what the fuck is happening in Russia?

"Is it that bizarre? LGBTQ is an expression of western imperialism."

Is it?

It is beginning to look that way, if I'm understanding him correctly

to who, exactly?

The right wing in Europe is casting LGBTQ as a corruption, a malign (outside) influence to be resisted.

sure, I was just calling anvil's phrasing into question as it appeared to give legitimacy to the argument, which I don't think it deserves

There is no legitimacy to that argument whatsoever. Unlike anti-colonial discourse.

Of course not. It's pure reactionary politics.

Well anvil is stating it's not bizarre or strange to see transphobia being called upon but usually reactionaries don't care for both anti-colonialism or trans rights.

This isn't about Putin but the two issues being spread out like this in the same speech.

reactionaries do care for stories of national victimhood

Opportunists going to opportune.

fascism's whole shtick iirc is getting a guy up there to be like "too many solid things have melted into air lately (because of the jews)-- but don't worry we've invented a murder ritual to bring them all back" and then just continuing to accelerate ultraviolent gangster capitalism while yelling on tv about god and dad; so it's not too weird to find it also willing to say there has been too much colonialism lately (because of the gays).

when the supply chain started breaking down i gave up.

I know I’m about a week behind but just wanted to comment that this post and the next one were lovely pieces of writing.

dlh - thanks. I get it now.

I see it as an attempt to fuse ‘western neoliberal imperial hegemony’ with ‘western cultural degenerate globalism’, and these are manifestations of the same thing, and they are done by the same people using different tools. The West is invading, with their NATO, and their LGBT, and their UEFA, and their so-called color revolutions (which, like Maidan, are in fact CIA coups), meddling where they’re not wanted, who needs them?.

It doesn’t seem bizarre because its not even original, its been pushed for years, in the west too, Galloway, Greyzone types. In the west we might get diluted versions for certain audiences tweaked a little, away from explicit ‘LGBT is bad’ to a more flexible ‘LGBT is cynically weaponised by elites’.

Not a million miles away from trying to fuse 'Corporations are bad' people with 'Corporations are bad because they are woke' people. Or using 'the west' for one audience, and 'globalists' for another

I've been watching this guy's videos talking to Russians, mostly in Moscow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1420channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1420channel

not me trying to link to the channel '1420'

Very good thread on nuke talk of the last few days.

Haven't yet heard a compelling case as to why, for the west, Putin's use of tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine turns Ukraine from its status now - a cause worth a proxy war - with limited some risk into a major war with significantly elevated risk of the worst outcome. 1/

— Patrick Porter (@PatPorter76) October 3, 2022

A much bigger Russian collapse will unfold in the coming days.

— Francis Fukuyama (@FukuyamaFrancis) October 3, 2022

always so prescient is this lad, give him a tenner and the lottery numbers for Wednesday are all yours.

If he's looking at open source data then he needs to say more. If he's dropping hints based on a classified briefing or a leak than he needs to say less.

History is over... NOW

wait

NOW

Wanda Jackson’s Fukuyama Mama

It does seem a fairly safe bet, just based on momentum, that Russia will continue to see setbacks on the battlefield in the coming days, though Fukuyama's tweet seems to imply something bigger than that. Not sure what information he has, other than Putin's evident desperation.

I think people are underestimating the extent to which Fukuyama operates on pure vibes.

Not sure what information he has

Does he have information or a desire for people to pay attention to him?

The latter. I think his comparative advantage is supposed to be an ability to recognize emerging patterns more quickly in data that everyone has access to.

in the chicago academic scene a lot of people are into post-history

I don't really have any view on whether his "End of History" thing was wrong or just early. But I do know it was a hugely successful and durable meme that he dined out on for years and parlayed into various comfortable sinecures. So not necessarily evidence of incompetence.

One of his predictions from February:

* The collapse of their (Russia's) position could be sudden and catastrophic, rather than happening slowly through a war of attrition.

More predictions.

happy october everyone pic.twitter.com/Dhq7DOO0MZ

— isi litke (@isilitke) October 3, 2022

Mr. Fun At (Halloween) Parties.

Joyce Carol Oates did it better

Yup.

at worst a war crimes

Any thoughts on why the US has released to NYT info that it believes Ukraine was behind the Dugina assassination?

I didn't think Ukraine was behind the assassination (and this particular release doesn't necessarily mean it was either). No idea why this was release (and released now), or even if it was intentional release

anyone with a hot take?

Letting Putin know that we're not in the business of assassinations on Russian soil? Gotta be on his mind.

yeah, we're too busy sabotaging pipelines to assassinate his cronies' children

I'm trying to get my head around the large numbers of torture sites in Ukraine that we're still probably only scratching the surface of. Particularly the seemingly unco-ordinated and purposeless nature of them. Is this ingrained in some way, an extension of Dedovshchina?

Its difficult to imagine going from zero to hundred so quickly, from regular life in Russia to this, unless it was already part of life to some degree. And if it wasn't...a lot of the torturers will be going back to everyday life in Russia eventually

They might be not be "going back to Russia" though. There's anecdotal evidence that some of the worst behaviour has been by separatists from Russian controlled areas of Ukraine.

Even if thats the case, the fact these sites seem to be all over and in places where the separatists aren't deployed (or are they? not sure) suggests its across the board, or at least fairly standard

That being said, I'm not all that clear who the separatists are, or what the dividing line between separatists and little green men is, or how much that line has changed between 2014 and 2022

This is a really weird line of thought, the notion that abhorrent behaviour in war and justifications for it is linked to national origin or whatever is not supported by most of recorded history.

Yeah, maybe, I'm not sure what to think either really. It might be that in other wars this is standard too, I know there was Abu Ghraib and others so maybe its just being reported more with the unprecedented level of access we have?

I mean, to pick one example from about a million in history…we know about some of the atrocities committed by the British in Kenya before independence because there were survivors and there are some surviving documents. But before leaving the country they dumped huge amounts of documents in the Indian Ocean rather than handing them to the new Kenyan government. What do you think was so bad that they couldn’t risk it being discovered?

The difference is whose torture is considered torture, and whose is considered an unfortunate if understandable cost.

I think the thing they couldn't risk being discovered was evidence of atrocities. Quite possibly directly ordered but maybe unfocussed and random as is seemingly the case today in Kharkiv and other oblasts

I'm not sure there is a difference, but if there is it would be the role of conscripts, regular Russians that weren't even troops a few months ago. How does one go from working in a cafe in January to torturing people in March?

You may well be right, that this is something intrinsic, that the exception isn't Russians, its Ukrainians - and the story isn't "why are Russians torturing?" at all, but "why aren't Ukrainians torturing? (unless of course they are too and we're not seeing the reports)

I will say this as nicely as I can.

A while ago I was unfortunate enough to encounter a free soldier F event in central London. All around me were men on motorbikes being cheered by huge numbers of people. Ordinary people cheering for the right of a British soldier to kill Irish civilians and walk free, because to kill us in cold blood in the streets is less of a crime than to be held accountable for it. How do you think I feel that I live somewhere where people voted for a government that included that as part of their policy agenda?

No people is uniquely monstrous. Given opportunity, a lot of people will excuse the worst atrocities, there’s really no more to it than that.

I think its essentialist to think any particular people are intrinsically more or less monstrous than any other people. We shouldn't pursue that line of thinking. I think a large percentage of any country is completely fine with killing in theory and enjoy seeing it on tv. I think a smaller but still large percentage of people would kill without even thinking abuot it. Doing torture...probably starting to drop off a bit but still higher than we would like

I think what you're suggesting is that the people who are ok with this, are actually able to jump right into torture - without having some level of it already being present in society? I think this is true for some, but still seems a big step for people without prior experience to some degree. Its not something I'd feel ready to step up to without some level of desensitization first

Stanley Milgram to thread.

(even though his study is super-flawed)

From what I can tell, much of this doesn't seem to fit that pattern though, much doesn't seem particularly directed (although there is that too). There's a chaotic element