Ukraine is part of the West. Maybe it hasn’t always clearly been, but as of late it definitely wants to, and so does the West. But this is irrelevant. It’s enough that we care about countries closer to home and to our mindsets (liberal democracy).
“Have you spoken to actual Russians? The Russian government doesn’t punish people just for saying that they dislike the way it’s governed.”
Are you serious? The parliament just passed a law that proposed up to 15 years in jail to those who contest the government’s official narrative regarding the “invasion”. Independent papers are being pressured to never use the word war. And of course, the many journalists and activists who’ve been arrested and killed along the years for pure political dissidence.
(Unless you’ll say something like “A-ha, wait, I only said that the government doesn’t punish people just for saying that they dislike the way they are being governed, doesn’t include actually voicing a contrarian view.” That would be a poor gotcha for obvious reasons.)
Both issues are just common sense really.
“In general, it’s always easy to call people who hold other political opinions than oneself brainwashed. Even in the US, many people hold their political opinions because of social pressure from their environment.”
True, but to a (very) different degree. As with everything in life.
“When the US attacked Iraq, Bush had the majority of its population behind it. Yes, that’s partly because of US media propaganda but it’s difficult to speak about the opinion as detached from that.”
There had always been a very vocal community anti Iraq war, specially among Democrats and alternative media. In Russia that’s way harder to manifest, regardless of people’s opinions.
Most importantly, I enterily agree that it’s difficult to speak of opinion as detached from external pressures, like you say. That’s why I spoke of a probability (I said that the war is an erratic whim of probably a single person). Only you spoke of certainties (“Putin has strong support”, aka we can neither be sure of that).
Are you serious? The parliament just passed a law that proposed up to 15 years in jail to those who contest the government’s official narrative regarding the “invasion”.
In that environment where that’s the line, there’s still nobody forced to express support of Putin.
The media environment of Russia is less free than that of the US and even less free than the UK (where you are comically not really free to criticize Russian oligarchs) but it’s not totalitarian.
We know that Russia is very nationalistic from the success of companies like Yandex or VK. Supporting Putin fits very well with nationalist sentiment. If you think that kind of nationalistic sentiment that leads to supporting strongmen can only happen in an unfree media environment, support for Erdogan is a good counterexample. In Germany, a majority of those with Turkish heritage support Erdogan despite German society disliking Erdogan.
Ukraine is part of the West. Maybe it hasn’t always clearly been, but as of late it definitely wants to, and so does the West. But this is irrelevant. It’s enough that we care about countries closer to home and to our mindsets (liberal democracy).
“Have you spoken to actual Russians? The Russian government doesn’t punish people just for saying that they dislike the way it’s governed.”
Are you serious? The parliament just passed a law that proposed up to 15 years in jail to those who contest the government’s official narrative regarding the “invasion”. Independent papers are being pressured to never use the word war. And of course, the many journalists and activists who’ve been arrested and killed along the years for pure political dissidence.
(Unless you’ll say something like “A-ha, wait, I only said that the government doesn’t punish people just for saying that they dislike the way they are being governed, doesn’t include actually voicing a contrarian view.” That would be a poor gotcha for obvious reasons.)
Both issues are just common sense really.
“In general, it’s always easy to call people who hold other political opinions than oneself brainwashed. Even in the US, many people hold their political opinions because of social pressure from their environment.”
True, but to a (very) different degree. As with everything in life.
“When the US attacked Iraq, Bush had the majority of its population behind it. Yes, that’s partly because of US media propaganda but it’s difficult to speak about the opinion as detached from that.”
There had always been a very vocal community anti Iraq war, specially among Democrats and alternative media. In Russia that’s way harder to manifest, regardless of people’s opinions.
Most importantly, I enterily agree that it’s difficult to speak of opinion as detached from external pressures, like you say. That’s why I spoke of a probability (I said that the war is an erratic whim of probably a single person). Only you spoke of certainties (“Putin has strong support”, aka we can neither be sure of that).
In that environment where that’s the line, there’s still nobody forced to express support of Putin.
The media environment of Russia is less free than that of the US and even less free than the UK (where you are comically not really free to criticize Russian oligarchs) but it’s not totalitarian.
We know that Russia is very nationalistic from the success of companies like Yandex or VK. Supporting Putin fits very well with nationalist sentiment. If you think that kind of nationalistic sentiment that leads to supporting strongmen can only happen in an unfree media environment, support for Erdogan is a good counterexample. In Germany, a majority of those with Turkish heritage support Erdogan despite German society disliking Erdogan.