Watching progressives that believe in abolising states, borders and policing suddenly become pro-technocracy chest thumping warmongers has been most fascinating.
Great essay. It will be interesting to see if the rhetoric is so strident in three months when, I’m guessing, Russia has militarily conquered Ukraine and has begun the long, grinding task of trying to govern that country.
Will there be the same willingness to boycott Russian grain and oil when food and energy prices are inflated? Will Germany really follow through, over the next several years, on its recent commitment to rebuild its military and to switch back to coal and nuclear fuel until they develop a renewable energy strategy that doesn’t depend on Russia?
Short term outrage can be satisfying, but reversion to the status quo ante is always so comfortable over the long haul.
Things are not going to go back to normal. The invasion of a country of 44 million by one of 142 million is not normal. In three months time Europe will have had to deal with an influx of perhaps tens of millions of refugees (Ukrainians and opportunists), with all the economic and healthcare consequences of that, during a cost of living crisis. I don’t think they will be more favourably disposed towards Russia at that stage.
You certainly are “guessing.”
But you ought to tell that to the Russian lads attacking Mykolaiv–oops–they’re not attacking Mykolaiv anymore.
How strange…
Katharine Eyre
2 years ago
Great essay. The guy pouring away the Stoli that had been bought and paid for and where the company is not even Russian-owned underlines just how thick our society has become. Online knee-jerk reactions that give a short kick of moral superiority and the thrill of several thousand clicks without bothering to think about the details are now the standard level of civic engagement. Once that’s done, then that is your contribution isn’t it? Nothing more to do. And that also goes for all of us here in the UnHerd forum too.
As I learnt from the refugee crisis in 2015, it is better to stand back from the first emotional response wave and settle in for the long term. Resist the knee-jerk reactions and empty gestures and the peer pressure to “do something, NOW” and try and identify (and settle in for) the long term consequences*.
[* Long term consequence = anything that requires more thought and engagement than seeing and liking a tweet]
Online knee-jerk reactions that give a short kick of moral superiority and the thrill of several thousand clicks without bothering to think about the details are now the standard level of civic engagement.
That’s such an online knee-jerk reaction. Examples of over-reach are abundant in every era, at an individual and national level. The dismantling of metal fences to make weapons in WWII (actually thrown into the sea); the internment of Japanese Americans; the standard jokes about Germans, Japanese etc which were perfectly acceptable, for most of the 20th century (dying out sometime in the 1990s).
Stephen Walshe
2 years ago
For years Russian state media has churned out anti-Western propaganda and conspiracy theories. Russians have imbibed it with their mother’s milk. Now there is a demonstration that openness to the West brought many benefits to Russia, and that isolation and hostility is very costly. This demonstration may be counterproductive, but the Russian people and elite need to understand that this ends if Russian forces withdraw from Ukraine, and things can go back to the way they were. If the President won’t do that, perhaps another leader might.
I suspect most Russians do remember what openness to the West brought in the 90s. Or that while the West are grabbing oligarch assets when convenient for them, these same countries happily welcomed those billionaires as they looted Russia and stripped the country to the bone.
And while you might dismiss it as propaganda, Russians would know for instance that “things can go back to the way they were” means a return to neo Nazis such as the Azovs murdering thousands of civilians in the Russian majority Eastern Ukraine provinces, Russian language being suppressed in Ukraine and NATO steadily expanding further eastwards to the very borders of Russia.
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
I taught for many years. Bullies are always insecure, envious, bitter and resentful. He’s very like those kids. They also try and buy friends because no one likes them. Again it’s what he’s done with his wretched cowardly Siloviki- the latter day Oprichniki. What a benighted country. A state run as a mafia organisation.
In 2013, Putin offered Ukraine a big soft loan to stay away from the West – much more generous (seemingly) than what was on offer from the EU at the time. Ukraine said “no” so next year Putin invaded Crimea. Shades of the domestic abuser who goes between showering his victim with flowers and chocolates and declaring his undying love, and then beating her up the next day.
That’s too simplistic Lennon. May I suggest you look up the 2018 address by the journalist, Vladimir Pozner at Yale. Talk about prescient.
If the West is not truthful about how we got to here, the successful way out will be obscured.
Let’s stop trying to understand a tyrant and stop making excuses for him. The Ukrainian population has no reason to like or trust Russia. Think of the many millions who died from famine or deportation to Siberia in the 20s and 30s. Think of the fact that serfdom was unknown in the Ukraine until the Russians introduced it to them in the 19th century. Why wouldn’t they seek closer ties with the West? Why should the West stop them? They should be free to choose, and Russia needs to give up the idea of empire and the idea of puppet states.
…heaping disdain on top of disrespect is a sure way of ensuring a former enemy remains one. Contrast the West’s approach to the rehab of Japan and Germany, with the political failure to override bureaucratic self interest and reset NATO in the 1990’s.
It’s not disdain it’s regret and sadness. Very hard to imagine being in a country with no sense ever of an independent judiciary or ‘magna carta’ style tradition and habeas corpus. The Rus were originally brought in at the beginning because the Novgorod slavs needed an overlord to prevent chaos. Then Mongol Yoke, Ivan the Terrible etc. Always the view that a ‘little father’ – Tsar, Stalin etc needs to be brutal to keep everything going and plurality and debate must mean weakness. Plenty of commenters on here who believe that clearly. Russian writers since Pushkin are obsessed with suffering as a good. Modern ones like Sorokin see it as madness and despair.
Admittedly, events will be decided on the battlefield.
But the near-universal anger does send a message to all Russians: their nation is now totally isolated, with most of its tactical elements already committed to an unwinnable war. Oh, by the way, the stock market remains closed after over a week.
As long as weapons and supplies are brought in from the West, the Russian army is doomed–either by slow attrition, or an abrupt collapse. That the Ukrainian air force still flies is an even greater indictment of the Russian air force’s capabilities.
Moreover, unlike WW2, there are no “Siberian reserves in the east,” about to come to the rescue. That Russia instead is recruiting Syrian mercenaries shows the manpower pool is dry.
This is because Putin dare not start conscripting middle class Russians (totally untrained anyway) to fight the war. Then Russians really will come out on to the streets.
This was an abysmally planned operation, based on fantasies about a nation no one in the Kremlin understood. Ironically, it even compares poorly with Hitler’s 1941 invasion. At least the latter had a few initial successes.
Better start planning about what happens after Putin–or even what happens after Russia.
After Putin? An another brutal Russian tsar will dream of conquering neighbouring countries and subduing the West.
Andrew Langridge
2 years ago
It is often surprising how effective cultural and sporting boycotts are. The sporting boycott of the apartheid regime in South Africa made a surprisingly big impact and was a decisive factor in its eventual collapse. ‘Bread and circuses’ was said to be the way the Romans maintained their power. In the modern globalised world, these factors are likely to be even stronger. No matter how much censorship and propaganda the Russian authorities deliver, the disappearance of many things middle class Russians take for granted in their daily lives is an inescapable demonstration of Russia’s international isolation, and might well lead to a groundswell of pressure that Putin cannot ignore.
Steven Campbell
2 years ago
No matter what the crisis, the Western Elites and followers are first and foremost virtue signalers. Never, never do anything that would disrupt your world when you can wear a ribbon, spout nonsense on TV and attack people who generally have nothing to do with the crisis. When you see the Climate Change bunch flying all over to solve the problem you can know that increasing our Fossil Fuel or Nuclear production as a counterweight to the crisis is not in the planning. I’m sick of all of them. Great article.
We are living in the era of social-media-fuelled “somethingism”. As in, “isn’t that war/pandemic/genocide terrible?” Followed by entreaties that “something must be done”. Followed by some absurd social media performance – cancelling Russian cats, tweeting yourself on a hike in the middle of nowhere wearing a face mask, etc. etc.
Last edited 2 years ago by Lennon Ó Náraigh
Martin Logan
2 years ago
Pretty much a strawman argument.
If you don’t like just “liking” anti-Putin facebook posts, there are plenty of places where you can support either civilian relief, or aid for th Ukrainian army. I’ve given quite a bit to the Ukrainian Freedome Fund, but there are many others. Here’s a list from the Ukrainian Institute in London: Russia’s war against Ukraine. What can you do to support Ukraine & Ukrainians? ‣ Ukrainian Institute London
Agreed, for most people their ability to actually change anything of note is extremely limited. If donating to Ukrainian causes or boycotting Russian goods is the limit of their influence then they shouldn’t be criticised for doing it, even if it achieves next to nothing
Yes, the article – although well worded – was ultimately just agitation with no solution.
My thought reading it was continuously, ‘Well okay, but what is the alternative?’
John Lee
2 years ago
What is the number?
What is the number of Ukranian dead that is acceptable before some action is taken by the West. (why is it the West that has to take action)
Is it maybe 100,000 dead or possibly one million dead, is there a number in the governments mind or is the horror going to be endless.
So you propose to allow the Russians to kill and enslave whomever they please. And did it occur to you that this would lead to “multiple millions of more deaths”, too? Not to mention the hundreds of millions enslaved? We are speaking about the whole Europe here.
Warren T
2 years ago
“a potent mix of ignorance and misdirected aggression that ought not to be indulged.”
But how indulged they are! And they vote too. It’s no wonder autocrats rule in some parts of the world.
Jeffrey Chongsathien
2 years ago
It’s a further validation of the mass formation psychosis theory that after the hypnotised sheeple awaken, they choose to remember nothing.
Karlo Tasler
2 years ago
Very intelligent article with the focus on the main weapon of this times – cancelation. To cancel somebody these days gives me a feeling of discomfort. Especially when I remember Joe Rogan and many others were labelled as fake news spreaders very recently. It is a very dangerous game cancellers play.
Art C
2 years ago
“easy for westerners to forget that our willingness to protest our government goes hand in hand with the guaranteed freedom to do so” ..
Unless, of course, you live in the boy tyrant’s Canada.
Graham Strugnell
2 years ago
The gymnast who recently wore a Z on his tracksuit (a symbol of support for the way) shows that sport and propaganda go hand in hand. Wake up.
….but sport is a safer arena to posture in surely.
R S Foster
2 years ago
…true, up to a point…but best evidence is that many older Russians get most if not all their information from official channels…in which it is a necessary, proportionate and virtuous undertaking against a brutal regime of Neo-Nazi Perverts…to prevent them from undertaking systematic genocide against innocent Russian-Speakers…and widely supported by all Ukrainians but said genocidal degenerates.
These various symbolic acts MIGHT get some of them wondering if they are being told the truth…as will Russian POW’s being allowed to phone their Mums…and the dead and injured being sent home (if they are…mobile crematoria are alleged to be held up in the column heading south, and Russia is a big place where it might be most convenient to “treat” the injured several hundred kilometres North of the Arctic Circle)…
…so, to that extent, and performative as they are…some of these actions might be useful…in time.
Last edited 2 years ago by R S Foster
Jeffrey Chongsathien
2 years ago
No-one should be allowed to express any opinion on Ukraine until they’ve studied a map of the region.
Last edited 2 years ago by Jeffrey Chongsathien
James Chater
2 years ago
Accepted the current ‘virtuous’ Russo-phobia is often wrong and counter-productive. But is this really comparable to the so-called ‘culture wars’, invariably restricted to university campuses, ‘cancelling’, etc.?
For sure if Russia was not threatening to use nuclear weapons (and of course they wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine without that), there would be a full-on military confrontation and more minds and energy would be concentrated on direct involvement.
Last edited 2 years ago by James Chater
Dennis Boylon
2 years ago
It is a bit depressing. I Witnessed George W Bush’s 90 percent approval ratings and the death threats to Barbara Lee from being the lone no vote on the AUMF… many from her own super liberal district. I can say I was not part of that hysteria either. I guess I am just an oddball. I grew up a barely middle class kid from the rust belt who served in the military during desert storm. I was never all in though. Not even when I was in the military. I should have been all in considering my background. After studying this phenomenon I concluded our educational and political systems are corrupt. I studied a lot of material trying to make sense of it all. They use propaganda to indoctrinate everyone and make us pliable. The Late John Taylor Gatto’s book the Underground History of American Education, Edward Bernay’s Propaganda, Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free are good reads to attempt to unprogram yourself. Goebbels himself was a student. Bernays talks about it in his autobiography. Asked if it bothered his conscience Bernays dismissed it as any insight can be used by humans for good or evil. Implying we use this manipulation only for good of course. Ahh to be so naive. Or is it arrogance? The only way not to be influenced by propaganda is to become very educated in it. We are literally steeped in it passed our eyeballs. I think I’ve repeated several times.. Who is the Fors Marsh Group and what have they done to earn $400 million dollars during the corona virus? Laura Dodsworth did some fantastic work publishing her book State of Fear. The West runs on propaganda. https://wikipedikia.org/did-goebbels-read-bernays/
Last edited 2 years ago by Dennis Boylon
Luna
1 year ago
I’d say the sanctions against Russia at the moment, are a bit beyond “Keyboard warriors” and “cancel culture”. It’s hard to predict how well it will work and how Germany can wean itself from Russian fossil fuels, but this is serious business and you reducing it to “cancel culture” seems more trivializing than some of the dumber choices people made in terms of who and what to target.
Your article is very one-sided focusing on some of the more random or even weird targets by some individuals, organizations, or cities. The fact is that several governments including the US, UK, and most EU countries among others have committed to hard economic sanctions. Some are directed mostly against the oligarchs and kleptos as Alexei Navalny -Russia’s main opposition figure now in prison-and his organization have long recommended, while other seem bent on slowing the war machine down.
The other fact is that some of the problems such as Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas or the world’s reliance on a relatively small number of key crops are issues that aren’t going away. Even if the war was over and Navalny President of Russia by next week, the world would have to grapple with those things. it’s mostly a shame that it even took war for people to take these things seriously.
As for targeting the Western located property of oligos/kleptos that part is a legal, political, and investigative nightmare decades in the making. While not all Russians with high value property in the West are oligarchs, kleptos, or Putin supporters focusing too much on things like banning Russian cats from cat shows, or bartenders pouring vodka down the sink, doesn’t add much value to any discussion of how to best target some of these ill-gotten gains or sort out complicit Russians from innocent ones.
The fact is that the current admin here and in several countries has a task force on going after the high value property of people who have been ID’d as enabling Putin. Biden has invoked the DPA for electric cars and proposed doing the same for heat pumps to be sold at cost in Europe-so they can do without Russian gas. This is way beyond “keyboard warriors”.
To the person who pointed out that sometimes sports boycotts do work, as happened with South Africa, thanks.
Watching progressives that believe in abolising states, borders and policing suddenly become pro-technocracy chest thumping warmongers has been most fascinating.
Yes, the imagination is a fascinating realm.
Great essay. It will be interesting to see if the rhetoric is so strident in three months when, I’m guessing, Russia has militarily conquered Ukraine and has begun the long, grinding task of trying to govern that country.
Will there be the same willingness to boycott Russian grain and oil when food and energy prices are inflated? Will Germany really follow through, over the next several years, on its recent commitment to rebuild its military and to switch back to coal and nuclear fuel until they develop a renewable energy strategy that doesn’t depend on Russia?
Short term outrage can be satisfying, but reversion to the status quo ante is always so comfortable over the long haul.
Perhaps we should have boycotted sauerkraut back in ‘39? We could have altered the arc of history!
Things are not going to go back to normal. The invasion of a country of 44 million by one of 142 million is not normal. In three months time Europe will have had to deal with an influx of perhaps tens of millions of refugees (Ukrainians and opportunists), with all the economic and healthcare consequences of that, during a cost of living crisis. I don’t think they will be more favourably disposed towards Russia at that stage.
You certainly are “guessing.”
But you ought to tell that to the Russian lads attacking Mykolaiv–oops–they’re not attacking Mykolaiv anymore.
How strange…
Great essay. The guy pouring away the Stoli that had been bought and paid for and where the company is not even Russian-owned underlines just how thick our society has become. Online knee-jerk reactions that give a short kick of moral superiority and the thrill of several thousand clicks without bothering to think about the details are now the standard level of civic engagement. Once that’s done, then that is your contribution isn’t it? Nothing more to do. And that also goes for all of us here in the UnHerd forum too.
As I learnt from the refugee crisis in 2015, it is better to stand back from the first emotional response wave and settle in for the long term. Resist the knee-jerk reactions and empty gestures and the peer pressure to “do something, NOW” and try and identify (and settle in for) the long term consequences*.
[* Long term consequence = anything that requires more thought and engagement than seeing and liking a tweet]
That’s such an online knee-jerk reaction. Examples of over-reach are abundant in every era, at an individual and national level. The dismantling of metal fences to make weapons in WWII (actually thrown into the sea); the internment of Japanese Americans; the standard jokes about Germans, Japanese etc which were perfectly acceptable, for most of the 20th century (dying out sometime in the 1990s).
For years Russian state media has churned out anti-Western propaganda and conspiracy theories. Russians have imbibed it with their mother’s milk. Now there is a demonstration that openness to the West brought many benefits to Russia, and that isolation and hostility is very costly. This demonstration may be counterproductive, but the Russian people and elite need to understand that this ends if Russian forces withdraw from Ukraine, and things can go back to the way they were. If the President won’t do that, perhaps another leader might.
I also seem to recall five years of anti-Russian propaganda in the United States after the powers that be, needed to explain how Hillary lost.
I suspect most Russians do remember what openness to the West brought in the 90s. Or that while the West are grabbing oligarch assets when convenient for them, these same countries happily welcomed those billionaires as they looted Russia and stripped the country to the bone.
And while you might dismiss it as propaganda, Russians would know for instance that “things can go back to the way they were” means a return to neo Nazis such as the Azovs murdering thousands of civilians in the Russian majority Eastern Ukraine provinces, Russian language being suppressed in Ukraine and NATO steadily expanding further eastwards to the very borders of Russia.
I taught for many years. Bullies are always insecure, envious, bitter and resentful. He’s very like those kids. They also try and buy friends because no one likes them. Again it’s what he’s done with his wretched cowardly Siloviki- the latter day Oprichniki. What a benighted country. A state run as a mafia organisation.
In 2013, Putin offered Ukraine a big soft loan to stay away from the West – much more generous (seemingly) than what was on offer from the EU at the time. Ukraine said “no” so next year Putin invaded Crimea. Shades of the domestic abuser who goes between showering his victim with flowers and chocolates and declaring his undying love, and then beating her up the next day.
That’s too simplistic Lennon. May I suggest you look up the 2018 address by the journalist, Vladimir Pozner at Yale. Talk about prescient.
If the West is not truthful about how we got to here, the successful way out will be obscured.
Let’s stop trying to understand a tyrant and stop making excuses for him. The Ukrainian population has no reason to like or trust Russia. Think of the many millions who died from famine or deportation to Siberia in the 20s and 30s. Think of the fact that serfdom was unknown in the Ukraine until the Russians introduced it to them in the 19th century. Why wouldn’t they seek closer ties with the West? Why should the West stop them? They should be free to choose, and Russia needs to give up the idea of empire and the idea of puppet states.
We want you to love us and we’ll shell and bomb you until you do.
…heaping disdain on top of disrespect is a sure way of ensuring a former enemy remains one. Contrast the West’s approach to the rehab of Japan and Germany, with the political failure to override bureaucratic self interest and reset NATO in the 1990’s.
Vladimir Putin–a good boy gone bad.
And it’s all our fault!
It’s not disdain it’s regret and sadness. Very hard to imagine being in a country with no sense ever of an independent judiciary or ‘magna carta’ style tradition and habeas corpus. The Rus were originally brought in at the beginning because the Novgorod slavs needed an overlord to prevent chaos. Then Mongol Yoke, Ivan the Terrible etc. Always the view that a ‘little father’ – Tsar, Stalin etc needs to be brutal to keep everything going and plurality and debate must mean weakness. Plenty of commenters on here who believe that clearly. Russian writers since Pushkin are obsessed with suffering as a good. Modern ones like Sorokin see it as madness and despair.
True but he’s still a murderous tyrant
Admittedly, events will be decided on the battlefield.
But the near-universal anger does send a message to all Russians: their nation is now totally isolated, with most of its tactical elements already committed to an unwinnable war. Oh, by the way, the stock market remains closed after over a week.
As long as weapons and supplies are brought in from the West, the Russian army is doomed–either by slow attrition, or an abrupt collapse. That the Ukrainian air force still flies is an even greater indictment of the Russian air force’s capabilities.
Moreover, unlike WW2, there are no “Siberian reserves in the east,” about to come to the rescue. That Russia instead is recruiting Syrian mercenaries shows the manpower pool is dry.
This is because Putin dare not start conscripting middle class Russians (totally untrained anyway) to fight the war. Then Russians really will come out on to the streets.
This was an abysmally planned operation, based on fantasies about a nation no one in the Kremlin understood. Ironically, it even compares poorly with Hitler’s 1941 invasion. At least the latter had a few initial successes.
Better start planning about what happens after Putin–or even what happens after Russia.
After Putin? An another brutal Russian tsar will dream of conquering neighbouring countries and subduing the West.
It is often surprising how effective cultural and sporting boycotts are. The sporting boycott of the apartheid regime in South Africa made a surprisingly big impact and was a decisive factor in its eventual collapse. ‘Bread and circuses’ was said to be the way the Romans maintained their power. In the modern globalised world, these factors are likely to be even stronger. No matter how much censorship and propaganda the Russian authorities deliver, the disappearance of many things middle class Russians take for granted in their daily lives is an inescapable demonstration of Russia’s international isolation, and might well lead to a groundswell of pressure that Putin cannot ignore.
No matter what the crisis, the Western Elites and followers are first and foremost virtue signalers. Never, never do anything that would disrupt your world when you can wear a ribbon, spout nonsense on TV and attack people who generally have nothing to do with the crisis. When you see the Climate Change bunch flying all over to solve the problem you can know that increasing our Fossil Fuel or Nuclear production as a counterweight to the crisis is not in the planning. I’m sick of all of them. Great article.
Great comment.
Very good article. Thank you.
We are living in the era of social-media-fuelled “somethingism”. As in, “isn’t that war/pandemic/genocide terrible?” Followed by entreaties that “something must be done”. Followed by some absurd social media performance – cancelling Russian cats, tweeting yourself on a hike in the middle of nowhere wearing a face mask, etc. etc.
Pretty much a strawman argument.
If you don’t like just “liking” anti-Putin facebook posts, there are plenty of places where you can support either civilian relief, or aid for th Ukrainian army. I’ve given quite a bit to the Ukrainian Freedome Fund, but there are many others. Here’s a list from the Ukrainian Institute in London: Russia’s war against Ukraine. What can you do to support Ukraine & Ukrainians? ‣ Ukrainian Institute London
Agreed, for most people their ability to actually change anything of note is extremely limited. If donating to Ukrainian causes or boycotting Russian goods is the limit of their influence then they shouldn’t be criticised for doing it, even if it achieves next to nothing
Yes, the article – although well worded – was ultimately just agitation with no solution.
My thought reading it was continuously, ‘Well okay, but what is the alternative?’
What is the number?
What is the number of Ukranian dead that is acceptable before some action is taken by the West. (why is it the West that has to take action)
Is it maybe 100,000 dead or possibly one million dead, is there a number in the governments mind or is the horror going to be endless.
….the horror will end, but with multiple millions of more deaths if Putin (and the Russian people) are backed into a corner with no escape.
The “escape” appears to be getting all of Ukraine.
As Dostoevsky observed about certain of his fellow Russians, “it’s Napoleon or nothing!”
So you propose to allow the Russians to kill and enslave whomever they please. And did it occur to you that this would lead to “multiple millions of more deaths”, too? Not to mention the hundreds of millions enslaved? We are speaking about the whole Europe here.
“a potent mix of ignorance and misdirected aggression that ought not to be indulged.”
But how indulged they are! And they vote too. It’s no wonder autocrats rule in some parts of the world.
It’s a further validation of the mass formation psychosis theory that after the hypnotised sheeple awaken, they choose to remember nothing.
Very intelligent article with the focus on the main weapon of this times – cancelation. To cancel somebody these days gives me a feeling of discomfort. Especially when I remember Joe Rogan and many others were labelled as fake news spreaders very recently. It is a very dangerous game cancellers play.
“easy for westerners to forget that our willingness to protest our government goes hand in hand with the guaranteed freedom to do so” ..
Unless, of course, you live in the boy tyrant’s Canada.
The gymnast who recently wore a Z on his tracksuit (a symbol of support for the way) shows that sport and propaganda go hand in hand. Wake up.
….but sport is a safer arena to posture in surely.
…true, up to a point…but best evidence is that many older Russians get most if not all their information from official channels…in which it is a necessary, proportionate and virtuous undertaking against a brutal regime of Neo-Nazi Perverts…to prevent them from undertaking systematic genocide against innocent Russian-Speakers…and widely supported by all Ukrainians but said genocidal degenerates.
These various symbolic acts MIGHT get some of them wondering if they are being told the truth…as will Russian POW’s being allowed to phone their Mums…and the dead and injured being sent home (if they are…mobile crematoria are alleged to be held up in the column heading south, and Russia is a big place where it might be most convenient to “treat” the injured several hundred kilometres North of the Arctic Circle)…
…so, to that extent, and performative as they are…some of these actions might be useful…in time.
No-one should be allowed to express any opinion on Ukraine until they’ve studied a map of the region.
Accepted the current ‘virtuous’ Russo-phobia is often wrong and counter-productive. But is this really comparable to the so-called ‘culture wars’, invariably restricted to university campuses, ‘cancelling’, etc.?
For sure if Russia was not threatening to use nuclear weapons (and of course they wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine without that), there would be a full-on military confrontation and more minds and energy would be concentrated on direct involvement.
It is a bit depressing. I Witnessed George W Bush’s 90 percent approval ratings and the death threats to Barbara Lee from being the lone no vote on the AUMF… many from her own super liberal district. I can say I was not part of that hysteria either. I guess I am just an oddball. I grew up a barely middle class kid from the rust belt who served in the military during desert storm. I was never all in though. Not even when I was in the military. I should have been all in considering my background. After studying this phenomenon I concluded our educational and political systems are corrupt. I studied a lot of material trying to make sense of it all. They use propaganda to indoctrinate everyone and make us pliable. The Late John Taylor Gatto’s book the Underground History of American Education, Edward Bernay’s Propaganda, Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free are good reads to attempt to unprogram yourself. Goebbels himself was a student. Bernays talks about it in his autobiography. Asked if it bothered his conscience Bernays dismissed it as any insight can be used by humans for good or evil. Implying we use this manipulation only for good of course. Ahh to be so naive. Or is it arrogance? The only way not to be influenced by propaganda is to become very educated in it. We are literally steeped in it passed our eyeballs. I think I’ve repeated several times.. Who is the Fors Marsh Group and what have they done to earn $400 million dollars during the corona virus? Laura Dodsworth did some fantastic work publishing her book State of Fear. The West runs on propaganda.
https://wikipedikia.org/did-goebbels-read-bernays/
I’d say the sanctions against Russia at the moment, are a bit beyond “Keyboard warriors” and “cancel culture”. It’s hard to predict how well it will work and how Germany can wean itself from Russian fossil fuels, but this is serious business and you reducing it to “cancel culture” seems more trivializing than some of the dumber choices people made in terms of who and what to target.
Your article is very one-sided focusing on some of the more random or even weird targets by some individuals, organizations, or cities. The fact is that several governments including the US, UK, and most EU countries among others have committed to hard economic sanctions. Some are directed mostly against the oligarchs and kleptos as Alexei Navalny -Russia’s main opposition figure now in prison-and his organization have long recommended, while other seem bent on slowing the war machine down.
The other fact is that some of the problems such as Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas or the world’s reliance on a relatively small number of key crops are issues that aren’t going away. Even if the war was over and Navalny President of Russia by next week, the world would have to grapple with those things. it’s mostly a shame that it even took war for people to take these things seriously.
As for targeting the Western located property of oligos/kleptos that part is a legal, political, and investigative nightmare decades in the making. While not all Russians with high value property in the West are oligarchs, kleptos, or Putin supporters focusing too much on things like banning Russian cats from cat shows, or bartenders pouring vodka down the sink, doesn’t add much value to any discussion of how to best target some of these ill-gotten gains or sort out complicit Russians from innocent ones.
The fact is that the current admin here and in several countries has a task force on going after the high value property of people who have been ID’d as enabling Putin. Biden has invoked the DPA for electric cars and proposed doing the same for heat pumps to be sold at cost in Europe-so they can do without Russian gas. This is way beyond “keyboard warriors”.
To the person who pointed out that sometimes sports boycotts do work, as happened with South Africa, thanks.