The reason Rutte is pushing this through ASAP is because Wilders 'won' the last election, and might become the next PM. He's widely seen as pro-Putin.
Hyperreality
joined 2 years ago
Not a democracy.
They're replenishing troops:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-army-expansion-a2bf0b035aabab20c8b120a1c86c9e38
And their arms and defense industry is ramping up heavily:
They've lost a lot of troops. Putin doesn't care, he can always send more of his countrymen to their deaths.
They've lost a lot of equipment. Putin doesn't care, the Soviet Union spent far far more than Russia as a proportion of GDP and maintained that spending for decades.
They are not to be underestimated, especially if Trump wins and further undermines NATO.
I wonder if and when they'll get nukes. They're more than capable of making them, they've been buying missiles and planes that can deliver them, and there's been discussions about if for a while now.
Sounds like it's time for that Sartre quote again:
“Never believe that [they] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. [They] have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”
Entirely unsurprising. Relevant wikipedia article:
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP)[a] is a Syrian nationalist party operating in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. ... is the second-largest political party in the pro-Assad National Progressive Front led by the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party ... Political rivals of SSNP have commonly labelled Antoun Saadeh as a fascist ideologue who formed relations with Nazis during the Second World War. ... Saadeh remained a strong admirer of Adolf Hitler and introduced Nazi symbolism into SSNP insignia. Similar to the "Fuhrer" title, Saadeh took the designation of "az-Za'im" and the party set him up as their "leader for life". The party adopted a reversed swastika as its symbol and the party anthem was sung to the tune of Deutschlandlied. ... Saadeh adopted many themes related to fascism: pushing a personality cult around the party leader, establishing a totalitarian state that policed all aspects of life, belief in "the organic whole of the Syrian Volk" ... Throughout the Second World War, Saadeh was rumoured to have close contacts with officials of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. ... Western journalists also describe it as fascist. Terry Glavin writes that it "sports its very own stylized swastika [and] sings an anthem to the tune of Deutschlandlied", while Bellingcat calls its a "rabidly anti-Semitic, fascist organization [with] international ties to the far-right." ... According to historian Stanley G. Payne, interwar Arab nationalism was influenced by European fascism, with the creation of at least seven Arab nationalist shirt movements similar to the brown shirt movement by 1939, with the most influenced ones being the SSNP ... SSNP wanting the complete control of Syria, belief in the superiority of their own people (with Saadeh theorizing a "distinct and naturally superior" Syrian race) ... Anglo-American journalist Christopher Hitchens and his team were assaulted in February 2009 by SSNP paramilitaries ... The attack left Hitchens with body injuries and a limp in his leg. Reporting to Vanity Fair in May 2009, Hitchens described SSNP as a "suicide-bomber front" that carries out terrorist operations in Lebanon on behalf of Ba'athist Syria. He asserted that SSNP was a violent fascist movement; noting its irredentist ambitions of creating "Greater Syria"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Party
why don’t we talk about the 26 million Soviets who were killed in that war? Are the six million more precious?
This is what the far right in Russia think, and is why they don't see the irony in calling Zelensky a Nazi. Relevant article:
The dominant version of antisemitism alive in parts of eastern Europe today is that Jews employ the Holocaust to seize the victimhood narrative from the “real” victims of the Nazis, who are Russian Christians (or other non-Jewish eastern Europeans). Those who embrace Russian Christian nationalist ideology will be especially susceptible to this strain of antisemitism. ... in a 2021 article, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev denounced Zelenskiy as disgusting, corrupt and faithless. The free democratic election of a Jewish president confirms in the fascist mind that the fascist bogeyman of liberal democracy as a tool for global Jewish domination is real. ... By claiming that the aim of the invasion is to “denazify” Ukraine, Putin appeals to the myths of contemporary eastern European antisemitism – that a global cabal of Jews were (and are) the real agents of violence against Russian Christians and the real victims of the Nazis were not the Jews, but rather this group. Russian Christians are targets of a conspiracy by a global elite, who, using the vocabulary of liberal democracy and human rights, attack the Christian faith and the Russian nation.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/vladimir-putin-ukraine-attack-antisemitism-denazify
Can you imagine having to go to those meetings?
You're basically paid to go plop yourself in a chair, while some paid appartchik rattles an absurd lecture at you.
And it's not as if you're ever really off the clock. It's almost certain the Finnish ambassador's Moscow home has been bugged up the wazoo. So they can't walk around their appartment naked or get freaky with that attractive guy or gal who was winking at them at the bar. Hell, if you meet some rando and you bond over your love of pastries, you have to worry that they're not trying to steal your underpants because they want to have your DNA on file or steal your poo particles to see if you have underlying medical conditions they can exploit.
For now it's just barking. But we'll have years of this bullshit if the Russians 'win' in Ukraine, especially if Trump wins and weakens NATO by even hinting at the US not coming to the defence of allies.
Even if Putin isn't dumb enough to actually invade the Baltics or Finland, the Russians will engage in an endless stream of provocations. Military exercises and buildups near the border, bomber runs that are aborted at the last moment, that kind of thing. The likelihood of a miscalculation or mistake will increase dramatically.
On the other hand, if the Ukrainians win, Russia will never be able to withdraw significant amounts of troops from the Ukrainian border. Ukraine is a large and highly educated country, with a battle hardened military, and with a long history of weapons making. Russia will effectively have been muzzled for the foreseeable future.
The victims are the wrong colour, the perpetrators are the wrong religion, the west is distracted, Africans aren't great fans of former colonial powers getting involved in their former colonies, and it's in the Russian/Chinese sphere of influence.
Although the root causes of the conflict are domestic, Russia's working on building a naval base there, there's evidence of Wagner involvement, and according to some media Russia is using Sudanese gold to help fund the war in Ukraine. Which probably doesn't help or give the Russians much of a motive to weaponise the conflict for propaganda purposes, unlike other conflicts.
I've linked to his wikipedia article above. Here's a relevant quote:
In 1995, Ben-Gvir came to public attention for the first time, when he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's car, and declared: "We got to his car, and we'll get to him too." Several weeks later, Rabin was assassinated by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir.
But that's arguably not even the worst bit in the article.
― Ben-Gvir. Israeli far-right politician and Minister of National Security since 2022.
They're not winning, yet.
No one ever won a war by underestimating the enemy. Alarm bells should be going off across the west. They should have been going off a decade ago.