Thread by @irgarner

🧵 I catalogued Russians' social media responses to Bucha for @JournalGenocide and what I found was almost unspeakable. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

In short, I assessed 300 comments about Bucha from 3 nationalist social media groups posted in the 48 hours after news broke. I rated posts based on whether they disagreed with Russian actions, reiterated/agreed with them, or encouraged Russians to commit more acts of violence.

There were only 3 posts that strongly disagreed with Russia's actions and the media narratives excusing their behaviour in Bucha. 3. Out of 300 posts. Nobody was speaking up.

Half of posts encouraged Russians to commit MORE genocide. Typical comments:
- “Death penalty for all the khokhols, there’s no place for them in the world, time to destroy this fucking race”
- “Destroy the satanists, no mercy”
- “Why didn’t they shoot these f***ts with a rocket?”

When I counted up the raw data for this my blood was boiling. One of those research moments when you think "It can't be as bad as this. That can't be true." I double checked. It is true: for some, genocide hasn't just been accepted, it's been embraced.

There are plenty more examples of this kind of language translated in the article. I hope it serves as a repository for non-experts and non-Russian speakers to witness the kinds of speech being thrown around in these spaces.

In sum, Russians have been using nationalist social media groups to encourage each other, whip each other up, to commit more and more obscene acts of violence after Bucha.

The article's available free of charge. It's a bleak read, but worth your time if you want to confront the reality of the way that genocide is being discussed.

h/t to @dirkmoses for asking me to write this and to @warmatters for giving it a read before submission.