Source https://lemmy.zip/post/72029200/29026430
Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance! To make this easy you can do an instance block at Settings > Block Tab > Scroll to bottom > Input “lemmy.ml” and apply
And consider donating to individual instances instead.
Check the megathread for more!
Uncritically? I tagged it as likely pro-Russian propaganda and I doubt anyone would find it convincing after reading the replies.
Edit: Actually presenting an opinion and having users 99% dogpile it is a pretty good strategy for discrediting a position. Everyone reading reaffirms their group identity and dismisses the opinion as literal crazy talk. I think that’s how r/worldnews worked. They would allow one or two people to state an opinion without being banned, but only so it could be brutalized by their flying monkeys.
That’s an overall ML strategy. Dissenting opinion that gets dog piled is removed because it’s violates a rule, them all that’s left is the arguments against the original opinion. Only replies that lack context about the original argument are left by the non-tanky poster so you can continue to take them apart straw man style.
What you experienced was just pushback and conversation about 1 of your talking points. With a bunch of lucid discussion about why that opinion (which you noted as Russian centered propaganda) is wrong.
It also misunderstands the fundamental issue of Russia. The propaganda is that Russia is capable when they use hard power at all. They aren’t. Russia Pound 4 pound has the worst track record of all militaries in the world, and that’s being on the winning side half the time.
Russia is great at soft power, but absolutely utter shit at hard power. Ukraine has gotten a 100th of the support Israel is getting, because Israel is the weapon testing platform of the West. Israel is where we’re testing how to kill with new technology.
Ukraine has built their weapon systems almost entirely in house and is now actually selling both it’s tech and tactics to other nations, much like Iran has done in the east as well.
Russia is just really, really, really bad at war.
Well, before I was banned from r/worldnews, I was a frequent punching bag, with my comments left untouched, so that’s what was going on there.
I’m saying I don’t feel bad for softballing Russian propaganda here, because it’s effectively just pointing out how unpopular and stupid it is when it’s attacked like it’s been here. I’m not defending it, I’m just putting it out there with the implicit question being, “Is this bullshit? because it kinda sounds like bullshit.”
Kinda funny you bring up Russia’s military, because just yesterday there was a Russian talking about how awesome the Russian military was, but, reading between the lines, he was mostly saying Russians don’t mind killing their soldiers while Americans have, since Vietnam, built their entire strategy around tactics that don’t risk soldiers…
So it’s a fair criticism. I think the American Empire is only sustainable by violence that does not cost American lives (be it sanctions or bombing campaigns)… but whether Russia has a “great” military is another question entirely.
But that leads me to a question that has really been perplexing me, because on the one hand, maybe Russia will be looking to Poland next, but on the other hand, could it really fight the EU if it’s only winning Ukraine via years and years of attrition? The Russian channels so that no, Russia has no such intentions, but also say Russia has a great military and all the other militaries suck, while European sources say Russia is a mortal threat to Europe and that Russia is extremely capable militarily, but the facts on the ground seem to indicate that Russia is a huge country with population, industry, and oil wealth, just grinding their way to victory.
The larger question is where do I get news with a leftist worldview that isn’t explicitly biased? I don’t think it’s possible. And I think the real risk for people who fall off the American Capitalism Is The Best bandwagon is that they’ll be suckers for pro-Eastern propaganda if that’s the only place pushing anti-US narratives, and maybe that’s how we get tankies.
I’d love to read an essay comparing Ukraine and Israel in terms of diplomatic and military support. My opinion is that the US’s military is focused on developing expensive hardware as congressional pork and jobs programs; and I think Europe probably has adopted the same model. Whatever happens if Russia attacks Poland, I think Europe is going to be on a steep learning curve.
News in this time is rough. There is no true left wing news in America, news is fully captured. The only source of unvarnished left wing news is Zines in the House US, and they are extremely idealogical, because they have to be to operate in a news embargo. All information is accepted, all opinions are taken with a grain of salt, existing right now sucks.
We haven’t actually had a modern war yet. When you look at Russia v Ukraine, or US vs Iran, you see what the new war looks like.
Israel as a weapon testing platform does not involve actual conflict. There’s a small about of fighting from Hamas, but realistically on Israel they can just kill whoever they want however they want.
The US exist as a power in precision bombing, we are fucking allergic to soldiers dying as you noted. You saw what happened when a power can just take precision bombing, just soak it up like Iran. Russia exists as a power in sending waves after waves of people that they are willing to lose, they win through attrition. You’re seeing what happens when their opponent stops spending lives and starts killing you autonomously.
Europe is not one place, despite the fact that they have an EU, individually they are not terribly good at working together. You saw how bad Brexit fucked regional trade. In my opinion the entire EU is worried that Nato is bullshit and no wants Russia to try and prove it.
Right now the only untested super power is China. China can produce munitions at a rate that the entire world’s production combined can’t touch. China has an nearly unlimited number of people and have embraced drone tech. Mark my fucking words, the world is a series of paper tigers next to China. The big powers are rushing to prove it.
The Guardian is where I get most of my US news from, and they’re UK based, which just shows you the level of capture here. But for foreign policy news, anywhere in the world is willing to criticize the US.
As far as war goes, it looks like we can pound the shit out of each other with missile and drones, but this is just an extension of air supremacy doctrine, which, as you’ve pointed out, can continue indefinitely without victory.
Given the psychology of the US and Israel, I think one of us will be dropping nukes soon, and then it’s time to wait for the octopus archeologists to put the pieces together in a few millenia.
What’s your take on Russia’s threat to the EU and the EU’s capacity to address it?
And here’s the thing I notice about China which I’ll bring up in the context of someone probably watching a lot of Chinese-friendly media. They do seem to have a fundamentally different, and I’ll say morally better, approach to foreign policy than the US. You can make the road initiviative in Africa seem as sinister as you want, it’s still better than destabilizing governments by arming pedophile warlords that sow chaos.
China COULD play the proxy war game to destabilize its enemies, but, as far as I can tell, it does not, and that’s why I think China is probably going to be the only lead player people are willing to work with…
And that for as long as it takes them to fall to the power madness that all empires fall into.
There is no escaping the wheel.
I think Russia poses a threat to anyone no matter how deep a hole they are currently in, they are a nuclear power, and even though the most likely people on the planet to use a nuke are the US in Iran or Israel in Iran, the threat of a nuclear powered nation engaging in offensive war is terrifying.
No matter how well the EU would be able to defend, and I have very very little opinion there, my info is extremely low with EU matters, Russia testing Nato directly would show that the agreement effectively doesn’t exist. I think it’s just as likely that Nato/EU does as much about Russian aggression as they did with Ukraine, no matter where it happens.
I could be totally wrong there, I’m willing to be totally wrong there.
I think drones as a fundamental technology of war have changed the game in a way you wouldn’t call air supremacy. Air supremacy used to rely on incredibly expensive pieces of flight equipment, even the drones. Now the tech involves things that cost pennies in comparison (basically consumer drone tech with military grade explosives tapes to them) that can take out a piece of equipment which is nearly irreplaceable. War has changed right under the nose of the US and Russia. At least Russia is trying to catch up, the US is rejecting this tech and trying to put more pieces of 7-8 figure equipment in the air.