Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
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What's the alternative to ''fighting to the last Ukrainian'' though?
Actively intervening to protect Ukraine will likely trigger WW3. The World War with Nukes
Not doing anything at all on the other hand is going to lead to genocide because Russia has by now more or less admitted that they want to exterminate Ukraine.
This is the outcome he wants. Just don't dare to actually call him out on it because apparently connecting his desired approach to the outcomes of that approach is "inventing positions". It's a very special kind of willful ignorance he's using.
- May 6, 2020
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I think he's just disappointed that he knows he's going to die before he can deny yet another genocide.
The decision for how much Ukraine wants to fight should rest with Ukraine.
But it's funny how Chomsky doesn't think Ukrainians deserve a say in their own future. Maybe because he thinks they're Nazis, or something.
Well, not really. Not in the sense of killing people, although it would be in the sense of destroying a culture.
Russia is dying. Slowly, steadily dying. People said Germany had a problem - it's not a patch on Russia. The USSR had a population of ~250-300 million, which made it powerful. Russia, upon the USSR's break-up, had about 150 million. It's currently just over 140 million, and it would be much worse were it not for the millions of ethnic Russians that have migrated to the motherland from other ex-Soviet states - and that's a limited resource. Even though Russia tried to spur the birth rate with child-friendly policies, it didn't work. Not only that, but the population is also receding into the western Russian core. All across the swathes of central and eastern Russia, villages and towns are dying and being abandoned, and the infrastructure collapsing with no-one to support it. In the long run, it's hard to think how little, dwindling Russia could think to hold it, and I'm sure China would be very interested in those natural resources.
It's that population issue that limits Russia and condemns it to being a second class power - soon it won't even have the manpower for its army. So if Russia cannot get its population up by the conventional means of breeding, it can instead take that population by annexing neighbouring countries. So the aim is very much not to kill too many Ukrainians, because they are required to fend off Russia's population crisis.
I also suspect that's why Russia can't necessarily fight this war for that long. If you've got five children, losing three is bad, but at least your family has a future with the remaining two. But Russian families whose kids are dying are often one child families, and when that poor sod packed out for Putin's ambition is dead, that's it. You can live all the way on to your eventual grave knowing you have no legacy to pass on. And I think that will generate a great deal of discontent.
- May 6, 2020
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Yes, but given his age and health, he knows that he may not be around to make his favorite two arguments:
1. "It's not really a *genocide* genocide."
2. "What about the United States?"
Speaking as someone who hails from a conservative school of thought, it's long been known that there are people on the right who have politics no more complex than "My country is always right" or "Anything done by a nominally conservative leader is defensible when the rubber hits the road."
I think we should also acknowledge, just as strongly, that there exist an equal and opposite way of thinking. The "Anything that opposes my country is good because my country has done/does bad things."
I do not think Dr. Chomsky is an unprincipled man. It's just that his principles aren't particularly nuanced. Or intelligent. Ukraine (largely) wants to align with the West and against Russia. This is bad because the West is bad and therefore it's wrong to encourage Ukraine to keep fighting rather than just rolling over to Russia or "negotiating" with Russia.
Nope.
Antifa was the Seanchaidh of pre WWII Germany. Whether you think that is better or worse than other political alignments is your prerogative, I suppose, but Seanchaidh is the one carrying on the actual historical tradition of Anti-Fascist Action.
The purpose of a word like "antifascism" is to call literally everything else fascist. You can very easily characterize any political ideology as anti-all the others. Everyone who is not a fascist is against fascism. The word "antifascist" is used specifically to flip the binary, to group the world into those against fascism or those not against fascism. This is not a single outstanding data point in this sort of rhetoric. There is the oft repeated suggestion that "if 4 people are at a table talking to a Nazi, there are 5 nazis at the table" or some variant thereof. All of this exists to build the narrative that "if youre not with antifascist, you're against them". And since the foundation of anti-fascists group is basically all Stalinism, it quickly degenerates to "if you're not a communist, you're a Nazi."
It is propaganda, it is a political recruitment tool of the worst kind, because it's that kind that actively encourages people to be nazis.
Absolutely categorically wrong.
A propaganda tool of a worse kind is to find anything that "antifascists" are against, and rehabilitate it.
No, fuck that. Someone who is against fascism in any active manner is "antifascist". A certain subset of corporatists and tankies would like to water that down in order to excuse certain forms of fascism they find convenient. Fuck them. No.
In your long and storied history of bad takes and flawed logic, this has to be your worst. So is "antibacterial" calling everything else a bacterium?
Isn't China in the same position though? IIRC, its TFR is 1.3, compared to Russia's 1.5. China has a bigger population, sure, but it's in the same demographic area that Russia is.
I get Russia's demographic fears (even if in the greater scheme of things, a reduced population is something to be welcomed), but the formula of "make Ukraine part of Russia to get extra manpower to fend off China"...well, there's a train of logic there, but it's a boneheaded one.
of course, this is Putin we're talking about, so...
Russia to fast-track adoptions of Ukrainian children 'forcibly deported' after their parents were killed by Putin's troops, authorities say
Ukrainian officials said more than 121,000 children had been forcibly deported to Russia by Putin's troops.
www.businessinsider.com
Adding onto the Russia committing genocide. This is straight up genocide according to the UN
United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect
Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect
www.un.org
Are you proposing a referendum? Because the current government of Ukraine is not the same thing as "Ukraine".
Negotiating a peaceful settlement.
That works wonders for Czechoslovakia at the lead up to ww2. Also by your logic the USSR should've allow the nazi to take them over.
They are. But since they don't want to give everything Russia is asking for Russia keeps on killing Ukrainians.