The word “whaboutism” considered harmful | Hacker News Reader

The word “whaboutism” considered harmful

9 pointsEGreg55 comments

Alright, HN. I've seen it here, and in many other places. There is a major outcry about some actor (a country, an institution in a country) doing bad thing X to people. "This cannot stand, we must all do something about it, and that something must be what we say it is." If you are not with us, you are against us -- nay, all of humanity!

If someone points out that X is not unprecedented, and in fact, the very countries whose people are shocked and outraged did 5X or 10X regularly, this used to be considered exposing hypocrisy or double standards, and welcomed as intellectual integrity. But in the last 10-20 years, it has come to be derided as "whataboutism".

The most obvious example, but by no means the only one, is that the USA invaded and occupied tons of countries. Just in the last 20 years, I've personally seen news of US forces invade and occupy Iraq (leading to 500K - 1 million excess deaths), Afghanistan (for 20 years), destroy Libya (it is now a failed state).

Bush just had a gaffe where he said "one man's brutal invasion of Iraq, er excuse me, Ukraine". And everyone laughed. "I'm 75", he said.

Trump, when asked whether he will still send weapons to Saudis after the brutal reports out of Yemen, one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, said "well it's billions of dollars and creates a lot of jobs." Trump says the quiet part out loud due to some mild psychopathy, while Biden might do it out of some mild dementia. Bush might accidentally blurt it out. But the problem remains.

Similarly, anti-zionists for example look past the actions of Israel's neighbors (Assad bombing Yarmouk, for instance, or Lebanon keeping Lebanese-born people stateless for generations, unable to even hold property, if they had a grandfather from the Nakba, etc.) but navel-gaze at Israel only.

The thing is, that we should work as an international society, to PREVENT wars, to RESOLVE refugee crises, with everyone listening to the others' security concerns, and pitching in. Instead, we get a game of telephone about whether Russia ever applied to NATO, whether NATO ever promised not to expand. There are war hawks everywhere, who call for no-fly zones over Syria (Hillary) or a war of Ukraine vs Russia (Arestovich prediction in 2019) in order to achieve broader geopolitical aims (usually involving some empire or other). But regular people don't want war or killing each other. They want citizenship in a country with a good economy.

Whataboutism shuts down the real conversation about cooperation to prevent wars and de-escalate conflicts, and instead identifies populations with leaders, and an us-vs-them mentality. And worst of all, it is a one-word shutdown of anyone pointing out hypocrisy, while at the same time appealing for action, NOW, on the basis of that hypocrisy. It simply leads to bullying of people (by BDS supporters, for instance, or Israel supporters on the other hand). Whataboutism itself is valuable because we need to clean up our double standards and solve the core of systemic issues, together and everywhere.

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Saying “what about” is a very effective way to deflect conversation away from a valid and important topic. I prefer conversations that can stay deeply focused on a single important topic without the need to rapidly re-orient.

Politicians and pundits know this.

I want to be clear ... we do need to solve problems, of course. "What about X" doesn't mean "we shouldn't do anything now". It means "where were you when we needed to do something before? Will you now turn your attention to, say Yemen, or Libya, and fix the problems there?"

If the answer is no, if the person is fixated on a specific "bad actor", then you can suspect they don't really care about the specific problem they're describing (famine, oppression, etc.) but rather want to use it as an excuse to organize something powerful against the "bad actor". If people stopped identifying the populations of countries, which number in the tens or hundreds of millions, with their government, then they would see that they should be on the side of the people, and not play these games of choosing sides.

Of course we do need to avoid wars, support diplomatic solutions, and stop playing games of empires promising and meddling in other countries' affairs in order to rip their populations away politically and economically from one or another "ally". There is room for multiculturalism, for democracy, some people prefer one thing, other people prefer something else. Most wars start because there is some binary choice imposed on an entire population, A or B, and some of them don't want to go along with it. Here in the USA, it could be abortion. But for example, in Ukraine, people could trade with Russia AND trade with EU, without having to choose sides. It's just that China, Russia and USA keep influencing or outright dominating politics within other countries, and have been doing it for decades. If we want to move past empires causing misery around the world with this competition, then we have to call for collaboration and expand the Geneva conventions with more human rights for populations within countries. We need to set up rule-based systems that can de-escalate conflicts, including nuclear conflicts, before they arise. Instead, we spend all our time blaming the other countries, and letting war hawks escalate. For cooler heads to prevail, they need to start systematically pushing back against escalation and imperialism, and towards de-escalation and collaboration.

> we should work as an international society, to PREVENT wars, to RESOLVE refugee crises, with everyone listening to the others' security concerns, and pitching in.

> Whataboutism itself is valuable because we need to clean up our double standards and solve the core of systemic issues, together and everywhere.

I can't tell if you're idealistic or if you're using an idealistic tone pedagogically.

In the political situations you describe the hypocrisy you are highlighting disappears when you consider them from the perspective of state entities. Arguing about the moral characterisations colouring the propaganda of nation-states is bikeshedding.

There is an Atlantic alliance working to increase costs for Russia in order to change China's calculus on Taiwan, which is itself only relevant because it is where 92% of advanced semiconductor manufacturing takes place. That's it, no-one important actually cares about whether it's appropriate to invade other countries, where the 'rightful clay' of your ethnonationalist group is, etc.

If Russia made 92% of the world's semiconductors my greengrocer wouldn't have a blue-and-yellow flag in his window. Simple as. If we want to have productive discussions about geopolitics we should talk about the /reasons/ of national interest, not the /excuses/ of bumper-sticker memetics.

I would be very surprised to find that the vast majority of people with Ukrainian flags are actually worried about semiconductors from Taiwan.

There is already a chip shortage. Also Israel is also an important player in the semiconductor industry, but lots of people in USA and Europe are fixated on it just as much as Russophobes have been fixated on Russia, and so on.

https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/israeli-semiconductors-and-t...

I think you’re talking about the calculus of various nations about necessary resources. Well, European politicians seem to be willing to “take one for the team” (by which I mean, volunteering the lower and middle class among their population to experience hardship, not the politicians themselves) by quickly trying to phase out Russian oil and eventually gas.

Ukrainian officials complained they aren’t doing it fast enough. But in reality the pandemic lockdowns and now the war has caused fossil fuels to finally stop being competitive with alternative energy, and this is likely to be the biggest and fastest drawdown of fossil fuel usage since 2020 when it dropped overnight and barrels of oil had negative prices.

My point is that fossil fuels are quite instrumental to the modern European economy but they’re willing to experience shortages in order to starve Russia of resources to fund its war.

> in order to starve Russia of resources to fund its war.

Russia is Mexico with missiles. Atlantic nations are engaging in the conflict in order to constrain and deter China, the rising hegemon.

> I would be very surprised to find that the vast majority of people with Ukrainian flags are actually worried about semiconductors from Taiwan.

The vast majority of people get their news from entertainers reassuring them that their prior assumptions are correct, relevant, and moral.

> Atlantic nations are engaging in the conflict in order to constrain and deter China, the rising hegemon.

No, Atlantic nations are engaging in the conflict (despite the fact that doing so makes it harder to contain China—which is why China is also engaging in the conflict, in a lower-key way) because Russia—which may be “Mexico“ in terms of economy but with nuclear weapons, a giant stockpile of conventional weapons, a better relationship between the government and organized crime, and a more aggressive attitude—immediately borders on and directly threatens members of the Atlantic alliance.

In 2020, Ukraine was the poorest country in Europe with a GNI of $3,570, slightly lower than Gaza or El Salvador. Russia looked at its own "aggressive attitude" and "giant stockpile of conventional weapons" and picked the weakest, easiest target they could find after eight years of ground work in Donbas.

If your theory is correct, Russia threatened the Atlantic alliance who reacted by... doubling the economic power of their terrifying neighbor with Nord Stream. Then Russia used those resources to occupy Donbas and Crimea, so the Atlantic states reacted decisively by... starting construction on Nord Stream 2.

If the Atlantic alliance worried about Russia they would have prioritized relations with petrostates that are even less of a threat.

Or, perhaps the Atlantic states aren't genuinely afraid of Russia.

> Or, perhaps the Atlantic states aren't genuinely afraid of Russia.

Or, perhaps, the Atlantic states were divided and uncertain of the threat from Russia, with well-publicized divisions, until the ramp up of Russian rhetoric and material positioning for general war in early 2022.

Before that, they weren't as a whole engaging in the conflict at all, so any explanation of why they are doing so as a bloc has to address itself to the time when they have been doing so as a bloc.

great comment. The term is used these days just to shut down conversation, and somehow avoid dealing with often self evident hypocrisy.

Deal with it how? The whatabout is almost always in reference to some sin in the past. Ain’t nuttin’ we can do about the past, whereas we might be able to do something about today’s issue.

Indians (including diplomats and common people) have been very active proponents of whataboutism to justify their attempt to profit from Ukrainian suffering and their ignorance toward it.

Here is a statement by Indian diplomat Subrahmanyam Jaishankar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tru06ruZvd4

In this is extremely arrogant remark he claims Europeans to not care about other nations out of Europe. Everyone who knows just a little history knows that it is completely false.

Even if we consider just India, European Union is provided humanitarian aid to India in tens of millions euros. In last COVID-19 crisis, it was Europe that shared the vaccine technology with India.

If there is humanitarian crisis in the world, it is mostly Europeans who rush to help first.

The argument of whataboutism is stupid patriotism made palpable for naive people that consider themselves to be "left". Whatever that means these days but they needed it framed differently.

It is completely dishonest, doesn't fit international politics and using it as an argument is indicative of severely lacking self-reflection.

Definition of 'whataboutism': "One law for me, another law for thee"

Indeed, every single time I've ever heard someone scream whataboutism, it's always been in response to someone else correctly calling them out for hypocrisy or a double standard.

While presumably trying to accomplish the opposite, you have written a fine example of whataboutism, that feels to be almost right out of the Russian propaganda playbook. Well done, I guess. Or?

Based on what you have written here, I would seriously recommend you to review the media and social media you are consuming as it hints about serious Russian propaganda influence in there.

Ukrainian invasion is not about occupation, it is not about regime change. It is about destruction of nation. How blind and deaf one has to be to not understand it when even the person solely responsible for this war says it himself???

How???

Do I support US wars? Honestly, no. Especially Iraq war that was started based on the very muddy reasons.

But are these wars even remotely comparable to Russian invasion in Ukraine? No.

Lets go over them in chronological order.

** Afghanistan war 2001 was started because of Taliban regime support and refuge to terrorist group behind attack on Twin Towers that resulted in around 4000 civilian deaths in a single strike (initial numbers were presumed to be even higher but this is the figure I remember to have seen recently).

Has Ukraine done anything that even remotely resembles something like this? No.

** Iraq war 2003 was started because of claim that Iraq is in possession of WMD and is hiding those. These weapons were not found after invasion. These were either successfully moved out of Iraq or were really destroyed as Iraq claimed. Later confessions have revealed that the real reason behind the war was unfinished business with Saddam Hussein in Gulf War where he was not removed from power and where he ruthlessly drowned civilian revolts against him in blood.

Regardless of all this, Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer and ruthless despot known to murder and torture its own people.

Is Ukrainian government even remotely similar to Saddam Hussein? Hell no!

** Military intervention in Libya 2011

In 2011 Libya was already in civil war and NATO intervention was started because of fear of genocide committed by Muammar Gaddafi.

Was this situation by any means similar to Ukraine? No.

** Yemen civil war 2014

This civil war started because of attempted coup but it quickly changed into proxy war between Saudi-Arabia and Iran that is, it is conflict between Sunny and Shia Muslims over control of natural resources. Not providing help to Sunny Muslims would most likely end in genocide against them.

Again, is this situation by any means similar to Ukraine? No.

I am following social media very closely and what you wrote down here are exactly the talking points of Russian propaganda with the same factual mistakes. Lets review one example.

Trump is what I would call a follower of realpolitik but even he was not as cynical as you write here. I recommend you to check what he actually said https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/st...

But what you write gets even worse because it looks like you are protecting Assad regime right to murder 100000s of civilians and creation of one of the largest refugee crises in recent history.

All this could have been prevented by timely US intervention that you appear to be opposing. Missing this even after usage of chemical weapons that was claimed to be the red line by Obama, resulted in giving the opportunity to Putin regime that in the end led to the current war in Ukraine.

Your claim of calling Arestovich a hawk is beyond ridiculous. This is already on the level of victim blaming. Why are you doing this?

Whataboutism is exactly what it is - an attempt to redirect the attention from the flaming problem at hand into endless discussion about something that is not even remotely relevant to the problem at hand. And you have fallen so nicely into this trap.

Now if you would be willing to discuss how the war in Ukraine could have been really avoided, I am ready to explain myself further.

I am even more willing to discuss the reason behind the war in Ukraine if you are interested and prospects to end this war.

Finally I am interested to compare these named conflicts to war in Ukraine in more detail because there for sure are certain similarities that should be discussed and analyzed, especially in hopes to prevent future wars.

Of course we should be preventing wars.

We shouldn’t flood the region with weapons, nearly all of which explode on UKRAINIAN soil and kill UKRAINIAN civilians. Think about that fact. Instead, we should promote diplomacy BEFORE conflicts even begin.

It could have been prevented if USA and Britain supported Minsk I or II instead of undermining it while France and Germany tried to make it happen via the Normandy format summits. They went so far as to help far right nationalists in Ukraine, to prevent it. It is like Netanyahu not supporting Hamas and Fatah making a peace deal in 2014 because then they’d start to be united.

It could have been prevented if NATO welcomed Russia in 2001 into itself. Or decades ago if it didn’t reject USSR’s application to join NATO.

It could have been prevented if some federation like EU could have been established after the fall of the Soviet Union. It is unthinkable that New York would invade New Jersey, but that’s because of the Union. Lincoln fought a far bloodier civil war to preserve the union, and Gorbachev never did. In fact, it is likely that if the USSR stayed intact, it would have been quite liberal by now. Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost were well under way by 1991 when it collapsed, and that was 30 years ago. EU is far stronger and more peaceful as a union, USA also.

Tulsi, Ron Paul, and many others in USA straight out say the war could have been avoided if NATO honestly admitted that it won’t welcome Ukraine, and stop trying to antagonize Russia. But Tulsi is probably correct that the war hawks want this war, because it will bleed Russia dry just as Afghanistan war bled USSR dry. At the cost of a million civilian lives ! Would they have made this choice if the civilians were their own rather than 3000 miles away? Ask yourself that.

Here is Tulsi on Tucker saying it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OF5oPNjMZw4

Here is Kim Iverson on Rising saying it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=11q9dir2Nts

Here is Hillary admitting it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AwpR6ngoSjQ

Hillary has been calling for no-fly zones with Russia in any country she could, since 2013. She hates Putin. She admits this ups the risk tremendously, and Biden calls it “WW3”, but the war hawk mentality is that we must lead everywhere and prevent anyone else from leading:

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/12/hillary-clinto...

Obama had to brag about destroying Russia’s allies, in order to justify his “leadership” to the media. No, literally:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wib6cLJ99yY

With the prevailing cold war exceptionalism mentality like this, that persists to this day in mainstream media and politics of USA and Russia And China, is it a wonder that these smaller countries are all messed up by foreign meddling?

Thank you for taking time to open your understanding of the issue from your current perspective. Let me help you by providing another perspective that is not so US centered.

I do not know if you realize that the failure of Minsk 2 was mainly due to lack of Russia's willingness to remove all the weapons it moved into Ukraine and its lack of willingness to dismantle all the terrorist groups it established there? Are you trying to hide the fact that Russia was the aggressor and was behind all the formed militias there? The fact is, Russia continued to move heavy weapons into Ukraine after signing Minsk 2 agreements. It is clear by now that Russia never had intention to follow Minsk 2 because it would have opened road to fair democratic referendum it would have lost most likely.

You probably do not realize that the idea of Russia joining NATO was not proposed in good faith. In fact it never materialized because Russia did not want to reform its military to meet NATO standards. Of course it was never made seriously and was just another tactical lie to confuse Western leaders. Even more so, how would have Russia being in NATO eliminated Putin's ambitions to annex again territories previously occupied by Soviet Russia? Putin made his desire to do so blatantly clear in 2007 and it is unlikely that this idea did not exists in his mind already before becoming Russia's leader.

It looks like you are quite conveniently forgetting or you are not at all aware of the existence of CIS, exactly the EU like federation you propose here. Gorbachev era was again another NEP, a temporary fallback from hard rule in hopes to survive until former power is restored. There was very specific reason to USSR collapse. It was not a voluntary union. It was de facto Russian occupation. Galsnost made it possible to discuss it openly and everyone realized that they indeed do not want to be in this forced union. CIS was the new USSR built on more equal grounds (minus the Baltic states that felt too violated by Russia because of hard Russification forced upon these countries). Did CIS prevent Russia to attack its members? Of course not. It attacked Georgia in 2008 and it attacked Ukraine in 2014.

So lets discuss the actual reason behind Russia's Ukrainian invasion.

Putin stated in 2007 that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. What did he mean by that when in fact USSR transformed into CIS? There is no question about it that he was bitter about Russia losing its de facto absolute power over its occupied territories and had to deal with them as equal partners.

Since then Putin has in plain sight prepared for the restoration of the former Russian empire. To create the ideological platform for the expansion, he turned to two historical figures. One of them is of course former Soviet leader and mass murderer Joseph Stalin. Another one has unfortunately gained much less attention in West. It is the exiled emigrant of the Russian Empire Ivan Ilyin. Putin went to great lengths to restore the image of this lost Russia's son. He moved his remains back to Russia and consecrated his grave in 2009 and has since then quoted him extensively and has recommended his books to from Duma members to military cadets. But what is there so special about him?

Ivan Ilyin was a philosopher. He was quite liberal thinking and hopeful about the more democratic future of the Russian Empire, but before he managed to finish his thesis and graduate, the World War started. His views started to turn into what we now call Fascist. He adored Mussolini. He worshiped Hitler and went to great lengths to demonstrate that Nazism had its roots in Russia because of shared anti-Semitism. He was of course disappointed when he realized that Hitler's views on Russians are not very favorable to put it mildly.

In Ilyin's view, Russians where the superior race, but most especially Russia's Fascist leader, who should redeem the world. He built the legitimacy of this power on top of Orthodox Christianity. It became clear to him after Hitler attacked Russia, that Russia has been the all suffering nation for 1000 years, in fact he realized that Russia is the Christ of the nations and it has purpose - only Russia, being pure and without sin, can redeem the world, that is conquer it with the help of all powerful Russian Fascist leader. This is actually the idea of Ivan Ilyin and not Putin's, that Ukraine does not exist.

But why revive all these crazy expansionist ideas? Why start to glorify a mass murderer, condemned even in USSR, under whose power the Russia gained greatest influence and territory? It would only increase the bitterness. Unless of course there is a purpose, the goal, the plan.

I'll stop here to give you change to catch up.

If you want to know more about Ivan Ilyin then historian and Holocaust researcher Timothy Snyder wrote fairly good introduction in 2018:

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/16/ivan-ilyin-putins-p...

He wrote again about him after Russian invasion. I think this writing can give better spiritual feeling:

https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-easter-offensive

The war was an acceptable result of some western nations. It was also predictable. Some people try to disown the appeasers of yesterday but those actually could have prevented the situations starkly in contrast to the war hawks that now want to get rid of their responsibility.

Can you describe how in your opinion the war was avoidable?

The voices that predicted wars if NATO is extended were numerous. Even worse, those that ignored these voices and did push through the extension now blame the "appeasers". They should not be listened to in any capacity because they take part of the responsibility here. Maybe the opposition did not believe Putin would take that last step in this escalation and therefore were not adamant enough to oppose such steps. That could have been a mistake.

Maybe also keep interventions within the political structure of Ukraine to a minimum. That would have shown convincing respect for the sovereignty of the country.

I think you are confusing the causation here. There was huge potential of friendly relations between Russia and countries it had occupied perilously or had been in alliance with. Except that Russia maintained hostile rhetoric against these countries but especially against Baltic states who tried to cope with the results of the extensive Russification Russia had forced upon them especially hard during last 10 years of the occupation.

This was this continued hostile rhetoric that pushed Baltic states to join NATO in 2004. Finland, against what Russia had maintained better attitude, and what did not have recent memory of Russian occupation, didn't feel such urge.

No, NATO did not push toward East, it was pulled there, like it was pulled toward Finland and Sweden right now.

Would NATO not extending avoided Russian restored expansionist politics? Of course not, just the order of attacks would have been different. It would have started from Baltic states.

Whataboutism is the noises fair-minded people make when hysteria is whipped up over an average example of a problem that should be addressed far more globally. How can one call out flaming hypocrisy without engaging in “whataboutism”? Answer me that.

Now to your political points.

All your apologetics for US aggression sound just like some Russian’s apologetics for Russian aggression in Chechnya, Georgia, Afghanistan etc. A justification can always be found, however flimsy.

Noam Chomsky says Iraq invasion by USA was far more unprovoked than Ukraine invasion by Russia. I happen to agree. Ukraine has a lot of Anti-Russian leaders (who may very well have good reason to be) and they happily collaborated with NATO and US to keep gradually ripping their population away from Russia’s economy, language, cultural, familial and other ties. 11 million people in Russia have relatives in Ukraine and vice versa! Many people objected. They were attacked, millions in the East were simply disenfranchised completely.

Look, you can hear it in their own words… here is Arestovich in 2019 perfectly predicting “a big war with Russia” in 2022 “with 99.9% certainty” with all the details including the attacks from Belarus, the new referendums etc. He says Ukraine MUST have this war, in order to join NATO. The alternative, he says, is that Ukraine will be too integrated with Russia in 10 years. And that is an outcome he simply cannot bear. So since he became an advisor to Zelensky he is ready to sacrifice Ukrainian civilians in a war (of course he himself is not anywhere near the front lines, neither the other politicians, the age of kings going into battle is over). And he even says it would be really “cool” to come out on the other side and join NATO! And the war with Russia would be the price of entry. And Arestovich is one of many who felt it is better to have a war with many civilians killed, than be “absorbed” by Russia… seems that multiculturalism and free trade with EU and Russia wasn’t in the cards. The right wing (such as Svoboda voters, and many Western Ukrainians) had historical grievances with Russia (eg Holodomor) and would gladly try to rip the rest of Ukraine away from Russia if they could. Enter NATO promises and weapons and training since 2014… and many of the weapons fell into the hands of the militias, who were even against Minsk I and II agreements, so all diplomatic solutions deteriorated thanks to USA and NATO promises and weapons.

Hear it in his OWN words before any invasion:

https://intellinews.com/former-ukrainian-presidential-adviso...

This is like Dick Cheney in 1994 perfectly predicting the horribke outcomes of the Iraq invasion but then later going for it anyway. And profiting from the Halliburton profits, too.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YENbElb5-xY

This is the guy who said we’d be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq. Look, everyone always invokes “genocide” as a justification for invading. Putin did it. USA did it in Libya — back then I fell for it, but later the Pentagon admitted that the claims of Gadaffi bombing his own people from helicopters were unsubstantiated rumors. The overthrow was done, already, and Libya is a failed state for almost a decade. And USA only cared about four statesmen in Benghazi, not millions of Libyans. Just like when it comes to Saudi Arabia, USA govt only cared about Kashoggi and not millions of Yemenites.

Look, USA promised stuff all the time. To Kurds, they promised that they’d get their own country if they helped USA in the Gulf War. Then they abandoned them. Trump did it again recently in Turkey. To Mujahideen, they promised the same thing as Ukrainians, and gave them weapons to fight USSR … ONE MILLION civilians died in that war. How is this any different than Ukraine:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0

Here is Nigel Farage warning the EU and Brussels just like many warned Washington and US:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KqE7UTptgGg

Russia’s red lines were clearly and repeatedly stated for over 10 years: no Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. Now, do I hate Russia’s imperialism? Yes, and China’s and USA’s. USA’s Monroe doctrine is far more expansive than Russia’s. The entire western third of USA is land they took from Mexico. But if, say, China offered Mexico to join a military alliance and house nukes, USA would blow a lid. In fact that’s what happened in Cuba (nevermind that Cuba asked USSR to protect itself after the Bay of Pigs invasion a year earlier… and nevermind that USA did the same thing to USSR earlier in Turkey, which it declassified decades later).

Look, I could say that the pot is calling the kettle black. I could say you have to compare apples to apples. I could quote Jesus about taking the log out of your own eye first. I could use all kinds of expressions people have developed to combat flaming hypocrisy and double standards. But you’d just laugh it off with the word “whataboutism”. There is literally no way to criticize hypocrisy these days once the self righteous momentum gets going. The “trap” you think I fell into, Jesus was fond of using. “You hypocrites!”

If find that this comment of your is an excellent example of the reason why whataboutism does not have any merit.

It does not advocate for world peace. It does not advocate for the protection and rights of the victim. Instead it advocates for the rights and interests of the aggressor.

Please study your comment carefully to understand how.

But your comment is even worse because it lowers to the victim blaming.

Before there is any change to even have any meaningful conversation you have to agree on the following.

Russia is the aggressor. It has no rights over Ukraine or over its decisions about its alliances. Ukraine is acting in its best interests how it sees possible given its own situation and international (geopolitical) realities.

If you can't come to agree with this, it is pointless to advance the discussion any further because you are then not participating in it in good faith.

Still, I would like to address something to what you have referred already twice under this post. The interview with Arestovich in 2019.

Your conclusion is very peculiar. Instead of commending his wisdom, you use it as a solid proof that shows how Ukraine is accomplice in this invasion. Is this your original idea or you have picked it up from somewhere? Think hard.

People who understand Russia knew that it is not question of if but when. Arestovich predicts that it will happen soon and he, having for sure thought about all the possibilities, proposes also how it will take place.

Let me help you to put it into perspective that is perhaps a little more relatable.

Imagine you are living in a country where rule of law is not very strong. You have a daughter who is engaged. On one evening two local thugs appear at your doorstep. One of them demands to "borrow" your daughter for one night. You manage to send them away but you know the following. They will come back. It will happen before your daughter gets married. One of them will probably break in from the front door while another one tries to enter from one window in the back of the house.

I would like to continue this discussion but you have to understand your fallacies first.

You have to understand your fallacies, namely hypocrisy and double standards for what you focus on or advocate. It’s bad enough you do it in your own thinking, but expecting others to be swayed by, say, guilt-tripping them based on total hypocrisy, should not work with rational or fair-minded people. It’s like a guy who’s been beating kids up and then one time he’s punched and he implores everyone to see the injustice and says they’re terrible people if they support it.

However, that analogy is unfair, because YOU didn’t invade Iraq. And this is the core of many of your disagreements with libertarians like me. The other fallacy you commit is a category error of conflating individuals, countries and their governments, when applying moral reasoning, which I go into below.

Allow me to illustrate it with direct questions, that I expect you to actually answwr. Is there any point at which you’d readily admit funneling MORE weapons into Ukraine is harmful to its civilians, since they all explode in Ukraine and according to the UN investigations they are the #1 source of civilian casualties? In Afghanistan, one MILLION civilian casualties was the price for USSR withdrawing, as US and Saudi fought “to the last Afghan”. Ask yourself whether you’d just as readily support a million of YOUR countrymen and families being killed for a flag. Do a time lapse on youtube of European flags and see how quickly they change — is it moral to volunteer other people’s families to die for a political outcome you yourself arent willing to have your family killed for?

Whataboutism isn’t a fallacy. To see this, answer my direct question: how can one point out hypocrisy and flaming double standards, no matter how serious, without engaging in “whataboutism”?

You are also wrong that I don’t advocate for more peace and cooperation. I have been screaming from the rooftops what needs to happen, for years. I even wrote some of it in a sibling comment. The difference is that I advocate solutions consistently and everywhere. And not just hypocritical one sided solutions.

The victims here are the Ukrainian people. When I criticize politicians for not doing their job (of preventing pandemics or wars) you only think I am engaging in victim blaminng because you have a very widespread “statist” mentality. You identify Zelensky’s government and Arestovich with Ukrainian civilians. You identify Putin with Russia. And so on.

You speak of countries as if they are people, when in fact they are composed of many PEOPLE, who think very differently, and who are pushed around by coercive forces and bullied into what to think, what to say and who to fight.

But the reality is that the Ukrainian civilians do not want this war and were not ready for it as much as Arestovich was, just as US Americans were not as ready for the pandemic-related market crash as members of Congress (greatest traders ever, amirite?) And the US public did not want to invade Iraq and the Russian public did not want to invade Ukraine, but the mass media and social media gradually radicalized them just as democrats vs republicans do here. The politicians could have allowed trade with BOTH Russia and EU, implemented something like Minsk II, NATI members could have heard Russia’s red lines and security concerns and taken them seriously, Zelensky’s government could have met with the separatists and taken them seriously, Erdogan could have met with the PKK instead of threatening to invade Syria as he does now. The CCP could take the concerns of Tibetans or Falun Dafa or Hong Kong residents seriously, etc.

The reason these normal statements that most regular people agree with, are considered unrealistic and laughable, is EXACTLY because politicians and imperialists are given a free pass when they escalate to wars where civilians pay the price. It is like crypto investors shrugging when they get rekt in rugpulls. This is the 21st century and we can do better. But we won’t as long as they have us at each other’s throats, talking past each other and engaging in total hypocrisy rather than asking our own government and industry to do better.

I have advocated actual solutions for years… go back on https://magarshak.com/blog and read since 2014 when I was writing about Gaza and Ukraine.

But I don’t just write about it. I build the solutions, which are by the people and not just for the people: https://intercoin.org/overview.pdf

I have put more effort and invested more of my work life than most people in solving these problems bottom-up instead of trying to “change the system” by being a single voice in a top-down statist environment everyone is used to . So you could not be more wrong that “it does not advocate for world peace”.

The sooner you understand that we have to hold the system and politicians to account instead of blaming individuals for not recycling or getting obese or engaging in whataboutism, the sooner YOU can make real change. Like Steve Jobs and Mark Z and many other tech pioneers and CEOs have done. They do more to improve the world and communication than any politicians do. But even more good is done by founders of open source projects, like Linus Torvalds with Linux, Igor Sysoev with NGinX, the teams behind MySQL and Postgres and Jimmy Wales founding Wikipedia etc.

I don’t care if I become a celebrity, I care about getting real solutions adopted and building tech that lets people on the ground organize positive things to collaborate instead of being held captive by a system of statist politicians and media.

Just admit that you hate America and by proxy you hate Ukrainians.

You are not a libertarian. So is not your idol Chomsky.

You are just an uninformed person who does not have any idea of the actual situation.

You have absolutely no idea against what Ukrainians must stand. If you paid just a little bit of attention, you would advocate for sending more weapons and training such that Ukrainians could push Russian invasion out of Ukraine completely such that civilian suffering could end and would not lead to complete genocide.

Maxim Katz has made nice video (he includes English subtitles in case you actually do not speak Russian). I linked to the most important part of it for you. Watch this, this section is only about 3 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaRUepc-7VQ&t=443s

Now again, should Ukraine surrender to Russia?

If you were libertarian, you would not advocate surrender to the most dangerous Fascist regimes of current time.

But for some reason you do. Do you have an explanation for this?

Again you have chosen the victim blaming with your Afghanistan example and somehow again favorable toward Russia. Somehow Russian military pretense that happened after they assassinated last elected Afghanistan president it is not a problem. Somehow Russian Army (lets be honest here, decorating it with words like Soviet does not make it less what it is, Russian army) killing civilians is not a problem. The problem is resistance to the killing. Somehow again everybody must surrender to Russia.

I think you are indeed fairly consistent: US bad, Russia good, just like Chomsky.

This is also the core idea of whataboutism: US bad, Russia good. Always, no mater what. It is not: US bad, Russia bad, no.

I do not think that you have right to make decisions for the Ukrainian people. You are not the one. You do not know what they want. I admit that, I actually do not know what they really want. Perhaps they all want to die so it would be already over. Who knows?

What you are instead doing is assuming that what people want is the opposite to Zelensky and Arestovych. Somehow people are tricked by them. Does it sound familiar? Does it sound exactly what Russia is claiming? I think it does.

Why do you think Zelensky or Arestovych wanted war? It looks to me that for you preparations for the inevitable is wanting it. If you prepare for war, it must mean that you want it. Si vis pacem, para bellum has no meaning to you, I guess. The truth is, this war would be already long time over had Ukraine not prepared for the war. But it had.

It must be incredibly inconvenient for the Russia supporters.

Why did Ukraine just not lose? The war would be over, Russia would have just killed not much more than few 100k and not deported more than few 1000k, but the life would have gone on, the business would have gone on. With Russia of course, because Ukraine does not exist, it is a fake country.

I don't hate USA. I love the USA. It has some of the greatest freedoms of speech of any country. When you love your family, and it goes out and kills some people, you don't cricitize them, right? That would be unpatriotic and traitorous? That mentality is just like many Russians have. I don't care that it's my country, I will speak for humanity and the truth. Will you?

Look, you will have to have more intellectual discipline / integrity and engage with people. I asked you specifically two questions, and you ignore them. Can you please answer them? Should I repost them?

How about just one: how can one point out complete hypocrisy and double standards in frantic calls to action, without using "whataboutism"?

> I think you are indeed fairly consistent: US bad, Russia good, just like Chomsky.

No, my position is that USA, Russia and China are all empires, they're bad in some things and good in others. (Wow, shocking.) This is a rather reasonable position, and it only sounds to you like "US bad, Russia good" because your starting point is to barely notice any crimes by USA and its allies, and only by Russia. So literally any information that comes out of the real world will seem like it's written by a Russian bot. It is the "whataboutism" you fear.

Chomsky probably has a similar position on condemning Russia, but spends most of his time criticizing USA because of the "Chomsky Principle". I actually criticized him for this in our latest interview. And I got him to condemn the Russian invasion which he likened to Hitler's and Stalin's invasion of Poland. Is that good enough for you?

When it comes to Ukraine and USA, I pushed him as well in the most recent interview I have done with him last week: https://vimeo.com/713049567/07f9561d88

I disagree with Chomsky in other areas. I've had a debate with him on my show for example about how influence is a form of capital that he benefits from and he is part of the celebrity culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc

> This is also the core idea of whataboutism: US bad, Russia good. Always, no mater what. It is not: US bad, Russia bad, no.

That's a total straw man. If someone said this, then whataboutism would quickly slap them down and ask what about Russia leveling Grozny to the ground and killing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people, or leveling Homs and Aleppo to the ground. That is a whole other level of destruction. And Russia is responsible. Russia BAD, get it? But notice that in all those instances, you didn't even bother to comment too much about it, let alone call for complete ostracism of Russia from the world economy, politics, culture, etc. What Russia did in Chechnya is far bigger destruction and could literally be called a "genocide" of Chechens. But why didn't you post much about Syrians and Chechens? Let me tell you the uncomfortable truth: they are not White Europeans. So therefore their lives matter to you as much as Yemenites or Afghanis.

Yes what about Yemenites, Chechens and Afghanis? Isn't it interesting that Russia was BAD and far WORSE back then, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and the Afghan war a million people died, but somehow Russia wasn't banned from everything?

So you see, whataboutism can even help you care about the other people that Russia attacked. So no, Russia not good. Russia bad. And China bad. And USA bad. But also good in other things. But you aren't getting the point. To you, anything deviating from complete and utter agreement with "USA good, Russia bad" is to be shut down and walked away from.

No, I do not do victim blaming of Afghanistan. You again commit the same fallacy. I condemn Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. The question is, what can we do to prevent a million civilians from dying in senseless extended wars? Your answer is "never mind that, Russia bad! Let's send them weapons so they can keep fighting, oh those poor civilians, what was the name of their city again?"

> Why do you think Zelensky or Arestovych wanted war?

I don't think Zelensky did, I think Arestovych did. Why? Because he flat out says that's what he wants -- so that Ukraine won't get "absorbed" into Russia. He doesn't quite spell out this false dichotomy or what would be so bad about this "absorbing", he doesn't stop to think maybe he's wrong before torpedoing a diplomatic process ... because the civilians who will be dying in the war won't be him personally or his folks. That's what I'm talking about, politicians can sit in their comfortable chairs and order armies to kill each other, while civilians sit under bombs. Did you ever see Good Will Hunting rant to the NSA? Watch it.

https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/75617/

In the peace process, one guy sent in the delegation by Zelensky was simply killed by Ukrainian SBU, on "suspicion of being a traitor". I am more informed than you think! When this war just broke out, I asked for an intro and spoke to David Arakhamia on Facebook and urged him to be serious and creative in the peace talks in Belarus. In case you don't know, Arakhamia became the most famous negotiator (the guy in the hat, who always said he wears the hat because he "doesn't respect" the peace process). You can see Ukrainians begging on his wall to make a peace deal. He paid lip service to it, but when it came to it, they met for 2 hours and bounced. Several times. And the civilians pay the price.

Just like you are happy to send weapons of which nearly 100% will explode on Ukrainian soil and kill UKRAINIAN CIVILIANS. The people that I care about. The civilians. (not just in Ukraine but everywhere). And the people you claim to care about. Is there any number of civilians at which you'd draw the line and say ... maybe it's better to do diplomacy instead of pouring more weapons into the region?

If you won't listen to me, listen to Interpol: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/ukraine-weapon...

Or listen to human rights organizations for years: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2018-07-09/ty-article/ri...

But all you're doing is parroting propaganda that says, Ukraine's politicians are amazing, Azov are just patriots, USA is just a concerned bystander, and anything half the world population says that you don't like must be because they got a check from the Kremlin. Wow, those guys must be so rich, paying off half the world...

Your example is again made in bad faith.

If you want honest comparison, then you would always criticize your own family but never the neighbors family, even when they do exactly the same things, you find a way to show your family in bad light but neighbors family in good light.

This is what you (and Chomsky) do. This is what is nature of whataboutism.

These are the real double standards.

> This is what you (and Chomsky) do.

No, I criticize the worst actors more and less bad actors less. Russia China and USA are all rather bad and create a lot of misery outside their empire, and they sometimes do it to jostle for control.

However, I agree Chomsky appears to do it and I criticize him for it. I believe that we should criticize the WORST ACTORS FIRST, and solve the worst problems first, and then move on down the line. Chomsky believes one should criticize one's OWN country first, because that is where one has the biggest influence. I disagree, and asked him, how much did all his criticizing change USA? It invaded Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and destroyed many people's lives, just in the last 20 years.

I mean, you don't have to guess, I am on video (I linked you!) arguing with Chomsky about this very point!

Once again, to be clear: I criticize families regardless of whether they are mine or theirs. If anything, I feel MORE loyalty to my family, and my criticism is out of love. You know, with kid gloves. I think it would be absolutely fair for USA to face sanctions from the world community to stop its invasion of Iraq, just as Russia faces to stop its invasion of Ukraine. But, you and I obviously give more of a pass to USA than to Russia. What's funny and ironic, is that even with this pass, you somehow think I am biased towards Russia and hate USA.

Listen, Russia talks for years about its red lines next door, tries diplomacy, and then invades. Yes that's bad. USA would invade for far less, e.g. Bay of Pigs invasion. Meanwhile, USA employed chemical weapons and carpet bombed south Asian countries that never presented any threat to it, bombed more than any country in history ever. The USA's justification for doing so is just as messed up as the Russians: it is to "fight Communists over there". Laos presented a threat to USA? Please. It goes halfway around the world 3000 miles to bomb shit in Wild Weasel operations before their soldiers ever come in. It did so in Iraq, in Libya. And you don't even question it. I repeat: the LARGEST humanitarian crises in the world are in Yemen and Ethiopia, RIGHT NOW. And if I bring it up, all you can think is "whatboutism".

I mean, seriously, I told you Russia did FAR WORSE in Chechnya, and recently in Syria. Compare footage of Homs and Aleppo. They are truly wiped off the map. Destroyed. The cities are not standing. In Ukraine, every city is standing. The citizens are back. You can see footage of them today. Every city. Russia's army is capable of a lot more destruction than it does, and so is Ukraine's army. Do you understand, the UN official figures of civilians dead is 4000? This is the only warn in recent history where a country killed less civilians than its own troops got killed. Show me a single other army where this happened. Obviously both armies are holding back... BUT THE SHRAPNEL FROM CROSSFIRE IS WHAT KILLS CIVILIANS. And far more people can die from famines, if we don't stop this.

My concerns are people's lives, civilians, famines. Yours are what flag will fly over a city, and you treat "Ukraine" as a person. You talk like this: "Russia has no right. Ukraine feels this way or that way." The reason I say I'm a libertarian is because I think about individual people and families first. I don't think of "the interests of Ukraine" as much as the people, who have diverse lives and opinions.

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Israel? I have discussed with rabid anti-Zionist people who focus on Israel in every issue first, despite it being 22nd in terms of actual bad actors. And they call any sort of argument "whataboutism" also. When you pick the bad actor country first and navel gaze at it for all bad issues while ignoring the problem everywhere else, you're biased against it.

I refer you to these two comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31602479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31603138

Criticizing does not help. It does not matter if you criticize the worst, or the second worst or the third worst actor.

Helping helps. The first important step in this is figuring out what will help. I explained it in the linked comments, so I will not repeat it here.

The way Chomsky addresses the issue makes him look dishonest and this removes all his credibility.

His failure to recognize genocide Serbians committed on Balkan is very repulsive for me. Also seeing him dance around Ukrainian question does create similar associations in me.

I will address Russia and Israel in other comment.

Btw. if you have access to Chomsky, I would recommend you to stress this to him if he cares about his legacy.

Putin said one of his primary motivations for the invasion for the genocide of Russians in Donbass. Well, what we do know is that Ukraine kept firing rockets into that region, and those people were completely disenfranchised. I don’t think it was a genocide. I also do not think it is a genocide what Russia is doing in Ukraine now. If it was a genocide, then why did less civilians die than Russian soldiers? If Russia wanted to simply kill and exterminate Ukrainian civilians for being Ukrainian — which is what real genocide is about, such as Armenian genocide and especially the Holocaust - then obviously they would go about it very differently.

Everyone claims genocide in order to justify military action. To justify our invasion of Libya, we claimed there was a genocide there. In that case I can excuse the UN for thinking so, the security council unanimously authorized the intervention and it was rather international, which is why I blame Obama and USA far less for invading Libya. We all were under the impression at the time that genocide was taking place. But anyway, as you can clearly see, such an intervention created a failed state, which is rules by warlords and gangs now. The international community needs to have more cooperation and prevention of wars, its current methods are like bloodletting and leeches were for health interventions until we wised up and got scientific !

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/23/gaddafi-libya-...

The word genocide and concentration camps has been co-opted and cheapened to the point where Ocasio Cortez used it to refer to migrants held in detention on the border. Yes those are basically internment camps but not full blown concentration camps.

I will definitely press Chomsky on the Balkans next time we speak because it is one of the examples of NATO aggression, bombing civilians for regime change. The difference between that, with Ukraine war (as well as with Russo-Georgian war for instance) is that those wars ended quickly, otherwise MORE civilians would have died.

You go on and on about how “capitulation by Ukraine” is the only possible alternative and it’s going to lead to more Russian aggression. But that is plainly ridiculous fearmongering. Georgia is better off, Serbia is better off, than if they had continued to fight for a decade like Afghanistan. In fact, Zelensky already agreed on the main demands, including non membership in NATO, before Boris Johnson visit. If Ukrainian negotiators — whom I spoke to personally — took the negotiations seriously and spent more than 2 hours a day discussing one topic and ignoring others, we could have stopped the war by now.

You should listen to my vimeo video to see what Chomsky says about genocide in Balkans. I will press him on the timeline further. But I would like to ask you… what was so bad about Minsk II agreements? Why couldn’t Ukraine and Russia simply agree instead of both sides insisting “you go first, no you go first”. Don’t you see it is the incompetence of the politicians that causes the civilians to pay a heavy price, while the politicians sit in their safe spots and give interviews and make $$$… or even escape abroad. Same with Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas for example. You have to wake up and see that it is less about Country A vs Country B and more about the system screwing over the civilians.

All this could also be avoided tomorrow if the people (Catalonians, Kurds, Basques, Donbass, Crimeans) could hold referendums regularly that the international community would agree to oversee and respect. Demographics change over time and regions like Kosovo should be choosing the country to serve them, not the other way around.

You are so deep in the Russian propaganda ass, that it is pathetic. You are about to relearn a lot about your perception of the reality. Let me prepare it for you.

This comment was mainly motivated by this comment of yours

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31607305

I gave it now complete answer.

I see that the same topic is covered by you here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31607305

I will give multiple answers over the course of the day there.

I will just mention here that Putin can claim what ever he wants. It does not make it true. All this "8 years in Donbas" is a huge fabrication of reality by Russian propaganda.

Russian invasion in Donbas deliberately created a failed state ruled by warlords and gangs. It was no accident. The economy of the whole occupied region has been destroyed.

The main reason of reduced civilian casualties has been many fold in my opinion. First is timely evacuation before Russian forces had reached the populated areas. Around 14 million people fled their homes. Where this was not successful there were huge numbers of civilian casualties like in Mariupol where the estimated death toll is over 20000 people. Destruction of lives in Mariupol has been deliberate to set it as an example result of not surrendering. The actual number is also really unknown. Over 1000 of dead have been discovered in the liberated Kyiv region where many people were evacuated before Russian forces and where occupation was very short lived. Russian forces have not managed to take, or even reach large centers yet. Ukrainian air defense has been effective against bombing attempts and Russian capacity to use long range missiles is limited.

Most importantly, we also do not know what is really happening on occupied territories. Bucha massacre was only revealed after Russian forces were pushed out in hurry.

You are here mixing up many things like they are somehow comparable. You can't compare Serbia, where attacking civilians was not deliberate, or Georgia where fighting did not reach larger centers and was stopped because of international pressure, to Ukraine.

In fact mentioning NATO operation in Kosovo war here in any capacity demonstrates your complete lack of integrity. NATO campaign did not target civilians. In contrary only in Mariupol 600 people died in a single deliberate strike against clearly marked civilian shelter. This is 100 more people killed deliberately in a single strike than after full campaign in Kosovo war by accident (including Albanians used as human shield by Serbian forces).

Objective of the Kosovo war was to prevent Serbian (confirmed) planned genocide against Kosovo Albanians. Serbians committed deliberate planned genocide against other nations on Balkan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_Plan

It is sickening that there are people who call themselves libertarians and who deny this genocide.

Objective of the war in Ukraine, as has been clearly stated on numerous occasions, is genocide against Ukrainians. There are already numerous people who could be arrested based on the international law for committing incitement to genocide if they happen to travel out of Russia.

Minsk II, at least on paper, is restoring pre 2014 invasion situation and having a democratic referendum about the status of the region. I don't see why Ukraine should be against it and in my opinion Ukraine has made all the steps possible from its side to reach this situation. The agreement is very clear about pulling out all the Russian forces from the territory and about disarming other illegal armed groups. Ukraine can't do it. It can't pull out Russian forces, it was also not in any capacity to disarm the illegal armed groups with heavy weapons. Claiming otherwise and accusing Ukraine in any wrongdoing is extremely dishonest. No democratic referendum is possible if Donbas is still occupied by Russian forces and controlled by terrorist groups.

This conflict was beneficial for Russia. So it continued. I do not know why are you so eagerly supporting Russia's imperialist ambitions.

There is war in Ukraine because Putin thinks that it belongs to Russia. It is simple as that. How is it so hard to process for self claimed libertarians when this is what Putin himself clearly claims.

If you are so eager to give something to Russia, why not give Alaska? Why not give Sunny Isles Beach to Russia? Don't want to?

What if Ukrainians also don't want to give their land to Russia?

Israel, anti-Zionists, are these people who think that Jews don't have the right for a state or people who think that they do not have right for Israel?

Well, they are there and I think they do not have any plan to go somewhere else. I think they have made it pretty clear by now.

The solution to end the conflict between people who call themselves Palestinians and Israelis comes down to the question: is there something that would make Palestinians satisfied in long term and is there somebody who can give it to them?

It comes down to this question because it looks to me that Israelis themselves are happy with the current situation, so they do not need anything.

While you claim to be objective, somehow you end up blaming US and protecting Russia and also blaming Ukraine.

I proposed a reasonable starting point for the discussion:

Yet you refuse it. Why?

Would you be able to say the same thing about USA:

"USA is the aggressor. It has no rights over Laos / North Korea / Iran / Iraq / Libya / Afghanistan / Syria and its decisions about its alliances. Those countries are acting in the best interests how it seems possible given their own situation and international (geopolitical) realities."

Why should North Korea or Iran trust the United States?

Why should Taiwan trust China?

This problem isn't unique to Russia but we do nothing about it. Only in Russia case we dial it up to an 11, everywhere else it barely makes headlines, instead we talk about Johnny Depp and Will Smith slapping someone.

It's like if dozens of Black people were being killed every day in the USA, but we only cared about one specific Black person, gave him golden caskets, and made entire parades and even riots destroying Black neighborhoods, in his name. It's not that he deserved it more than the other Black people whose names we don't even know. It's that George Floyd was killed by police on camera, at a time when people were angry at police for lockdowns and protesting was the only way to let loose and go outside in a crowd. It's about the aggressor being the police, not George Floyd being somehow better than all the other Black people who are killed every day. This is the same phenomenon...

It's like if 150 people were killed in Paris and the whole world lit up in French colors, but no one cared about the same size attack in Beirut by ISIS same day: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/middleeast/beirut-l...

It's like how right now Yemen and Ethiopea have MILLIONS of people in a crisis and we are only talking about Ukraine. It's because the topic is set by our governments and media, and the goal is to isolate Russia and starve it of resources. (But it turns out not to be so easy, because the East and half the world doesn't want to go along with it).

And you can see this because Hillary called for a no-fly zone and closing the sky over Syria... before any Russian invasions or aggressions in Ukraine. USA isn't doing it for love of Ukrainians, the war hawks want to use ANY country to get Russia involved in a quagmire like ViatNam, Afghanistan or Iraq, to weaken it and use it as a reason to totally isolate it from the world. And Russia fell for it. Yes Russian leaders were that stupid, they couldn't match USA's cunning and couldn't get Minsk II done. They are far more inept strategically than USA.

And this is again the essence of whataboutism and demonstration of its uselessness and harm.

See, I tried to explain how it is reasonable to handle the question about Ukraine, but you, instead of interacting with the issue, flooded the medium with complete unrelated nonsense.

You just flooded the medium with noise mostly.

I think Ukrainians made a very correct observation about Chomsky

https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2022/05/19/open-letter-to-noam-ch...

"While you admittedly call the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “war crime,” it appears to us that you cannot do so without naming in the same breath all of the past atrocities committed by the U.S. abroad (e.g., in Iraq or Afghanistan) and, ultimately, spending most of your time discussing the latter."

See also the example I made here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31602479

Worse, the two issues you like to stress here constantly (Yemen, Ethiopia) are completely different in nature and have very different solutions as was explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31603138 based on Yemen example.

In fact, there is (for now) clear and straightforward solution to end the war in Ukraine but Yemen and Ethiopia are lacking such solution, so these 2 are even completely irrelevant to the problem at hand.

There is also another notable observation.

Whataboutism and victim blaming do go hand in hand with you.

Again you are blaming Ukraine that it invited, or even conned Russia to attack.

If Russia had any interest to follow Minsk agreements, it would have done so. Instead it did the opposite. It sent more heavy weapons and did not disarm and disband terrorist groups it had established in Donbas.

Russia alone cannot implement Minsk agreements, it is for Ukraine to do so. Why is it worse than a huge war, to give your own citizens a way to vote, and promise not to bomb them? Explain to me that. Ukraine correctly stopped beating up the Euronaidan protests with Berkut, they should have sat down with the separatists too.

You keep missing the point. Allow me to illustrate it this way:

No one is perfect. Neither people nor countries have perfect records when they are faced with challenges.

Expecting perfection is unreasonable. Let’s say that this is the 15th century Europe and baths and showers are rare. Coming to a person and saying “You stink! I can’t be around you.” is hypocritical if you yourself stink and everyone around you stinks. If stinking a certain amount is the norm for that level of civilization, then you have to take that into account when trying to address issues.

If someone comes along and says to you, “look, you and your friends have not taken any showers recently either, and smelled even worse last year… this person had very good reason preventing him from taking a shower” what would be your reply? If it is the following…

“That’s what aboutism! You are victim blaming! The complete and utter responsibility is on this person for stinking! Their stench is foul! Yes, perhaps somewhere, some other people did the same (huge understatement). But let’s focus on only this one case and take EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES to exclude THIS person from society.”

“But when you and your friends did it, no one excluded you even a little bit…”

“Well, mistakes were made back then, but we are wayyy cleaner than this person obviously. And besides, you are trying to distract from this one issue… we ALL have to band together teach this guy a lesson, if you are still talking to this person then you’rs a traitor and part of the problem and J must now shun you too”.

This argument has numerous logical problems:

1. It sets one standard for the “target” to be “punished” after having had a completely different standard the entire time for oneself and one’s allies

2. It makes no promise to now use this new standard consistently going forward, no guarantee that the one calling for massive penalties will not continue to do that very thing or worse

3. It ignores far worse situations that are happening AT THE SAME TIME and were happening for years leading up to it, and doesn’t propose to do anything about them

4. It actively takes away support from real solutions that could prevent such situations from happening, within the current framework (diplomacy, eg Minsk agreements or deodorant/cologne for stinking)

5. It puts roadblocks in the way of improving the system, eg creating more mechanisms in International Law for peaceful self determination via voting to join a diff country, or requiring countries to give citizenship to native born children at least 2 generations in, etc.

Again I ask, how can one point these problems out without engaging in “whataboutism”? Or we have to simply accept any hypocritical hysterical bullying or be told “we are part of the problem”, “on the wrong side of history” and deplatformed?

You have to compare apples to apples. If all apples are a bit rotten, but you only focus on ONE apple rather than the problem of why apples rot, and not even the MOST rotten apples, then you are just hijacking the issue to attack one “enemy apple” you dislike. You are part of the “real problem”.

I see that the same topic is covered by you here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31607305

I will give multiple answers over the course of the day there.

Ok, I had more time to focus on this comment that I thought to be about something else.

Honestly, this comment is pointless. See again the example here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31602479

that you have not addressed.

Let me iterate it one more time. Whataboutism does not help. It only distracts.

If you care about Yemen, if you care about Ethiopia (I actually care but I do not have any idea how to stop it) then propose solutions that would end the conflict. I'm eager to read about these.

Don't fuck up (sorry) solutions to other conflicts that can be realistically implemented. It does not help.

Talk about your conflicts, propose solutions, but don't fuck up solutions to other conflicts because you think that your conflicts do not receive enough attention.

Ukrainian invasion is European war, so Europeans care, especially Eastern Europeans. This conflict has at the moment only military solution as all the other solutions have failed so far. How many times have European leaders called Putin? What is the result? During Georgian war it had effect. Not anymore. It is ideological war, it does not have any rational purpose. It only ends when either Ukraine surrenders or somebody or something convinces Putin to stop.

What it could be in your opinion? Ukraine not joining NATO? Sorry, it was not going to because of ongoing conflict anyway. And Putin knows this.

But lets assume that Putin agrees to stop hostilities for land. Lets be generous and give him all the Donbas and all the land currently occupied by Russia. What does stop him from starting the war again when he has recovered and regrouped? If you think Russia respects agreements then you really do not know Russia. You do not know Russian mentality. Many people do. Listen to them.

The current solution is to exhaust Russia's warring capacity so it literally could not make continued war in the future. The more modern heavy weapons Ukraine receives, less are there civil casualties because Ukraine can eliminate Russian forces from safer distance. This is literally the only thing at the moment that helps to save lives. Everything else is just wishful thinking and procrastination.

Regarding Arestovich: he didn’t just predict it. He openly advocated and implemented politically and militarily aggressive actions (while opposing the Minsk/Normandy diplomatic process or endfranchisement of millions of pro Russians) leading to a “big war with 99.9% certainty” as he himself admitted.

Arestovich justified this by unilaterally insisting on a false dichotomy and emphatically ruling out what he called “gradually being absorbed by Russia in 10 years” (while being totally OK being “absorbed by EU” and many countries are “absorbed by USA” are somehow considered lucky by people like him). He figures that, since he is a genius at figuring out HOW the Russians will attack, he also knows better than millions of his countrymen that “being absorbed by Russia” is far worse than “a big war” (in which neither he himself nor most politicians won’t be on the front lines). And he is willing to make the decision for them. Whether or not he is “objectively” right, this is just evidence of the arrogance and motivations of the politicians and that this war wasn’t “totally unprovoked”.

He and people like him got into a position of power - advising or exerting influence on the President and the entire government - and their ACTIONS led away from diplomacy and towards war — which you can clearly see he welcomed. I gave this as a clear example of the mentality that we must disenfranchise and deplatform all pro Russian voices same way Uncle Toms, Nazi sympathizers and White Supremacists get marginalized… and then rip the 11 million people and their families gradually away from Russian language, politics, economics and so on. Ukraine had pro West people, pro Russian people and those who wanted total independence from empires. The second one of those was to be gradually eliminated after Yanukovich and Opposition Bloc destroyed. That’s millions of voters.

Many imperialists in the USA and Britain were only too happy to “lure Ukraine away” like a guy who has an affair with a man’s wife. While giving them weapons to pummel the pro Russians with, they made sure to bury any chance of Minsk II being implemented. France and Germany tried to create opportunities for dialogue to finally implement Minsk II with the Normandy format but show me one place where US and Britain did anything other than try to pull Ukraine AWAY from the negotiating table with Russia. That’s what empires do, but USA does it 3000 miles away which is unusual in the last 100 years. It’s like the entire world is the USA’s colonial protectorate.

I see that you are not willing to conduct a honest discussion.

Only thing I wonder about is how is it possible that the rhetoric and vocabulary you are using is too damn similar to Russian trolls.

I recommend you to meditate about it if you consider yourself an American.

You are a prime example that shows that whataboutism is exactly what it is thought to be.

I asked you two direct questions, asked you to answer them, and you ignored them both times. Then you say that I am not willing to conduct an honest discussion.

Please see the sibling comment below, and answer my two questions. I can assure you (and you can verify by my entire posting history) that I am interested ONLY in good-faith honest discussions.

> Only thing I wonder about is how is it possible that the rhetoric and vocabulary you are using is too damn similar to Russian trolls.

Actually, it is similar to Noam Chomsky and other antiwar intellectuals who have been decrying imperialism for decades.

Do Russian trolls condemn Russia's invasion? Because I do. I simply put it in context, that it's one of many invasions and occupations by empires like USA and China. They all resulted in a lot of misery. But the solution is to prevent them from happening, and to push all politicians towards diplomacy. We must fix the system instead of hysterically talking about one example, not even the largest one at the current moment, of a country attacking another country and killing civilians, while ignoring all others.

So now for the whataboutism. Just for context, in Ukraine, the UN figures say 4 thousand civilians died. In Yemen and Ethiopia, the figure is far higher, and for years no one in the White, Christian liberal west seems to know or can even name who is involved:

https://www.rescue.org/article/crisis-yemen-protracted-confl...

https://www.refugeesinternational.org/stop-tigray-famine

Do YOU care? Have you donated to the refugees even 1% of what you donated to weapons for Ukraine? Have you picked a side that's 100% wrong and will be sponsoring weapons for the other? Don't worry, USA has done that for you and has been sending weapons to Saudis for years:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/09/02/yemen-coalition-bus-bomb...

Prolonging the war in Ukraine is irresponsible also because it can lead to widespread famine. One third of the food in Yemen comes from Ukraine, for instance. MILLIONS of people around the world have to pay for these armies to "have their fun", obviously I blame Putin for it but not ONLY Putin, while you blame ONLY Putin and have no plan for stopping the war, instead supporting the position that "we must keep fighting as long as it takes, so Putin slinks back in total defeat". Meanwhile you're perpetuating a situation causing millions of these people in much larger conflict zones to starve. Not that you said much about them this entire time (I know, I know, whataboutism).

Regarding the war in Ukraine, I don't know about "Russian trolls" but if I started listing countries whose media and people feel similarly to me about USA and NATO's involvement, it might end up being over half the world. You just don't care about that part of the world. China, India, Pakistan are still doing business with Russia and resisting NATO pressure. The middle east, Saudis don't pick up the phone on Biden, and started selling oil for Chinese currency. Even Israel and Palestinians both refrained from criticizing Russia too much. Much of South America (who still harbor resentment to USA), including large countries like Brazil, refuse to take sides, and even some eastern European countries and Hungary's government are hesitant.

Of course, unlike you, I am not quick to identify the population with the country's government, for that we need polls (see below).

> I recommend you to meditate about it if you consider yourself an American.

Yes! USA has one of the best protections for freedom of speech anywhere in the world. It is quintessentially American to be able to speak your mind.

I may ask well ask you how come your rhetoric and vocabulary are so damn similar to US war hawks? Are you on John Bolton's and Hillary's payroll?

Does being an American mean totally closing your eyes to what the rest of the world thinks: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/05/us-threat-demo...

I mean even the word "American" is so chauvinistic, United States isn't all of north and south America, large countries like Canada Mexico and Brazil are also "American".

> You are a prime example that shows that whataboutism is exactly what it is thought to be.

Good, because it's supposed to call out total hypocrisy and double standards. Were you willing to agree that US athletes should be banned from sporting events, and crippling sanctions would be put on the USA to stop the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan, the destruction of Libya, or this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Invasions_by_the_Unit...

or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Can we kick Saudi Arabia off the human rights council finally? Or China? They imprisoned huge numbers of Uyghurs, Falun Dafa and so on, in re-education camps. Some even allege that they mine them for organs. The same problem exists: we don't have enough video evidence from inside. And the UN will do nothing because it's an "internal matter", just as it is in Tibet, Hong Kong and soon in Taiwan. I say the international system needs to do a lot of work to prevent human rights violations. You say... Russian man bad.

I also asked you something but you refused to consider it.

I wonder if you also deny genocide Serbians committed, like Chomsky? I'm just curious.

I think that very likely Chomsky is nothing more than a Russian shill, and considering how in harmony all of it resonates, I would give it high likelihood to be correct.

It was also discussed here, perhaps you missed it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31457200

Did input from Chomsky help somehow or was the opposite true that it muddied the discussion and made reaching the solution actually much harder?

This is why I started with comparison. To show that you can't just ask randomly: but what about? First most situations are not comparable and second, it really does not help.

Even though you appear to be blind to humane examples, I will try again with one.

Imagine you are in a foreign city, you have no money, you do knot know anybody, you have hunger. So you ask a person for help, you explain your situation and this person asks, but what about children in Africa?

You see, whataboutism did not help you and it did not also help children in Africa. That is the whole point of whataboutism - direct the attention away from the actual problem that needs direct immediate action.

So lets take one another example. There is Russian invasion in Ukraine, Russia is committing war crimes on large scale and it is most likely preparing for wide scale genocide. Ukraine needs immediate international assistance to counter the invasion, it needs humanitarian aid, financial aid and military aid and strong diplomatic support.

Now instead of actually reacting to this real need, to actually end the invasion, you ask, but what about Yemen?

Like asking about children in Africa, how does it help?

It certainly does not help Ukraine and it for sure does not help Yemen.

Because nobody cares about Yemen and now there is high likelihood that they do not also care about Ukraine anymore.

The person who asked from hungry you about children in Africa did not want to help them, he just wanted to distract you to go away.

I will write in sibling comment about Ukraine and Yemen in more detail.

Yemen and Ukraine.

Sending humanitarian aid to Yemen does not help, actually it has very high probability to prolong the struggle.

Sending immediately military aid to Ukraine has high probability to end the conflict and avoid larger humanitarian catastrophe.

It took me some time to figure out between who is the conflict in Yemen, and why, though involvement of Saudi-Arabia and Iran was a big give away. So it is indeed between Sunny and Shia Muslims. They all appear to be Arabs in large part, so it indeed is just difference in minor details of faith. But why? It appears that it is over control of natural resources. Both sides want to have full control and leave other side nothing. In fact it is just continuation of the previous Yemen civil war.

The war was started by Shia Muslims. The conflict is 8 year old by now and it appears to be in some sort of stalemate.

I have no idea if the diplomatic solution is possible at the moment. As it is civil war, neither side has in principle more right to win.

Should we fear consequences of one side losing? I don't know, is there risk of ethnic cleansing that could follow?

Should we fear consequences of one side winning? Perhaps. If Shias win, it would mean that they copy the same conflict elsewhere, for example in Iraq. I don't know.

Most important part here in comparison with Ukraine is that these conflicts are not comparable and solutions to these conflicts will be completely different.

One is civil war and another is full scale foreign invasion with the goal to end statehood of the victim.

It is also very clear that if Ukraine would win, the conflict will be over. There would be no large scale humanitarian crisis because neighboring countries would manage to provide enough help to avoid it. There will be probably some amount of repressions against the losing side but these would be reasonable and in accordance to accepted civil practices.

It is also very clear that if Russia would win, the conflict will just start because of very high likelihood of continuous insurgency. It is also clear that there would be large scale humanitarian crisis because Russia has already stated that it will use humanitarian aid as a way to punish Ukrainians for the resistance, it is also clear that there will be large wave of repressions resulting in end of life and end of freedom on large scale.

It is also very clear that if Russia wins, it would repeat the conflict elsewhere. Most likely against NATO country.

Based on the current information, Ukraine winning is highly favorable.

Current practice has also surely demonstrated that there is at the moment no possible diplomatic solution because Russia is not accepting any except total surrender that is again not acceptable by Ukraine and is also not favorable for the overall situation.

In conclusion, conflicts in Ukraine and Yemen are very different in origin and in possible solution. Comparing these two is meaningless and does not in any way help to find resolution to either one.

Just one remark. Russia threatening the world with nuclear weapons and famine is another very strong reason in favor of Ukrainian win. It is in fact one of the main reasons. Nuclear weapons and famine should be not become de facto tools of war like Russia is currently using them.

I'm not sure if you and Chomsky, as I understand, are willing to give in to such threats out of cowardice or stupidity.

Another main reason is that genocide is not acceptable. Russia is already committing genocide in Ukraine but it is clear that when it wins, the extent of the genocide will be multiple orders of magnitude larger.

“Both sides want to have full control and leave other side nothing. In fact it is just continuation of the previous Yemen civil war.”

Now you found the root of the problem in Ukraine too.

Instead of Shia and Sunni, we have three groups: Pro-Russian, Pro-Western and Ukrainian Independence.

And each group wants the other to have nothing.

Yanukovich nixed a simple association agreement with EU, which Nigel Farage warned about. That was because Russia and Pro-Russian forces forced (heavily influenced) him to do it. Which he openly admitted. Had he not done that, there would be no Euromaidan, and whoever wanted to be closer with EU could be closer to EU. Both pro western and pro russian sides could do their thing.

Instead he unleashed Berkut on the protestors and eventually got outsted in yet another revolution and coup (starting with Arab Spring a lot of those happened, but in Ukraine it’s like the norm, just pick a color and year).

And then the Pro Western mobs and Prob Russian mobs clashed. Pro Western mob burned people alive in Odessa which shocked the pro Russians (Party of Regions, later Opposition block). And yes the Pro western included a lot of hard line right wing nationalists a— eg Svoboda got 10% of the vote in 2012, and in the 90s a party literally named Socialist Nationalist Party had serious support, Yarosh and Right Sector were just one among many, the latest incarnation at the time, Azov Battallion and other battallions which formed openly admitted that 20% held basically “nazi beliefs”. (I could go on.) Bh it pro Russian also included hard supporters of USSR, which surely was viewed badly by Western Ukrainians whose ancestors faced holodomor at the hands of Stalin.

But to me the internal beliefs and rhetoric isn’t the main issue… Taliban and Hamas are Islamist etc. The main issue is what happens next. Do the white supremacists allow blacks to do their thing and only talk? Or do they use violence?

Well, we know what happened. They got control back in Kharkiv but anywhere with a land bridge to Russia the separatists got Russian support, just like the Pro West guys got NATO support. It became a proxy war between Russia and NATO. And we all know that leads to years of fighting as weapons and fighers pour in from both sides. Relations get worse and worse. Remember that 11 million people — quarter of Ukraine’s population — have relatives in the other country, the language and culture is extremely similar AND YET these mechanisms caused such a rift that they hate each other… these mechanisms of escalation and deescalation are the very thing we need to study. And we can’t do it if you decry whataboutism. Whataboutism is exactly what repeatability in science is all about.

Now the Pro Russian voters are disenfranchised from the country, pro Russian media and parties is banned, any opposition parties are banned too. The US and NATO backed governments in Ukraine have been indeed systematically embracing the Pro Western militias (even the neo nazi ones) while ripping their population away from Russian economy, language, culture etc. The USA and Britain would have long ago invaded “to protect its interests” as it did in Guatemala (for United Fruit Company), or sponsored a revolution as it did in Iran (for British Petroleum). And Russia did the latter. It is no different than what USA did in Nicaragua and around the world. It could have been stopped and resolved by the international community and diplomacy. France and Germany almost did it but USA and Britain blocked it.

It is these universally repeating mechanisms and patterns that we have to study and how to prevent them from causing problems. That is what science and engineering systematically does and why our technology eliminated so many problems that used to plague it. But in Politics, this isnt done because we tend to focus on simplistiv explanations in only one particular case (racism, sexism, russia bad, white supremacists bad, and yes even fascists bad etc.) without sitting down and cooperating. And the word to prevent and shut down any sort of systematic analysis of patterns across the entire data set, to discuss solutions, is “whataboutism”. You do it here!

So lets try to sort this out a little. First and very important matter to understand is that by 2014, Russia had completely weaponized its media. To understand the power and extent of it, I will refer to earlier usage of this weapon that has been extensively studied - 2007 Estonian riots.

Events revolved around a statue. You probably knew this but lets take a moment to appreciate the absurdity of this.

Estonian capital had a bronze statue of a Red Army soldier in the middle of the city that was used as gathering ground for hard core Russia supporters around 9th May every year. The company was usually not large but because they consumed strong alcohol, it was noisy and disorderly and because many of them also waved red Soviet flags, it also attracted attention of Estonians who perceived this as demonstration of Russian supremacy and insult on their suffering because of the Russian occupation. Russian narrative of these gatherings was commemoration of the fallen soldiers who liberated Estonia. This did not help to bring two communities closer. When existence of the actual remains under the statue was confirmed, Estonian government decided to follow the Russian narrative and move the statue out of the city center to the cemetery and also rebury the remains there properly. If local Russians learned about this, small crowd, perhaps few dozen, game to protest against this relocation. This was the starting point to from where the weaponized Russian media kicked in.

The peaceful relocation of the statue to the cemetery and reburial of the remains was reframed as plan to destroy the statue and the remains. Then this was used as backdrop to the narrative that it is all done as an attack against Russians, their memory and all the things Russian. Suddenly this became the main focal point of all the Russia, like it was the most important thing in the world. It was constantly hammered in the media for weeks, members of the Russian parliament gave their opinions and the narrative was getting more and more hostile by every day and more and more detached from the reality. Of course it was framed as expression of Nazism. It was complete mass hysteria. And it worked. Estonian Russians, who were mostly under influence of the Russian media, bought this false narrative and gathered to protest in thousands.

The protests were violent, rocks were thrown at the police, which of course was not displayed in the Russian media, there it was a peaceful protest, but the situation was still mostly orderly and under police control. Until a complete hoax was used to spark disorderly riots that ended in city wide destruction of the private property. The statue was photoshopped out of the image, cut off from the legs, and it was then distributed in Russian media as proof that it had been destroyed. The footage of the police operation, that followed, was then displayed in the Russian media to portray it as Estonian government violent attack on the Russian population. More hoaxes were created like the claim that police officers murdered a Russian man on the street.

In the end the riots were dispersed with great effort, the statue was moved to the cemetery as planned, it was not destroyed of course and the remains were properly reburied.

In conclusion, Russian propaganda can create a complete fabrication of the reality and then use it as a weapon.

Another very important aspect to understand is how Russia has weaponized falsified historical narratives. Claim that Estonian government attempts to rewrite the history was also very prominent Russian propaganda claim during the 2007 riots.

Russia's most important historical narrative revolves around the victory in WW2 against Nazi Germany.

In fact WW2 does not exists in Russia. Everything starts in 1941 with the attack of Nazi Germany against USSR. How the Red Army was in Poland and why it was in the attack position is not discussed. To be honest, contradictions on the level of schizophrenia are rather rule than an exception in the Russian narrative.

For example there is claim that Hitler betrayed Stalin. But you can only betray your friend or allay, yet Stalin and Hitler were never friends or allies. The existence of MRP is either not discussed or is downplayed as "just" a non-aggression agreement. Its additional protocols where the spheres of influences were agreed on is denied, especially the division of Poland and attack against it in alliance is denied most fiercely.

Immediate repressions on the occupied territories are naturally denied too. The fact that almost all the military and in large part also police officers were murdered in Baltic states and in Poland, is denied. Deportations of large part of the population, including women and children, into labor camps is also denied. There are two notable things I would like to point out. First one is that the men were mostly directed into labor camps especially designed to kill prisoners through forced work and malnutrition. The second one is that also large proportion of the Jews were arrested, murdered or deported. For example 200000 Polish Jews were deported into Gulag labor camps. This was also the reason why not all the Jews on the Russian occupied territories did evacuate before the German advance and fell prey of Nazis.

The horrors continued when Russians returned after Germans left.

These horrors are then presented as glorious liberation what of course is not an acceptable narrative to the survivors of the horrors but are not understandable to the brainwashed masses who do not have any understanding of the human suffering it caused.

Every nation between the Germany and Russia has its own specific story but none of them is favorable toward Russians, except the Serbian story.

The worst part is training of the Russian population to react strongly to the trigger words. Have you watched the movie Inglourious Basterds? I could not make myself to watch it because of the level of dehumanization it creates. Yet Russian population has been trained to react to the Nazi keyword with strong hate. Keep this in mind when you see another Russian spokesperson to call somebody a Nazi.

Russian narrative about Ukraine has one additional important detail. In this narrative Ukrainian People's Republic never existed. In Russian narrative the history of Ukraine starts with the Russian puppet state - Ukrainian SSR, yet like every nation under the previous rule of Russian or Austrian empires managed to create their own nation state after WW1, so did Ukrainians. Yet the existence of this democratic state and its destruction by Russia is denied.

Why is it so important? Because Crimea and large parts of then Ukrainian populated areas of current Russia belonged to this state.

Next falsified historical narrative is Russia constantly being under attack for 1000 years yet constantly growing from small principality to vast empire over two continents. In this narrative Russia must constantly protect itself and is constantly suffering. This is basis for the Russian Christ of the nation concept that has been developed into perfection by Ivan Ilyin and is the main basis for the current Russian expansionist and imperialist ideology. Being attacked by Nazis and then expanding by protecting itself fits perfectly into this narrative.

This leads to the Russian minority narrative. Nation that has large numerical dominance is considered somehow repressed by the nation that is ten to hundred times smaller in numbers on its own territory. It is not the Russians who have forcefully moved in large numbers into occupied territory that are the oppressors, it is the other way around.

Like I mentioned, schizophrenic understandings are rather rule than an exception.

There are of course more such false narratives but these mentioned form the basis of the Russian imperialist narrative that current regime has weaponized.

So talking about Russian minority in Ukraine, or Russian majority areas in Ukraine, this has to be seriously taken into account.

Ukrainian SSR was formed on basis of Ukrainian majority on its territories but still many territories with the Ukrainian majority like Kuban were left out. How was it then possible that Russians gained majority in many Eastern Ukrainian areas?

There are three answers to this: Holodomor, deportations and Russification. Killing large part of Ukrainian population by man made famine, deporting native Ukrainian population into other territory and populating the territory with large number of Russians. Genocide and ethnocide, two imperialist tools of Russia over centuries.

Therefore when somebody talks about oppression of Russian minority in Ukraine then this person is directly advancing Russia's imperialist policies.

If somebody claims that this area has Russian majority in Ukraine then this person is again is directly advancing Russia's imperialist policies.

If you are against imperialism then you will not do that.

If you are against imperialism then you would try to advance policies that will try to heal results of previous imperialist actions.

If you are against imperialism then you do not support any Russia's action against Ukraine.

If you can't do that then you are not against imperialism, you are perhaps against US, but not against imperialism.

We can almost address the situation in 2014, but before doing that, one more aspect should be discussed.

It is alliances of the nations in the reach of Russia with other nations in attempt to counter Russia's negative influence (occupation, genocide, ethnocide).

In recent history, Estonia and Latvia managed to gain their independence after WW1 in large part with the help of Britain because its interests to restore Royalists power in Russia aligned with independence war of Baltic nations against Bolsheviks. Ukraine was able to gain its independence with the help of Germany in the end of WW1. This can also explain why Baltic nations hoped that alliance with Britain could help them against Russia and why Ukrainians hoped to restore free Ukraine with the help of Germans. None of this played out but it could have if the circumstances would have been a little different.

This means that nations who consider Russia as threat are naturally looking for international players who could counter Russia's influence. Today it is European Union, NATO and US. Therefore talking about US imperialism in context of Ukraine and calling Ukraine a pawn, is malicious (borderline racist) and also idiotic.

Taking all the previous into account, it is important to distinguish between Ukrainians (either Ukrainian or Russian speaking) and Russians (ethnic Russians moved into Ukraine as part of the Russification plan).

Before 2014 Svoboda was only political power what was openly critical toward Russia. It is clear based on the elections that took place after 2012 that it was the only motivation why people voted for it. Later when they did not have such monopoly, they became irrelevant. It is not possible to deduce anything based on 2012 election results.

Without knowing what these "basically Nazi beliefs" are it is not possible to conclude anything either and that 20% is very clear minority. Azov Battalion was a multicultural battalion, it had Russian speaking majority and it consisted Christians, Jewish and Slavic paganism followers.

It is also very important to observe that Russia had already invaded Crimea in February 2014.

Before 2nd May, both Maidan and anti-Maidan supporters had coordinated their protest to avoid clashes and violence.

This changed on 2nd May when anti-Maidan militia attacked pro unity march. Vitaliy Budko opened fire from his 5.45 mm calibre Kalashnikov and killed a man. It was clear that wide scale violence was their plan from the beginning. Fighting broke loose in the city. Outnumbered, anti-Maidan militia retreated. When Vitaliy Budko returned to the Kulikovo Field, he offered anti-Maidan supporters to leave but they instead decided to barricade into Union building. Maiden protesters were not interested to attack the building but destroy the camp in front of the building. Nobody wanted to burn people alive. It was an accident, mainly caused by the people in the building who had created a complete fire hazard inside the stairhall.

If you want to have an objective idea of what really happened, I recommend you to read

An Eyewitness Account of Events in Odessa on 2 May 2014 By Sergey Dibrov A Special Investigative Report for Radio Liberty

But it does not matter what really happened, as you correctly have identified, it was the turning point because now Russian media weapon kicked in with full force.

As in 2007, completely fabricated representation of the reality was produced. There were of course no Russians attacking peaceful march, there were no fight in front of the Union building, it was just peaceful Russians surrounded in the building and burned alive by Ukrainian Nazis (please recall what I said about Nazis). Complete fabrication of the reality. This was then constantly hammered down in Russian media. There were other numerous hoaxes like crucifixion of a Russian boy, hanging in the forest and so on. All these hoaxes were used to rally Russians from Russia into Donbas because Ukrainians did not want to fight. The narrative that was used was again the familiar one - Russia is under attack and it must be protected by attacking another country to protect it against Nazis.

The war in Donbas was not a civil war, it was a Russian invasion using hybrid war tactics.

If we remove Russia from the conflict, it will end.

Russia is the "root problem".

Lets see if you are really against imperialism or you just hate US.

You believing that I equate state with people is wrong. I don't see point in further explanation, just take this into consideration.

I have tried to argue with people from India about Russian invasion and guess what, it all ends in whataboutism. As far I understand the situation based on observation, Indians hold grudges very long (why did US support Pakistan in the war that happened 50 years ago?) and I know that Russian media propaganda is very strong in India. It is complicated diplomatic issue.

I don't have contacts in Pakistan and China, so I could not comment on this one, but it looks to me that both countries are slightly balanced in favor of Ukraine, that is, if they did not favor Ukraine, they would be more supportive to Russia.

Hungarian president is very clearly in Putin pocket based on his statements. There are two factors: he is known to be incredibly corrupt (according to Hungarians) and there is Hungarian minority question in Ukraine. But he is clearly an outlier in EU.

Brazil has agreed to provided ammunition to Ukraine - shells for German Gepards. This shows that they are not very strongly aligned with Russia. I do not know what is the current status of the deal.

It was explained to me that Biden pretty much ruined in very short time what Trump had accomplished in Middle-East because this is Democrat party policy to favor Iran over Saudi-Arabia even when it is stubborn stupid, so exactly this is what he did - attempted to make Iran sell gas and oil to Europe. He managed to make bad situation worse unfortunately.

Israel support to Ukraine has grown stronger after Russia's complete diplomatic fiasco. It may get very bad if Russia somehow mistreats captured Azov Jewish fighters.

One thing is sure, Russian capability to affect public opinion in foreign countries should not be underestimated. It may appear that it completely lost its edge in Western countries but other countries are pretty much wide open and helpless against Russian propaganda because the population does not have internal detection mechanisms like Western countries have.

The main issue is that large part of the world, including Western countries, do not realize the extent of the problem the world is facing.

If Russia manages to win then globally

Using nuclear weapons (or threat of) as offensive weapon becomes possibility Using famine (or threat of) as offensive weapon becomes possibility Committing wide scale genocide becomes norm Support to Fascist regimes and movements will grow stronger Risk of local conflicts started by Russia will grow larger Risk of local conflicts started by aggressive local actor (with or without foreign support) will grow larger China's hostile ambitions against other countries will grow stronger

In addition risk of actual nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia will rise.

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