of course, this comes from pure conjecture because the facts haven't been laid out yet. But I highly doubt the plane crash was orchestrated by Russian officials.
Russia's doing really good in the international community right now (not the NATO one, the actual one) and is winning their war. The only thing Russia has going in the international sphere right now are reasons to celebrate. Meanwhile, NATO's suffering a major defeat in Ukraine, the international community is trying to distance themselves from dependency on NATO, etc.
Who benefits the most from Prigozhin's death is the West. Already they've used it to stir the pot against Russia. Without Wagner Group's leadership, they've been significantly weakened, this matters because they've been the powerhouse of the Ukraine war, and because they could become a major obstacle to regaining colonial control over Niger. WG's leader being murdered also furthens the division between the Russian State and the mercenary group, NATO could harness this to their advantage. It could also increase the risk of civil emergency, as those who saw themselves as being more loyal to Prigozhin than Putin could seek retribution if they believed Putin was to blame.
It's not unheard of within Russian politics for opposition to be assassinated, so the chance exists for this to be that. But I really don't think Putin nor his strategists would think killing Prigozhin is a good idea. At least not while NATO's looking for any reason to up the war effort, and tensions in Africa could escalate.
Also, the slant of this, when Liberals talk about how Russia lacks a fair democracy and a small group of people hold a majority of the power within the political system. Then argue that all you have to do to change conditions in Western countries is to vote.
And, ya know, Russia's just "the villain," so they'll talk and talk about how bad that situation is, but when you talk about the US, who they see as "the hero," they get defensive and act like you're the problem for implying that the US has the exact problems and voting doesn't matter.
"my dumpster fire is pure and perfect, all of the issues that my dumpster fire has can be fixed if we just vote on it. Your dumpster fire is evil and impure. The only way to fix its problems is if my dumpster fire invades it." literally their take.
"China isn't real Socialism because they have billionaires and corporations"
"Nordic Socialism is a better form of Socialism than Marxism-Leninism, because it's democratic and happiness is high in those countries"
Meanwhile, China has democratic elections and scores high on citizen happiness, and the Nordic countries also have billionaires and corporations. China has a ML government, while the Nordic countries are capitalist. Make it make sense.
It is disgusting to me that most people have no idea that European business leaders - notably the ones in England - strongly supported the south. Further, it upsets me that most people don't know that workers demonstrated and held strikes to force their bosses to stop supporting the southern war effort.
The US civil war was not a self-contained conflict, it was not just a concern to the United States. Every nation that benefitted from US products was involved in the southern war effort in some way, even if their governments officially supported the north or banned slavery. Hell, Brazil celebrated the confederates, and used fleeing confederates to colonize parts of Brazil. There are STILL pro-confederacy festivals in Brazil.
i'm not sure exactly what I am and am not allowed to say, so I won't list any names.
but i'm pissed off that Catra's been banned for being mean to a colonizer, but the colonizer only got one of their comments removed and nothing else. IMO feeling and expressing rage towards a colonizer is justified as long as it doesn't go too far. And I don't think Catra went too far.
I can't critique how Lemmy moderates too much, it's not my instance to make calls on. But they really need to stop being hypocritical in how they do moderation. A person can spew reactionary bullshit and be fine, but if someone gets angry about it the angry person gets punished? fuck no.
this is unironically a real thing though, it's people who's only real critique of Nazi Germany is how much power Hitler had and how centralized the government became. In their opinion, Nazi Germany would have "worked" if the NAP existed and was followed.
If you try to fight Liberals on this, they just pivot to saying Russia isn't LGBTQIA+ friendly and that's why Azov are "heroes". And though it's true that Russia's policies towards queer rights are criminally lacking, Azov are literal nazis who've said they want to defend Ukraine from the queer community.
maybe now's a good time to share that Reddit has always had rampant Russophobia. Back in 2016 when the Enough Trump Spam subreddit was made, they added "no xenophobia" to their rules. but every other post was xenophobic towards either Russia, China, or the DPRK. Hell, I got like a thousand downvotes on a comment where I corrected the OP on the reach of DPRK's missiles (it was one of those "oh no, the north koreans are going to nuke us next week" posts), and nearly all of the thousands of comments were calling me a Russian bot, or using slurs to insult me.
Russophobia was a big part of the Democrat's strategy against Trump in that election, claiming that Russia helped Trump win and whatnot. Russophobia is at this point, perhaps, the oldest propagandist tool used by the American state. Ever since the revolution in Russia, and honestly even before it, they scaremongered supporters into supporting whatever it was the politicians or the media wanted them to support, using Russia, the Soviet Union, or Communism (which was tied to the Soviets for them) as the leverage. Black people want rights? can't do that, that's communism, and look at what's going on in the evil USSR. Workers want rights? can't do that, the evil USSR. so on, so forth. It's very disheartening that they still use this tactic today, but it's even more disheartening that in the information age, where anyone can simply look the information up and disprove the propaganda, people still eat the tactic up like day-old fries.
If you explain why the source isn't trustable, that'll work for some people. But the people who wanna shout "but china bad" at the mear mention of it will just ignore that. So, ultimately - and unfortunate as it may be - this is one of the things that a hard stance must be taken on, and will likely be disrupting to your community. I.E. you're gonna have to remove any and all posts with these sources, and possibly ban users who repeatedly try to use these sources.
we decided against doing IP bans because it could keep users who use VPNs from logging in, since VPN IPs aren't always unique. I just banned this person for being a troll, but I'm not entirely sure if they're banned from the main branch or just Lemmygrad. I banned this person before for commenting a death threat on a main branch post. I don't remember how to do @s, but it might be worth getting the attention of one of the main branch admins for this.
This time on: Loser can't use google, claims community is alienating users.