Something that i find prettyd disgusting these days is how certain people put their political ideologies / viewpoints over human lives, for example, celebrating the russian invasion of ukraine because it is “a blow against US / NATO imperialism” completely ignoring all the warcrimes, the deaths, and the suffering generated by that war, the same happening with the palestinian genocide because “Israel is the only working democracy on the middle east”, acting like their ideoligies are going to bring back to life all the dead people somehow
I put human lives over political ideologies, and I’m pretty alone with that.
I’m a pacifist to the point that I’m opposed to the concept of “self defense” on a national level.
If someone tries to kill you, by all means defend yourself.
But this concept doesn’t translate to groups of millions of people, killing each other for years over who’s in charge.
Interesting. What do you think Ukraine should do then if not fight back against the Russian invasion?
What India did against the British – sabotage all Russian-led businesses in Ukraine, and refuse to cooperate with the occupiers.
It would lead to a great deal of suffering for Ukrainians, but the alternative against which this would have to be measured is the current war – with close to one million dead, several million displaced, and no resolution in sight anywhere.
Well Putin for sure would be happy if Ukraine would choose this path. He’s quite used to brutally squash dissidents. Russia also has absolutely no qualm to disperse a group throughout their country to destroy their cultural identity. They are already doing so with the Ukrainian children they’ve kidnapped.
So sorry, but your proposal seems to be really naiv and not taking into account how fucking brutal Putin’s Russia is to people stepping even slightly out of line.
Pacifists are always confronted with this criticism. Every time:
“This war is different. This war is justified, cause this attacker is truly evil. We need to stop this evil guy by all means necessary, even if it completely destroys the country we’re trying to defend and kills an entire generation of its inhabitants.”
I’m not naive, at all. I have no illusions about Russia. I just believe there is no option available that will save Ukraine, and war is always the worst option available. No matter how justified it was in the beginning, in the end all that’s left is war.
Two things can be true:
We don’t get to live in a world where doing the right thing is always simple and easy, or even a good option.
There is no peaceful discussion with fascism, the only language it understands is violence.
I’ll shut up about it if a fascist movement has ever once been stopped by talk.
Sure wish we could put you in front of a long line of Ukrainian bereaved so you can tell them their family’s deaths weren’t the act of an evil man.
I wonder how many of them will spit in your face.
Putin ordered a false flag strike that killed russian grandmothers just to propel himself into office. He IS evil and your bullshit both sidesism deserves to be slapped out of your brain.
Your comment has nothing to do with what I wrote.
But yeah, I’d rather have Ukrainians spit in my face than go to war.
I’d rather be killed by Russians than go to war, for that matter.
It seems you have been so privileged to grow up in a country where mortal violence is not a pressing threat.
There are people in the world that would gladly kill you for your shoes, or for fun, or even for sexual pleasure.
What do you do when one of those people target you or your family?
There is no reasoning with them, there is no reaction except to run or fight.
Pooty poot sent orcs to kill Ukrainian civilians, the elderly, women, children. There are tens of thousands of people who will never see their families again, would any amount of talking or self-sacrifice stop them if they were breaking into your family house?
You have every right to choose to be a pacifist, and I guess there is some degree of self-satisfaction to it, but pacifism will not stop an violent madman if he chooses to target you or someone you love.
I defend myself and my family, with deadly force if necessary.
But as I said in another comment, war isn’t self defense. It’s defense of the nation, which is something completely different, although nationalists like to pretend it’s the same.
What will stop Russia from doing the same to more countries?
The same thing that lead to the decolonization of almost all countries that were once occupied - it’s neither possible nor profitable to rule over a populace that hates you and doesn’t identify themselves as subjects to your rule in the long term.
Ah, so we should just let them attack countries until the internal problems get too big and the empire falls from within? And those countries should just suck it up in the meantime?
Look, I have no good solution for this. No one has, the currently accepted solution is killing millions until the problem disappears behind the problems caused by the war.
I’m not telling anyone or any country what to do. I’m just saying, I won’t ever support or participate in any war, defensive or otherwise.
No, the currently accepted solution is defending yourself against an invading force. Ukraine isn’t killing people to solve the problem, they are killing them to stop themselves from being killed.
And what if your solution doesn’t work? What if Russia just expands and the current regime stays in power? You’ll take away the sovereignty of possibly generations of people, and continually condemning more and more to the same fate, until maybe things collapse. And even then you have no guarantee that whatever comes after the collapse is, in any way, better.
There’s a quote on this topic that puts this into words better than I can:
So you admit your position doesn’t solve anything.
Name one example from the past 110 years where war actually achieved the goal the “good guys” had before it started.
Slavery in the USA South disagrees with that. It was very possible and profitable. It would have continued but armed conflict ended that.
And next up on the Disney Channel: The fall of the bad man because teh peepo don’t like him.
The issue is the popularity of tribalism. A lot of people see an attack on people they “identify” with as an attack on themselves.
Tell me you 19 years old, without telling me your 19 years old…
I’m old enough to have talked to people who experienced WW1, as an adult.
You can be 19 and still talk to people who experienced WW1…
If you’re 19 and had a meaningful conversation with people who experienced WW1 as an adult, those people would have to be at least 113 years old and still mentally fit.
In my case it was my grandma who hacked off the hand of a home intruder with a fire axe and threw it in a nearby river cause there was no police you could call in 1918.