To repeat my comment from 2015:
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Western democracies are faltering. There exists a failure of leadership in democracies and large sections of the population who are deranged. Autocrats and adversaries are working vigorously to weaken democracies for their own gain. Is this how great wars start?
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Why would Russia want a war when it can achieve global domination just by spending a few million rubles to quietly interfere in western elections?
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It’s how small wars start. Autocrats are nothing without external enemies and appeasers, so balkanisation and isolationist and/or fascist rivals suit them.
Putin isn’t particularly interested in global domination. He just want a free hand to re-create as much of the Soviet and Imperial empire as he can. A little expansionism here and there is how he keeps his supporters happy, per these general guidelines:
This goal requires the weakening of NATO and the EU, an isolationist U.S., the normalisation of illiberal strongman governments over liberal democracies, and the promotion of bigotry (especially anti-Muslim but also anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ) in the West. As you note, it turns out that those things can be done relatively cheaply and without resorting to main force.
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It’s got to be deliberate social media tr0lling to draw attention to the account. Although it may be an error – this is the party that couldn’t fake a traffic jam as intended.
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I disagree. They aren’t “deranged”. That’s a dismissive way to look at the majority.
I think a lot of people vote for candidates with charisma, no matter how shitty they are. That’s basic politics/celebrity at work. Boris and Donald are horrible human beings, but they have huge charisma. They’re cartoon characters writ large. And when a charismatic cartoon character can sum up his thesis in three words, while his opponent is a dullard who’s dithering over what to actually say, a lot of people choose the easy option.
To be fair, he was talking about large sections of the population. Which translates in my mind to any given country’s Know-Nothing 27%. They’re the base on which the majority that votes for cartoonish demagogues or for xenophobic policies are built, and they are effectively deranged and worthy of dismissal. But add in a dithering and nostalgia-addled opponent like Corbyn and a lot of vote splitting amongst the other parties of the left, and that 27% becomes even more powerful.
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People who do not care about facts and good judgement are a minority and I take their views very seriously.
LOL. Dude, that was intentional to get everyone and their dog who is against Brexit to retweet it.
Much respect to the propaganda game.
Starting to think that 2020, and any subsequent years, might not be worth bothering with.
As has been noted, the political battleground has completely changed. Left v Right is dead. It’s now isolationist nativism v open internationalism. We’ve been fighting the wrong war. And the big question is whether or not it’s too late?
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I’m with you there. The Autocrats survive as long as they can on their lies, until everyone starts to realise what lying shits they are. Then they engineer a war to get everybody “to pull together for the sake of the country”. Yes, little wars are fine, but don’t you think there are an awful lot of autocrats around at the moment?
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