Probably worth listening to John’s comments in total (I know, I know!), which to me come across very differently than the fragments presented in those tweets:
Dude is going out of his way to muddy the waters on war crimes. Oh the Russians get pissed that some of the Ukrainian men were volunteers and committed war crimes? NO SHIT. Wow such brilliant insight.
Ok I listened. It matched the transcript I provided in the tweet. Why exactly did I need to hear the same words I just read?
“It’s obviously very hard to tell exactly what happened.”
Yes, who knows the Ukrainians might be murdering entire families in cellars, including babies, and tying up their own civilians and shooting them, and somehow getting every survivor’s story to perfectly line up. Fuck off. It’s not hard to tell what happened if you actually give a shit to look into it. Mearsheimer can go to hell.
I did watch it (I appreciate you cuing up the relevant part), and he comes across exactly as he is portrayed in the Twitter comments. There is zero mitigating context.
He just said that it’s very difficult to know exactly what’s going on (obviously true), and that civilians are being encouraged to fight the Russian invaders (this is also well documented). The latter is obviously relevant when you’re talking about civilian casualties – if those civilians had taken up arms, they’re legitimate targets. This doesn’t deny that Russian atrocities have taken place, just saying that it’s a complex situation and we don’t know what’s actually happening.
Do you think we can’t grasp that the Russians were pissed that some Ukrainian civilian volunteers had taken up arms to defend their country, and were trying to send a message by committing atrocities against civilians? How is this some kind of great insight? How does it change anything?
It doesn’t. Not if you think about it for very long. It just deflects, muddies up the waters and offers a life presever for people who are already invested in Meirsheimer’s overall thesis that Ukraine should just lie back and accept whatever happens to them w/o resisting too much.
Yes, sure the Russians may or may not have done some bad things. But it’s so hard to tell what’s really going on. And and also the Russians are really mad that civilians have taken up arms to defend their country from the 2022 version of Nazis (imagine!).
Jordan Peterson didn’t say that! Just watch his videos. No I can’t put it into my own words or describe how you’re wrong. But I know he didn’t say it exactly like that. Just listen to him talk. He sounds so smart!
