do a lot about it, from petitioning other governments to cease diplomatic relations to terrorism. Even a small country, like the Netherlands, is a complex social system with it's own interests and guiding principles and not just a chip in political games of giants.
See this seems perfectly coherent even if I don’t agree with a lot of it - I actually do agree with the idea that Russia is motivated by a desire to keep hostile alliances from creeping up literally to their border, in a way that’s not readily understood in the West and leads to things being provocative from Russia’s POV. But also, I think that’s often not the intent from the Western side, and I think the Magnitsky Act and the subsequent reigniting of the Cold War and Russia’s extensive interference with US domestic politics is also vital context, and I think the idea that the Ukraine war is a “ploy” that the US invented is very obviously not accurate. But like I say, sure, this is a coherent thing we could talk about as to why I do or don’t think it.
But none of that is what’s on the other side of the link up at the top. If there are people on hexbear / lemmygrad who think the kinds of things you just said, they are currently being drowned out by people who think Russia is on the verge of winning the war and anyway they’re just trying to help Ukraine and the West is trying to destroy Ukraine, and similar comically insane things, who will just get super hostile if anyone disagrees with them about any of it.
So, everyone has to have the same opinion? Is that how the world should be ?. Wtf
Hexbear: Literally the most insane and aggressive disagreement with literally everything and everyone, including yelling and cursing and deleting comments and banning people who disagree with their insane viewpoint
Me: I think your opinions are not correct
Hexbear: Why are you SILENCING MY DISSENT this is unfair
Reading comprehension really isn't your thing, is it? Or are you just intentionally misstating OPs position to push a different narrative?
So much hate!
Got it, intentionally pushing a narrative.
Making honor to your username I guess :)
So little actual discussion from you!
Would it make sense to have one? :)
Usually? Yes. With your replies so far, I'm not so sure that's the case here.
I see why you talk in circles with your vague platitudes;
If you spoke in a straight line you'd actually get to the fucking point and we would all see your true motives.
If the strongest defense of this bullshit that you can possibly muster is "people are allowed to have different opinions" then that's actually a pretty damning condemnation of them, so thanks .
Ah another hater!
You seem angry.
If the opinions are "killing civilians is bad" and "land grabs are shitty"...
Yes, everyone should hold those as truth.
If you don't, then you support all sorts of bad shit like genocides and civilian displacement.
If that's the case, you deserve to have the entirety of this platform openly mock you wherever you go.