Diplomats say Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine has brought back darkest memories of occupation under Stalin
Nato must be ready for Russia launching an “existential” war against the Baltic states “masked by a blizzard of disinformation”, ambassadors from the three countries have warned.
Writing exclusively for The Sunday Telegraph, the top diplomats to the UK from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said that Russia could “pivot quickly” from Ukraine to invade the Baltic.
And they said that Vladimir Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine is evoking the three countries’ “darkest memories” of occupation under Stalin.
The Estonian ambassador Viljar Lubi, the Latvian ambassador Ivita Burmistre, and Lithuania’s charge d’affaire Lina Zigmantaite, wrote the joint article to mark Friday’s 20 year anniversary of their countries acceding to Nato.
Turns out we should have been helping Ukraine against Putin’s fascistic colonialism instead of supporting an entirely separate set of fascists commit genocide in Palestine.
The issue is partially that we have no real voice in American politics. Republicans are highly responsive to the whims of their voters, Democrats work hard to ignore when their voters have demands. Republicans have not choice to do what they’re voters want. Democrats have carte blanc because they know “Blue no Matter Who” and “Any Blue Will Do”. It’s incredibly important to recognize this divide in electoralism. The policies of the Republican party are the will of the Republican voter. Republicans are scared shitless of their voters because it is a non stop series of purity tests effectively contrived through the alt right media. If you step out of line as a Republican, consider your career vanished
I feel like you have it completely backwards.
Democrats have always been “the big tent” party, which is part of their weakness, as their voters have a wide range of “demands” that are often, if not always, contradictory. You have to remember that this is a party that has to appeal to religiously conservative black people, while also appealing to upper middle secularists. They are trying to appeal to both conservative religious muslims, and at the same time the powerful voting Jewish bloc.
It’s not an easy tightrope to walk, but it’s not regularly “ignoring demands of the party” it’s “which of these two competing demands of our party can we ignore that will hurt us less?” They basically try to appeal to the voter, but that’s impossible because they are trying to please too many disparate groups at the same time.
Republicans have the advantage of having to appeal to a smaller group and set of beliefs, and then just get everyone else to fall in line behind it (although that is being tested now with MAGA delusionalists vs the traditional conservatives). Republicans have been pushing this fear of different people (immigrants, different religions)and liberal elites for decades now (as you note in another post, via things like right wing media). . . it’s just that they lost control of it when someone (Trump) rose up and fully embodied the id they had been fostering. . .and now they are just following the playbook where they have to get everyone to fall in in line behind that.
I’ll be real, that situation seems pretty fucked, but I have no idea about US politics really, I’m from Wales.
That being said, our main political parties are essentially in this same state by the looks of things.
Its super fucked, but its also people conditioned to believe that the Democrats are out there trying to do work for them, when they are just as invested in the US monoparty as the Republicans are. And those people are the majority of people on lemmy, pretty much representing a down vote brigade whenever you criticize Democrats, or point out that they are part and parcel to the dysfunction in our political system. They aren’t adjacent or subject to the problem; they are the cause and source and one of the primary beneficiaries of the dysfunctional state. The Democrats are not your friends. They aren’t on your side. They have shown that at a national level they do not give a fuck about the polices they campaign on. If it wasn’t for Democrats setting the table for it in 2008, there would be no MAGA movement right now. Failing to go after any kind of meaningful policies or actual criminal prosecution of the engineers of the financial crisis; effectively validating BAU and the Bush era policies and tax cuts: they had no interest in differentiating themselves from contemporaneous Republicans. This left the primary criticism on the table and perfectly valid: that the extant political system doesn’t reflect the will of its users. Enter MAGA. A specific and reactionary populist movement to address this criticism precisely. And it works because its transactional. MAGA voters are getting what they pay for when they vote MAGA. The policies are horrendous and deplorable, but you can count on MAGA politicians to work to get them into place. And herein lies the crux of the matter: Democrats are not interested in the politics they campaign on. They do not work to get the things they campaign on into place, because there are no consequences to them for not getting the job done. This is a direct extension of ‘Blue No Matter Who’ and “Any Blue Will Do”. Democrats always have an excuse for why it can’t be done. Republicans who fail to get it done are replaced.
I can’t argue with your logic here, and neither can I fault your conclusion. All that being the case, though, what can US voters do in this case?
Not vote? Vote 3rd party? Do you guys even have more than 2 parties over there? Seems like you have even more of a duopoly than we do over here in the UK.
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I don’t think this is exactly right. For the longest time Republicans were the same way, dangling a carrot of doing something to get votes but never actually doing it. I think Donald Trump has emboldened a lot of people to run for office that don’t understand that you don’t actually give the base what they want cause it makes you deeply unpopular with everyone else.
You need to listen to what MAGA and rightwingers say when they are critical of the establishment. You don’t have to agree with them and you shouldn’t, but you should try to understand why they make the decisions they make and come to the conclusions that they do.
The MAGA movement was able to fuckold the Republican establishment into doing the will of their voters. It just happens that the will of their voters is vile and wrong, and basically orchestrated through the distribution of rightwing media. It went from outside radicals to business as usual in the Republican party in one election cycle.
Trump pushed for every single one of his campaign tent poles. He didn’t get them all, but he pushed damned hard for almost all of them, and got or made progress on many of them. You should hate him. You should hate those policy positioned he pursued. But he did his voters right in that they voted for a person who would go after those policy positions, and he went after those policy position. These anti-human policies are what right wing voters want.
Here are is a video interviewing rightwingers. Pay attention to how they frame things, how they are structuring their arguments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w42DboOj-Xs
and a response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoP8PjWwn30
And what you are describing, Republicans in the business of dangling carrots; that was the republican party for decades. Its also been the business of Democrats for decades. The difference is that the MAGA movement was able to force the Republicans into action on their polices. The progressive movement has been unable to do so with Democrats.
I generally agree with you, I think the one part I disagree on is the why Republicans go along with this. Sure some of it is because of the purity testing kind of stuff but a lot of it is just because the Republicans for the longest time have paid lip service to these issues but never done anything about them. Like with abortion for example. But then you have someone like Donald Trump come in who is just like, well why don’t we do all these crazy things. And that is what emboldened more people like him, with no experience in politics and no understanding that you can’t actually give the base the way out there stuff without alienating the general public, to run for election and start winning in very red areas. So it’s less of a pressure on the party from the outside to start following this new MAGA movement (although that does exist too) and more of an internal transformation of the party under Trump.
Thanks, trumptards.
Biden got 100 secret arms shipments to israel done while ignoring Zelensky. Bypassed Congress for israel, not Ukraine.
Blaming Trump for Biden abandoning Ukraine to support israels Genocide is top tier mental gymnastics.
Coming to Trumps defense and bashing Biden. CLASSIC LINKERBAAN
Cognitive dissonance and a genocidal apologist liberal, name a more iconic duo.
Go tell your god emperor Genocide Joe to put in effort for Ukraine instead of whining about Trump.
Trump is not an elected official right now but Joe Biden abandoning Ukraine must be Trumps fault. Liberal gymnastics are truly something.
Average lemmy user when any one brings up valid criticism of Biden or the Democrats:
Valid criticism is appreciated and I’ve changed my mind on the genocide going on. That said, when one submits only posts or comments pushing a single narrative to the exclusion of criticizing any other politician, it’s obvious they are a propagandist.
Look through this guy’s post and comment history.
I wouldn’t say average lemmy user, but I have noticed a huge influx of astroturfers looking to gentrify lemmy and make it into another reddit (see r/politics for a prime example of that crap). It started with the shrieking demands to defederate from “tankie” instances.
It’s Russian bots. It’s the disinformation campaign the OP story is referring to.
Arms shipments so secret that we are here talking about them?
Yep because they got leaked. Real sad that Biden is using the same dirty tactic Trump used to secretly sell weapons to Saudi. But of course Biden does it to support Genocide, not help Ukraine. And Biden recently passed the free israel money without Ukraine in the bill. Because Joe Biden does not seem to care about Ukraine at all aside from optics.
I think you may be under the impression that “secret” means something it does not.
Strange when Trump did this to secretly sell weapons to Saudi it was a massive scandal and we all really cared about it. But if Biden does it it’s fine because only Trump would do violate his presidential powers this hard.
By the way do show me the receipts of these sales if they aren’t secret.
You speak only for yourself, there is no we here lol.
I really would suggest at least checking what the word secret means.
You’re desperately trying to argue semantics because you don’t have any actual argument.
Hmmm I wonder who is responsible for the aid money not going to Ukraine. Couldn’t have been republicans refusing to vote for it. Nope… That can’t be it
Oh look there’s still someone left that believes in the fairy tale of voting and the President not being able to bypass congress after being directly demonstrated of the opposite.
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Removed, insulting other users in Russian is still insulting. Attacking the idea is fine, not the person.
“Anyone pointing out inconvenient facts is a Russian plant” is a stupid argument to make. I do see all the mindless upvotes you’re getting while seeing all the mindless downvotes others who are actually citing facts are getting and it makes me wonder if the regular astroturfers from reddit have added lemmy to their list of sites.
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Removed, insulting other users in Russian is still insulting. Attacking the idea is fine, not the person.
This is the cost of failing to fully support Ukraine, while supporting Israel in a genocide.
Is Russia really in any position to be trying to wage war on multiple new fronts? Poland just implied Russia is going to attack Europe. With what? Dry Russian wit and empty vodka bottles?
Russia still has a lot of men and has already transitioned into a war-time economy. All Europe has done is have Baltics and Poland (and probably also Finland) go through potential invasion strategies, the rest of Europe doesn’t even believe in the possibility of war. The only way circumstances could be better is if Trump gets elected because that old fuck will make sure to hamper US support. Other than that if you’re going to invade you couldn’t want better conditions.
I’m not saying it will happen. I’m going to say the invasion would the stupid and hardly beneficial for Russia and the logical thing would be to not invade. But I will add that I said the exact same thing about the invasion of Ukraine and we know how that went. I wouldn’t put it beyond the realm of possibilities.
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Just commenting so I can come back here when Russia invades another country
Why multiple fronts? The current conflict may be frozen under “right” circumstances, Putin will have several years to resupply. It doesn’t matter if Ukrainian allies have more economical and technological power than Russia if people in places like Germany cry that Currywurst now costs 1 EUR more than 2 years ago, and just want this to be over.
I think most people are missing the strategy of modern Russian warfare. Is Russian going to roll tanks and soldiers into the Baltics this year? Probably not.
Russia is using more of an asymmetrical approach to warfare with a ramp up. On the low end is the disinformation campaign. (News and religion: there are a lot of Orthodox in Latvia) Economic “Little Green men” Conventional warfare Nukes or the threat of nukes
I’m the Baltics they are in the disinformation and economic section of the ramp up and are worried about escalation.
Also note Russia goes up and down that ramp escalating and descalating as they did in Ukraine.
Yeah kinda, that’s how Russia has historically won wars and handled surplus population. Sort of why its so fucking big.
It muddies the water around, supporting the various states, and the public image of that.
The same thing for the Palestine genocide ongoing now, the US has a second war to supply.
This is where the drive to withdraw from NATO comes from. Because if you withdraw before your puppet master would trigger article 5 you have no problem.
Wut? Is he going to invade using a pivot table?
He is Vlooking for trouble
Such fear porn. It’s amazing that now Sweden and Finland have become NATO members that they are subject to even more scare tactics! I think it’s ridiculous. Nobody is shelling Russians from Finland or Sweden for the last 7 years. Granted, joining AMericATO is a big mistake but mainly because you are submitting your national defence to US rent seeking instead of developing a European arms framework.
