You’re giving way too much credit to ideological consistency here.
If a random Russian guy is willing to bankroll your anarchist LARP, plenty of disaffected young morons will happily take that money under the banner of anarchism.
So as a "disaffected young moron" you'd be willing to risk life imprisonment and crippling fines just because some "random Russian guy" would bankroll your anarchist LARP, in which you don't even believe?
Seems to me like you're giving too much credit to ideological inconsistency here.
I know european anarchists and they're as ideological as it gets, much more than the average communist as commies are usually more pragmatic. The disillusioned anarchists simply quit the lifestyle as there's nothing to benefit from it if you don't strongly believe in it: only hardship, unpaid work, and sacrifices.
No I'm saying that sometimes people's interests align and they're willing to look past ideological differences to collaborate. More specifically: an attack can be committed by anarchists and be attributable to Russia, even if anarchists hypothetically hate Russia/USSR/whatever.
Russia has been committing arson attacks throughout Europe, it's totally fair to suspect them and "it was actually anarchists" shouldn't obviate that suspicion nearly as much as you're suggesting it should.
Doing the dirty work of someone whose ambitions differ from yours due to coincidentally aligned short term objectives is exactly what makes one a useful idiot.
Anarchists wanted the Tsar gone. Didn't work out for them in the long run.
I don't get why it's so hard to believe that anarchists would do exactly what they say they want to do. The anarchists I've met are steadfast about anti-nationalism and it's hard to imagine a more globally nationalistic event than the Olympics.
There is widespread desire for this to be Russian in origin. HN had plenty of this as well.
Propaganda remains popular because it works so well. Humans, including smart ones, are highly susceptible to well told stories. This is a very important topic, but there is something about it that makes it essentially impossible to discuss at the object level (during a specific incident) without people losing control. Maybe certain kinds of thinking are like juggling.
So what is your working proposal to end "this shit" -- this evil war propped up by Goebbelsian machinations, per your insinuation -- then?
Specifically which of Ukraine's regions are you willing to hand over (in terms of granting permanent recognized sovereignty) to Russia in order to make that happen?
they chose to fight and lost. I rather prefer them to live than keep dying a meaningless death. Ukrainians were led to believe they could win a war against Russia which have never been true.
Every day that keeps Russian rapists and murderers away from more Ukrainian cities, towns and villages is a victory. There is nothing meaningless about protecting your loved ones from the fate that people in the occupied territories have suffered.
Should all people who participated in the underlying causality be hanged, or only the ones that you identify (as a consequence of "information" you have consumed about "reality", which is also a part of the chain of causality)?
I am not necessarily opposed to hanging, but I would prefer that we make sure we catch all guilty parties. If you are going to do a job, might as well do it right!
Let's check the numbers we have from reports so far....yes it does. Objectively and undeniably.
Even if you don't want to base your opinion on data, just check how is life in Mariupol today[0][1]. I don't see mass killings or rapes, just people living their lives.
Reports from trustworthy sources stress that their numbers severely undercount victims due to lack of access. We have propaganda videos from the beachfront, but no access to the mass graves around Mariupol that can be seen from space. Not to mention the hidden away sites like Izium mass graves that were uncovered only after liberation. You don't see mass graves and concentration camps on German news reels either, "just people living their lives" and no hint of the Holocaust.
It's war, obviously people died during the battle for Mariupol, but people aren't dying anymore, in fact Russia has spent huge amounts of money to rebuild the city and "win over the hearts and minds" of the locals.
Don't take my word for granted, read the BBC[0].
If nothing this should be an argument to cease all hostilities as soon as possible, rather than making countless more people die in a contest over who will rule a specific piece of land.
Now, do you have any proof of mass killings and rapes going on now?
We could start by not making stuff up and posting it as if it is fact. Revolutionary yes, but perhaps worth a try. People dying is rather important after all, but perhaps not that important.
Do Humans ever speak not entirely untruthfully? Like in geopolitics, or like you in this comment section?
If you take everything (that the West prints) at face value, do you take war seriously (an accusation you made of someone else, based on questionable reasoning)?
>Specifically which of Ukraine's regions are you willing to hand over (in terms of granting permanent recognized sovereignty) to Russia in order to make that happen?
When you lose a war or the toll is too high to continue it, you make consessions. That has been true throughout history, and it's how such wars usually end. Establishing a neutral zone in the southern parts would be the best option at this point.
Even better to not have fuelled the start of war in the first place. Of course who'd thought not respecting decades of promises, expanding a Cold-War-era coalition eastwards right to the neighbors borders, having an orange revolution to topple the government and bring one fueling nationalism instead of promoting co-operation and understanding between the two ethnic population groups in the country, would ever have caused all this? It only ever worked like that in every place imperialism/colonialism passed from.
Perhaps, but others in a conversation can have their own idea of how to respond. How about that?
>If you can't provide a straight answer -- then the fate of the people living there is obviously of no particular concern to you.
The fate of the people dying there is what should be the concern. And ending the whole shitshow.
As for the specific regions, that's for the peace negotiations to define, I'm pretty sure it wont be based on HN suggestions.
>Permanent recognized sovereignty is Putin's demand -- not a "neutral zone"
Didn't you start by accepting that when you're losing a war, you make concessions?
As far as concessions go, a sovereign buffer zone is a pretty low bar. The populations of Russian ethnic origin in those weren't exactly in love with Kiev either, to begin with.
Nor is the question "which specific new borders / regions to give up" any sign of deep thinking of the matter. Tracking the history, politics, and geoplitics behind the issue over time, for the past decades at least, is what requires the actual deep thinking.
Isn't it interesting how thinking capabilities of Humans change depending on the topic? I mean, it is right in front of our faces in high resolution, all day everyday, both dumb people and "smart" people.
It's weird that this gets so little attention since it likely is a massive driver of war and other negative things in the system. It's almost like there's some sort of force that prevents us from thinking about such things. But what could that force(s) be? Also: is it a hard limitation, or only a lack of discovery?
Maybe because I've answered several times about the core of the subject, and you insist on the stupid "give me a specific set of regions" question, as giving a list will change anything. Sorry, I'm not your bitch.
The exact set of borders will be decided by negotiations, and even what cities will be included, end of story. If needs be, all major currently captured cities, will have to be included (they were already part of the previous negotiations/conditions anyway).
I mean, "If you can't provide a straight answer -- then the fate of the people living there is obviously of no particular concern to you." - really? What are we, 12 year olds?
It's a BS question so that you can gloat "ah, so you want X or Y taken away" - it wont be dignified.
That sounds like a carricature of anarchism in some comic.
Anarchists in real life are concerned with fascism, capitalism, opression, etc, not the Olympics.
And even if they did, it's hardly "nationalistic", it's a global gathering of different countries for friendly competition, almost the opposite of nationalism. There would be thousands more nationalistic things to concern themselves.
I think your description of anarchists is pretty idealistic
In my experience, many people who label themselves anarchists are just rebels without a cause. They don't like authority of any sort.
Also the Olympics is absolutely nationalist. The competition is friendly but most people don't watch it saying "I hope they all just have fun", they watch it to see their country win.
>In my experience, many people who label themselves anarchists are just rebels without a cause. They don't like authority of any sort.
Which is all good an well. Doesn't mean they go around sabotaging the Olympic Games. More like demonstrating against the police and such.
>Also the Olympics is absolutely nationalist. The competition is friendly but most people don't watch it saying "I hope they all just have fun", they watch it to see their country win.
As far as nationalism goes that's not even worth mentioning, that's peanuts. The last thing any anarchist would be concerned with.
Olympics are a great point of national pride for the organizing country. I don't understand why these days we still let each Olympics be organized by a single country. It could very easily become a global event, where different disciplines would happen in different parts of the world.
More importantly, though, Olympics have become a major capitalism fest, its increasingly about consumption, and a small number of already very rich people making shitload of money at the expense of the public in the organizing country.
I don't mean to say that anarchists in real life spend their time discussing how to bring down the Olympics. A more precise framing is that if there were lunatic-jerk-criminals who decided to sabotage the Olympics and it was later revealed that they identified politically as anarchists, I would not be especially surprised.
Your position that the Olympics are the opposite of nationalism is a new one to me, though. I think I'd probably disagree. Kathleen Powers wrote in 2021 [1] that
nationalism is woven into the fabric of the Olympic Games, I found it convincing enough.
Individual liberty is not a “right-wing” concept, any more than “authoritarian dictatorship” is. Left/Right division does not map this axis well, being primarily concerned with the moral implications of excludable/rival property ownership.
I got the feeling that most people didn't just suspect Russia but wanted it to be guilty, with all the global consequences that would come with it. The reactions to this news around the web confirm it.
64 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 66.3 ms ] threadIf a random Russian guy is willing to bankroll your anarchist LARP, plenty of disaffected young morons will happily take that money under the banner of anarchism.
Seems to me like you're giving too much credit to ideological inconsistency here.
I know european anarchists and they're as ideological as it gets, much more than the average communist as commies are usually more pragmatic. The disillusioned anarchists simply quit the lifestyle as there's nothing to benefit from it if you don't strongly believe in it: only hardship, unpaid work, and sacrifices.
Russia has been committing arson attacks throughout Europe, it's totally fair to suspect them and "it was actually anarchists" shouldn't obviate that suspicion nearly as much as you're suggesting it should.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/russias-brazen-i...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/30/europe...
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/3-arrested-kremlin-plot-stage-1417...
"It was committed by anarchists" just doesn't address the hypothesis at all.
Anarchists wanted the Tsar gone. Didn't work out for them in the long run.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1eetmee/farleft_ext...
I don't get why it's so hard to believe that anarchists would do exactly what they say they want to do. The anarchists I've met are steadfast about anti-nationalism and it's hard to imagine a more globally nationalistic event than the Olympics.
Propaganda remains popular because it works so well. Humans, including smart ones, are highly susceptible to well told stories. This is a very important topic, but there is something about it that makes it essentially impossible to discuss at the object level (during a specific incident) without people losing control. Maybe certain kinds of thinking are like juggling.
A previous discussion (search on Russia):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41076831
Such operations are a tale as old as Goebbels.
Find some culture war discussions online and search for that term.
Or, vice versa:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+not+justified%22+site%...
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22justification%22+site%3Ar...
Look at all the confused yet ultra-confident Humans!
Specifically which of Ukraine's regions are you willing to hand over (in terms of granting permanent recognized sovereignty) to Russia in order to make that happen?
Because that's the name of the game, here.
I am not necessarily opposed to hanging, but I would prefer that we make sure we catch all guilty parties. If you are going to do a job, might as well do it right!
All of them, it that's what it takes to stop the countless deaths.
Even if you don't want to base your opinion on data, just check how is life in Mariupol today[0][1]. I don't see mass killings or rapes, just people living their lives.
- [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StYKfo3mh6Q
- [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XNKgCMXeKo
It's war, obviously people died during the battle for Mariupol, but people aren't dying anymore, in fact Russia has spent huge amounts of money to rebuild the city and "win over the hearts and minds" of the locals.
Don't take my word for granted, read the BBC[0].
If nothing this should be an argument to cease all hostilities as soon as possible, rather than making countless more people die in a contest over who will rule a specific piece of land.
Now, do you have any proof of mass killings and rapes going on now?
- [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64887890
The Germans made some lovely newsreels about the places they "liberated" that you'd probably find to be equally inspiring.
I think it would be a very interesting experiment.
We could start by not making stuff up and posting it as if it is fact. Revolutionary yes, but perhaps worth a try. People dying is rather important after all, but perhaps not that important.
Those are Putin's stated conditions for ending this thing.
If you take everything (that the West prints) at face value, do you take war seriously (an accusation you made of someone else, based on questionable reasoning)?
When you lose a war or the toll is too high to continue it, you make consessions. That has been true throughout history, and it's how such wars usually end. Establishing a neutral zone in the southern parts would be the best option at this point.
Even better to not have fuelled the start of war in the first place. Of course who'd thought not respecting decades of promises, expanding a Cold-War-era coalition eastwards right to the neighbors borders, having an orange revolution to topple the government and bring one fueling nationalism instead of promoting co-operation and understanding between the two ethnic population groups in the country, would ever have caused all this? It only ever worked like that in every place imperialism/colonialism passed from.
If you can't provide a straight answer -- then the fate of the people living there is obviously of no particular concern to you.
Establishing a neutral zone in the southern parts would be the best option at this point.
Permanent recognized sovereignty is Putin's demand -- not a "neutral zone".
Perhaps, but others in a conversation can have their own idea of how to respond. How about that?
>If you can't provide a straight answer -- then the fate of the people living there is obviously of no particular concern to you.
The fate of the people dying there is what should be the concern. And ending the whole shitshow.
As for the specific regions, that's for the peace negotiations to define, I'm pretty sure it wont be based on HN suggestions.
>Permanent recognized sovereignty is Putin's demand -- not a "neutral zone"
Didn't you start by accepting that when you're losing a war, you make concessions?
As far as concessions go, a sovereign buffer zone is a pretty low bar. The populations of Russian ethnic origin in those weren't exactly in love with Kiev either, to begin with.
Nor is the question "which specific new borders / regions to give up" any sign of deep thinking of the matter. Tracking the history, politics, and geoplitics behind the issue over time, for the past decades at least, is what requires the actual deep thinking.
It's weird that this gets so little attention since it likely is a massive driver of war and other negative things in the system. It's almost like there's some sort of force that prevents us from thinking about such things. But what could that force(s) be? Also: is it a hard limitation, or only a lack of discovery?
Also: please do not make up rules and assert them as mandatory.
Also: which is worse, an imperfect answer, or a refusal to answer?
But the fact that of all people it's you [0] who is insisting on "straight answer" is ironic. And hilarious.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41095442
The exact set of borders will be decided by negotiations, and even what cities will be included, end of story. If needs be, all major currently captured cities, will have to be included (they were already part of the previous negotiations/conditions anyway).
I mean, "If you can't provide a straight answer -- then the fate of the people living there is obviously of no particular concern to you." - really? What are we, 12 year olds?
It's a BS question so that you can gloat "ah, so you want X or Y taken away" - it wont be dignified.
So that's the camp you're in, then. You could have just said so from the very beginning.
What about the 19,000 abducted minors -- does Putin get to keep them as well, "if need be"?
I'm not your bitch.
You're free as a bird here, man. I'm not making you do anything.
Anarchists in real life are concerned with fascism, capitalism, opression, etc, not the Olympics.
And even if they did, it's hardly "nationalistic", it's a global gathering of different countries for friendly competition, almost the opposite of nationalism. There would be thousands more nationalistic things to concern themselves.
In my experience, many people who label themselves anarchists are just rebels without a cause. They don't like authority of any sort.
Also the Olympics is absolutely nationalist. The competition is friendly but most people don't watch it saying "I hope they all just have fun", they watch it to see their country win.
Which is all good an well. Doesn't mean they go around sabotaging the Olympic Games. More like demonstrating against the police and such.
>Also the Olympics is absolutely nationalist. The competition is friendly but most people don't watch it saying "I hope they all just have fun", they watch it to see their country win.
As far as nationalism goes that's not even worth mentioning, that's peanuts. The last thing any anarchist would be concerned with.
More importantly, though, Olympics have become a major capitalism fest, its increasingly about consumption, and a small number of already very rich people making shitload of money at the expense of the public in the organizing country.
Your position that the Olympics are the opposite of nationalism is a new one to me, though. I think I'd probably disagree. Kathleen Powers wrote in 2021 [1] that nationalism is woven into the fabric of the Olympic Games, I found it convincing enough.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/26/do-olympi...
Is this sabotage a part of the opening ceremony?