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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

It's curious how the "true narrative" people fight with such a passion for so frequently coincides with the dominant war narrative currently pushed by the imperial power center they live under.

That is, until 10 years later when they have a new narrative about a different military rival. They quietly stop pushing the old narrative and everyone quietly admits the old one was kinda bullshit all along.

E.g. my views didnt change one iota since 2003 but these views at some point magically stopped conferring a "Saddam sympathizer" moniker from people who demanded unthinking ideological commitment.

It works the same way with people who live under and unthinkingly consume Russian imperialist propaganda too. The more passionate ones make routine demands for ideological purity similar to the one above.

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What annoys me is that war is war. Of course there’s an aggressor and defender that’s how war works. A bunch of people die. War happens because there is no peaceful answer to, “who is right”. There is no global true narrative. Does it really matter which side is justified? No. The side that wins writes history. But that doesn’t stop a bunch of people so far removed from the war it will never affect them even one tiny bit from burning cycles arguing about which narrative is the nice “true” one. Likely so they can feel good and comfy and morally superior when they close their eyes at night.

How would you characterize the conflict?

Proxy war between two rival imperial power centers dueling for influence over a strategic chunk of land and sea.

so "war with Russia" becomes "US proxy war with Russia over Ukraine" - fair enough

From earlier:

  That is, until 10 years later when they have a new narrative about a different military rival. They quietly stop pushing the old narrative and everyone quietly admits the old one was kinda bullshit all along. /---/ It works the same way with people who live under and unthinkingly consume Russian imperialist propaganda too.

It certainly does. The Russian war against Ukraine began with unmarked soldiers, nicknamed "little green men," and Russia denying any involvement, claiming instead that Ukraine was in the midst of a civil war. When the latest Russian weapons appeared in Ukraine, Russia claimed that tourists must've bought them from military surplus stores.

Then we went through a lot of bullshit - that Ukrainian nationalists were committing genocide in Donbas, or that Ukraine was secretly developing nuclear and biological weapons.

Now, 10 years later, the narrative has shifted to how this has always been a major confrontation with the USA and NATO, a "proxy war". No doubt, it will shift many more times. Looking forward to when the current "supreme commander" Putin will be regarded as a failure, much like Gorbachev, and blamed for causing the difficult 2030s.

It began with a false flag terrorist attack on civilians in Maidan square which was used to usurp a democratically elected president who was extremely popular in the east and south.

Nobody has ever been jailed for this terrorist attack and all the evidence points to Ukrainian fascists being culpable, including:

* The Berkut who were there being tried and the trial falling through because all of them were too obviously very far away from the protestor-controlled hotel where the snipers nest was set up.

* A Ukrainian war hero who had no reason to lie who was there telling people who was responsible (before being thrown in jail).

* A group of the snipers (mercenaries who were there who never got paid) went public.

It was as much a proxy war back then, it was just fought under the surface with NGO agitators instead of weapons deliveries.

Has there ever been a terrorist attack that was not a "false flag" according to internet loonies? :D

The fact that you have to make something like this up within the first ten words of your narrative really shows just how detached from reality it is.

I wonder what narratives will dominate after the war, when reality sets in: hundreds of thousands dead and never returning home; several times as many disabled, many of them severely; the might and pride of the Russian military sunk or blown up; returned soldiers running massive criminal rings like in the 1990s; state budget empty from massive military spending, leaving people to survive on their own as safety nets crumble. Some conspiracy story about snipers 10+ years ago in another country doesn't really cut it, and getting beaten in an imagined confrontation with the "collective West" sounds really pathetic too, especially when the other side didn't even step into the boxing ring. The USAF hasn't flown a single sortie against Russia, yet strategic bombers are already burning on airfields like in the opening hours of Operation Barbarossa.

>Has there ever been a terrorist attack that was not a "false flag" according to internet loonies? :D

Reichstag fire. All the nutter conspiracy theorists think Hitler did it. Obviously you know better.

>The fact that you have to make something like this up

Evidence doesnt mean much to some people. They will follow the narrative of their leaders whether it is dictated via Moscow blabbing about biolabs or Washington that they allied with freedom loving democrats in Ukraine rather than Nazi goons.

Excellent example. In case you're not aware (as the snark suggests), the broad consensus among historians since the 1960s holds that the Reichstag was indeed not set on fire by the Nazis.

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