Really don’t want to weigh in but why was this hidden?
I didn’t flag it.
Yeah curious as to why I mean I get it’s sidetracking the thread (or rather responding to responses sidetracking) but didn’t seem abusive.
You could say the same about virtually every invading military on earth. I mean a recent Australian Victoria Cross medallist (Ben Roberts-Smith) is being accused of numerous civilian murders and torture in Afghanistan by multiple soldiers he served with.
Do you think empathy is a genetic trait?
No. What the Russians did the the German and Eastern European populace, what the Japanese did to China and SE Asia, what the US did in My Lai, is not the same. Those were rape, murder and torture of civilians as a matter of policy. The US soldiers knew what was expected of them, which is why only one person was ever lightly punished.
Central Americans by and large are the most gracious friendly people you’ll ever meet. Yet their soldiers committed countless atrocities against civilians in the 20th century.
This stuff comes from the top. It’s not that hard to motivate young men to commit atrocities in the middle of a war. We all like to think we’d be Charlie Sheen in the heat of the moment, but very few people actually are.
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There was mass emigration from Russia when the iron curtain fell. Most of the people who left were smarter/more educated/more talented etc. than those who stayed behind. I don’t know if it would have any effect from a “selective breeding” point of view though.
Edit: this was sort of intended in response to the post above re: genetic traits.
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I don’t think we are in disagreement at least regarding things from the top? I just think that the top decision makers in virtually all invasions are fairly indifferent (at best) to war crimes. It’s why these seldom get punished (and most who do get punished are on the losing side of the war or have since been removed from positions of power themselves). I’m actually against the posters labelling all Russian soldiers as savages etc.
Ultra bad take here. Be careful with blanket statements about entire nationalities.
I mean, I’ve been watching a bunch of Russian language youtube political channels lately (shout out to @VoteForSocialists for putting me on to those) and there are plenty of Russians calling Russians savages right now. I’m one of them.
Good for you. Wonder what people think about African countries that have even more fraught recent histories of war.
I don’t follow everything that goes on in the world, so I am insufficiently informed to have a view, sorry. This event seems particularly relevant right now, and it’s particularly relevant to me as it involves the country where I was born.
Seems to be a bunch of posters whatabbouting round here lately.
There is very little evidence that the Red Army’s rapes in Germany were official policy, although there were not many attempts to curb the conduct of the soldiers until mid-1945.
The motivation was not direction from above but revenge. As brutal as the mass rapes were in Germany, the Red Army were a model of restraint compared to what the Wehrmacht had visited on the Soviet Union, which had included many many more rapes, 7 to 7.5 million civilians killed, 27 million odd total Soviet deaths, towns wiped off the map, massacres of women and children, etc etc etc.
Whataboutism. Ban.
Meh. “Bred” is a very poor choice of words and I don’t think was meant by the post. “Intimidated” or even “trained”— acquiring a learned behavior much the way the family violence is perpetuated with the added variable that those that don’t care on the violence try to leave or if they stay and protest are removed by the state in some fashion (gulag, etc).
As written it’s definitely an offensive and insensitive post. I’m hoping that it’s just a bad analogy and not really as the simple reading indicates.
sup, chads? lol
We should all make an effort to not take the worst possible interpretation of a post that we probably only skimmed in the first place.
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War has repeatedly resulted in atrocity. Sometimes by specific design of the leaders, other times by poor leadership. Something about needing to dehumanize the enemy to be able to do the killing that is part of the “job”.
Civilized war is the oxymoron of all time.
Uhh this selective breeding/countries being genetically cruel thing needs to stop, ASAP. We’re getting into Eugenics territory here.
A culture being “heartless” is 1000% a cultural thing. The differences re: human rights between Russia/China and the West is nil compared to ~any modern society and the Medieval world. The factors to explain your perception of one country being more cruel than another are 0% genetic. Unambiguously.
That our species is capable of extreme kindness and such cruelty is mind boggling. Seems without exception based on origin or even era. Modern or ancient times.
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