Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 251 posts

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#171

Post by ROTMetro »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #129
keewee7 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is not the greatest atrocity of our generation. There have been at least three invasions and occupations that are significantly worse crimes: the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan That depends on what numbers you're going to believe about civilian fatalities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen etc. It is often claimed that the Iraq War killed anywhere from 0.5 million to over 1.0 million Iraqis. However these big nu…

The study of Iraqi deaths is ongoing and I suspect that the confirmed civilian casualties from direct violence is an undercount, but regardless we should also be counting excess deaths caused by the deterioration of the country's infrastructure. That's a direct result of the war. It does mean we have no good way of counting the dead in Ukraine yet and won't for years. That said, the Ukrainian state has survived and i…

No post body was provided.

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#174

Post by kieselguhr_kid »

unmole wrote: post #159
atemerev wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelensky, the current president, was democratically elected. Yanukovich fled to Russia after mass protests, when he attempted to reverse the process of association with the EU, as requested by Putin (it is one thing to be a “pro-Russian”, and another — to be a Kremlin puppet). Stop spreading Russian propaganda.

Yanukovych was democratically elected, the same as Zelenskyy. Please read the comment I replied to and understand the tone and context. And please read the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People are downvoting this but it's like...objectively true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ukrainian_presidential_el...

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#176

Post by bazoom42 »

lordleft wrote: post #2

Apart from the abstract conviction that we should not indict the cultural output of a country that is under the thrall of an oligarch, I'm a bit baffled at the notion of decrying Tolstoy of people -- a Christian anarchist who radically challenged all of the assumptions of Tsarist Russia. Basically all of the great Russian writers lived in opposition to the various incarnations of the Russian State (Tsarist Russia, US…

While I think it is too simplistic to “blame” or “decry” Tolstoy, the Tolstoy of War and Peace have some nationalistic and anti-individualistic ideas which is easy to see how can be misused for imperialistic purposes.

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#177

Post by kieselguhr_kid »

ROTMetro wrote: post #171
kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study of Iraqi deaths is ongoing and I suspect that the confirmed civilian casualties from direct violence is an undercount, but regardless we should also be counting excess deaths caused by the deterioration of the country's infrastructure. That's a direct result of the war. It does mean we have no good way of counting the dead in Ukraine yet and won't for years. That said, the Ukrainian state has survived and i…

Quoted post unavailable.

The displacement of Ukrainian children is awful, but also occurred in all these other conflicts. The flow of refugees is also awful, as is the imposition of the conqueror's ideology, but that happened in Iraq too.

All the other effects are speculative and caused as much by US/EU sanctions (which have historically never accomplished their goals and have not had their intended effect even in this conflict) as they are by the invasion.

I'm not saying the war in Ukraine isn't a horrendous war crime. It absolutely is. But it just hasn't reached the scale of the other conflicts I mentioned, and I suspect that the fact that white Europeans are suffering instead of Arabs or central Asians is the root of this overemphasis.

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#179

Post by cpursley »

lbrito wrote: post #75
vlyubin wrote: post #13

A Ukrainian here - couldn't disagree more with the author. Take a beloved in the West author like Solzhenitsyn, whose "compassion" suddenly evaporates when Ukrainian question is raised. Even a modern sci-fi author Sergei Lukyanenko does not shy away from racial jokes against Ukrainians or Lithuanians in his Dozor books. Ukraine is a pawn at the world stage, but if the West is serious about battling russia (for its ow…

I'm baffled how this seems only to apply to the Ukraine this one time. Any meaningful discussion is labeled "whataboutism" and dismissed. You will surely agree with me that Russia is not the world's pioneer in wars of aggression. What about (oh no, whataboutism! We can safely dismiss the argument without thinking now) all the other countries that did, and do the same? Should we also dismiss their cultural output? I'm…

It really comes down to race, but most will never openly admit it. Let's face it, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a white people war.

The 11 million muslims killed (and many more displaced) by the collective west (NATO) since 1990 don't count, because they're brown.

But when a non-western majority white country wages war, as George Carlin famously said "That's Our F*ck!ng Job":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qyG6cmTHco

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#180

Post by unmole »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #174
unmole wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yanukovych was democratically elected, the same as Zelenskyy. Please read the comment I replied to and understand the tone and context. And please read the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People are downvoting this but it's like...objectively true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ukrainian_presidential_el...

No, no. It's all Russian propaganda you see. And that Wikipedia page is part of the Russian information war.
Post reply on HN