Do you hear anyone saying they don’t want ordinary Russians to move to the US because they might grow up to be terrorists? 50% of the Republican party still loves Putin and Russia.
Yes I know you can find tweets from pissed-off Ukrainians. Their citizens are being tortured, raped and killed by an invading army. It’s understandable to be a little upset at the enemy.
While there is heated war rhetoric right now - which is understandable when one country is basically re-running Hitler 1939 and rigging kids toys to blow up - fear/hatred of ordinary Russian citizens by the greater world is not a thing. You’re playing directly into Russian propgandists’ hands if you entertain that it is.
When the country literally acting like Nazi Germany in actions, iconography, propaganda, etc. is also spewing grievances about being victims - that’s a cause for major concern. Nazis saw themselves as victims too - it was an important part of their propaganda. It always is.
right, you’ll know this is an actual problem when Trump gets on TV and calls for a total and complete shutdown of russians entering the country until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
nope, it’s pervasive. you really shouldn’t guess about russian society. a molotov cocktail costs less than bottle of shampoo.
this is called lying. stop lying.
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i didn’t lie. you said they don’t have a choice. i pointed put they have a choice to not take a part in an illegal undeclared war. even under the awful russian justice system.
i had a chance to chat with a buddy who is in the military about m777. it’s so fucking standard in the us, there are thousands of them, probably at every base the us has ever deployed. and 90 (!) of them are basically the difference for VSU vs RU, even before you factor in russia’s stupidity in planning and command.
true that. my grandfather was in artillery. his hearing got pretty bad by his sixties. although nowadays the GI ear protection is way better that it used to be.
m777 was first deployed in like 2004 and is made mostly of titanium. Watched a vid on its loading and use and it seems surprisingly janky. Requires 5-8 man crew. The US has about 1000.
I’d like to apologize for my poor analogy earlier in this thread involving Islam, terrorism, and Russophobia.
A closer analogy to supporting “Russophobia is a made up term by the Russians to counter condemnation of the Russian state, so it’s OK to call Russians orcs and engage in genetic arguments of why Russians are violent thugs” would be “Anti-semitism is a made up term by Jewish people to counter condemnation of the state of Israel’s ongoing apartheid, so it’s OK to engage in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.”
Tap dancing Jesus. I live in a world where someone thinks that denying the self-victimization propaganda from a country committing genocide against another is equivalent to saying things in service of genocide.
Time for some people to own up to their beliefs.
Genocide?
Russia is committing genocide against Ukraine
Ukraine is committing genocide against Russians
NATO countries are committing genocide against Russians
NATO countries are committing genocide against Ukrainians
There is no genocide happening at all
Genocide is not something outside actors should take any violent or proxy-violent actions to stop
I don’t like orcs and I don’t use it. But I understand that Ukrainians who are being raped, tortured and killed might lash out a bit.
Dehumanizing the enemy happens in all wars, and especially when one country is the aggressive invader. I doubt you’d care if Iraqis called US soldiers orcs.
During wars, Americans called the Germans Huns, the Japanese Japs and the Vietnamese worse stuff I’m not going to type. And I’m sure they called us worse. But nobody still hates the Germans, Japanese or Vietnamese. It passes after the war.
i have memories of playing “war” as early as kindergarden. the enemy was “Fritz” or “fascist”. so i feel like it did not really pass for russians. the literary accounts say that having a german name would get you beaten up in the USSR well into the 60s. it took until the 90s that german cars would become a fashionable and desirable status symbol.
i use orcs because of how dumb RU commanders are, not because of some hidden hatred of russians. (my self-hate is very much not hidden LDO) i also probably say “war criminal”, “rapist”, “murderer”, rather than orc for the atrocities. i’ve heard ukrainian witnesses call the occupying soldiers “fascists”, clearly referencing the occupation during ww2. i use fascist for the regime, but i would feel weird referring to the soldiers.
there are like 20 different terms, some work better in specific languages, or for particular countries. it is weird to clam onto “orcs” as a great insult to russians. lol indeed.
At the risk of painting with an overly broad brush, I’d say that anti-German sentiments were alive and well a full generation and longer across much of Europe, especially in the generation experiencing the war first-hand.