this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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I had some conversations here. They were saying that north Korea is a lovely democracy, Russia is totally justified in Ukraine, and China isn't doing anything to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Sure those are only ideological differences, but they are really big ones.
Just chiming in to thank mr clay for making that thread so engaging and fun and to second his recommendation that you read it.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll leave cursing the great satan, amerikkka!
Oh hey! You never got back to me on whether you felt that the discussion we had exposed some more nuance on the subject of the war in Ukraine, I assumed you must have gone to sleep or something. But I was really enjoying our discussion and was genuinely curious if you felt it had been productive. Maybe you just wanted to argue with other people more, but it seemed like we were making progress.
For what it's worth, I didn't say Russia was justified, I said the war was bad and the US made decisions that lead to this situation. I'd appreciate it if you would represent me fairly. I certainly hope you're representing everyone else fairly too, I didn't really read the other discussions you were having.
I blocked all hexbear communities after last night, sorry for not getting back to you. There were just to many conversations going on at once.
Yeah I don't think yours were the most wrong takes on Russia out there. I can't see them now though since I blocked the community. I guess justified might be stretching it, since some people were saying morality and justice were useless to try and apply to nations. I guess that would be defending the amorality of Russia?
You didn't actually say any of my takes were wrong, you asked clarifying questions or moved from what we were talking about to another related issue that bothered you. It's truly unfortunate that you've blocked the community and can't go back to see the context, I felt like we were getting somewhere. I'm sure you had your reasons though.
Yeah there were some good ones in there. But I got sucked into answering and asking several hundred questions for 6 hours and didn't think it would be a good thing to go regularly.
Nobody said any such thing.
Not anymore no. They were running re-education centres that had mandatory stayover Mon-Fri, return home on weekends. Those all closed literally 2 years ago now but liberals still scream about it.
DPRK positions are generally quite critical and measured when it's socialists discussing with other socialists. However when a liberal comes in with all their propaganda and brainworms though you get the unironic stanning because it's practically a waste of time having the conversation. If you wanted the measured and mature conversation about it you'd first have to demonstrate genuine willingness to learn and engage with intent to learn, most liberals are incapable of this and want to talk about haircuts or how the entire country is somehow one big play pretend show put on purely for white western liberals and actually things are so bad because they unironically believe the propaganda from defectors making up absurd stories like they have to push the trains because you lot actively want to believe anything you're told.
I'd have the measured conversation about it, but I seriously do not think your response to this will be mature or academic enough for it.
Socialists are much further away from you than you are away from republicans. We know this. We point it out regularly.
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I mentioned to a different commenter, but I'll copy here. I guess justified might be stretching it, since some people were saying morality and justice were useless to try and apply to nations. I guess that would be defending the amorality of Russia?
I think morality is just not a very useful metric for discussing what states do because none of them are moral, ever. "We're doing [thing] for justice!" is 100% propaganda 100% of the time. It was propaganda when the US said it about invading Iraq and it's propaganda when warhawks say it about Ukraine defending itself. Their real motivations of american policy makers are throwing ukrainian people into a meat grinder because they want to see russia harmed for global competition reasons.
If we want to talk morality. The only moral thing to advocate for is the shortest possible path to the lowest possible number of lives lost. The quickest end to the war. The liberals claim Russia want to genocide all of ukraine because they know that if they drop this claim they have no way to continue the war, because continuing the war by keeping them armed only costs lives for an unwinnable meatgrinder.
Advocating for the continuation of the war is immoral. It will cost tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands more lives, will not be won, and for what? Lines on a map? We're socialists, we don't care about which bourgeoise state exploits the people, we care about the people. Choosing to advocate for an action that continues the war is just nationalism, the act of defending a bourgeois-state at the cost of lives. We don't want to spend those lives. We're not cheerleaders for one group of billionaires (the west) or another group of billionaire capitalists (russia) having their rule over the ukrainian people or russian people. We ultimately want them both gone and want the people to no longer be exploited. In the meantime we want the least harm. The least harm in a war is the shortest end to that war, not dragging it out as long as possible for the highest number of deaths possible.
And that's it really. That's what I think about any argument over "morality" in this war. I think we have the morality position, liberals and fascists advocate for a nationalist position, they care about states and lines on maps more than people. We are going over exactly the same moral contradictions that the internationalists vs the nationalists of the late 1800s and early 1900s went over.
I think the moral position is to advocate to minimize the number of lives lost and injustice done over all, not just the number of lives lost during the war. But I agree all other things being equal, a less life costly war is better.
Russia does pretty aggressive demographic reshaping to areas they've conquered. Like in Crimea, they moved much of the local population and replaced them with people more loyal to Russia. It isn't just to move people around like that, uprooting peoples lives for more favorable demographics. Plus the stress of being forced to move to somewhere unfamiliar is also quite difficult, causing some shorter lifespan. If Russia conquers more territory, they'll likely do the same there. That will lead to increased distress and death. So that needs to be weighed against the cost of war.
The bigger concern though is the longer term outlook of Russia. If Russia is able to start more wars, that will kill many many people. So we do not want an outcome of this war that will permit more wars to result. If Russia is right and Western support for Ukraine just dries up and they can take territory and people, Russia will be more inclined to try it again other places in the future. This invasion was based off of their successful invasions of Crimea and Georgia (sorry brain slip) for example.
I would like a quick end to the war, but not one that sacrifices many civilians or leads to more war in the future. So I support giving Ukraine as much aid as is reasonable to quickly win the war to minimize loss of life.
Why just war theory matters is because the public still influences policy in democratic countries. If a war is unjust, the public is more likely to be against it, which is bad for reelection chances of those involved. I agree we shouldn't take the government's justification at face value, but instead form an opinion based on our moral framework. So it's still useful to critique the government since they need to listen at least a bit.
Edit: also, the death of civilization, especially children is usually more unjust than the death of willing combatants. This effect isn't huge, but minimizing civilian casualties is better than minimizing military casualties.