Day 568
Genocide? What genocide?
As if there wasn’t enough to do last year.
Trying out this whole ‘conveying ideas sincerely’ thing (as opposed to that whole ‘flitting about pretending Russia isn’t committing genocide’ thing) is really rather a lot like the whole ‘wearing new shoes on a long walk’ thing.
Tens of thousands more limbs are now missing, almost the same number as kidnapped Ukrainian children. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions more displaced.
Singy songy ratatat genocide.
Amid the bloodbath, Elon mumbled something about preventing a Pearl Harbor-like situation one year ago, saying Ukraine’s government asked him during the middle of the night to switch on Starlink.
Shortly thereafter, Elon tweeted his wacko “peace plan.”
Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.
Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). - Water supply to Crimea assured.
Ukraine remains neutral.
Elon today says switching on Starlink last year would have been tantamount to violating U.S. sanctions (over Russia illegally annexing Crimea in 2014). America’s wealthiest fascistic entrepreneur also mumbled something about Taiwan being an integral part of China, which, er, it is not.
Elon recently took to X and said:
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
According to Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, the reason politicians and policymakers in America don’t talk a lot Russia’s genocidal campaign in Ukraine is because then they would have to do something about it.
People in the West avoid saying genocide because they know that it is, and if they said that it was, it would require more action. It would require them to ask themselves: "Why didn't I do something earlier on?1"
Timothy’s colleague, Jason Stanley, also talked about the genocide Russia is committing in an interview last month.
We all could watch in real time how these processes unfolded in Russia. As an expert on fascist regimes, did you see any similarities between the formation of fascism in Russia and what previously happened in other countries?
Nazi Germany is the closest example. The only difference is that for the Germans, everything was based on race, while the basis of Russian fascism is language and culture. And now we know that linguistic and cultural nationalism can also lead to genocide.
In fact, anything that can divide people into groups can become the basis for genocide. Do you remember the genocide in Rwanda? Until the 1950s, Tutsis and Hutus did not exist, they were one people, divided by the Belgians. They spoke one language, practiced one religion — and this is in Africa, where every country has a lot of languages and religions. And there was seriously nothing there that could be used as a weapon. But the genocide happened2.
How many genocidal acts does Russia have to commit in Ukraine before Elon calls it genocide?
Interview with Timothy Snyder. (European Pravda, September 11, 2023)
Interview with Jason Stanley (Babel, August 29, 2023)