Quote (El1te @ Aug 18 2023 09:21pm)
It doesn't matter if there are some nazi-ideology supporters in the Wagner group/Russian military. They are not flying the banner, they are not displaying the symbols, they are not organized.
You can say the same thing about any Western military. Are there lots of nazi ideology supporters in the US military? Yes. French military? Yes. You get my point.
My point is not ill conceived. The Azov battalion and others are flag bearing outright nazis, there's no level of interpretation here.
Your definition of genocide is odd. Can you support evidence towards mass killings of Ukrainians that are not engaged in open belligerency? (e.g. deaths in war)
Wagner have plenty members that are openly "nazis" check it out yourself. Why do you have such a leaning view of who or who isn't a nazi to Ukraine's detriment?
To me and not only me the intent from Russia is blatant. "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group."
Examples but not confined to,
Bucha massacre, destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, indiscriminate strikes against civilian infrastructure eg: attacks on agriculture,on grain export infrastructure, energy infrastructures during winter. Even attacks on actual apartment buildings with no significant military importance.
I accept that two of these events could be callously chalked up as military actions. The Russian tactic that convinced me of their intention is the deportation of Ukrainian children.
You don't have to completely eradicate every person in an ethnicity for it to be an effective genocide. Removing young Ukrainians en masse not only denys Ukraine of an already living generation but of future potential generations.
Russia is actively and intentionally damaging Ukraine's demographic and their intentions are clear. Which is where I think yourself and ofthevoid are closed minded in this; You both appear to have the bar set higher than what the actual definition of genocide is, because of historical instances.
Quote (ofthevoid @ Aug 18 2023 09:31pm)
I don't really see Russians forcing Ukrainians to learn Russian or abandon their culture tbh. We can agree to a certain extent that something like this was a thing under the Soviet union, particularly in the earlier days, but that's really more of a function of trying to homogenize a population because under communism it's a lot easier to control and program a population that's the same so they would buy into the 'collective' so the underlying reason of why it's happening is important. There's a world of difference between wanting a subgroup to adopt the mainstream language, customs, largely in a relatively peaceful way and what we currently thing as genocide.
My biggest gripe over changing definitions of words based on what's currently in fashion or what currently suits our interests is it fundamentally erodes the historically established meaning, and value of historical events. When we label something like this a genocide, you're putting it in the same language bucket list as millions of Jews getting rounded up like cattle and thrown into a furnace. It's a genuine spit in the face to historical events like that because by labeling them both genocides, you fundamentally water down the scale and absolutely horrific suffering they endured.
It's important to preserve the integrity and gravity of events like the Holocaust, like the Armenian genocide, like the killing fields under Pol Pot. I'm sorry but wars like Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. simply don't belong in the same group as the former ones.
While I can see what your saying about diminishing the plight of Jews in WW2 for example, I completely disagree with you.
In my opinion the opposite is true. By claiming that what is happening today could never be as bad as what happened historically then its a spit in the face of people suffering an equally terrible situation today, relative to their own perception.
There isn't some scale of suffering as you appear to be applying; People are suffering in Ukraine what I believe is an attempted genocide. And I have given my reasons for that above, your welcome to disagree.
Take what ISIS did to Yazidi populations in Iraq and Syria. Estimates of those killed go as high as 5000 people. It is widely accepted as a genocide.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died. Possibly tens of thousands of civilians alone.
It is simply not appropriate to compare one genocide to another as if its a pissing contest.
On this point you are sorely misguided. What your saying about preserving integrity and gravity of events like the holocaust is not unlike prejudice against one ethnicity or another.
Quote (ferdia @ Aug 18 2023 10:26pm)
exactly.
Not even close. Far detached from reality. This is the behavior I and others are talking about. It makes you appear weak.
This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Aug 18 2023 03:49pm