-approved bad guys.I have a few lib family members who are well-meaning and actually open to challenges to their preconceptions. They consider themselves anti-war, even did anti-war activism during the Iraq war and state that their primary concern with respect to the Russia-Ukraine situation is for the well-being of the Ukrainian civilians. They even recognized the racism happening at the borders and were appalled by it. They are boomers, but they're actually not too bad as boomers go.
However, they are avid CNN-watchers and so that is their perspective on this conflict. I feel like it is my duty (whether that's true or not) to at least attempt to give them an accurate view of the truth about what's happening in Ukraine and some of the very important context around it. I would like to think I can get through to them, but I am terrible about talking about this kind of thing. I stumble, I completely forget everything pertinent, and instead of making a good case for my view, I end up making it look foolish instead.
I'm slightly better in writing, so I've decided to attempt to compile a very broad, general, absolutely NOT comprehensive list of the distortions, lies, and overall false narrative that the US/NATO and the West generally are pushing via CNN. The plan is to make a bulleted list of the overall major distortions and then populate each section with "sub-lists" that contain specific examples. I've started on a very very rough draft of the broad list that I'll put inside a spoiler tag at the bottom of this post. I have been saving a lot of what gets posted in the Russia-Ukraine megathreads, from links to important tweets, to links to articles, to some of the many examples of MSM suppression of info, to even quotes I liked from fellow Hexbears. But it's all just a jumbled mess right now, but that's why I'm going to try to make this list. You know how the megathread has the "Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict"? I want to do something like that, but on the much broader topic of "Examples of the false narrative being created and the actual realities contradicting it." I know it sounds like a massive undertaking, but I figure it's only a matter of how detailed it is.
I have a few questions for you all. First, are there any good web tools for making this list? I know I can make a personal wiki but I've never done that before. It looks like there are several options for this, so are there opinions here as to which one would be best? Or is using a wiki overkill? Maybe I should just do it in a document file.
But that leads me to my next question: Does anyone want to help? I don't mean to ask others to do my research work for me, but I also thought that some of you might enjoy working on something like this, and that maybe if it were a group effort (and not just my personal shitty compilation) it might even end up being a helpful resource for other people to use as reference or maybe even in their attempts to deworm the libs in their lives. Is this a silly request? I know there has been interest in doing something like this, and I would love to have the help. Actually here is a thread about that started by @MaoistLandlord a while ago in the R-U megathread and I see it come up often, I just happened to have that one bookmarked. So I'm just tossing this out here just in case anyone wants to use it as a jumping off point for something more comprehensive than my little project, but I don't mean to be presumptuous.
Obviously, if this were to be a group thing, it would be up to whoever was working on it to decide what kind of list or structure it would be. If it's just me, I'm not going to commit a ton of time to it, and it's going to be what I described above: just very basic list, with major bullet points of what CNN is not talking about for the sake of the false narrative, and some examples beneath each bullet point. It's only going to be a way to structure some of the stuff I've saved from the megathread and present it to my libs so they have a better view.
Here's what I have so far as the super rough draft I just typed up in 10 minutes of only the broad points and in no real order. What am I missing? What did I get wrong?
spoiler
Obviously there's a lot of overlap, but what can you do.
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This is a proxy war between the US (NATO is essentially an alliance for the interests of the US) and Russia. It is not an invasion on the whim of a maniac.
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The Ukrainian government is heavily infiltrated and influenced by literal Nazis and the military is lead by Nazis and made up of entire Nazi battalions that have been funded and trained by the US for years.
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The violence now has been an ongoing issue ever since the US-backed coup in 2014 and the Nazi government and military have been shelling the eastern part of Ukraine ever since, as well as going in and committing hate crimes.
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NATO (which was created as a military alliance against the USSR but did not disband when the USSR fell, but instead continued to treat Russia as a threat despite Russia's many capitulations) has repeatedly promised Russia it would not expand, has denied Russia's request to actually join NATO as well.
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The Ukrainian military has been committing atrocities against its own people and blaming it on Russia, including shooting civilians who try to escape to safety instead of stay and fight. (a list of atrocities - as in, the types of atrocities being committed would be helpful here, of course a list of specific instances would end up being a book in itself) They are hiding themselves and arms in schools and hospitals and using civilians as meat shields.
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The Ukrainian government has been putting out massive amounts of ridiculous propaganda in a bid to try to get the US/NATO to do more, despite the almost certainty that further US/NATO intervention would lead to a WWIII scenario. Sub list of some of the most ridiculous or egregious propaganda would be good - ghost of Kiev obviously.
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The US and western media in general is parading this propaganda as truth to an astounding degree. More importantly, it is suppressing any information that remotely goes against the prevailing narrative for the purpose of manufacturing consent for its own support and gearing up for a new col war with Russia. (sub-list of egregious examples of suppression, perhaps even a sub-sub list of likely false flag events like the fire at the nuclear power plant - honestly I'm not sure what category to put that under, same with all the info about western volunteers going over there and the things that have been reported by them.)
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Putin is not a Communist (he is a Capitalist through and through), does not want to reform the USSR, and Russia is not at all a communist country.
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Zelensky is not a good guy but a war criminal for a number of reasons (again a sub-list here would be good) but includes not allowing men below the age of 60 to leave the country (hence the Nazi contingents murdering those who try), handing out weapons to everyone even when they don't know how to use them (leading to citizens killing each other both by accident/misidentification as well as outright murders of each other as in revenge killings and interfactional violence)
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There has been shocking anti-Russian sentiment from violence to banning of ordinary innocent Russian people from participating in society throughout the West (another sub-list here) and it is being hailed as a good thing by western media.
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While this fits under the propaganda parts, it's worth it's own big bullet point: Ukraine is NOT winning the war, Russia is NOT incompetent and doing poorly. Russia WILL absolutely win, no question, unless NATO decides to intervene further, and we should NOT want this to happen unless we want to edge close to and possibly cross the line into the annihilation of humanity.
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It is also worth stating that “winning” and “losing” does not mean in reality how it is being portrayed, specifically considering what Russia’s goals actually are. It is almost certainly not Russia’s goal to completely occupy Ukraine or literally make it part of Russia itself, but 1. to ensure the sovereignty and freedom of the the former areas of Ukraine that have been under violent attack by the Ukrainian military since 2014, the LPR and DPR (aka Donbas region) as well as Crimea, 2. the demilitarizing (and “denazifying”) Ukraine and 3. The absolute prevention of Ukraine joining NATO. If those objectives are accomplished, Russia will have “won.”
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Zelensky and the Ukrainian government have had multiple talks with Russia, each was an opportunity to do the right thing and surrender. This would save innumerable lives. Instead, Zelensky makes ridiculous demands and perpetuates the violence. Whether this is for vanity, for a (hopefully) misplaced idea that NATO will intervene and "save" him, or if he correctly or not thinks that surrender would mean the ultranationalist elements in his own government would assassinate him*, it is utterly selfish. (*include example of official who was shot in the head for supposedly potentially giving information to the Russians)
In a society that rewards greed and punishes empathy while grinding everyone into abject alienation from their labor, from their communities, from each other, and from themselves, it's no surprise that so many people get molded into self-serving, willfully ignorant, insufferable pricks. It's a feature of a capitalist society, not a bug. Capitalism cultivates and nurtures the worst aspects of human nature while trying to snuff out or at best twist the good and positive traits of our social species. There's nothing wrong with hating the innumerable shitty people who have adapted to this mode of production by becoming shit people, so long as you don't ever think they represent the "inherent" state of humanity or lead you to hate humanity as a whole. Don't let that rational, understandable hatred of people as they are now, adapted under capitalism, dissuade you from seeing the beautiful potential for a loving, healthy humanity as it would be when adapted to communism.