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Comment by nopriorarrests | Hacker News Reader

The problem here is Gessen uses Zhukov's words to bash Donald Trump, but neglects to mention that Zhukov is a right-winger who supports Trump, and the Tea Party. He's also anti-feminist & new yorker readers would feel differently if they knew these things. It's disingenuous.

https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1203785706860109830

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If you're quoting someone you should indicate that. If you're quoting Bryan MacDonald well I think you should validate it pretty carefully. And if you are Bryan MacDonald...well I'm not surprised how you turned out Bryan.

Yes, I'am quoting Bryan MacDonald, sorry if it wasn't clear. And since I speak russian, I can attest that his tweet is factually correct.

Well even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

Well, there is a video where Zhukov tells that he doesn't agree with principle of collective responsibility advocated by _some_ feminists. Calling him anti-feminist after that is kind of big jump, isn't it?

The BBC describes Zhukov as a "libertarian activist": https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50684676

But note that journalist who wrote that tweet is actually works for Russia Today -- russian state propaganda outlet. So don't take that seriously.

Is the tweet correct or not? Is your point here that

- Zhukov is not actually a Tea Party Trump supporter and the tweet is made up, or

- Zhukov is all these things but it would not in fact be relevant to New Yorker readers, or

- Zhukov is all these things, but the facts should be ignored because they are coming from an unapproved source?

I was just saying that collaboration with RT is a big red flag. Talking about tweet itself it's definitely not correct at least in anti-feminist part. Also whole tweet intention is kind of ad hominem, original article discussed Zhukov's speech and his sentence, not his personality.

> I was just saying that collaboration with RT is a big red flag

How come?

It comes from the consistent history of the factually incorrect propaganda reporting, with direct funding from the state budget. The very same state that dictates convictions to judges for political prisoners upon a phone call from the state administration.

Turns out even people who work for Russia Today tell the truth sometimes (if they were consistently lying they would be telling the truth after all:).

I have watched Zhukovs videos before he got arrested, he self identifies as a libertarian, supports Trump as a lesser evil compared to Sanders and Warren, and likes Jordan Peterson. Because of this Russian twitter was abuzz today with feminists arguing whether it was ok to support him. So the article indeed misrepresents his views.

So are you saying that because Zhukov is, you claim, a right-winger, that means that his criticisms of Russia are wrong, and that Russia is actually a pretty good place?

Oh, and by the way, I don't know if Zhukov actually is a right winger, but Putin definitely is.

No, I just find it amusing that Masha Gessen is praising some person, who, if relocated to USA while keeping his political views intact, will instantly become alt-right monster and God knows what else (see Covington kids case).

Funny how these things work.

The question of how good or bad Russia is, is a million times more important than an amusing observation about a particular journalist. So let me ask you again, what do you think of it?

> So are you saying that because Zhukov is, you claim, a right-winger, that means that his criticisms of Russia are wrong, and that Russia is actually a pretty good place?

There is no causal connection between the OP's message and this assumption. The initial argument is that the journalist interpreted the Zhukov’s letter and his (right-wing libertarian) views in accordance with her political (left-wing and anti-Trump) views.

edit: Putin is authoritarian right-wing, which has nothing to do with Zhukov's libertarianism. As follows at least from his indictment.

It's also par for the course for Gessen. She's extremely biased, and she doesn't even try to hide it. There's no nuance whatsoever in what she writes, it's all black and white for her. I'm not sure why she still calls herself a "jornalist".

His statement, however, looks like something a US conservative would largely agree with: decries identity (in his words "atomization") politics (which Gessen largely supports), calls to strengthen traditional families (which Gessen opposes), calls for individual responsibility, etc. For the record: I don't know about his "anti-feminist" views, but I agree with what he says in that particular statement.

It's directly applicable to the US as well - people are pretty much at war with each other here, and at least half the population is quite willing to give up their liberty for taxpayer funded government handouts. Having grown up in the USSR, I know where this particular road ends.

There's one bit of context that people in the US will miss: the Soviet legacy. Back then people relied on the government for _everything_ and had little to no individual responsibility for anything. You worked for peanuts and by Western standards lived in poverty, but a lot of the stuff was "free" and you didn't have to worry about your future - it was largely predetermined.

A large, older chunk of Russian population still lives like that and has futile expectations that the government will solve whatever problems they might have. The government stopped doing that some 30 years ago, but they don't know any better. I think this, and the extreme level of corruption, is why the GDP of Russia is less than that of Texas. IMO for a country with such insane wealth of natural resources, and a pretty decent education system this is shameful.

The whole 'government doing anything is a slippery slope to socialism' is such a worn cliche. It's much more likely that having a large, disadvantaged population thats cut off from class mobility or basic life necessities is what encourages people to start dragging landowners into the streets.

There's a reason why the Great Depression led to a number of relief programs - the threat of a soviet-style communist uprising was pretty high.

There also were some pretty great "relief programs" in the USSR at the time, where millions of people were relieved of their food and left to die of starvation. A government powerful enough to give you everything is also necessarily powerful enough to take everything.

And "class mobility" is a 100% capitalist concept. Under communism there's no "upper class" to be mobile to.

As of 2018, the US is experiencing the lowest poverty rate in history (considerably lower than e.g. UK, Germany, and France), and record low unemployment as well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/10/us-povert...

Repeating things doesn’t make them true. People aren’t asking for the government to do everything, they’re asking for affordable healthcare and education

But that's not what the government can actually deliver. All the government can really do is take money from one set of people under threat of violence, and give it to another set of people. That's it. It's a parasite. It doesn't produce anything. If you believe in the law of conservation of energy, adding government to any process will only make it less efficient. See e.g. US student loans and what that did to college tuition.

Governments obviously do more than what your absurd statement implies. They are democratically controlled veichles of power. One of the things they do is some measure of redistribution of wealth, attempting to counter the capitalist tendency for wealth concentration.

Bizarre references to "conservation of energy" (?) aside, you can simply look empirically. Places with low social and economic inequality are factually better places to live.

The US is factually a better place to live than most other countries, in spite of the high "inequality".

For subset of Americans, sure.

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