Thread by @pavel23

In the 1960/70s the extreme political left sided with the communist bloc and rallied against the U.S. government war efforts in Vietnam; today the extreme right sympathizes with Putin, helps to disseminate Russian propaganda and rallies against Ukraine support.

The symbol Z, which would be like western military marking heir vehicles with Ж or З, is a bit weird, but ok, it’s a symbol. Having normal people in Russia including children put it on their clothes and cars etc. reminds of the use of the swastika in Nazi Germany though.

Both together, use of the same symbol on military vehicles and have civilians wearing it, reminds more of the use of the swastika by SS-troups on vehicles rather than the regular Wehrmacht troups, although the Luftwaffe used randomly swastikas on planes. Am I overthinking this?

And then there is this novel figure called “Zorro”, fox in Spanish, from black-and-white TV shows when I was a kid. A rich guy who in his spare time puts on mask and cape and goes rebel vigilante, and marks his victims with a Z, cut into their skin with a swift move of a rapier.

Just wondering what kind of shit they were airing on German national TV when I was a kid. Guess it was ok for kids because it was swift; had he done it slowly with a knife, it would have been unsuitable for kids I guess.

So there might be a lesson here, also for Putin: If you do cruel shit, quickness matters. You do it swiftly, even kids can watch it. You take too much time, even hard-boiled politicians are horrified.

And then you’ve got Putin talking about denazification of Ukraine, an autocratic Russian ruler, who acts a lot like a fascist, but claims to be anti-fascist and anti-Nazi, but is liked by Neonazis and other right wing extremists all around the world,…

…but also people from the left who haven’t figured out that Russia isn’t communist any more, and only because he used to be some KGB-buerocrat, he is not a fellow comrade, and never was.

So we have a former KGB guy behaving like a Fascist, claiming to hunt Neonazis led by a Jew, supported by confused right wing and left wing fundamentalist and extremists and pacifist in the West, and then there is Israel, home to a millions Jews from Russia and Ukraine,…

…self-proclaimed protector of all jews world-wide, also in Russia and Ukraine, caught in the middle of the conflict, being one of last safe havens for Russian oligarchs and their money. Israel has given more than 30 Russian oligarchs or tycoons citizenship,

…among them Abramovitch, who came there a few days ago with his private jet, but supposedly moved on. The U.S. are pretty pissed right now because Israel has not joined the sanctions and also refuses to deliver any military equipment, even not vests or helmets,…

…but Israel supposedly sent a lot of equipment to treat wounded. In the U.S. now the term “ungrateful ally” for Israel has resurfaced, and calls for diverting all funds for support of Israel to Ukraine are being made.

This is all very dangerous for Israel, but this is what you get when you have a corrupt government that invites Russian influence agents a.k.a. oligarchs and confuse them with normal billionaires who actually own their money.

These Russian oligarchs do not really own their property; it is all just props for their role as influence agents, and linked to their tenure, as a normal official does not own his office. Oligarchs who forget that are swiftly stripped of all money, freedom and maybe their life.

It is not just dangerous for Israel’s security, but directly fuels anti-jewish sentiments with stereotypes about rich jews pulling strings and having no moral principles, as if other super-rich were morally superior, but when rich Jews do bad stuff, people prefer…

…to attribute that to their jewishness instead of seeing them as rich assholes first.

In Germany the Green party, founded by pacifists, is overseeing the largest rearmament since the cold war and is sending weapons into a warzone, something Germans had a firm policy against.

But despite all the political labeling and mislabeling, in this case it is pretty easy to see who the good guys and who the bad buys are. This was more difficult with the Coalition of the willing against Irak, where you had bad guys on both sides.

In this case Russia and Putin do not have a leg to stand on; Putin started the war in 2014 can not use anything that happened since as justification for his invasion Ok, obviously he can, but it makes him look stupid,..

…like Bush and Co. became the laughstock of the the world when there were no weapon of mass destruction. There are surely violent and real Neo-Nazis to be found in the Ukraine, but how is that Russia’s business? Neo-Nazis are not in charge in Ukraine.

Putin also tried to play the terrorists card, like the U.S. justified attacking Afghanistan because it was supposedly harboring Bin-Laden. I hoped the U.S. would not do it because it was obviously stupid and played right into Bin-Ladens hands, who was hiding in Pakistan anyway.

It cost the U.S. trillions in the end, fueled wars and violence for decades with nothing to show in the end, and morally corrupted the U.S. even more, turning them into bad guys and torturing war criminals, so they have trouble now to call Putin the war criminal he is without…

…exposing themselves to be held accountable as war criminals, too, which they should. However, in order to make the terrorist hunting story believable Putin would have had to blow up appartment buildings in Moscow again like he did to justify the 2nd Chechen war, or ….

…commit some other atrocities and blame them on Ukraine, but he failed to pull that off or didn’t deem it necessary. Now the whole thing will ruin Russia and be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in Russian history.

In this 3rd world war we are already in, no country will be able to stay on the sidelines, and you don’t want to be on the losers side, which is going to be Russia. Putin did not just screw up the military campaign, but he also already lost on the media front. Irreversibly.