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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

It's weird that so many Germans are sympathetic to Russia given that they were subjugated by Russia for decades.

Can someone please explain what's going on here? What am I culturally missing?

We don’t know what country he was spying for, but we do know it’s not Russia. From the very short article: > The case does not involve Russia, according to information obtained by Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Ah, sorry I was thinking of 2023.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyeedd6kzdko

> A German military officer has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for spying for Russia.

Even "allies" spy on each other. The US has been caught, several times, spying on allies, and Israel spies on everyone.

And that's probably why Israel is allied with everyone. They have such good spies, they have endless blackmail material for politicians.

For instance, it's suspected that Epstein worked for Israel to acquire blackmail material. We know Epstein recorded everything that happened on that island, and not secretly.

Israel doesn’t really have any allies other than the United States, and even that is a one-sided relationship.

They are adversarial to everyone, but everyone who wants to maintain friendly relations with the U.S. is obliged to play nicely with Israel.

Most of Europe and especially Germany; and Oceania; and half the gulf states. And that's just the places I know of, because the news about them is in English.

It's in the 3rd paragraph:

The Spiegel news magazine reported late on Tuesday that investigators were pursuing a possible connection to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan and Russia signed a Declaration on Allied Interaction on 22 February 2022 when Russia escalated.

From what I see here it’s a mixture of anti-Americanism, „Ostslgie“ (the longing for the good old times of the DDR, a feeling often inherited from parents) and a crap ton of Russian propaganda that floods social media.

Combine this with a step economic decline and voila you got the perfect conditions for autocratic sympathies

The Eastern Germans remember the old days fondly (you know, before "the West destroyed their industry" and whatnot) while the Western Germany had a national policy of "not provoking Russia" and "accepting its sphere of influence" for basically all of it's existence.

From personal experience I would also say that Germans and Russians are alike in quite a few ways - both are pretty chauvinist societies looking down at other nations, and both have very low empathy. Obviously, there are big cultural differences as well.

Some part of the population was subject to 60 years of continuous propaganda. That's three generations. You might say people should be able to see beyond that, but the ones influencing them were professionals too.

Similar to why there's a significant fraction of pro-mainland China people in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Reasons include people who benefitted from the Soviet Union, often due to business and trade. Analogy would be Foxconn, a Taiwanese company which is dependent on manufacturing in China.

Nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses/rosy retrospection, Ostalgie in German.

Families that were ethnically from Russia, moved during the Soviet Union times and still have ties to Russia.

The former East Germany is way more pro-Russian than the former West Germany, showing the effects of these factors.

I would not say it's many but certainly there are some. I found it surprising that in recent sabotage or spy cases in Germany there were often Ukrainian or Latvian accomplices to the Russians. But then again it's obvious that not all Ukrainians have the same opinion about the war.

> It's weird that so many Germans are sympathetic to Russia given that they were subjugated by Russia for decades.

Do you think that Germany might have done something right before this "subjugation"?

Maybe 25-40 million things?

If the Holocaust were that "successful", Israel wouldn't exist today. Perhaps you're confusing with Mao.

you do know that jews were not the only targets of the nazi killing machine?

If you're including all other targets, still nowhere near 25 million. 11-17 million.

The figure that is usually talked about for the eastern front is 27 million deaths for the Soviet Union.

Are you only counting civilians killed directly by the Nazis? The Soviets alone lost 9+ million military dead. Millions of civilians died of starvation not part of any specific extermination program.

Are you sympathetic to MBS when you buy oil from Saudi Arabia?

There are obviously people throughout the western world (including East Germany) who are sympathizers of Russia well beyond just buying energy from them. Pretty sure GP is referring to those people.

The are practically no sympathizers in the sense that they want to revive the Warsaw Pact. There are:

1) People who want to trade.

2) People who appreciate Russia's undeniable cultural achievements.

3) Organizations like the LaRouche Schiller institute that are most likely CIA fronts, double agents or both.

That is moving the goal posts quiet far. Being sympathetic to Russia does not require someone to want the Warsaw pact resurrected

Yes yes Vlad you are so right

There are just people who like Russian ballet and then the CIA. So long as you do not wish to recreate the Warsaw Pact, then you are not a sympathizer but just a Very Normal German

Thank you Vlad for your contribution

For the edification of the Ukrainian online hall monitor, here is the Washington Post on the value of the LaRouche network:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/01/15/s...

For the rest: Stop interfering with EU politics and free speech. I hope Ukraine never joins the EU, just as I hope Russia never does.

Your provided evidence of LaRouche being a CIA front is an article in which the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency orders the DIA to stop interacting with them for fear of them being a Russian front?

> Graham recalled that LaRouche associates came up with what he called good intelligence about the situation in Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere. Graham said that in the mid-1970s, he and DIA colleagues concluded that some of the information was so sensitive that they suspected the LaRouche group was getting some of it from the Soviets or another government. Graham added that he couldn't prove the contention

Hmm... what's more likely: Russian sympathizing group with connections to Russia and advocating Russian positions and disseminating intelligence of likely-Russian origin is... Russia-aligned?

No no, it must be CIA-aligned because umm... they gave info to the CIA. There are no conceivable reasons that a truly Russia-sympathizing group would want to give the CIA information, right? Lmfao

> Russia's undeniable cultural achievements.

You mean war, genocide, destruction and misery?

I don't buy oil from Saudi Arabia. I buy gasoline from a local gas station. It doesn't say where the oil came from.

> Can someone please explain what's going on here?

Putin got'em addicted to cheap Russian gas and paid up anti nuclear NGOs who also got cash from big oil.

Also Berlin still has some Russian minority since the GDR. That includes anti Putin Russian diaspora or people that just needed a break from paranoia and brespredel.

There's a certain subset of every population that just wants to be dominated. Some of these people don't have the courage to ask their romantic partner or a professional, so they try to realize their kink through political means.

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