Russia - threadbanned users in OP

For some posters, this thread is like the Two Minutes Hate Orwell wrote about in 1984. Orwell hadn't envisaged the Internet though; the Two Minutes Hate can now run 24/7.

"A cancer in our midst" is a line from the film...

There are people that have read 1984 but only apply its insights to the Other, forgetting that it is a warning to us all, and a matter of personal responsibility that we resist the kind of degenerate howling into the Internet that this thread represents for some posters.

Finished my 4th watch of it last year/start of this year. As you say, it should be shown to absolutely everyone, the episode on the Holocaust at a minimum should be shown to every 1st year in secondary school.

For your later points though, I'd argue somewhat. There's a world of difference between the dissonance required to eat meat and the dissonance required to start killing people. I think the German psyche at the time was far more open to it. Primo Levi was on The World At War, if anyone hasn't read If This is a Man then they've missed one of the key books of the last century. Anyway he makes the point that for all of the "it could have been anywhere" stuff it's very, very important to note that it wasn't anywhere. It was the Germans. There were collaborators elsewhere but it was the Germans. The later writings about getting home and experiences in Russia are humorous at times, even having smashed through Germany they weren't exactly an efficient or well-organised bunch of lads.

Similarly, I question the rationality and awareness of most of the Russian psyche today and it seems like it hasn't changed much in the last century. From the top to the bottom, there are shrugs at war crimes (because surely everyone just does it as bad and on the same scale?), there's fatalism, cynicism and ignorance. I mean they were planning to wheel through and just slaughter Ukrainian civil society and expect no resistance because well, why would anyone bother to resist the inevitable?

I sometimes wind up my ould lad with comparisons to the North, "See? Brits weren't so bad were they?" :D But really, the difference is night and day. And it was mostly done with the ignorance of the British population. Meanwhile there was anti-Irish sentiment growing in England (apparently) yet my dad and plenty of others could travel freely (apart from being profiled, imagine the horror!) and work and make a living and save/send money home (didn't work out for him for other reasons). For all the **** that was going on and all the differences, just imagine Russia in charge of Westminster. There'd have been no Catholics left within a few years' partition. If it happened later "Free Derry" with their socialistic stuff would have learned that the biggest threat to a socialist movement is another socialist movement with bigger weapons. :P

None of the above is to excuse the Brits and the nonsense they performed and allowed to happen. The point being though that if someone came in and tried to compare the Troubles and the Brits' role and the current war in Ukraine then I think most people would rightly **** them off. And it's similar with Ukraine, I'm absolutely and more than willing to turn a blind eye to small-scale issues. I'd be putting more resources into figuring out what idiot-fools are letting the videos out tbh. When someone hasn't (or rarely) posted on the thread and they come in with "I dunno..." and focus on Ukrainian issues it comes across as more than a bit insincere, and I'm being generous. There are contrarians of course (saw a mate for the first time in a while last week, every subject he'll admit he doesn't know much but will start straight into both-sides because he thinks that means he's being "balanced" or "fair") and some who simply aren't bright but went to a couple of philosophy lectures and have decided that everything is a "thought exercise".

I don't put you into either camp btw, and I do think you've been jumped on unfairly more than once on the thread, but that's my reading on it and I suspect why people are quick to jump. Could argue it's a failing on their part to see the subtlety and a rush to categorise but with emotions high and 90%+ of the time those judgments being correct I can't blame them. A willingness for people to walk/row back a little bit or to accept that their posts are coming across to people in a way that wasn't intended would make for a much happier and fruitful experience for all I would think.