this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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[–] Blissingg 57 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Opening the comments section of stories like this is always a real eye opener for the type of people lemmy has attracted kinda sad.

[–] assembly 55 points 1 year ago (20 children)

No kidding. Who is honestly against moves like this? I mean very few issues are black and white and defending Ukraine is as close to being on the right side of history as one can get. They were invaded by a much larger country that suppressed them for so long. They are a democracy that is trying really hard to further the will of their people. Russians are committing genocide against the local population. Supporting Ukraine and watching the Ukrainians fight back for their freedom is one of the few great parts of history that inspires.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

The only real country that comes close to Russia lately as far as a polarizing bad guy is WWII Germany, and THAT is saying something.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

Yeah. I get being cynical about all of the wars the U.S. has been part of in my lifetime.

But if you can't see how helping the Ukrainians is unequivocally the right thing to do, I don't know what to say. To me it's nice to be the good guys for once and point our defense industry at something worthwhile.

[–] C3ltic 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's already a huge handful of conservative communities and almost every conservative I've ever met is suddenly very upset with our military budget and without any proof think Zelensky is just pocketing the money.

But it has felt like they're still the minority for the time being.

[–] dangblingus 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Have you seen the community list? The top conservative communities have like 150 subs.

[–] bl4ckblooc 4 points 1 year ago

The biggest post on conservative was someone trolling and asking how hard it is to build an echo chamber for one person.

[–] Something_Complex 1 points 1 year ago

They are like rats, or cockroaches. Everywhere, scare normal people away, and live in the darkness.

[–] zacher_glachl 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I gotta say, the tankie infestation of the fediverse is giving me serious second thoughts about this place. I get that it will get better over time as more people join and dilute the crazies, but I currently have a very hard time suggesting lemmy to people because of this.

[–] andrei_chiffa 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's fediverse. You don't like an instance, you create your own and defederate from the ones you don't like. That's the nice thing about it.

[–] zacher_glachl 2 points 1 year ago

So what, am I going to defederate from lemmy.world which is like the most generic possible instance but posts there still attract these loonies? At that point I can just ditch the fediverse because it's useless as a reddit replacement.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

They were always there. Lemmy literally is developed by tankies and genocide deniers.

[–] GustavoM 5 points 1 year ago

One guys thoughts/mentality =/= million of users thoughts and mentality tho.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Okay I'll bite. Some people support Ukraine but don't support more weapons spending. In the early days of reddit, a lot of the power users were libertarian leaning programmers, and Lemmy has naturally attracted that cohort. You can see subs like Privacy and Piracy moving here, and there is a staunch anti government position that comes with anti centralization. I don't think these people should be called sad, as some are very well reasoned and thoughtful about their anti government position. What's more, if you don't live in the United States, it's very easy to call out the hypocrisy of US government warmongering e.g. in the middle east.

[–] hark -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

What I see are some dissenting opinions and then people parroting US government talking points browbeating and downvoting them. Russia is absolutely wrong for invading Ukraine, but let's not overlook the US government using Ukraine as a pawn to advance its own geopolitical ambitions, similar to how it benefited from arming groups in Afghanistan when Russia invaded there.

I'm hoping Lemmy provides for more nuanced and diverse discussion instead of brigading and shouting down of opinions simply for going against the officially-approved narrative of the US government.

[–] rook 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

hated for being world police but also hated for not "doing something" about international injustices. US can't win.

[–] hark 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

International injustices like the US helping the Saudis genocide Yemenis? The problem is that the US is self-serving in its self-appointed role of world police. They don't care about injustices and only use (or even create) them as excuses to carry out selfish geopolitical objectives.

[–] rook 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

no like north korea threating to glass its neighbor, or russia threatening to glass europe, or china claiming that taiwan belongs to them, or ISIS saying that all non-muslims deserve death, but yeah cherry pick all ya want

[–] hark -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

North Korea is all bark and no bite. North Korea benefits China by acting as a buffer and benefits the US by strengthening ties between the US and South Korea and Japan. There is no interest in changing this arrangement.

Russia didn't get this way over night. The USSR collapsed and the US capitalized on the situation by enforcing markets in a way to grab wealth. There were many opportunities to rehabilitate and allow Russia to participate in the world as a peer but that went against the US need for an enemy and to dominate them, as evidenced by the Wolfowitz doctrine. Russia's economy was terrible and Putin did well for himself betting on oil which gave the Russian economy some stability and which is how he got popular. You'll find that the price of oil collapsed in 2014 and the protests were happening in Ukraine around that time threatening the puppet he had there.

Just watch as the plan is spelled out for you on American television: https://www.cc.com/video/8067fc/the-colbert-report-crisis-in-ukraine-gideon-rose

As for ISIS: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq

[–] BombOmOm -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There were many opportunities to rehabilitate and allow Russia to participate in the world as a peer but that went against the US need for an enemy and to dominate them

Germany was actively buying and expanding their gas imports from Russia, Russia's largest export good. Germany was quite happy with this arrangement until Russia invaded Ukraine, cut gas exports, and started actively bragging about how they would freeze Europe. Russia could have continued raking in the piles of cash from their gas exports to Europe, but, that isn't what Russia wanted. Russia didn't want to participate on the world stage as an equal, they wanted to dominate Ukraine and take what Ukraine had for themselves.

[–] hark 2 points 1 year ago

A decent chunk of Russia's gas runs through Ukraine and Russia had their puppet in Ukraine overthrown in 2014. Their gas business was already in danger from a long time ago and was constantly being attacked on all fronts, including sanctions and fearmongering campaigns against the nord stream pipelines. You can point to the current situation and say the fear was justified, but it took a lot to get to this point.

Shutting off their largest export is a move of desperation which they made while smugly pretending they were more indispensable than they actually are. Heck, invading Ukraine was a move of desperation itself. As you can see from the Gideon Rose interview I posted, the US was actively moving to isolate Russia for a long while. It doesn't justify Russia's actions, but also these actions didn't crop up out of nowhere. The US has overthrown governments over oil (even when they have plenty of other countries to get oil from) and here is Russia having its main export threatened.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nobody in their right mind is hating on the USA for not being world police. It's just White Man's Burden in disguise. Oh dear me you're so burdened by having to civilize the rest of the world, boohoo. Nobody asked them to, people even push back against it, and yet they do it anyway and then have the gall to complain about how much doing so is inconvenient. Then, two minutes later, the USA will complain about "sovereignty" and pretend they aren't encroaching on sovereignty every time they pretend to be world police.

[–] rook 3 points 1 year ago

i think ukraine asked the west for help a couple times but idk i can't read

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