https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/06/russia-spreading-false-claims-about-quran-burnings-to-harm-nato-bid-says-sweden
Defence agency says Moscow is using the protests in Stockholm to stir tensions between Arab countries and the west
Defence agency says Moscow is using the protests in Stockholm to stir tensions between Arab countries and the west
Russia at the center of a whole hell of a lot of the tension and strife that the world has gone through over the last few years.
He is trying to destabilize the West in hundreds of different way and average folks just don't understand or actually would even believe. Far right candidates in Italy, France, the US and elsewhere. Stirring of the religious pot in Sweden and a few other Europeans countries. He has an army of Russian trolls online trying to spread misinformation and propaganda. The most obvious international meddling that he's done is invade Ukraine, but there is just so much more.
This list is from 5 years ago and so much more could be added, but much of the meddling we won't really know for years to come.
Russia at the center of a whole hell of a lot of the tension and strife that the world has gone through over the last few years. He is trying to destabilize the West in hundreds of different way
USA you mean?
"I'm going to attempt to derail the conversation and distract from the main topic by pointlessly bringing up the United States, as if that somehow makes what other bad actors are doing completely okay! How dare you criticize other countries for doing shitty things! "
Any Western reporting about how much Russia "meddles" in the affairs of others is laughable because the US and the Western European powers have done so much more, for so much longer, and far more effectively. If the goal is to stop meddling, try dismantling the West first, then go after the smaller threats.
I am honestly looking for my defence of any "west" and coming up empty. And I think you might have just done whataboutism recursion. Neat!
Nah, you just happen to be using terminology that is used by western propagandists in order to criticize someone who is pointing out western hypocrisy. Any time the west is criticized, it's "whataboutism". The term, by the way, was created during the cold war to also dismiss when the west was criticized back then. It really should've stayed there, and I'm honestly kind of surprised at how quickly people bought into cold war mentality again to scream about Russia (and China). At least "commie/pinko" got changed to "tankie" so there's something new I guess.
Oh its much older then the cold war "Tu quoque" style arguments go way back. I would still call it out no matter where or who it was directed at.
This is a post about a country doing something shitty, to then excuse shitty actions with a "but look at what other country does" is not calling out hypocrisy but to in fact encourage and endorse those shitty actions.
I didn't claim that style of argument was invented then, just the term. Turns out I got the invention of the term wrong, but it definitely was used during the cold war. Still, I see endless articles about Russian disinformation campaigns as if it was something unique to them. Instead of talking about disinformation in a post about disinformation, the only acceptable way to go about it is to instead make separate endless posts of American disinformation campaigns?
Pretty sure the Greeks figured out that logical fallacy 25 centuries ago. Wikipedia says the particular coining of that term comes from the 1970s to justify IRA tactics.
I want a citation that it was "created during the cold war to also dismiss when the west was criticized back then."
I wasn't claiming the fallacy was invented that recently, obviously. I thought the term was, but apparently I got the timing wrong on that. My bad.
No it is whataboutism when it is a thread about a Russian doing X and someone mentions the West also doing X.
Two wrongs do not make a right, condemning one person doesn't mean approving of another.
Someone claimed that, and I quote, "Russia at the center of a whole hell of a lot of the tension and strife that the world has gone through over the last few years."
How is pointing out a much, MUCH bigger force in global geopolitics whataboutism?
That's literally not how whataboutism works. Whataboutism is when you deflect by pointing to a DIFFERENT thing that someone else is doing. When it's the same thing, we just call it "naming hypocrisy". The article is hypocritical, because The Guardian literally spreads Western propaganda including lies ALL THE TIME. So when the lying liars who lie tell you that there are other lying liars who lie, then the we can say "you're a hypocrite."
But that's not even the important part. The important part is that the lying liars who lie in the West are lying are part of a very large and very long process of war mongering that has causes hundreds of millions to die for Western imperialism. So when the Western lying liars who lie tell you about other lying liars who lie, what they are doing is building a case for killing the lying liars who lie that are $OTHER, but they never agree that the same consequences should be applied to the lying liars who lie that are $WESTERN_COUNTRY_LIST[rand()]. So it's worse than merely hypocrisy, it's violent war mongering that kills innocent people.
Even better is when we compare the scope. The lying done by Russia is so small compared to the lying done by the West and has killed far fewer people than the lying done by the West. For example, the lying liars who lie from BRITAIN got 40% of China addicted to opium. When China decided to ban opium, the lying liars who lie from BRITAIN went back to BRITAIN where not only they run a drug dealership but they also own newspapers. They wrote lies about China and convinced the British Navy to attack China. The Opium Wars were literally launched by British drug dealers who owned newspapers and published lies. And who were these drug dealers? Ever heard of Forbes? Yes, Forbes magazine is part of the Forbes business empire that was built from fortunes made on building US railroads funded by the money accumulated by selling opium to China..
So fuck The Guardian and the lying liars they are. No one gives a shit about the lies of the Russians because the British and the rest of the West have been lying for 600 unbroken years and used those lies to kill 100s of millions of people around the globe and dominate 80% of the world's population for a long time. Yes, the Russians lie, because that's the fucking game that the West has put everyone in. It's the only way to beat the West and no one seriously thinks Russia's lies are worth getting upset about except the fucking war hawks. So when you repeat the propaganda, you're participating in the war machine.
It's not whataboutism.
You have no fucking idea what that terms means. Whataboutism is when you say "Johnny stole a cookie" and I use whataboutism to say "But you killed the dog 3 years ago." Whataboutism is not when you say "Johnny stole a cookie" and I say "But you invaded and occupied the bakery, killed the original owners, steal the ingredients to make your cookies, and issue predatory loans to hungry people so they can buy your cookies at price gouging prices."
It is not whataboutism to call out hypocrisy. It takes a special form of brain rot to not see this.
Your previous post is textbook Whataboutism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation.
No argument was actually made. I was the one making the argument, which was that Russia's meddling is smaller and less damaging than Western meddling.
Your response was to how "Russia meddles" as you put it yourself. And instead of making an argument, you say "so did the West".
Which is whataboutism, ad hominem and a red herring.
You never put forward an actual argument in your comment starting with "Any Western reporting" Which I referred to earlier.
I find it very hard to understand how you believe you are actually making a point here?
It's a wonder you can figure out how to navigate the world around you. The commenter was not making an argument, they were adding a list of facts about Russian meddling, none of which is up for debate. The argument is implied by the article to which the commenter was adding additional premises as supporting evidence. Again, no problem with those premises, they are supported by fact. The problem is with the argument made by the article, which is that we should care about Russian meddling and we should act, or support actions, to stop it.
This is argument is inherently relative and involves numerous relative claims. These claims can be that Russian meddling is distinct from other meddling, that it is particularly severe, that it leads to particular bad outcomes, that it is distinctly morally inferior, or meddling itself morally reprehensible and must be stopped.
But generally Western propaganda goes like this: that nation over there did a bad thing and we must stop them, we never do that bad thing, but if we do it's for good outcomes, but if the outcomes are bad it was an accident, but if it wasn't an accident than they deserved it. Basically the abusers psychological playbook. And West and their media arms play that game masterfully. In this case, Russian meddling is newsworthy and part of a larger trend of why we must defeat Russia, crush its economy, sanction its people, arm its enemies, and encircle it with military bases and nuclear capabilities.
Never mind the fact that Putin is in office because of US meddling. Never mind that US meddling has been more egregious, more comprehensive, has effected more countries, more of the world's population, more land, more wealth, more children, has caused more death, more environmental devastation, and has gone on for far longer than Russian meddling. The US media never says the international community should sanction US billionaires because of US meddling that led to Putin, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, death squads, drug epidemics, etc.
Nope. None of that. Because the US doesn't meddle in the affairs of sovereign nations, but if it does it's for their own good, and if harms them then it was accident, and if it wasn't an accident then they deserved it.
And you think I'm engaged in whataboutism? I think you're a myopic Western drone who's been indoctrinated since birth in a system that embeds orientalism, white supremacy, and global dominance into every single aspect of life from the time you were in grade school through all of your employable years, that your family raised you to succeed within that indoctrination because failing to do so would be worse for your economic and social outlook, and now, thanks to that indoctrination, you can't even reason effectively about a basic thing like whether or not someone is deflecting by asking "what about something else" or if they are fundamentally attacking the basic premises of an argument that culminates in a call for escalating a proxy war with a global nuclear power.
Get your fucking head on straight and think for a goddamned second instead of imaging that anyone accusing the Western war propagandists of hypocrisy is engaging in whataboutism.
Super annoying, isn't it.
I got some clown named @bigMouthCommie who responded to me who thinks he's clever. It's a 5year old account with no other posts except to reply to me. He asked for citations thinking I wouldn't have any. I gave him a couple, but I know he'll never even look at them.
I remember when it first started Worldnews on reddit was swarmed with all these weird accounts like that. Multiple years old with no activity until that day and then 8 comments supporting Russia.
To the credit of reddit mods every account I reported for taken down.
Yeah I don't know how Lemmy works when it comes to that. I think with the upcoming US elections this kind of shit is going to explode here now that this site is getting more traffic. I really think people here are ill prepared for an onslaught of bad actors and I don't think mods here have any way to stop it.
I can't see them being able to do anything. Someone is going to have to add on something to the site that lets you mark accounts that are paid Russian shills that everyone else can see.
Useful idiots. Anyone thinking defending Russia is defending communism is a moron. Russia isn't a Communist state, it's a fascist state.
Worse than "edgy teen angst" is the "totally grown up" parroting of western propaganda as if it were the objective fact of the world. You remind me of the people who think conservatism is the new counterculture.
LOL. Entire families killed by US-trained death squads in El Salvador as a signal to indigenous people to stop political organizing inspires angst? OK.
They love ignoring it was US interference (Bill Clinton) in Russian elections that gave us Putin
So you want to dismantle the west, that is the most functional, equal and free region of the world and only then go after the "smaller threats" (that is f* Russia with its second biggest nuclear arsenal in the world, currently involved in a genocidal war to increase its territory, besides all the side conflicts from Syria to Niger). Just wow at your total delusion, that's what speaking from a point of privilege is.
The West is the most dysfunction, unequal, and unfree region of the world. You are the one who is delusional. All you need to do is look at the US prison population, the amount of land occupied by Western powers, which country is the only country to drop nukes on civilians, the Atlantic slave trade, the occupation of India, the Berlin Conference, the Opium Wars, the Open Door Policy, the indigenous genocide, etc.
Why are there white people in the Western hemisphere? Dysfunction, violent expansionism, genocide, oppression. Why are there white people on Australia and New Zealand. Dysfunction, violent expansionism, genocide, oppression. Why are Hong Kong and Taiwan going through so much turmoil? Dysfunction, violent expansionism, genocide, oppression.
Where did fascism emerge? Western Europe. Under what conditions? Western liberal democracy. Who is voting against the condemnation of Nazis? The US.
What is the 5 Eyes alliance?
The Victims of Communism propaganda project struggles to reach 100M killed by Communism. It includes Nazis killed by the Soviets during WW2 and it includes births that the researchers claim should have happened but didn't. The authors of the Black Book have denounced their own research. Meanwhile, the Western imperialist order has killed hundreds of millions. 70 - 80 million people indigenous the Americas alone. Millions died in a famine in India deliberately and knowingly created by the British occupiers.
The US has dropped so many bombs that the most bombed countries in the world are all bombed by the US. The US engineered multi-generational genocides through the use of nuclear and chemical weapons, mostly in the Pacific where it has no business being. The US illegally occupies Hawaii by it's own laws! It sterilized 1/3 of Puerto Rico as part of its eugenics project that didn't stop until the 1970s. It has never stopped forcibly kidnapping children and separating them from their families. They have been doing it since they landed on Plymouth Rock and they keep doing it to this day.
And then we have the sanctions regimes that have killed millions through collective punishment, starvation, denial of access to life saving medicines. For those it didn't kill it stunted their growth, made them incredibly ill, traumatized entire nations of people. And these sanctions are not small. They have hit hundreds of millions of people and they last decades.
The West is sociopathic. It is "free, equal, and functional" for barely 30% of its white cis het male population. And unlike other countries, its sociopathy extends far beyond its own borders. Sure, the West oppresses non-white, non-cis, queer, non-men within its own borders to the tune of millions including vigilantism, rape, torture, mass murder, genocide, lynchings, police brutality, domestic spying, theft of property, displacement, deaths of poverty and neglect, active state oppression, etc. But the West has been exporting that shit for 600 years to literally 80% of the world's population.
The West is the greatest scourge to humanity that has ever existed. It is the source of the supermajority of oppression that humanity has experienced. No one has done more harm to humanity and to the planet than the West.
And the fact that you think it's the most functional, equal, and free region of the world speaks to your privilege, not mine. The wealth of the West was stolen from the rest of the world. Trillions of dollars extracted from Africa alone. When the Haitian slave revolt won independence from France, what did the West do? They levied a multi-billion dollar debt on them, and they made the calculation based on the market value of each black body on the island. France literally said "you owe us the money we bought you with" and the Western banking system agreed. To this day that debt still stands, it is in the hands of Citi, and they continue to make profit from the interest on it.
Nothing will help humanity more than the dismantling of the Western imperialist world order.
The first Quran burning event in Sweden was Paid by a party of the extreme right with Russian connections. The burning was in front of the Turkish embassy, to anger Turkey as much as possible, probably exactly to prevent Sweden from entering NATO.
So very obviously the Russians had part in it from the beginning.
Which one? That stupid Dane has been burning Qurans in Sweden since before the war began.
And it's a bit misleading to say paid. It's technically true, but it is a very low amount of money that's needed for a permit. It's 50 € or something like that.
While the Russians might have encouraged it, he would have done it anyways. He just loves attention.
But seriously, if anything fucky is going on rn, my default is that Russia is behind it. Kinda sucks because it's just another conspiracy theory, but it fits too well not to be true most of the time. The coups going on in Niger (and Mali and Burkina Faso before) are the most obvious examples. Less obvious is the disinformation campaign in Germany (and probably all over europe) against progressive policies atm.
I think it’s less about being against progressive policies and more about creating societal friction by supporting controversial figures and helping politicians that are pro-russia. The conservative/ alt right politics fit Russia, but more importantly those parties are often less critical of Russia (they don’t mind their anti human rights / free press autocratic tendencies as much) while also being underrated in the polls. Populistic anti-migration parties often aren’t taken seriously and rarely included in coalitions, but get a surprising amount of votes which can still be fairly useful to influence those countries.
The coup in Niger is directly tied to Russia through the Wagner group. Those assholes are neck deep in seemingly half the continent's internal strife.
Apparently the west is just sitting on their asses doing nothing with exponentially more resources than russia?
Saying one thing is happening doesn’t make it mutually exclusive for other things to be happening.
You're never confused because you let your CIA handbook do all the thinking for you. Everyone you disagree with is apparently a tankie. The word has lost all meaning (if it even had one beyond bashing leftists in the first place).
The person I responded to said, and I quote, "if anything fucky is going on rn, my default is that Russia is behind it."
Absolutely not. But I feel that the strategy has changed. Compared to some years/decades ago, when you could pinpoint coups to the CIA, the West seems to be more interested in stability than turmoil. I might also be totally wrong though. With so much going on it's easy to lose track.
All these super well-funded intelligence agencies across the NATO alliance and not one of them can stop a bank transfer.
It’s pretty easy to believably say that the Swedish government supports Quran burning when they keep issuing permits for it.
If you wanna get a little background, they keep letting this Rasmussen guy burn em as a demonstration. What is he demonstrating? Why his legitimate ethnio-nationalist political beliefs which hold that there is no place in Sweden for Muslims. If that makes you wanna vote for him, he’s got his own political party (far right, naturally).
An easy parallel is calling the government that issues the kkk a permit to march in robes racist.
It would be real simple for the swedish government to put an end to this kind of talk, they’d just have to stop issuing protest permits and police escorts to people burning Qurans.
If you don’t want your enemies to be able to say you condone hate speech, stop condoning it.
I'm sorry, but your parallel shows how you've got this wrong.
It's ok to demonstrate against Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and even countries like Russia, China, or USA.
It is NOT ok to demonstrate against Muslims, Jews, bhuddists, or Russians, Chinese, or Americans.
The KKK marching in white robes are classed as hate speech, because they hate a group of people.
Burning the Qur'an is not hate speech because it shows a hatred for Islam, not Muslims.
If we start to ban stuff like this we're heading towards a slippery slope we don't want to go down.
HOWEVER, I believe you could see it more as hate speech when it's obviously directed at, for example, Turkish people when you burn it outside their embassy. And that's what this discussion should be about, because it's a whole different thing burning the Qur'an at "plattan" in central Stockholm compared to outside a countries' embassy. I haven't paid much attention to Rasmussen either, but if his intent is "Muslims are bad" instead of "limit amount of refugees", I believe that can be classified as hate speech as well.
It’s cool, I can burn the Quran, I don’t hate Muslims, I just hate Islam, the religion and history of all Muslims. Where am I gonna burn the Quran you ask? Why, in front of a mosque, in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood or in front of the embassy of a Muslim nation. Don’t worry though, I’m doing it to show that I hate Islam, not Muslims. Pay no attention to my extensive history of speaking in racial epithets toward muslim people, my association with far right anti Muslim groups or my political party that explicitly opposes allowing muslims to live in the country. Now please provide me a police escort so I’m not torn limb from limb in the process. Why no, I certainly did not intend to incite, what ever could have given you that idea?
This is like saying people should be able to burn crosses because theyre doing it to show that they hate Christianity (or in the case of a kkk offshoot that really existed: that it’s part of their Christian worship service). No one is out here burning crosses for any reason other than to signal hate. No one is burning Qurans for any reason other than to signal hate.
We can easily prove this by looking for someone burning a Quran who isn’t aligned with a far right party that has anti Muslim ideology, hasn’t spoken out against muslims and isn’t funded by groups that are.
There of course are none, because everyone burning Qurans is doing it as a form of hate speech.
I didn’t suggest they ban it. The easiest way for the state to not condone hate speech is to not issue a permit to make it.
Yeah… not sure you quite understand that goes against free speech by removing their right to speak about it if a permit is required but the government isn’t granting it… much less that a permit be required for “free speech.”
I am seeing you make a distinction but I am not seeing you list a difference. There is no point to protesting anything if you don't have people see it.
Permitless speech is still possible, the speaker just won’t have the backing of the state in making it.
If the state denied a permit for this kind of demonstration the speaker could still up and decide to burn a Quran or make any other speech they see fit, they just wouldn’t have police protection and crowd control.
Given how unpopular this sentiment is in general and the various speakers’ choices of venue (Muslim neighborhoods, mosques, embassies of Muslim nations), I doubt they’d continue burning Qurans.
That’s why I phrased my initial response the way I did. The Swedish state should stop condoning that kind of speech if it doesn’t want it’s enemies to be able to accuse it of condoning that kind of speech.
Stop issuing permits, stop protecting hate speech.
Oh absolutely. While I love baseless accusations, accusations are better when it’s obvious.
Edit: and check homies history… it’s pretty obvious.
only if the people on the other side are arguing in good faith, which a lot of them over on lemmygrad arent. they use textbook propaganda tactics and tow the kremlin line religiously.
I do appreciate seeing more perspectives, but Lemmygrad is open that they don’t intent to push things in good faith.
I will say that the more socialist (than I’m used to) lemmy.ml has been interesting, but the lemmygrad spots are a silly but dangerous echo chamber
I should have read one comment down before responding. This is absolutely the correct answer.
The fake communists don’t want to hear them though, so there isn’t really any sort of debate.
Source: banned on lemmygrad.ml and I’m a pretty far leftist.
I like it when people make up statements because they can’t refute what is actually being said.
Nowhere did this person say that.
Says the guy who posted "found the Russian". I understand you're trying to back up your CIA co-worker, but there is nothing to refute in the post I replied to, so you're not making any sense. He just wanted to defederate from Lemmygrad (guess why).
I have alts for current affairs and local normal stuff; this one is supposed to be for hobbies like Tolkien and fantasy stuff but I keep getting dragged into other stuff lol.
They are but they are more against NATO than brown people, so they'll side with brown people to hurt NATO. I have a russian colleague that is the summary of Russia. I used to talk a lot with him and he was a racist and homophobic bastard, but he would act friendly towards indians and chineses because of political reasons.
Like alt-right politicians and gay people? It’s always weird to see them tweet something out in support of a gay couple until you see it’s about an incident involving migrants.
What really weirds me out is the small group of LGBT without the T siding with the religious.
Wtf! They are going after you next!
No. Stop projecting Western pathologies onto your enemies. Russia certainly has its share of the Western mind virus, but so many of its cultures were not even considered White by Europeans. You could do research for the next year and try to compile all the evidence of Russia being against brown people and it couldn't hold a candle to even 1 of the Western European states.
I'm sorry. Are you implying that the existence of ethnic violence within Russia is indicative of Russia being MORE against brown people than the NATO countries. The US who occupied Afghanistan for 20 years, bombed all of Iraq's civil infrastructure, organized multiple coups, occupations, and pro-Western regime changes throughout the Islamic world, developed their own interpretation of Islam that was extremist and then trained Islamic extremist groups in terrorism and used them to achieve pro-Western goals? How about the brown people in India that NATO member Britain occupied, exploited, destroyed, and extracted from, and starved millions through a deliberate famine? How about the brown people France occupied, enslaved, and killed all through Africa? How about the brown people the Netherlands, NATO member, kidnapped from Africa and sold, occupied all around Africa and Southeast Asia? Belgium? Spain?
Every single one of those countries has ethnic violence within their own borders, but that's not the primary indicator of how much harm they cause brown people. The US literally ran eugenics programs against various shades of brown people through the 1970s. Those eugenics programs were adopted by the Third Reich and used against many different people's who were considered non-White, but in Mein Kampf the author literally states his aims to apply the US programs of industrial genocide and apartheid to subjugate the Slavs.
No, Russia isn't MORE against Brown people. The enemies of the West are not merely worse versions of the West, despite what the propagandists would have you believe.
Oh and:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337291231_The_Concept_of_the_'New_Soviet_Man'_As_a_Eugenic_Project_Eugenics_in_Soviet_Russia_after_World_War_II
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53055857
Oh and the current genocide (I am waving my hands in the general direction of Ukraine)
Hurdurr whataboutism! You found a research paper that literally states that there is no evidence of eugenics finding institutional roots that would indicate a flourishing of eugenics but instead focused on improving environment, social, and educational conditions of people so that people would become better people over time. Compare that to the actual forced sterilization of fully a third of the colonial US holding of Puerto Rico, the mass murder of 7/8s of the indigenous population in the Americas followed closely by the destruction of their environment and destruction of their social and educational behaviors followed by the forced kidnapping of millions of indigenous children and their subsequent re-education by physical, psychological, and sexual torture to remove their language and culture and turn them into obedient slaves of the white ruling class.
I mean, you're a sick fuck if you think this paper is anywhere near capable of being compared to US eugenics, let alone what was going on in Europe at the time.
I am sorry, but I must not be reading that right, I cannot parse.
Edit, much better.
Also did you see the comment about selective calling of whataboutism? Wild stuff, love to see it.
LOL, what goal posts? You're just randomly throwing out what you think are logical fallacies as your solution to countering narratives that paint Western actions in a negative light? Try to define the "goal posts" and then show what you think moved. Because as I see it, the question is "who hates brown people more" and that means the goal posts are quite literally "who's actions have harmed brown people the most"
These "goal posts", you know the ones you set and rhetorically asked to provide evidence for....
"No. Stop projecting Western pathologies onto your enemies. Russia certainly has its share of the Western mind virus, but so many of its cultures were not even considered White by Europeans. You could do research for the next year and try to compile all the evidence of Russia being against brown people and it couldn’t hold a candle to even 1 of the Western European states."
You said Russia’s negative treatment of PoC wasn’t even comparable to any Western European country. He sent back a report about mistreatment in Russia. And you changed the subject to whether Russia or the USA has been worse. I think that is what the person responding to you is referring to.
according to the statistics afro russians are such an extreme minority that many of my local towns have more people of African descent than the entirety of Russia.
It's so sad that you have to imagine your ideological opponents as paid shills of the government you know nothing about. It's too hard for you to imagine that I'm actually a born and raised American white boy who went through the same indoctrination everyone else around me did and through self-crit, studying history, and engaging in dialog with people who challenge my deeply held convictions that I ended up disagreeing with your deeply held beliefs. It's sad. I don't need to imagine you're something you're not in order to understand why we disagree.