this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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I don't want this to devolve into a long discussion about democracy in Ukraine, but even though Ukrainian soldiers might be defending their homes, Ukraine as a nation is defending it's political system. If Ukraine surrendered immediately some people would still have been killed, some houses destroyed and some private property taken over by Russian oligarchs, but Putin wouldn't have taken every single home of Ukrainian citizens. The Russian soldiers attacking the Ukrainian homes aren't doing this because they want the houses but because they are forced, or at least brainwashed to do so because the Russian state wants control of Ukraine.
The main support should be of the Ukrainian and Russian people suffering from war, secondary that of Ukraine as a state as it's current political system is better for it's people than Russia's.
Edit: Ukrainian soldiers aren't actually actually able to attack the people that want Ukraine to be invaded (Putin), the treaties they signed with the western nations to get support forbids them from attacking targets on Russian territory, meaning they have to defend them against their invaders meatshields not against the invaders
I'm afraid there are a lot of historical examples of how things can go very wrong inside the country if the govt doesn't like some specific group. So even ceding the whole country and becoming a part of ~~the empire~~ Russia might not have helped much
How do you explain Bucha or Mariupol?
ah, yes, brainwashed soldiers have never done war crimes either. case in point: the united states.
I'm confused, here you're saying brainwashed soldiers but down below you're saying that war crimes can only be committed by people that are inherently evil. How can it be both?
Never claimed they don't. The Russian propaganda commonly demonizes and dehumanizes Ukrainian(-soldier)s. They also like to pretend that they are actually doing this for the Ukrainian people (like the US). Do you think that Russian soldiers commit war crimes because they are inherently evil?
yes, anyone who commits a war crime is an inherently evil person. a normal person, even during war, does not torture or rape someone. don't try the nazi defense, that's bullshit and you know it. if you have the choice of raping and murdering civilians, or being shot for refusing orders, and you choose to rape and murder, you don't get a pass for just following orders. you're still a rapist and murderer. you're still evil.
That's a dangerously naive mindset. Anyone can be tricked into committing war crimes. It isn't just certain groups that are inherently susceptible. Normal people are very capable of atrocities. Fascism and of course capitalism specialize in incentivizing said atrocities.
please, tell us how you get tricked into raping and torturing people? is this like when men argue that the woman was tempting them? do you trip an fall out of your clothes and into the raping? I'm curious how you think people are "tricked" into something like that.
or if that's too hard to answer, let's use a different scenario. we've see videos of russians castrating captured ukranians. how do you trick somebody into doing that?
You're not familiar at all with what propaganda is? What dehumanization is? What nationalism is? What capitalism is? That's how.
How about I ask another question. Who specifically are the groups susceptible to war crimes. Point at them. Every single russian? How do you identify them? Every single American? Every single German? Every single British person? Every single person from sudan? War crimes and atrocities and the like are carried out basically globally by every people. You really think it's just select people or do you think maybe it's something that humans are susceptible to and we should guard against? Don't be naive and assume you're special.
those arguments are the same ones the nazis used to defend themselves at nuremburg. they didn't work several decades ago, so what do you think has changed in the interim that makes them a good argument now?
Listen I say this is someone who's looking out for your own good. I want you to educate yourself on how easy it is for fascism to infect people. Read They Thought They Were Free. Understand that Nazis weren't comic book villains. They were for the most part regular people that fell for the grift. That went along with it cuz it was easy. That you couldn't look at them and identify them by their evil eyes. Because people that think Nazis were some kind of comic book evil villain instead of regular people who did Evil are people who are going to fall for the same thing. They don't understand how easy it is to fall for fascism. They're the reason fascism has overtaken the world again. Because they think it couldn't happen to them.
Ordinary Men is another book on this topic, mostly following a group of older police officers who turned into perpetrators of genocide. It affected me deeply. It's based on interviews and Nuremburg testimony.
This just comes across as too prejustifying become a war criminal.
It ignores all the people who resisted and all those who resisted and died.
You have already decided you would rather survive by murdering and raping and being a good soilder and that's all on you.
You are what allows fascists to operate and that was the point of the thread. You've been given enough rope on your his and you used it all thinking you were winning.
What an absurd comment. What an enormous straw man you've managed to build here.
Truly this is the mindset that scares me about the future. The idea that education and knowledge and preparedness should be discouraged. The idea that being able to look at and identify the trends of impending fascism should be discouraged. You're like an anti-vaxxer. The disease of fascism Rises and you sit there without a mask.
Your visceral reaction to the summation of your words presented back at you succinctly is not a straw man. It does nothing to address my concern that you're primed to be a fascist boot, instead it reinforces it by illustrating your lack of culpability in what you preach.
What on Earth are you babbling about?
I'm just curious as to why you think the nazis were innocent of their war crimes? after all, you're using nazi apologia.
Literally no one is saying that. You sound ridiculous.
your argument against mine saying that people have a personal responsibility for engaging in war crimes like rape and torture, is to absolve them of that guilt by claiming that anyone could be tricked into such acts. that's nazi apologia.
you're obviously a terrible fucking person.
That's not even remotely close do anything I said.
However I wanted you to consider something. In our conversations you've shown yourself to be extremely judgmental, quick to anger, exceedingly hostile, inability to consider points of views of others, you've shown a sense of innate self-superiority, and an inability to empathize. If I were trying to describe the people most susceptible to being conditioned to commit war crimes and atrocities those are all traits I would absolutely list. You're not special. Nobody is.
I want you to answer this too. yes, or no?
I'm not sure who on Earth you were quoting here (im guessing yourself) or what it has to do with anything we said. Absolution has never been our topic.
But since we're asking questions I'd like you to go back and answer the question I asked a couple responses ago that you ignored. Your argument is that people who commit war crimes atrocities are special. Only certain select people do them. You're not one of those people, you're innately Superior to those people. And I just want to know again who those people are? How do you identify them? What makes them so inherently evil? How are there so many of them? Inexhaustibly throughout human history in every people and culture.
Before you answer that question though I'd like you to look at that quote you posted that I assume is from you. I noticed you said something in that quote. You said Netanyahu convinced the people of Israel of the same. He convinced them. How did he do that? I thought it was only certain people. I thought you couldn't be convinced of things like that. Isn't that the Crux of your entire argument? That only the other people are capable of those things? How do you convince a whole people? Surely you're not going to make the argument that all Israeli people are inherently evil, so doesn't that rather break your entire argument apart here?
yes, I am absolutely superior to people who would do those things. idk, maybe that's different for you. maybe you think you could be convinced to do horrible things like that. maybe you think you'ree suspectable to propaaganda in a way that could convince you that something like that was OK. idc what propaganda you show me, I'm not going to decide it's OK to rape somebody. I guess I'm just fucking built different than you are, but there is no conditions that you could ever possibly conceive of that would convince me to do something like that.
gods, you're so fucking thick, aren't you? idk why I gotta explain this so many fucking times to you. yeah, propaganda can convince people that another group is subhuman and beneath them. but normal fucking people don't go around raping and torturing animals either, you fucking shit-for-brains twatwaffle. no fucking normal person engages in shit like that. if they do something like that, THEY AREN'T FUCKING NORMAL PEOPLE.
now answer the fucking question, do you think the IDF soldiers who raped those prisoners are absolved of their guilt because they've been propagandized? and a follow up question, just based on your responses, why do you think you personally could be convinced to rape somebody?
Well okay, even I'm a little stunned at how easily you walked into this.
So to summarize your comment there. You are an inherently Superior being. No matter what situation you were thrust into raised into whatever, you were better than other people. Kind of an Übermensch if you will. You're just that much better than those others. Those others can be convinced to do evil because they're inherently less than you. Those others include the entire people of Israel. They're inherently less than you, the Übermensch. Interesting...
I didn't walk into anything. I knew what you were doing. it was an amateur fucking attempt. and yeah, I'm not a fucking rapist and never will be. and I absolutely think I'm a much better person than a rapist, or anyone who has such a fragile fucking mind that they could be propagandized into being a rapist. you seem to think that's some kind of fucking "gotcha", but it isn't, you dipshit. I would wager most of the people reading this, besides you obviously, would agree that they would never rape somebody. and one hundred percent of those people think they're better than a rapist.
cause guess what, fuckwad? people who refuse to rape someone ARE ABSOLUTELY BETTER PEOPLE THAN RAPISTS. go ahead and report me to the mods for that, please. I'm a nazi because I won't rape people, no matter what? that's your fucking argument? you're a fucking piece of shit if you think that.
As we all know, if you refuse to rape someone, you're a Nazi. Makes total logical sense.
"You won't rape Nazis because rape is wrong? Huh, must be a Nazi."
Listen to yourself. You just want rape someone and make it justified. Maybe we don't rape people?
I cannot even imagine the amount of mental gymnastics it took to try to justify making that comment.
No reflection at all, got it.
No I don't typically have much to reflect on from absurd straw man arguments.
Let's agree to disagree. We clearly have very different ideas on human nature and I don't think either of us is an adequately educated physiological professional to hold a sensicle disscusion on the topic
we can agree that if you do these things, you are an evil person, or we don't agree at all. I don't really give a shit about what sort of justifications you wanna come up with, that's just rape and torture apologia and if you do that, then you're a bad fucking person too.
We do agree that one shouldn't kill or rape people, however were we disagree is that you think that someone can't do something without finding it wrong if they had an objektive look at the facts. Do you think someone shooting a dog that is attack ing their child is a evil person? Do you think the majority of people couldn't be convinced that a certain group of people is subhuman, more similar to an animal perhaps, not be treated as a human? Do you not think that the majority of couldn't be made believe that these subhumans are attacking your country men, practically your family?
To name a more harmless example: most people will continue to buy products even they know they are partially being manufactured by slaves, even if they know that the production conditions of these products cause many deaths, even though this isn't a life or death situation for them.
Your idealism is honorable, however I think you expect to much from humanity
how is that remotely on par with a war crime?
pity you weren't born several decades ago, I think your life's calling would have been defending the nazis at Nuremburg. that's the same argument they used to try to absolve themselves of personal responsibility for their war crimes.
It's not, that's the point. People are made believe that they are equivalent
The crimes the nazis committed are on a bit of different level than those committed by Russian soldiers, so please don't relativize them.
To follow along with the point, I have on multiple occasions heard the sentenment expressed, most recently in a well known podcast(I can look for it if you want to), that World War II soldiers that killed German civilians aren't that bad because the Germans were nazis. Ukraine government/military/parts of the population being nazis is common in Russian propaganda. Don't you think those people could be convinced that it's okay to kill Ukrainian civilians?
does them believing that absolve them of war crimes? that's the crux of my argument, and international courts have ruled time and time again that no, being brainwashed by propaganda does not absolve you of guilt for war crimes.
Netanyahu thinks Palestinians are subhuman, and has convinced the nation of Israel of the same. does that excuse the IDF soliders for raping Palestinian prisoners? yes or no, please, I want you to answer that.
Many of the international courts do like to overlook war crimes committed by the "good guys", also legality≠morality
In general I think there has been a miscommunication. Do I think that people committing war crimes, under any whatever circumstance, have done nothing wrong? No. But if you look at the laws, there are circumstances were a crime is viewed specially. For example were I live if you get drunk and kill someone you will not be punished for murder, but for not being able to now your limits with alcohol. Or if someone puts a gun to your head and tells you to kill someone you will not be considered guilty in the way a murderer would.
To get to the IDF soldiers, no I don't think the propaganda excuses rape, they have done something wrong. However I don't think they are inherently evil people that deserve to die or should be permanently excluded from society. I don't think there lives should be considered expendable or worth less
I'm assuming so, because that's the argument I'm making. being a victim of propaganda doesn't absolve you of guilt for violent acts. you have to choose to do that. nobody is holding a gun to the heads of the IDF soldiers and telling them to rape prisoners. they chose to do that without urging. did the propaganda make them decide the people they were hurting were subhuman? yeah, maybe. but a normal person doesn't go around raping and torturing animals, either. the kind of person who does things like this is someone who has something broken inside them. the propaganda is just a convenient excuse for them.
does every person have the capacity for evil acts in them? absolutely. but some people have a greater capacity than others, and they were born that way. they're all around us, living among us, a part of every group and nation. just waiting for an excuse to do truly horrible things to other humans.
And it this point we're back to what I said, neither of us is a psychology expert that can on a scientifical level make claims about if people are born in a way, or raised or whatever, that's why this is mostly pointless.
luckily for us, there are people like that that have published peer reviewed research on the matter, so we can defer to those experts.