UKRAINE

I can understand a need to be a contrarian and believe it rhetorically useful in some cases, but here I see a thread which, if it wasn’t designed to turn into Russia-bashing, is now safely that. And this, as I think has been noted, doesn’t really help Ukraine or even affect Russia: it’s just that, a group of people bashing a country, its people and its cultural experiences while never having lived there or studied it. I keep checking in here from time to time to see if anything beyond that would materialise; and whilst I have no issue with the OP, it’s very interesting how the focus is shifting to horrible evil Russia from Ukraine.

Also most (if not all) soldiers in all of the world’s wars commit crimes. This is an unfortunate reality of warfare and what it does to the human psyche. I remember you didn’t react kindly to my posting about Russian soldiers being tortured by Ukrainians. Whoever is in the wrong, that’s still a war crime on my planet?

And there you are, my friend, in a rhetorical quagmire. The above is about as good a piece of evidence that “tolerance” is really a myth as any. As with the Will Smith/any recent free speech drama, you don’t know why “another person” might be hurt. For all I know, maybe the mysterious and nefarious “Russian trolls” are hurt by your random anti-Russian quips. That’s where your freedom of speech ends, I guess?

Of course Russians are totally and utterly brainwashed. And no, they are obviously not winning the war.

I have studied it, yes. At postgraduate level (not that I think that makes it objective). Not in Russia, obviously, so we get that out of the way. As for the latter, well, many a less incendiary thread have been closed for less. I’m never for shutting down discussion, but there’s no discussion here really.

There is you/some others spurting out truth claims about Russia because most people won’t contradict you/get involved. I mean, it might be easier to change the subject of the thread to “**** Russia!” and what more can be said?

Yes, okay, and every single nation on Earth engaged in a war has done the same thing. And please, by all means, call me “a Russian troll” (I never quite discovered what they are, but alas), but this isn’t a form of deflection, or whatever you call it, this is factually true. Every nation on Earth that’s been at war has committed war crimes. War is not ethical business. So for me to say to you that Russia in that way is in no way remarkable isn’t “trolling”.

My grandmother was Polish. She had to hide in a well during the war for weeks on end, no light, no water. Once she got out and until the day she died, she had a phobia of Germans, even when she lived in London and walked through Marylebone, she would flinch away from German speech. Your reference to your grandmother is a problem less because it’s ad hominem but mainly because it is inherently emotional and impossible to approach analytically.

Everyone’s personal experience shapes their perception and attitudes, and to use that in all seriousness to claim “Russians are evil”/“worse than Germans” is darkly comical. I have a Ukrainian housekeeper who once insulted me suggesting it’s high time I have kids as “time’s running out” (I was in my early twenties). I guess I should say all Ukrainians are tactless ****s who can’t mind their own business.

“Evil” is not a word that can be quantified. There’s a whole discipline called “ponerology” that studies evil. “Evil” is a way of othering something. But anyway, the fact that you actually in all seriousness refer to Russians, or any nationality, as “evil” makes me feel very little hope about this exchange.

You seem to be under the impression that I am denying Russian war crimes - no. Again, your broader point being what? “Russians are evil?” What are you, you personally, trying to achieve here? What is your objective? I sure as hell hope that isn’t regime change in Russia, as that means you really don’t even care about understanding the country you’re enjoying bashing so much. Seeing as Russians could never under the circumstances “take to the streets”, or whatever other idiotic term there is, and even so, given there is ample sociological research proving that “protest”/“taking to the streets” doesn’t work/accomplishes nothing (below):

https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...t-work/360264/

And again, I am in no way denying that Russians are murdering civilians/etc etc (although to me, honestly, as someone who partly works in public affairs/politics, it seems like a tiny drop in the ocean given what goes on in the world…. Oops, I guess I’m a Russian troll again). I actually tried to convert a denier last night and I agree, it’s tough. So yes, to get that out of the way, Russia is committing war crimes. I’m trying to grasp, I guess, what people expect “outrage” such as that in this thread to do about it. If anyone explains, in a neutral fashion, I’d be very interested.

What you don’t seem to be willing to grasp is that every nation on Earth that has been at war has committed war crimes of some sort. This isn’t anything special. We are paying attention to Ukraine because the victims are white, this isn’t because of anyone’s “trolling”, but because people tend to care more about those who look like them.

https://www.newswise.com/articles/ne...ieve-we-should

I mean, sure, Ukraine has “a huge moral advantage”, whatever that means, so do the Uyghurs in China and the Copts in Egypt. Did having a moral advantage ever help anyone? Even the Jews with a moral advantage during the Holocaust weren’t let into most countries until very late in the day.

What you also don’t seem to be willing to grasp is that online threads or even in-person church meets where people go round in a circle discussing how “evil” Russians are is just about the most counter-productive thing one could possibly come up with during an armed conflict. “Widespread condemnation” has never truly stopped anyone save for corporate entities like McDonald’s from doing anything. “Widespread condemnation” isn’t an action, it’s a non-event, it’s nothing.

Speaking of reading on Russian history or whatnot, do you know about the prophesy of Fátima and the consecration of Russia? Have a read about that. Russia has already been consecrated twice, so what, what has that done? Same here with the “widespread condemnation” and Russia-bashing threads.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consecration_of_Russia

This thread is by now nothing of use except random Russia-bashing. Y’all enjoy yourselves carrying on with that.

(I totally understand if I should be banned, whatever).

I work in litigation and I’m not a fan of victim impact statements, I think they’re manipulative. Also I never said (this keeps coming up in so many discussions) that my thinking/any thinking is absolute and should be applied indiscriminately to different types of cases. But to attempt to answer your question, I don’t think a rape victim’s mother should give evidence in court to determine how long the rapist’ sentence should be, because yes, her response is rooted in feelings, not evidence or legal practice.

If the rape victim said, “I bet he’s never had consensual sex in his life and raped all his exes because he’s EVIL”, then yes, duh, I would strike that from the record. Equally, if we’re trying to examine the allegations to see whether or not it was consensual, then I would say we should try looking at some kind of video evidence, not just the victim’s words. We certainly can’t rely on the emotional response of the side that’s “morally in the right”. I’m sure you’ve seen 12 Angry Men (one of my favourite films). That explores exactly that type of conundrum and shows that personal involvement/emotional responses, even if uncontrollable, are detrimental to the legal process and its objectivity.

Sure they do. It’s just that they carry exactly as much weight as those of the so-called “Russian trolls”, seeing as they are equally ideologically coloured.

If a country invades another country and kills civilians, it deserves to be bashed.

What do you mean by that? Could you rephrase?

This is a cop-out. If you kill several people, you are then persecuted for your crime. And saying "But... but... Ed Gein killed many people, too!" won't help you a bit. The thing is, nobody will persecute Russian war criminals. If anything, they will get medals for fighting Ukrainian "Nazis".

There is no need for sarcasm. From my experience, Russians always take it as a personal offense any time you say anything non-positive about Russia. You should not be hurt when somebody says your country did or is doing something wrong. This shows insecurity.

Besides, is asking to not tell outright lies about another nationality and not murdering them based on these lies too much?

And Russian trolls are by no means a mysterious group:

• Russian web brigades
• Internet Research Agency

This, here, is a prime example of Poe's law. I have no idea if you're saying this sarcastically or agreeing with me!

Most people won't contradict me because they agree with me. You are in the minority, I'm afraid.

I explicitly underlined how what I say is not meant to incite hate on all Russians. But an authoritarian state waging an inhumane war on another state and oppressing the few of its own people who stand up to the crimes deserves criticism.

Not to such extent, though. Not all of them, no. And you're still repeating the same old argument: "but others did that, too!". It just doesn't matter.

My reference did not mean to say that Germans weren't evil. It was meant to say that Russians were comparably evil. But while today's Germany wears penitential attire and continues to apologize for Nazi crimes, Russia not only denies an apology but oftentimes outright denies that any crimes happened, to begin with.

I have already addressed this point before. But if you follow what you wrote ad verbatim, then you can never criticize anybody or anything because a collective experience is still built on a multitude of personal experiences. So you can use this pseudo-argument to actually say Ukraine has no right to criticize Russia because there was some ninety-year-old grandpa in a deep Siberian forest who has nothing to do with the war.

But your point is flawed, and the following example of using the same logic illustrates it very well:
1. Oskar Schindler saved many Jews!
2. Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi Party.
3. You have no right to criticize Nazis as a whole. Not every Nazi was evil!

Am I to understand the Ukrainian housekeeper raped, tortured, and murdered you, and then there was a similar Ukrainian housekeeper in every xth house in London? This is a bad example. We are not talking about just one person who did wrong. We are talking about many people who did wrong and some people who didn't do wrong. The fact there are good, humane, and wonderful people in Russia is undeniable. Unfortunately, the fact Russians committed numerous crimes during both the Second World War as well as the War in Ukraine is also undeniable.

You absolutely can quantify evil. If you slap somebody's face, you hurt them, so that can be fairly seen as evil. But if you cut off somebody's hand and then use this hand to bash them to death, then that's evil so much greater than just slapping the person. But I admit that measuring evil gets harder the more evil is done by a particular individual or group. Is killing 500,000 people really that much worse than killing 499,999 people? Anyway, it's not really about how evil the Russians were during WW2. It's about the fact they were very evil, but they never apologized and the state never did anything to change the people's minds.

Anyway, your rhetorical games change nothing, really. Russians are committing evil war crimes in Ukraine at the moment. And these crimes remind me of crimes they committed in the past, including during the Second World War.

But I didn't. Not in the quoted block of text, anyway. Your emphasis skipped an important part of the sentence. The full sentence with a correct emphasis is:

Then why are you acting as if you were?

I could ask you the exact same questions, but... My broader point is multifold. Education is one - Captain Spaulding asked a question, so I answered it. But above all, I'm a user on a forum I like, so I'm posting in a thread I'm interested in. Just like you.

At last we agree on something: There is no way Russians will take to the streets in a big number. Unless the flour to sawdust ratio in their bread approaches 50:50, that is. But your point that protests accomplish nothing is, oh irony, so wrong, that the very Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity proves you wrong.

I don't think anybody expects that writing about it on the forum is going to change anything except for maybe clarifying the situation for those who do not know anything about the war. But chiefly, writing about the war is just a way of coping with it. Sure, you can write about it somewhere else, but for many MoFos, Movie Forums is their go-to place on the internet, so it's only natural they'd write about it. Besides, the thread is open, so we write in it.

And what you don't seem to be willing to grasp is that it doesn't matter.

We are paying attention to Ukraine because to some of us, it's closer. Besides, we usually see Europe as a civilized place, more so than Asia or Africa. I'm not saying this isn't wrong, but this is how it mostly is. There wasn't such a big war in Europe since the Bosnian War. The War in Donbas has been raging since 2014, but it was mostly ignored. For many of us, this is the first big war nearby.

I don't know what you are talking about or trying to achieve here. My quip about a huge moral advantage was a reply to your accusation that I don't see an issue with Ukrainians overestimating Russian losses. It was supposed to show that it's not really an immoral thing to do, all things considered. And yes, Ukraine's huge moral advantage actually gets them weapons and tanks from other countries. Because almost the entire world supports Ukraine. With the exception of pariahs and undemocratic countries like North Korea, China, Belarus, and Syria. Quite a company, eh? I'm not going to comment on the comparisons to Jews, but Poland alone has already taken 2.5 million Ukrainians since the beginning of the war.

So is spreading Russian propaganda. What's more, the latter is harmful, too.

I don't believe in prophecies and don't care to comment on that point.

Closing this again. This is will be the last temporary closing before it's closed for good.

I don't think you're replying to what I asked. If being from a neighboring country (which, by the way, quite universally shifts opinions toward Russians in the same direction) makes one's opinions automatically unqualified due to being colored by past experiences is not, to me, the same as asking rape victim's mother about the sentence. It equals asking the victim to evaluate the rapist as a human being.

Even in your scenario, there's a ton of evidence about Russian behavior in the past and present (Stalin, the great ally of the West, killed more people than Hitler). The culture in there isn't our "enlightened" western culture (which isn't bad in its entirety). Putin (and many other Russians) dream of the new Soviet Union instead of a democratic and free nation. Lots of the mindset hasn't changed that much since the days of the Czars.

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