So I spent some time thinking about why this tweet made me so sick and full of rage — on a scale that no Russian propaganda piece ever managed to enrage me.
Let me explain in this thread.
First of all, let’s make it clear: the Americans should care about how the war in Ukraine is going because if Russia wins, it would mean more regional conflicts across the world (because apparently war can be rewarded!), more nuclear armament (blackmail works!), more genocide.
Ukraine is the biggest test for the modern global security system: if a fascist totalitarian state on nukes can invade, exterminate, and crush a smaller democratic neighbor with the world just watching it on mute, then we’re all in for more war and global instability.
All that armament and multiplying conflicts on top of climate crisis with the issues of food, mass migration, and extreme weather events.
My point is: Ukraine’s victory (and Russia’s loss) are hugely important for preserving and improving the (yes, imperfect) world.
Now to the video.
The elephant in the room: @briebriejoy rolled her eyes when @Cirincione talked about the mass forced deportation & adoption of Ukrainian kids by Russians.
This is a hugely important body language mistake. As a host and speaker, she should have know…
that openly showing disrespect and apathy to people experiencing genocide is an unprofessional, offensive act.
Even if deep down she doesn’t care about Ukrainians, she shouldn’t have bragged about that that on camera.
But not only she did just that, she cut THIS bit from the…
interview and turned it into a highlight, a content engagement thing that she pinned to her Twitter account.
She made a nasty mistake and then shamelessly went bragging about it, calling the offended crowd a “harassment attack” and refusing to acknowledge she did anything wrong.
And that’s what made me furious.
People who are openly fascist genocide deniers are clearly our enemy.
But people like her claim to be empathetic, humane fighters for social justice. They claim to care.
And yet when there are real people dying and the US is genuinely helping…
then survive genocide, these fake peace promoters smirk, roll their eyes, and brag about online to increase the monetization of their content.
This is a disgusting, toxic, and hypocritical behavior that I personally will never forgive or forget.
End of thread.
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My grand theory of why American and W European cultural establishments love Russian anti-regime stories is because they all view storytelling as the main act of resistance.
They don’t like talking about solutions to hard problems. They’d rather keep talking about the problems 1/
in ever more subtle and meta ways. They favor “complex” stories with “nuance” that don’t tell the audience clear answers.
It’s all discourse for these people, and participating in this discourse without any practical impact is seen as the most righteous thing to do.
This is 2/
very different from how Ukrainians view storytelling in the middle of the war.
If a chid is murdered by a Russian missile, Ukrainians tell that story to do their small bid in preventing another child getting killed.
We deal with life/death scenarios everyday and learn to 3/
We are yet to see what kind of deal Trump strikes with Putin.
But it’s clear what kind of strategy the US is pursuing: Trump wants to reach some form of ceasefire, possibly get some juicy rare mineral deals out of Ukraine and be fully done with this part of the world.
1/9
No strategic deterrence of an increasingly hostile adversary.
No support for a democracy under attack.
Zero care for the security of America’s biggest trade partners in the region – partners it had pledged to defend for decades.
2/9
With America’s full or partial withdrawal from Ukraine, there’s only one path left that ensures my home survives the next decade: the revival of Europe.
Something’s changing on the maps
of Europe right now.
It’s subtle change that only a trained eye can see.
As a Ukrainian, I never had the privilege of not noticing what the map of Europe looked like in every book or movie. On too many of those maps, Ukraine wasn’t included. 1/
Ukraine’s absence always communicated a bitter sense of invisibility. Here I was, sitting in Kyiv, a capital of a dynamic democracy bordering four EU countries.
And yet, apparently, I was not in Europe. Together with my forty million compatriots, I was stuck in a non-place.
2/
Borders mean much more to the people who inhabit them, and Ukrainians are one of Europe’s key border folk.
We have always been, as Serhiy Plokhy put it, “the gates of Europe”: from the spread of Indo-Europeans to the Mongolian invasion and to modern Russian aggression.
3/
My hot take: Ukraine’s Maidan was a pretty standard pro-democratic revolution for Central/Eastern Europe.
Similar revolts led to democracy fully prevailing in other countries — and didn’t lead to wars and mass devastation.
Do you know why? One word: Russia.
1/
When pro-democracy movements swept Central/Eastern Europe in the 1980s/1990s, Soviet Union was in decline and then Russia was deep in internal crises.
So these nations could peacefully sort their politics out and transition into western democracies.
Ukraine wasn’t so lucky.
2/
Georgia and Ukraine had their democratic turning points exactly when Russia was fully back into its usual autocratic empire state — so our revolutions were met with direct military aggression from Russia in 2008 and 2014 respectively.
3/
I know some are getting tired of the Russians at War movie scandal at @TIFF_NET
I get it.
I don’t like canceling stuff — especially when there are more practical ways to help Ukraine (like helping its armed forces).
But this is an exception.
This is a teachable moment.
🧵
The backlash against the funding and promotion of Trofimova’s Russians at War movie by Canadian institutions is not caused by hurt feelings or anti-Ru censorship.
It’s caused by western institutions getting easily exploited by Russian propaganda campaigns — which has to stop.
2/
As of today, here’s how the situation looks:
Trofimova, who spent 7 years working for Kremlin’s top propaganda network, got hundreds of thousands of Canada’s public money to film a movie showing Russian soldiers in ordinary, empathetic light.
3/