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Comment by dempseye | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately the Russians never got that memo and remained barbarian.

I don't believe referring to any group of people as barbarians is an appropriate comment for HN, or indeed for any place purporting to be a forum for civilized discourse.

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He's also implicitly calling Yemenis, Afghanistanis, Palestenians and Israelis uncivilized too. I heard the same statement ("We are too civilized for war unlike other places") coming from Ukranian tv hosts and it left me dumbfounded.

Which ones of Ukrainian TV hosts?

I was aware of same EU TV person, maybe a UK person, having majorly stepped in it along those lines. It's just incredibly narrow to presume that war-torn places were would choose that.

Thank you for calling this out; the comment serves only to heighten animosity against your average Russian. I'm sure OP aimed it at the Kremlin leadership, but being precise here is important.

I see nothing in his comment to justify such a charitable interpretation.

I agree, but in discourse I strongly subscribe to the Principle of Charity [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Further, said principle is mandated by Hacker News. <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> states:

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I don’t know what else you call invading a sovereign country because they don’t want to be your vassal though? That seems pretty barbaric to me.

If that is the standard by which the population of a country can be judged to be barbarians, then the category of barbarians is a wide one indeed.

Would you say the same of Israel?

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