Glad you’re reconsidering, if nothing else, and realizing you’re likely still engaging in even more biases yet.
Past that though- I don’t think I offered you any less respect than you did me, not that either of us resorted to shit-flinging. You responded to diss/dunk, and I responded in turn, admittedly I shouldn’t have fed that fire as neither of us were being nasty about it IMO. Other than the discussion on gender though, I feel I called it as I saw it, and I wasn’t attacking you nor “speculating on your position on the Spanish genocides” or “connecting you with the Spanish empire,” and I don’t think my words could have been reasonably taken as such when taken in their context. I was simply pointing to the bias which I felt was present (and which I’d point out again), which was/is about as western as it gets, the assumptions/extrapolations of what I meant were on your end.
I still won’t defend people who enlist themselves to fight in the Russian army, and I definitely won’t call that based
As for that- what exactly is it they do that you consider “not based?” Think about it. The Russian nation has a living memory of fascist genocidal aggression, and while Russia may no longer be socialist, I don’t think it would be inaccurate to call this an echo of the Great Patriotic War. Look at the atrocities and institutionalized discrimination suffered by the ethnic Russians and other minorities in Ukraine for a decade, or the terror still being inflicted- and documented- upon civilians since the Kursk invasion, and I don’t see how it could be called anything but based (and I am not ethnic Russian, nor in any way related to the Russian state- though I feel much of the world which has had similar experiences of persecution and anti-imperialist struggle could and would agree). Meanwhile, what does the Russian army do, exactly? By-and-large I would call it a force for good (Syria, the western Sahel states, etc) and where it is not, it is at least not a force for malice (hell, look at how they treated the Chechens, who today have semi-autonomy- even if that may result in policies that you and I alike might not agree with, it is their internal issue to deal with- and who have been returned to the fold in a manner unthinkable in the west). And the entire world outside the west can see not only the infinite difference between Russia’s (or any of the BRICS’) foreign policy and that of the west- but the infinite difference between Russia’s methods of waging war, compared to those of the west. From Serbia to Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc… (not to mention the countless cold war era wars) if Russia had been engaging according to NATO doctrines, I can tell you that Ukrainians would already be freezing, food-insecure if not starving, with much of their vital infrastructure destroyed, and with no small amount of neverending “collateral damage” of civilians. The Russian army is not anything remotely akin to that of anything in the west, and it is better for it, and in the context of defending their nation from imperialist aggression I would call it based, just as I’d call someone fighting for any of the other highly flawed states I mentioned in resistance to imperialism.
Glad you’re reconsidering, if nothing else, and realizing you’re likely still engaging in even more biases yet.
Past that though- I don’t think I offered you any less respect than you did me, not that either of us resorted to shit-flinging. You responded to diss/dunk, and I responded in turn, admittedly I shouldn’t have fed that fire as neither of us were being nasty about it IMO. Other than the discussion on gender though, I feel I called it as I saw it, and I wasn’t attacking you nor “speculating on your position on the Spanish genocides” or “connecting you with the Spanish empire,” and I don’t think my words could have been reasonably taken as such when taken in their context. I was simply pointing to the bias which I felt was present (and which I’d point out again), which was/is about as western as it gets, the assumptions/extrapolations of what I meant were on your end.
As for that- what exactly is it they do that you consider “not based?” Think about it. The Russian nation has a living memory of fascist genocidal aggression, and while Russia may no longer be socialist, I don’t think it would be inaccurate to call this an echo of the Great Patriotic War. Look at the atrocities and institutionalized discrimination suffered by the ethnic Russians and other minorities in Ukraine for a decade, or the terror still being inflicted- and documented- upon civilians since the Kursk invasion, and I don’t see how it could be called anything but based (and I am not ethnic Russian, nor in any way related to the Russian state- though I feel much of the world which has had similar experiences of persecution and anti-imperialist struggle could and would agree). Meanwhile, what does the Russian army do, exactly? By-and-large I would call it a force for good (Syria, the western Sahel states, etc) and where it is not, it is at least not a force for malice (hell, look at how they treated the Chechens, who today have semi-autonomy- even if that may result in policies that you and I alike might not agree with, it is their internal issue to deal with- and who have been returned to the fold in a manner unthinkable in the west). And the entire world outside the west can see not only the infinite difference between Russia’s (or any of the BRICS’) foreign policy and that of the west- but the infinite difference between Russia’s methods of waging war, compared to those of the west. From Serbia to Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc… (not to mention the countless cold war era wars) if Russia had been engaging according to NATO doctrines, I can tell you that Ukrainians would already be freezing, food-insecure if not starving, with much of their vital infrastructure destroyed, and with no small amount of neverending “collateral damage” of civilians. The Russian army is not anything remotely akin to that of anything in the west, and it is better for it, and in the context of defending their nation from imperialist aggression I would call it based, just as I’d call someone fighting for any of the other highly flawed states I mentioned in resistance to imperialism.