Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Gabriel]

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

Paediatric hospital in Mykolaiv hit, possibly with cluster bombs.

If MSF can report, specifically, then we should take notice.

 

[Protein Junkie]

I have been wondering why this has become so prevalent too.

You have the Russian version - the Nazi Ukrainians and NATO have got it in for us.

Then there is the QAnon thing about a powerful cabal of Satan worshipping, adrenochrome-consuming pedophiles orchestrating everything to keep the rest of us in check.

Plus, there’s the Salafi-Jihadist variation, according to which the West wants to get rid of Islam and Muslims.

Twenty years ago, the journalist Jon Ronson wrote a book about conspiracy theories called Them. If I remember it rightly, his conclusion was that conspiracy theories appeal because they help people to make sense of a world that would otherwise remain incomprehensible and chaotic to us, one in which there are actually no secret rulers or a 'deep state' that are seeking to control and manipulate us.

Could it also be an evolutionary thing? Again, I dimly recall somebody (Richard Dawkins?) arguing that we are a pattern-recognising species. This might confer an evolutionary advantage if it helps us to sense danger before it arises. Unfortunately, it can also generate false positives.

Collapse of trust in institutions, politicians (except for populists who play the 'fake news' card), and grand narratives of progress might also be a factor.

A couple of days ago, someone on here started a thread about Gnosticism. The Gnostics claimed an ability to intuit hidden meanings in early Christian literature. The Kabbalists do the same with the Torah, and Sufi and Shia Muslims with the Qur'an.

This got me thinking that conspiracy theorists are a bit similar, in the sense that they perceive hidden meanings in world events.

It is also a tendency that movies like The Matrix and its sequels exploit: only those who have swallowed the red pill (or don the sunglasses in John Carpenter's excellent They Live!) can see the truth.

Conspiracy theorising can also be traced quite a long way back in history, to Plato's Allegory of the Cave (the details can easily be Googled) for example, where the philosophers turn out to be the ones who manage to free themselves from enslavement through the deployment of rationality.

Where it includes a threat, a conspiracy theory also provides a larger cause to align oneself with: save the children from the shape-shifting pedophile lizards, save the Mother Land from the Nazis and Russophobes, and so on. It also gives people hope: after Trump arrests the cabal and JFK Jr. emerges from occultation, a 'Great Awakening' will happen, or in the case of Russia there is the prospect of making the country great again.

When it comes to Putin, I don't think he actually believes his own bullshit. It's just a cynical ploy to deflect attention away from the massive corruption and inequality in his own society, and to preserve his grip on power.

Will stop there as this post is already too long. But in closing, will just add that conspiracy theorists are not necessarily a confederacy of dunces. For example, all educational levels are represented within QAnon, including PhDs, doctors and lawyers. The same goes for Salafi-jihadists, with a lot of recruits coming from medical, engineering, or IT backgrounds.

Had no idea that Le Tissier was such a massive ****, though. And he really does seem to be thick.

Good post.
Haven’t got a fecking clue what it’s about though :-)

 

[SWP's back]

as is shooting prisoners of war. Even if those with hand and feet tied were soldiers they would have been prisoners of war at that point.

100%, what’s your point with this? You’re not talking about that video which purported to show Ukrainian soldiers doing that to Russian soldiers which was then thoroughly taken apart as bogus are you?

 

[SWP's back]

An embarrassment and no wonder he is now unemployable. Shows that a decent career in football doesn’t need much in the way of intelligence.

 

[SWP's back]

Anti-vax dickhead. No surprise he's thick as fuck and full of conspiracy bullshit.

The only thing Tiss’s tweet was missing was a like from MSC.

 

[SWP's back]

So why jump on the blokes back and call him WUM when these thing happen and have happened and will unfortunatly happen again.

He said the Russian army aren’t acting differently than any army throughout history.

He is excusing the massacres of civilians in Ukraine by saying every army does it in war. That’s patently bollocks. Do you think the British army did this is WW1, WW2, either Gulf War, the Falklands etc etc?

Posting a link that shows genocide of native Americans 150 years before the Geneva Convention was signed doesn’t really prove him right does it.

 

[Coatigan]

I'm not so sure this is correct. I don't think it is being portrayed as Ukraine winning (not here at least) but rather doing much better than initially expected in military terms. At the start many believed it would all be over in a few days.

I suspect you are correct about a major offensive in the Dronbas region though.

I think it is true, unfortunately, on here in particular. Almost feels like it hits excitement levels at times, I find a lot if it quite distasteful, when so many Ukrainians are suffering.

Fucking terrible this war, and maybe that in itself makes us (me) more sensitive and read into things more than needed, but certainly feels like that at times.

 

[grunge]

100%, what’s your point with this? You’re not talking about that video which purported to show Ukrainian soldiers doing that to Russian soldiers which was then thoroughly taken apart as bogus are you?

Nope not at all. I took the thread of the chat to mean the bodies littering the areas around Kyiv where Hand an feet were tied before they were executed.

civilian or soldiers, that’s a war crime.

 

[Blue Llama]

Nope not at all. I took the thread of the chat to mean the bodies littering the areas around Kyiv where Hand an feet were tied before they were executed.

civilian or soldiers, that’s a war crime.

Considering Putin's insistence that it isn't a war surely every act by the Russians is a crime and every death is murder?