The YouTube video-hosting site and app have stopped being accessible across Russia, thousands of Internet users in the country said online on August 8.
Russia’s problems lie in the attitude of the overwhelming majority of its people, not in the lack of access to information.
They make a conscious and fully informed choice to be genocidal imperialists and embrace authoritarianism.
“they”?
what happens to dissidents in Putin’s Russia? It’s easy to criticize a repressed population when you’re not risking anything.
were all U.S. citizens responsible for the invasion of iraq? In U.S. where you don’t disappear for criticising the government and it’s choices, what difference did that freedom of speech make for Iraqis?
Where in the so called “west” do people keep buying from Putin’s Russia through cloaked trade?
while we’re on the subject of “genocidal imperialists embracing authoritarianism”, who are the greatest sponsors of one of the longest running apartheid regime? Is “the attitude of the overwhelming majority of its people” the cause of this genocidal apartheid?
nuances! “Overwhelming majority” is just trying to get by. Most people are not power hungry psychopaths. If Putin, Netanyahu and some more of their ilk died today, world would be a better place tomorrow.
fuck this! it’s time to go offline and read a decent book.
What about so called russian “dissidents”? Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).
The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.
We are not discussing US right now! The US did not annex Basra state, steal all the local children, force everyone to speak English and send anyone caught talking Arabic to a torture chamber; all with support of somewhere between 65% to 85% of their population.
The overwhelming majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists. They support invasions of foreign countries, annexations, attempts at elimatining local language and culture and setting up mass torture camps for anyone opposed to the yoke of russian degeneracy.
The “trying to get by” pitch is a ruse. Both qualitative and quantitative research (different methodologies, including ones that attempt to account for preference falsification) show this is not true and that on an outcome basis, the overwhelming majority of russians are indeed genocidal imperialists.
You do understand that anecdotal findings don’t mean anything, right? I’ve lived in russia for a decade; the three russians I still speak to are anti-war. That’s not how any of this works!
I’ve posted links and reference to various research works previously in this thread. You can start by looking at polling from Levada (lots of age group information), Russian Field and a paper by LSE that uses list experiments (URL in one of my comments in this thread).
Even qualitative research by russian academics is damning for russian society. They find that even among those who don’t actively support the invasion, a majority still want to see their army win (i.e. annexation Ukrainian territories, steal children, bomb children’s cancer hospitals). This was a recent project done in a small town (15K) in Siberian russia, released just last month.
A strong majority of russian are most definitely genocidal imperialists (including the 19-29 age group, although it may be more of a regular majority than a “strong majority”). You’re really ignorant (of practically all quantitative and qualitative research as well as of history) and/or you are naive and not willing to ask yourself difficult questions.
I’m willing to accept your claim, I’m just yet to see enough evidence to prove it.
Put yourself in their shoes for a moment.
People who criticise Putin over there don’t seem to last very long.
Maybe the average Russian citizen won’t have to worry about that, but there’s still the implication that having different political beliefs is something that should be shunned.
Checking the Levada polling methods, it doesn’t sound like those who are polled are always able to answer anonymously.
Judging by that page, they seem to prioritise door-knocking and in-person interviews.
Are you going to tell the person interviewing you, without knowing if they work for your corrupt government or not, that you disagree with your government?
I’m not a statician, but I think this is called social desirability bias. And when there’s a potential risk to your safety, or even the slightest suspicion that your answers could negatively impact you, that bias increases.
Yes, I’ll admit anecdotal findings are essentially useless when discussing a population, but those statistics aren’t much better.
Considering the points that you raised, what are your critiques of list experiment methodology (e.g. the one by LSE that I referenced earlier) and their findings that preference falsification is just 10%. I will note that you are the one who brought up personal safety.
If the vast majority of your country are genocidal imperialists, it really doesn’t matter that a tiny micro-minority are hiding their preferences does it? At the very least you can admit that this logic is consistent, no?
Since you brought up Levada, they show that something like 84% of the Russian population supported the annexation of Crimea (i.e. at the very least they are committed imperialists). This data point has been consistent since 2014.
In context of your critique of Levada, how is that list experiment research had a comparable level of support at 80% for the annexation of Crimea?
The truth of the matter is that your have no evidence (quantitative or qualitative) or even a working theory to justify your view that the vast majority of russian are just poor souls who got stuck with putin.
This is nothing new for me btw. On the English language internet, you constantly see comically dumb takes about russians being little angels and putin being solely responsible for all evils committed by the russians.
Read the conclusion of the study.
The list experiment very clearly proved that there’s a lot of preference falsification happening, which was all they were testing for.
The survey results are unlikely to be an accurate representation of the public’s support of the war, there are many factors which could raise or lower the true level of support. Getting an accurate percentage wasn’t the purpose of the study.
And I don’t think Russians are innocent. Propaganda and local news may have a strong influence, but the genuine levels of support for their government’s actions is still seemingly much higher than it has any right to be.
But I don’t think its fair to say the vast majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists without accurate figures to back it up.
Those sort of blanket statements lead to racism, hate crimes, etc, against many innocent people.
And what is their estimate of preference falsification? It’s just ~10%, no?
What impact does this level of preference falsification have with respect to the % of russians who support the invasion of Ukraine, annexation of its territories and extermination of Ukrainian identity?
We go from ~75% to ~65% with preference falsification w.r.t. support for the above, is that not the case?
Do the numbers cited (less preference falsification) in support of the war not fall under the definition of “strong majority”? Is 65% not a strong majority?
Don’t the authors clearly state that their methodology (even with weights) likely underestimates the true level of support?
Their numbers (for support of the invasion of Ukraine) align with other polling methods; which is damning for the “innocent Russians just got played a bad hand, they are not really genocidal imperialists” narrative.
Why did you leave out these numbers? I don’t understand. They clearly reference them. Why would you do this?
But you would never accept any methodology or research that doesn’t show what you want to see. Be honest! It’s not about the research or the numbers for you.
So why bring up “accurate figures”?
White washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians leads to 100 of thousands of deaths, 10 of thousands people being tortured (UN stated that 95% of Ukrainian POWs were tortured, and that doesn’t include civilians) and millions having their livelihoods ruined.
And I am just referencing Ukraine. There are many other examples. The russians killed 5% of the civilian population of Chechnya in the 90s. That would be equivalent to killing 7 million russian civilians.
In that particular study, yes, they measured a ~10% difference in support when using the list method vs directly asking.
I didn’t mention the exact figure because if you read the study, you would see that even they claim this isn’t a perfect method.
There could be many more supporters of the war, but there could also be many fewer.
As they say, they sampled a relatively liberal demographic, so it’s likely that the national average result from this survey would be higher, which would certainly help your argument.
But they also say that there’s “empirical evidence that list experiments reduce response bias but do not eliminate it entirely (Rosenfeld et al. 2016).”
Like I said earlier, I’m not a statistician, so I have no idea if the bias can be estimated to have been reduced by 90% or 20%.
All I know is that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, especially when there’s many external factors at play.
I’m willing to be proven wrong, and I don’t appreciate your attempts to strawman me as somebody who isn’t.
I’ll admit that I’m biased because I want to believe that most people over there aren’t terrible, and in my anecdotal experience, they have been. So yes, I’m more likely to be skeptical of results that indicate the opposite, especially if they don’t properly account for the external social influences at play.
I’ve never stated that there isn’t a large percentage of Russians who are genocidal imperialists, I’m arguing that we should try and figure out the facts before claiming that the overwhelming majority of the population are that way.
The way you jump to the opposite conclusion without definitive evidence leads me to believe that you are also biased in your beliefs.
I’m not sure what this argument is trying to accomplish anyway?
I’m not convinced that ‘white washing’ the beliefs of the Russian population are to blame.
What Russia is doing is fucking horrific, there’s no argument to be had there. But should the entire population be monstrified for the actions of their government?
Instead of just slapping a label on the entire population, we should be working on lowering those statistics, and spreading awareness that there’s a huge percentage of Russians who disagree with their government.
The people over there need to know that they aren’t alone in their beliefs, and that they have more like-minded supporters than they realise.
Otherwise the thought of fighting back and enacting change seems hopeless.
Of course not. But the US is actively funding a genocide in palestine and many similar atrocities around the globe. This empire has a long history of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery, racism, war, etc. The overwhelming majority of USAians are also genocidal imperialists. Just listen to NPR. Just look at the presidential candidates.
I’m not saying the alt-empire is any better. I’m saying that empire is the same everywhere. All of these politicians are extremely privileged hanging out together at the UN, dinner parties, etc. regardless of what brand of state they serve. It’s all the same system and same people. Every state and all empire is trash.
So when did senior US politicians call for extermination of Gazan identity, banning arabic in Gaza and annexing Gaza as a new state?
You do understand that the term “genocidal imperialist” has actual meaning, right?
The overwhelming majority of russian are genocidal imperialist because they support russia full scale invasion and they have always supported the annexation of Crimea.
We can have a conversation about the bad and good things done by the US, but I don’t see what this has to do with the topic at hand?
Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).
Not really: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/opinion/how-to-punish-putin.html ; this is just days after the annexation. I’m no fan of Navalny for various reasons (his nationalist views, xenophobic comments and narratives, etc), but he was very much against all Putin’s shenanigans in Ukraine, and vehemently anti-war.
The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.
What are you on about? Name one of them who supported the war. Most of them were jailed due to their anti-war positions.
The NYT article is aimed at western audiences, of course they are going to present a more humanistic pitch.
English language content from the russian “opposition” is often misleading.
In russian, Navalniy initially clearly stated that “Ukrainians, you should forget about Crimea” and that “Crimea is not a ham sandwich, you can’t just give it back!”
He later did a PR pass on his position with a call for an “independent referendum”; a typical russian imperialist mindset. The Ukrainian constitution only allows for national referendums on such matters.
Navalniy own head goon even confirmed that they supported the annexation of Crimea because the vast majority of russian are imperialists:
He was most definitely not anti-war. The russian invasion of Ukraine began with the annexation of Crimea; which was supported by Navaliy and his team.
One of Yashin’s responsibilities as a deputy in 2018 was conscription. Russia has been at war with Ukraine since 2014.
Now I understand for Yashin the “real” war started in 2022 and he was just “looking to promote democracy by taking part in municipal politics”.
But that’s irrelevant if you are from Donbas and your family was forced to leave in 2014. Or if you language and religion are being prosecuted In Crimea.
Kara-Murza went a tired rant about how we sanctions need to be weakened
Pivaovarov stated opposition minded Russians shouldn’t donate to the AFU. Imagine dissidents of the Nazi regime (who took part in a prisoner exchange) stated that opposition minded Germans shouldn’t be supporting the war effort against Nazi Germany.
“they”?
what happens to dissidents in Putin’s Russia? It’s easy to criticize a repressed population when you’re not risking anything.
were all U.S. citizens responsible for the invasion of iraq? In U.S. where you don’t disappear for criticising the government and it’s choices, what difference did that freedom of speech make for Iraqis?
Where in the so called “west” do people keep buying from Putin’s Russia through cloaked trade?
while we’re on the subject of “genocidal imperialists embracing authoritarianism”, who are the greatest sponsors of one of the longest running apartheid regime? Is “the attitude of the overwhelming majority of its people” the cause of this genocidal apartheid?
nuances! “Overwhelming majority” is just trying to get by. Most people are not power hungry psychopaths. If Putin, Netanyahu and some more of their ilk died today, world would be a better place tomorrow.
fuck this! it’s time to go offline and read a decent book.
Sometimes you shoot yourself in the head. Twice.
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What about so called russian “dissidents”? Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).
The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.
We are not discussing US right now! The US did not annex Basra state, steal all the local children, force everyone to speak English and send anyone caught talking Arabic to a torture chamber; all with support of somewhere between 65% to 85% of their population.
The overwhelming majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists. They support invasions of foreign countries, annexations, attempts at elimatining local language and culture and setting up mass torture camps for anyone opposed to the yoke of russian degeneracy.
The “trying to get by” pitch is a ruse. Both qualitative and quantitative research (different methodologies, including ones that attempt to account for preference falsification) show this is not true and that on an outcome basis, the overwhelming majority of russians are indeed genocidal imperialists.
Fuck off with your xenophobia-biased opinions.
If you actually spent any amount of time communicating with people in Russia, you’d realise the overwhelming majority are not genocidal imperialists.
The overwhelming majority of Russians I’ve spoken to do not support the ongoing war, and would prefer if Ukraine was left alone.
I’d be interested in seeing where you’re pulling these extrapolated statistics from, including the demographics of the people who were surveyed.
If 7/10 Texans oppose abortion, does that mean 70% of the country believe the same thing?
You do understand that anecdotal findings don’t mean anything, right? I’ve lived in russia for a decade; the three russians I still speak to are anti-war. That’s not how any of this works!
I’ve posted links and reference to various research works previously in this thread. You can start by looking at polling from Levada (lots of age group information), Russian Field and a paper by LSE that uses list experiments (URL in one of my comments in this thread).
Even qualitative research by russian academics is damning for russian society. They find that even among those who don’t actively support the invasion, a majority still want to see their army win (i.e. annexation Ukrainian territories, steal children, bomb children’s cancer hospitals). This was a recent project done in a small town (15K) in Siberian russia, released just last month.
A strong majority of russian are most definitely genocidal imperialists (including the 19-29 age group, although it may be more of a regular majority than a “strong majority”). You’re really ignorant (of practically all quantitative and qualitative research as well as of history) and/or you are naive and not willing to ask yourself difficult questions.
I’m willing to accept your claim, I’m just yet to see enough evidence to prove it.
Put yourself in their shoes for a moment.
People who criticise Putin over there don’t seem to last very long.
Maybe the average Russian citizen won’t have to worry about that, but there’s still the implication that having different political beliefs is something that should be shunned.
Checking the Levada polling methods, it doesn’t sound like those who are polled are always able to answer anonymously.
Judging by that page, they seem to prioritise door-knocking and in-person interviews.
Are you going to tell the person interviewing you, without knowing if they work for your corrupt government or not, that you disagree with your government?
I’m not a statician, but I think this is called social desirability bias. And when there’s a potential risk to your safety, or even the slightest suspicion that your answers could negatively impact you, that bias increases.
Yes, I’ll admit anecdotal findings are essentially useless when discussing a population, but those statistics aren’t much better.
Considering the points that you raised, what are your critiques of list experiment methodology (e.g. the one by LSE that I referenced earlier) and their findings that preference falsification is just 10%. I will note that you are the one who brought up personal safety.
If the vast majority of your country are genocidal imperialists, it really doesn’t matter that a tiny micro-minority are hiding their preferences does it? At the very least you can admit that this logic is consistent, no?
Since you brought up Levada, they show that something like 84% of the Russian population supported the annexation of Crimea (i.e. at the very least they are committed imperialists). This data point has been consistent since 2014.
In context of your critique of Levada, how is that list experiment research had a comparable level of support at 80% for the annexation of Crimea?
The truth of the matter is that your have no evidence (quantitative or qualitative) or even a working theory to justify your view that the vast majority of russian are just poor souls who got stuck with putin.
This is nothing new for me btw. On the English language internet, you constantly see comically dumb takes about russians being little angels and putin being solely responsible for all evils committed by the russians.
Read the conclusion of the study. The list experiment very clearly proved that there’s a lot of preference falsification happening, which was all they were testing for.
The survey results are unlikely to be an accurate representation of the public’s support of the war, there are many factors which could raise or lower the true level of support. Getting an accurate percentage wasn’t the purpose of the study.
And I don’t think Russians are innocent. Propaganda and local news may have a strong influence, but the genuine levels of support for their government’s actions is still seemingly much higher than it has any right to be.
But I don’t think its fair to say the vast majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists without accurate figures to back it up.
Those sort of blanket statements lead to racism, hate crimes, etc, against many innocent people.
And what is their estimate of preference falsification? It’s just ~10%, no?
What impact does this level of preference falsification have with respect to the % of russians who support the invasion of Ukraine, annexation of its territories and extermination of Ukrainian identity?
We go from ~75% to ~65% with preference falsification w.r.t. support for the above, is that not the case?
Do the numbers cited (less preference falsification) in support of the war not fall under the definition of “strong majority”? Is 65% not a strong majority?
Don’t the authors clearly state that their methodology (even with weights) likely underestimates the true level of support?
Their numbers (for support of the invasion of Ukraine) align with other polling methods; which is damning for the “innocent Russians just got played a bad hand, they are not really genocidal imperialists” narrative.
Why did you leave out these numbers? I don’t understand. They clearly reference them. Why would you do this?
But you would never accept any methodology or research that doesn’t show what you want to see. Be honest! It’s not about the research or the numbers for you.
So why bring up “accurate figures”?
White washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians leads to 100 of thousands of deaths, 10 of thousands people being tortured (UN stated that 95% of Ukrainian POWs were tortured, and that doesn’t include civilians) and millions having their livelihoods ruined.
And I am just referencing Ukraine. There are many other examples. The russians killed 5% of the civilian population of Chechnya in the 90s. That would be equivalent to killing 7 million russian civilians.
In that particular study, yes, they measured a ~10% difference in support when using the list method vs directly asking.
I didn’t mention the exact figure because if you read the study, you would see that even they claim this isn’t a perfect method.
There could be many more supporters of the war, but there could also be many fewer.
As they say, they sampled a relatively liberal demographic, so it’s likely that the national average result from this survey would be higher, which would certainly help your argument.
But they also say that there’s “empirical evidence that list experiments reduce response bias but do not eliminate it entirely (Rosenfeld et al. 2016).”
Like I said earlier, I’m not a statistician, so I have no idea if the bias can be estimated to have been reduced by 90% or 20%.
All I know is that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, especially when there’s many external factors at play.
I’m willing to be proven wrong, and I don’t appreciate your attempts to strawman me as somebody who isn’t.
I’ll admit that I’m biased because I want to believe that most people over there aren’t terrible, and in my anecdotal experience, they have been. So yes, I’m more likely to be skeptical of results that indicate the opposite, especially if they don’t properly account for the external social influences at play.
I’ve never stated that there isn’t a large percentage of Russians who are genocidal imperialists, I’m arguing that we should try and figure out the facts before claiming that the overwhelming majority of the population are that way.
The way you jump to the opposite conclusion without definitive evidence leads me to believe that you are also biased in your beliefs.
I’m not sure what this argument is trying to accomplish anyway?
I’m not convinced that ‘white washing’ the beliefs of the Russian population are to blame.
What Russia is doing is fucking horrific, there’s no argument to be had there. But should the entire population be monstrified for the actions of their government?
Instead of just slapping a label on the entire population, we should be working on lowering those statistics, and spreading awareness that there’s a huge percentage of Russians who disagree with their government.
The people over there need to know that they aren’t alone in their beliefs, and that they have more like-minded supporters than they realise.
Otherwise the thought of fighting back and enacting change seems hopeless.
Do you have a link to the qualitative research in the Siberian town? Would like to read it specifically
https://meduza.io/feature/2024/06/25/a-kogda-uzhe-pobeda-to-nasha-budet
The article is in russian. Very stuffy and verbose writing style.
They’ve only released an in-depth preview news article. I believe the full paper (with an English translation) will be released later this month.
Of course not. But the US is actively funding a genocide in palestine and many similar atrocities around the globe. This empire has a long history of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery, racism, war, etc. The overwhelming majority of USAians are also genocidal imperialists. Just listen to NPR. Just look at the presidential candidates.
I’m not saying the alt-empire is any better. I’m saying that empire is the same everywhere. All of these politicians are extremely privileged hanging out together at the UN, dinner parties, etc. regardless of what brand of state they serve. It’s all the same system and same people. Every state and all empire is trash.
So when did senior US politicians call for extermination of Gazan identity, banning arabic in Gaza and annexing Gaza as a new state?
You do understand that the term “genocidal imperialist” has actual meaning, right?
The overwhelming majority of russian are genocidal imperialist because they support russia full scale invasion and they have always supported the annexation of Crimea.
We can have a conversation about the bad and good things done by the US, but I don’t see what this has to do with the topic at hand?
Not really: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/opinion/how-to-punish-putin.html ; this is just days after the annexation. I’m no fan of Navalny for various reasons (his nationalist views, xenophobic comments and narratives, etc), but he was very much against all Putin’s shenanigans in Ukraine, and vehemently anti-war.
What are you on about? Name one of them who supported the war. Most of them were jailed due to their anti-war positions.
The NYT article is aimed at western audiences, of course they are going to present a more humanistic pitch.
English language content from the russian “opposition” is often misleading.
In russian, Navalniy initially clearly stated that “Ukrainians, you should forget about Crimea” and that “Crimea is not a ham sandwich, you can’t just give it back!”
He later did a PR pass on his position with a call for an “independent referendum”; a typical russian imperialist mindset. The Ukrainian constitution only allows for national referendums on such matters.
Navalniy own head goon even confirmed that they supported the annexation of Crimea because the vast majority of russian are imperialists:
https://time.com/6162889/navalny-ukraine-russia-leonid-volkov/
He was most definitely not anti-war. The russian invasion of Ukraine began with the annexation of Crimea; which was supported by Navaliy and his team.
One of Yashin’s responsibilities as a deputy in 2018 was conscription. Russia has been at war with Ukraine since 2014.
Now I understand for Yashin the “real” war started in 2022 and he was just “looking to promote democracy by taking part in municipal politics”.
But that’s irrelevant if you are from Donbas and your family was forced to leave in 2014. Or if you language and religion are being prosecuted In Crimea.
Kara-Murza went a tired rant about how we sanctions need to be weakened
Pivaovarov stated opposition minded Russians shouldn’t donate to the AFU. Imagine dissidents of the Nazi regime (who took part in a prisoner exchange) stated that opposition minded Germans shouldn’t be supporting the war effort against Nazi Germany.
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