Doubling Down on Double Standards
medialens.org
medialens.org
That said, if and when these viewpoints serve to minimize the Russian atrocities as it has on several of these alternate news sites that I follow then it crosses a red line.
Are we? My anecdotal media exposure tells me the many Middle East wars are seen as, at best, grey.
ie, I don’t think the argument being offered here is unfounded, and the “denial of reality” I’m noting here does not actually attack the argument itself.
Lazier invocations of this same idea often invoke identity politics issues. Often the line is implied, and goes something like this: “Here’s a movie with a successful lead [woman/african-american/etc.] which really isn’t something we’re used to seeing.”
Well it’s something I’m used to seeing, and I think it’s something everyone else is used to seeing. Despite the commonality of the event, people are very worried about how common a portrayal is, and often something which was common 40 years ago is felt as “common today,” even when the world has moved on.
If so then the premise of my argument would seem moot? and so people have already realized that peace is in everyone's best interest. Which doesn't really tally with what I see around me, but I could be wrong. I really hope that I am.
I agree to your last paragraph though. It helps that Media Lens does have a consistency; consistency matters in the modern society because other qualities are much harder to verify.
We can't keep going in circles like this. Yes the West is hypocritical, self serving and needs to reassess. But right now, less so than Russia.
There are, very broadly, two closely related topics:
1. X, Y, and Z past events, vs the current attitude toward Russia, are specific examples of, more or less, hypocrisy in the West. More charitably, they are evidence of a cultural disconnect and inability to sympathize that has badly needed bridging for all of human history, but is especially relevant right now.
2. The West are hypocrites and therefore should not oppose, neither with words nor with actions, the idea of Putin attacking Ukraine's capital to coerce them into surrendering their land.
I think if it's clear the article is not making the case for #2, we should really try not to bar them from rational discourse, despite their inevitable misuse in promotion of item #2.
You must be joking. Hacker News is absolutely riddled with "other-side-ism" (whataboutism). To a ridiculous degree.
Look at the comments on this recent submission, "Moscow police officers stop people, request their phones to read their messages"[0]. An incredible number of the comments are comparing the video to American policies like Stop and Frisk and TSA screening, or to London police searches.
Even in the most absurd cases imaginable HN commenters love whataboutism because it's a way of signaling "I know a fact that's tangentially related to this".
Do you seriously? You think that HN is the home of black-and-white thinking and mindless, uncritical acceptance of main-stream media?
You may want to examine your own built-in biases if that is what you see on this site.
The HN content, community and moderation quality are away above average. But there is definitely some moderator that takes US criticism too personally
I have seen this several times, as soon as the conversation turns too far away from the mainstream it gets flagged as too political
It is always too political, but it is allowed, when it is against China, Russia, Trump...
Kyle Rittenhouse case was posted several times, bashing left and right, as soon as he was acquitted no article was allowed anymore, flagged almost immediately
Not really. It wasn't so much a reflection on HN in general as "HN when a ruthless dictatorship invades a democratic country in a flagrant breach of international law". I'm happy that my apprehension was proven wrong, the post survived and at least some intelligent discussion ensued.
Edit: It got flagged after all.
Saddam was terrible. But do you know who was worse? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Also, in the tables of moral calculus, incompetence in pursuit of noble goals ("depose evil dictator and establish democracy") is significantly less offensive than overtly evil goals ("overthrow democracy and install kleptocracy that rules the natives at gunpoint").
But then if you saw enough autocratic regimes not doing these things, (Singapore?), could you be brought around to preferring autocracy?
What the fuck are you smoking? Are you arguing that there is no a priori reason to prefer democracy?
I suggest these definitions, but am open to revisions.
def: a government is the smallest set of people with a (almost) monopoly of force in a particular geographic region.
def: democracy is a government where the set size is at least 10% of the total number of people occupying the geographic region.
def: autocracy is government where the set size is one.
Presently, it is not clear to me how to make a persuasive and coherent a priori argument in favor of democracy. I believe you have a nomination for such an argument, please share.
There is no such thing as a true monopoly on force, since I require other people to fight for me. They could instead choose to do nothing, so I must always operate in this context. I won't speak to the full set of ways to accomplish it, but it seems clear that there are at least two.
In order to meaningfully be an autocrat, it must be possible for you to wield this force in a manner inconsistent with its own majority interests. If you do not maintain that power, you are de facto operating in a democracy.
This is a real downside to running an autocracy. The autocrat now forever engaged in a game of don't-let-the-balloon-touch-the-floor, and the cost is that for every gun you want pointed at your personal objective, you have to point a gun at the person holding the gun you want pointed and so on. As you can imagine, this is expensive and fragile, since there are, by an absolute law of mathematics, fewer guns at the top than the bottom, and you have to possess a lot more guns than if you didn't need to point guns at the people actually executing the force. Technology can lower the number of guns you need to point in between layers in order to reach pseudo-stability, but never to zero, and there is always a risk that the force will figure out how to organize in its own interests and depose you.
There is another way, of course, in which the organizational structure of the military is designed around ensuring that its aggregate interests are met, including the meta interest of maintaining that property. This is roughly identifiable as democracy, and it should be clear that the difference between this case and the previous one is qualitative, which makes it a much more sensible way of drawing a line between the two governments.
I still claim that this is a bad definition of government.
Do you think that most Iraqi people were pro-Saddam or against him?
Everyone from Henry Kissinger to Joe Biden is on record saying NATO expansion would lead to a confrontation with Russia.
As for Iraq, it takes a special kind of wilful ignorance to think that deposing a strongman, leaving a power vaccum and excluding the existing power structure would lead to anything but chaos.
> Do you think that most Iraqi people were pro-Saddam or against him?
Either the people of Iraq supported Saddam, in which case the justification of liberating Iraq was BS. Or the majority did not support Saddam, in which case there is absolutely no justification for the suffering inflicted on them.
> Either the people of Iraq supported Saddam, in which case the justification of liberating Iraq was BS. Or the majority did not support Saddam, in which case there is absolutely no justification for the suffering inflicted on them.
In fact it's the second one, Shia were a repressed majority. But how would the first justify their suffering? Saddam had nothing to do with 911.
Russia has to beat into submission so it is no longer a threat. Just like it was done with Germany in WW2, Stalin did get away from that.
Being different from that is exactly not the point.
Well, that ship sailed thankfully and Russia can expect a strong fist from those countries. Hitler and WW2 Germany had smaller negative impact on those countries than Soviet Russia.
The Sunnis dominated the country politically and militarily, until the Americans took out their army in 1991 and established autonomy for the Kurds, and finally deposed Saddam in 2003.
> “Now, when I go past that statue, I feel pain and shame,” said Kadhim al-Jabouri in 2016. “I ask myself”: Why did I topple that statue?” He regretted the fall of Saddam’s regime. What came after, in his opinion, was a disaster: “Saddam has gone, but in his place we now have one thousand Saddams.” Kadhim even wanted the statue back. “I’d like to put it back up, to rebuild it,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’d be killed.”
A despot starting a war of choice vs a democracy is very compelling… for good reason.
Violence /= all violence.
Patrolling how people feel and finger waving will not result in progress.
Our politics honest. Our country good. Our military righteous.
Their politics corrupt. Their country bad. Their military evil.
Every side thinks the same
Does that matter?
Obama and Biden in 1 single year dropped 26k bombs in 7 different countries https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/americ...
Obama apologises for Afghan hospital bombing - ITV News https://www.itv.com/news/story/2015-10-07/obama-apologises-f...
So every country is the same, everyone invades for a "good" reason, and all violence is the same. Every invaded country suffers the same, and people live worse after
2. The Yemen war, as deplorable as it may be, has not posed the risk of global thermonuclear war.
3. Yes, the Ukrainians are using some propaganda and disinformation, just as the Russians are. They are in a war for their nations survival and are using all the tools they have at their disposal.
4. The argument that Russia is invading Ukraine because it wants "space" around its borders to separate it from NATO is hogwash. This invasion, if successful, will accomplish precisely the opposite. If Ukraine had joined NATO, Russia would have 1 more NATO country on it's borders. After taking over Ukraine Russia will gain all of Ukraine's NATO neighbours as it's own and potentially drive Finland and Sweden into NATO as well.
5. A big part of why the EU has enjoyed peace since WWII, even if other parts of the world EU members have become embroiled with haven't, is because European countries do not invade European countries anymore. The UN, NATO, and the world's economy are all designed to bring about this stability. If Russia manages to profit from this invasion, that order is overturned. The problem with this is that there are multiple nuclear states in Europe. A move away from defined, stable borders risks the entire world's fate. The stakes are higher in this invasion than in any since WWII.
6. The opposition to Russia, aside from Ukraine, is trying to use non-violent methods to force Russia to abandon the invasion. It's debatable if they will work. Economic sanctions haven't worked in the past, but we haven't seen economic sanctions like these before. Targeting oligarchs directly in particular is an interesting play. Self-flagellation, navel gazing, and moral relativism all have their place in Western society, but one must hope that we apply adequately firm will to bring the World back from the brink of nuclear war that Putin seems so willing to casually flirt with. The real double standard here is, in truth, a nuclear one.
Is a punic war to install a puppet not outside the range of possible goals?
> punic
Did you mean punitive?
2. Again, as long as we morally condemn the act but tolerate actions not affecting me ("...has not posed the risk of global thermonuclear war"), it's ok.
3. I agree with you.
4. Now, this is an interesting take. I don't know why Russia thinks the EU is its enemy. I don't think the EU wants to go to war with Russia over resources. The other side of the coin: back in the 90's, US + EU + Russia "agreed" no more expansion to the East. NATO kept expanding itself. If I (Russia) was to make an stand, I'll definitely find a diplomatic way to avoid more eastern countries to join NATO. That doesn't work? Well, Since I won't want anyone to put any type of weapon just in case I go "rogue", I'll use any means necessary to avoid that.
5. I agree with you. The EU is so intertwined it'll be next to impossible for someone like Hitler to raise up again. None of us know war and we don't want to know it. Much less a nuclear war.
6. There so much Russia will take until things get sour for the rest of the world. If Russia "wins" this will polarize the world again (Cold War 2). If Russia "loses", this will create or increase bitterness against the West. Other countries will start making alliances to counteract NATO's economical power.
I'm trying to be as impartial as possible. The conflict is complex. The US won't tolerate any type of action near them (ie. Cuba) nor the EU for that matter.
I can't imagine what Ukrainians are going through right now. Let's hope the conflict doesn't escalate and they can agree to stop this war.
Stop repeating this nonsense or show the treaty.
This is not to say the Russians are justified in their very violent action in Ukraine, but it's important to understand their motivations if they are to be countered on any level short of all-out conventional war or, God forbid, nuclear armageddon.
I do agree with your point #6, that "firm will to bring the world back from the brink" is required here. I don't think the various "cancel culture" sanctions will do anything useful -- might put pressure on the oligarchy, or might not. Does a billionaire care that Portugal (or whoever) has impounded his $20m yacht? Or that suddenly his UK bank accounts are frozen? I don't really know. But it's important to keep in mind human nature. Pushing the Russians too hard, e.g. cutting off Visa/Mastercard/Paypal, boycotting Russian athletes, etc., may backfire and create more sympathy for Putin's stance, thus prolonging the conflict and maybe escalating it disastrously.
As the article extremely rightly points out, this is _the_ time to examine these issues. We cannot allow the West to begome complacent we-do-no-evil-to-others we-see-no-evil-in-us we-hear-no-evil-from-us. If something leads to dystopia, it's what we are doing to ourselves.
This right-wing/tankie nonsense is exhausting.
People have wanted out of Afghanistan, Syria, etc for a long time now. Sure some TV anchor thinks its cool how missiles look when they kill non-europeans but the actual population of the US did not.
It's time now to figure out how to not have these issues in the future. We don't need to re-examine the past anymore to convince gen. pop. it was wrong; they know.
That is not the same thing as the US and UK invading and overthrowing totalitarian dictator Saddam Hussein.
The idea that people should pretend the merits of these two things are the same is dumb, or atleast it's dumb if you value democracy or freedom over totalitarian dictatorships.
It's also the case that right now, the UK, EU and NATO are in the right. They're standing up for a democratic country's right to self-determination and independence, and the right for Ukraine's citizens to live free lives. And since that is the case, making the argument "Well you guys invaded Iraq 20 years ago" is a dumb argument - let's concede you're right, the US shouldn't have invaded Iraq (a position most people probably actually agree with right now), Fine. What the hell has that got to do with what's happening now? Should the West not stand up for Ukraine now? Don't be absurd.
This article is written as if the invasion of Iraq is happening today, a fiction which is pretty transparent.
Either violation of a nation's sovereignty is a crime or it isn't. If being an authoritariann dictatorship is the criteria when is Saudi Arabia getting invaded?
> Should the West not stand up for Ukraine now? Don't be absurd.
Can you point to where TFA makes this argument?
Ah but here you are changing the goalposts, the OP never said it was a crime, they said it was different. And it IS different. I marched against the Iraq war and was against those wars from the beginning, and I still would argue that they are being fought for a very different reason, a reason that is a big cause for concern. Afghanistan and Iraq, for all the folly, were not attacked with a clear goal of expanding territory and maintaining long term control of each country. US and allies were only too eager to get out if they could get some stability and not have it look like a big L. They were attempting to allow the locals to vote in a self determined government, however miserably those attempts ended up.
Russia is very clearly expanding its territory at the cost of a peoples right to self determination.
Now you can say, well in terms of the consequences, what's worse? If many more civilians die in the first case, maybe it's worse?
My counter would be, we don't know where this ends, and I don't think we can measure impact only in civilian deaths.
Additionally, I would recommend the R2P (responsibility to protect) doctrine as a good rule of thumb for when we may consider it necessary to overthrow a totalitarian dictator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
Pirating WinRAR is a crime. Murdering someone is also a crime. Just because two things are described by a single word, doesn't make them equal on a moral landscape.
Violation of the sovereignty of a free and open democracy isn't the same as violation of the sovereignty of a brutal dictatorship, and pretending that Putin's regime is somehow as legitimate as a free open democracy is absurd and it's not difficult to see how people come to the conclusion that people pushing that idea are carrying water for Putin. It's also just straight up ignorant to pretend that the US actions in Afghanistan look anything like the straight carpet bombing conducted in Syria. It's also not particularly difficult to see how you would be strategic about where you would intervene.
>Can you point to where TFA makes this argument?
To quote the article I'm "reading between the lines". We're not stupid, when Russia invades a sovereign nation and you spend time talking about everything bad the west has done in the last 30 years, we're going to point it out. When people try and manufacture false equivalencies between what the west has done and what Russia is doing, we're going to point it out.
This article, frankly picks out a tonne of quotes to try and paint the west as some massive war mongering groupthink, but the truth of it is that there has been huge criticism of the western interventions in the middle-east and it's ridiculous to cherry pick war hawks and pretend that's a homogenous view from the west. The truth is that even by 2008 Obama was running against the Bush-era wars, and there have been massive campaigns from both sides of the the aisle in the US to take the US out of foreign wars.
Look I'm not afraid to own it, I feel more of a kinship with Europoeans than with other global citizens. Ukrainians watch the same superhero movies, they play the same video games. They are all over reddit, not just on the news reddits but also posting to r/shittyfoodporn joking about their war-zone meals.
I don't feel the same kinship with Iraquis or Yeminis. You can call it racism or a double standard, but it’s human nature. You may as well say I have double standards for caring about my family more than yours.
In fact many of the measures taken (providing weapons to Ukraine) will make Ukraine a prolonged war-zone and goes against the life and safety of the Ukrainian citizens. But 1) Putin needs to be stopped, 2) the Ukrainians seem to be willing to pay that price for freedom.
Not only a direct threat, but also a recent history (Poland 1939, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 and others).
Consistency is a component of justice and it's something people sometimes aim for, but it's not necessarily more important than other values. You have to make the case for why it's important in a particular situation.
It is pointing out to a bias in reporting: one can never read "fact X". One can only read "fact X from source Y". Depending on one's alignment with source Y, one is more or less inclined to believe or care about fact X. The text points out examples of multiple Ys and how they choose how to report on X.
Much of what you call "woke" is realizing that human rationality has many biases, and in order to reify what we in the West agreed upon in text back in 1789, we will have to learn what these biases are and learn to actively compensate for them.
Much progress has been done, but much is still left to do.
Of course you care more about your family than anyone else's, and about Ukrainians and Russians more than Iraqis or Yemenis. It's a great starting point to think about that, and what unintended consequences everyone's individual biases can have for the future of our society. This is not an exercise that people go through often enough.
We should have stronger requirements for education in mathematical logic, and perhaps probability theory in schools instead of teaching countless anecdata.
What if source Y is biased in that its using all facts X to push an anti-bias agenda?
But that’s beside the point; it’s pretty shallow to base sympathy on superficial things like entertainment choices. Preferring the company of like-minded people is understandable, but extending that to include sympathy for innocent victims of war crimes?
Edit: for the record, fuck Bush (father and son, actually), Obama, Trump, Putin, Saddam, Gaddafi, and Assad.
Edit1: No, I am not a nihilist. But I do despise pretty much every government out there. Don’t ask me for a solution, I don’t know what it is. But yeah, the leaders of Western democracies are less harmful than Putin and the CCP. The politicians themselves might be just as bad, but having to work in a democratic framework limits what they can get away with.
Most of us understand the need to employ reason to overcome the worst elements of our nature. After all you could argue it's in our nature to want the benefits of making people work for you without having to pay them. Fighting that was 'wokeness' at one point too.
Modern tribalism has been shit for humanity. It's an impulse we also need to ditch.
Only people with a spine are A) willing to accept them as necessary/good/whatever to achieve the desired outcome on an issue by issue basis B) able to have frank discussions about death and destruction and act like an adult while doing it in the absence of a biased selection of the facts. (B is a necessary prerequisite for evaluating whether A is the correct course of action in a given situation or ever and if so to what extent)
And brains are much common than spines.
The events of the last 2yr have brought these selective information issues into the public conscience. The "concern trolling" is just a way to make a buck off of this.
I'm on Ukraine's side in this or a variety of reasons but it would be nice if we didn't have to do the whole double standard song and dance about this sort of thing. Russia is gonna kill a lot of people here. They killed a lot of people in Syria. I wasn't pissed off when they did that because <laundry list of reasons>.
If we don't examine ourselves and take actions to better ourselves we only build another China.
Regards definitely not one with the woke.
However, in a lot of the modern Middle East conflicts (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, for example) ALL the leaders are hot garbage (even and especially the ones that the US chooses to support), and the world would be better off if they all died in a fire.
And, quite often, when the invaders go home, the sects and tribes go back to killing each other with vigor.
None of this is a recipe for sympathy from the West.
Also, considering how many of these 'conservative' countries were created by US & European regime change policy. Your elected officials shoved these fuckers on us.
Don't blame the US and Europe for a religious doctrine that is accepted by the majority of people in those nations.
Maybe try talking to Iranians sometimes :)
The people you've "othered" do the same.
This is an absolutely disgusting comment and instead of you taking this as a moment of introspection and an opportunity to humanize and relate to the "others", you just "own" your xenophobic views and then come here to proudly justify them.
The bar to humanize people is reddit and disney apparently.
JFC.
Also, it's spelt Iraqis. Not Iraquis. Literally any spellchecker would've told you, but I guess they're not human enough to care.
Watch a Ukrainian or Iraqi child die from a mortar and tell me if you feel any difference. If you don't you haven't got a point and if you do you haven't got a soul.
Ukraine was behind the iron curtain.
FWIW I don't think it matters and you should care about humans because they're humans.
- Mentions US interference in Ukraine, ignores Russia's
- Calls the resulting protests violent while ignoring Russian demands to shoot the protesters before Yanokovic was ousted
- Quotes Mearsheimer, a realist who admits he doesn't consider the moral dimension to helping Ukrainians determine their own future
- Apologises for the annexation of Crimea by stating Putin's speculated fears for Sevastopol naval access - set against and ignoring Ukrainians ACTUAL fears of being invaded
- Complains Corbyn et al being reprimanded by their party for falsely equivocating Russian invasion to NATO expansion, calls it a loss of their 'freedom' to criticism NATO again all in contrast to the literal loss of actual freedom of Ukrainians
And on and on.
This is pro-imperialist apologia. YES the West is hypocritical and self-interest too, obviously. YES Western governments have behaved despicably and should be scrutinised more. YES the media is biased toward laziness and sensationalism. YES it hasn't written this week about the few hundred nazis fighting for Ukraine. YES the public has a short memory and has forgotten Syrians on the other Polish border. Yes to all of that. NONE of that exonerates Putin as this tries to suggest.
Framing it this way, at this time, is done to blunt the criticism of and excuse a brutal, corrupt, aggressive, nuclear armed dictator whose ambitions beyond Ukraine are not yet clear. That is the priority. This is the news now. Two or three actors can be simultaneously bad. Sorry it doesn't conform to your world view.
Yes, the West does all kinds of bad stuff and I'm not excusing that.
But sitting on the sidelines is not always an option -- unless you are covered by U.S. military power. It's like being in a gated community with private security and criticizing police.
If you follow moral equivalence far enough, it's self-defeating. Because the totalitarians and tyrants don't bother with such nonsense.
That being said, it's good to reflect once in a while to make sure you haven't become the enemy. But we shouldn't sit in front of the mirror all the time and never bother to look out the window.
Releasing such an article at this time is a good way to get people to roll their eyes and dismiss it as yet another mouthpiece of Putin's trolls. It's also borderline insensitive. At this moment, the western world doesn't want to hear these complaints, there's something more pressing to deal with.
While I'm sure there's more to the Russia/Ukraine conflict than most of us can understand or appreciate, it's more than a little disingenuous to compare Russia's attempt to forcibly annex Ukraine to America's efforts to push out terrorist-supporting dictatorships.
According to Russia they are fighting neo-nazis, which is same as the US saying that they are fighting terrorists.
It's only disingenuous to compare if you fully believe one side, if you look at it critically, you would be hard pressed to not see them as the same thing.
You have to be quite naive to believe that the US spends money attacking countries out of the kindness of their hearts and not to protect their interests(not other's), which sometimes means killing a "few" civilians or wrecking a country or two. Just look at all the horrible stuff China did and the Myanmar mass killings where the US didn't even bat an eye, because there was nothing to be gained.
It's only ridiculous if you believe one side fully and become fully ignorant at the other one and if you look a little bit, you might find some ethnic cleansing done by the Ukrainians. It is at least as strong as the USA's reasons for attacking other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine#Ukr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odessa_clashes
As an actual European who happened to grow up 20km away from the Ukrainian border, I find it frustrating to see all these western media outlets talk like they know anything about the situation while being barely able to even find these countries on a map.
> but that doesn't mean they don't take humanitarian concerns to heart as well
They don't, just look at how happy they were to feed the Afghan people to the Taliban(I'm talking about not giving them a chance to evacuate). They even left some weapons for the Taliban. You can also look at the fact that the US causes problems and doesn't really take in refugees, it just lets Europe deal with the mess they started.
Please name a single country which became better after the US troops went in with their "democracy", if making the world a better place would be the goal for the US military they would be the biggest screwups in the universe.
Edit - no downvoters want to provide a counter-example? Of a country that was a democracy and had a larger population at the time of invasion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...
And IMO overseas colonies don't count as they weren't invaded and also weren't included in the democratic process back then.
Also bigger is bigger. But the fact that the next biggest was France in WWII is a great example of how significant the invasion of Ukraine actually is...
No one believes they have double standards.
This is like when people post trite aphorisms as if it's some sort of mic drop moment. As if the aphorism can't possibly apply to them as well. No, they're the chosen one, elected by the self to bring the wisdom to the sleeping masses.
No Billy, you're not some warrior poet bucking the system, you're a fucking dipshit who barely graduated high school who services vending machines.