First of all, I have no intention of taking or promoting any side here, because I'm not well informed enough about what has happened since 2022... however, before getting burned out of the internet somewhen by the end of the last decade, I used to follow a lot of anarchist collectives. I was on Riseup and Autistici mailing lists, and I remember reading a lot about everything that was happening in Ukraine directly from the anarchists there, the protests being led by openly fascist paramilitary groups like the C14, Svoboda, Tryzub, Pravy Sektor, the SNA that became the Azov Battalion, tons of pictures and videos documenting everything and everyone, even American Blackwater mercenaries operating in the country. These fascist groups clashing with socialists, setting fire to union buildings and shooting people trying to escape, and now it's hard to even find references to these groups and their actions on the internet, like it was sanitized (not so long ago, I also had trouble finding some materials from antizionist rabbis I had read back in the mid-2000s, I actually just found accusations of them being antisemitic on main search engines, so I really believe there is a lot of fuckery going on to control information)... and I'm afraid if I start talking about Donetsk and Lugansk I might get accused of something, so never mind.
I'm mentioning it because it has been only a few months since I joined Lemmy, and I've seen some controversy about accusations of nazis in Ukrainian lines, like it's tankie propaganda or that Dugin shit... but, uh, back when pro-EU factions took the government, the anarchists had documented the nazis very well... is there a generational gap of information here? How many people were following anarchist press (not the shit you'd find on Twitter, Tumblr, or whatever) back in 2014?
ps: I'm not here to discuss Russia.
edit: fixed some grammar mistakes I noticed, but I'm no native speaker.
Merely loosely aware of. [May have seen some stuff directly from anarchists there, but I don't recall specifically.]
In 2014, I was more paying attention to the leaked info on suppressed [potentially] emancipatory technologies (like zero inertia propulsion spaceships in use (e.g. by the US Navy, such as TR-3B)), and participating in overt emancipatory technology development (like distro-agnostic linux tooling) and advocacy and support and community building. But was peripherally aware of both, the crooked statist jingoist portions of global hegemony & totalitarian tyranny ploys afoot in the Ukraine, and, the increase of leaving that corrupt devastating dangerous system to participate in anarchist (like-minded) do-ocratic organisings, doings, support, which I did not doubt was in part caused by the worsening geopolitical situation atop the pre-existing oligarchy problem.
The past dozen years have been especially bad for the enshitification of the internet, not least by corporate search engines increasingly censoring heavily, going from tens of thousands of search results (to freely rummage through), to mere hundreds, if even, like they want to just give you "the one true way". Our contemporary book burning before our eyes, at our fingertips. History being rewritten.
Given the "first casualty"^1^ propaganda going around, it's not surprising that this piece of history is especially hit hard.
And I think that's part of the intent, of both the censorship and smears, to terrorise people into self-censorship in fear of the baying totalitarians all around ready to lynch anyone for "wrongthink", to decry them as a witch or whatever other slur for the othered outcast class who do not stay in the mass formation repeating the groupthink chorus. But best (only?) way to defeat such totalitarianised psyche proliferation, is to keep speaking out, introducing them to other perspectives, until the cognitive dissonance intrinsic to the totalitarianised psyche short-circuits and they experience an awakening, and can start rebuilding their atrophied cognitive capacities, no longer being kept in a terrorised social-dominance limbic reflex. [Edit: And, it's worth remembering, totalitarianism unchallenged only worsens, where any and all atrocities are seen as necessary virtues. Not challenging them to keep your head down and stay safe, is not a viable option.]
Anything archived anywhere? Like even on archive.org? Would be nice to dig up and re-present some of this history.
I wonder if perhaps I was seeing some of it, not just from astute friends on irc, but also from those posting to the first big diaspora pod, joindiaspora.com [Edit: funnily enough closed in (iirc) 2020 (or 2021?), without diaspora's migration fully working yet, meaning we had to join new pods without our contacts and post history etc], which was quite active with a higher concentration of those most interested in anarchism and similar areas of interest back then (before the googleplus exodus "bubbly bunch" joined with their choir of corporate-statist normalcy).
Would be really good to have some of that history neatly presented for the normies in reductive opposame-polarised groupthink mindsets/narratives to short-circuit upon.
^1^ "The first casualty of war is the truth."
I don't know of it being archived, I don't have contact with anyone from these networks anymore, but I didn't want to talk about Donetsk and Lugansk because perspectives change, and I don't know if the situation of today is the same as it was 12 years ago.
Being a South American myself, every time we "vote wrong" the Western powers sponsor coups or simply invade us to change the government, so despite reading from afar, I saw too many similarities, and my take was that after the government didn't side with Western powers, the mass media started a generic campaign against corruption to mobilize public anger - all so common here. Literal nazis were the shock troops leading the violence, as it was denounced by the anarchists documenting all the groups. At the time, it was easy information to find, even Google wasn't so enshitified, so you could find some noblogs or Indymedia content as well... (I think Rosa Negra was starting at the time, perhaps they might have information), but recently I tried to find it again and it's easier to find (on English-speaking internet, at least) allegations saying that Azov isn't nazi at all and it's just Russian propaganda, than their own pictures and speeches showing they are literal nazis (same for other the other groups I mentioned in the post).
Everyone that was against this nazi-enforced coup was labelled pro-Russian, regardless of whether they were just against a nazi-enforced coup. Opposition was outlawed and persecuted, and then the regions that had a clear majority against the coup, which to my surprise nowadays is called the Revolution of Dignity, started being bombed and slaughtered for not recognizing the new government. They organized and had clear, internationally observed referendums about their self-determination, but it was dismissed and ridiculed by Western media and governments, and this is where Russian active support to these regions enters.
I don't believe for a second in Russia's good intentions, but I believe for people so cornered, they accept support from anyone. I also believe that Russia expanding the conflict outside of the separatist regions forced people outside of them to support anyone on their side (but since actual Ukrainian left organizations were outlawed, it's kinda hard to know their take on all of that...).
However, Western media and social media platforms were always pro-Western agenda. American liberals eat that shit like cornflakes and pose as "left" on the internet, so all that was opposed was dismissed as Russian propaganda, etc, etc, even what I'd read from Ukrainian anarchist sources. So it was always kinda pointless taking it to Twitter or so because of the American "left". There are a lot of activists that are now mature and are probably very knowledgeable about theory and praxis and current events, but that I fear had their formative "rebel" years on Twitter and its narratives (not anyone's fault, it's hard to find information on your own when you don't have anyone to help you, and liberals do pose as rebels on Twitter). So that's why I wonder if there is a generational information gap, because when I see leftist (including anarchists) support for the Ukrainian government nowadays, well, it's kinda weird compared to what I knew of the situation. But I do recognize I don't have nearly enough information about how everything developed to really have an opinion worth being heard (but back then, I think being anti-maidan wasn't polarizing at all among anarchists and other socialist groups).
All too familiar here. Survived a genocide here that they spurred on public anger for and indifference to with lies. Except that was to cover up corruption and shift blame (and hate) to the vulnerable.
Yes, and unfortunately such is effective, especially in the minds of those who want to believe. Group-think does terrible things to people, causing them to do yet even more terrible things to other people yet. Especially when so manipulated and curated. Doubly especially when used to hide and normalise things like Nazism.
Yep. A very familiar pattern now. Same modus-operandi over and over. Terrorises minds out of nuance, to protect the narrative that permits the ploys and abuse.
Almost like that's the intended ploy, and those behind the armies are really, secretly, on the same side, against the people, and are merely using the lines on the map to further separate and abuse us by.
And none of this would be happening if not for the PNAC and associated ploys, and NATO expansion in breach of the treaties that had kept the peace. Not following their own rules, so they can carry out these monstrous ploys, throwing those who would be most fit to rise up against the corrupt political structures, into the meat grinder. Priming the next phase of the weapons of mass distraction, by which they acquire, through terror, more power over people, making us more vulnerable to their plans to depopulate the world to way under 500 million people, as they had published on the Georgia guide stones, as if such vast atrocity were a necessary virtue. (It's not. ~ They sit on the means of abundance and emancipation, hog tie us to pollution and rents, then blame us, and offer the solution of a global cull of the human population, rather than relinquish their oppressive power over us and their suppression of the means of emancipation, where even they would be richer than they are now. It's beyond merely stupid. And then we're supposed to run around in fear, distracted by other countries, that they also abuse, and play abuse off abuse, to keep us all distracted, like a magician not wanting us to see through their trick. Oh noes! Russia! Oh noes! The Ukraine! And pay no attention to the calls for self determination, autonomy, independence, and different ways of doing things. Just kept in the false dichotomy from the opposames.)
Yeah. Putin (whichever of his dozen+ body doubles (and/or skinsuits/androids/clones)) is in the same big club. Talks a better talk than many of the political muppets in the west, more actually like an adult in the room, but ultimately still attends the same parties, still a "WEF Young Leader", ruled by the same banking empire.
Yeah, like the other reply here highlighted an example of.
It's easy to be an angel in heaven. Hard not to ally with a devil when a bigger devil's threatening you.
Yep. Not my left (and not even left).