I hope we here in the US have the strength and fortitude of our Ukrainian Counterparts to stand up against those who are attacking our democracy here. Amazing how singular moment(s) change the world.
Because no speech in Ukraine is complete without a reference to the great Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, I concluded with perhaps his most famous line: “Boritesya - poborete.” “Fight on and you will prevail.”
- Marie Yovanovitch 📖 Lessons From The Edge. A memoir.
I have just had a second round of email exchanges with UNITED24. Daria promised that their weekly newsletter will contain the latest on the fundraising effort (this note added on 3rd December) .... Just a quick note so that we all are on top of things. According to the latest information, within a week, Professor Timothy Snyder's fundraising appeal gathered more than half of the requested sum. I wrote to United24 asking them to provide weekly updates. They promised they will let me have the info on how to access the latest results.
I, too, check the site every few days to note the status of the fundraiser as well as receive the weekly update. It is frustrating at times because I get the feeling Ukraine is not getting the attention and urgency it needs and deserves. Thank you, Prof. Snyder, for your knowledge and relentless effort to facilitate Ukraine victory.
Hi, Elizabeth. Another thing I've been thinking about is winter things. Remember last year that Razom placed the AFU's winter needs like sleeping bags, winter socks, portable charging devices, etc., on amazon. It gave me great pleasure to donate to this. I'm not seeing this on their website currently, though (https://www.razomforukraine.org/). I do know, from what I see on Twitter, that the AFU is in need of tourniquets. Razom is collecting money for this and other medical needs.
Hi, Rose, winter things are sorely needed. The Dailly Telegraph has daily podcasts on Ukraine and I heard about the need for tourniquets. Ukrainian citizens are supplying some winter stuff, but there's never enough. "Ukraine the Latest" from yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGFpfQhnmo4 An excellent resource.
Thanks, Elizabeth. I just googled, "razom for ukraine winter clothes amazon" and couldn't find anything. The Razom website popped up, but again I could find nothing about winter things. Thanks for the podcast. I didn't know the Daily Telegraph does daily podcasts on Ukraine. I'll listen to it it right now.
Rose, you may wish to know... Olga's little boy was born at the end of October. The family is in Lviv, safe and sound. Olga's teenage boy is also well and well-catered for in Finland.
Thanks! I sacrifice little treats like takeaway coffees for special causes, and having early detections of drones & missiles has the possibility to save so many innocent lives, so a no-brainer!
I would appreciate Professor Synder’s insights about Ukraine’s situation today:
1)a likely winter military stalemate
2) the implications of major changes in Ukrainian military leadership;
3) the prospects that US and European support for Ukraine is weakening—US House and Ukraine funding, election in Slovakia;
4) longer-term possibilities of a united Ukraine against Putin’s Greater Russia.
As an historian and a former Foreign Service Officer (Congo-1960-1966) I am aware of the limitations of an historian projecting the future. However, as a FSO, I realized that in the real world, such three dimensional thinking is imperative.
I look forward to Snyder’s knowledgeable thoughts about what’s likely over the next year or two.
P. S. When I was rating the debt of sovereign states for Moody’s I was dealing with history, character, and finances in making major judgments about the future. In 1975, Iran had a whooping balance of trade surplus after the 1973 oil bump.
Merrill Lynch sought a $1 billion bond issue for Iran. I was concerned about the long-term political prospects of Iran. I told them that, were Iran to try to go to market, I would rate them below investment grade. In response to their protests, I advised them to look at Egypt’s Khedive Ismail, the Civil War cotton boom, and the Suez Canal.
My gut instinct, based on three-dimensional-history saved investors close to $1 billion.
Re Item 3, the German government announced last week that they are doubling military aid to the Ukraine in 2024. I am in Berlin at the moment and see no flagging of determination to support Ukraine. Ukrainian flags everywhere.No Russian items for sale, Aeroflot building boarded up.
My fear for Ukraine is not NATO, but US. Too many Americans can hardly think past the price of eggs (wheat, climate change, no biology courses, never saw a farm) to imagine the importance of keeping Russia within its borders until Putin is a bad memory.
Thank you, Keith. Having read both volumes of Norman Davies “God’s Playground” recommended by a Polish friend and “Moscow 1937” (until I couldn’t face another horror), I live in a place where the tribalism of Ukrainians who refused to join the Polish empire when Muscovy was a “rump state,” plus Stalin’s starving Ukrainians for his “Five Year Plans” make me wish for a Ukraine, with its own George Washington, safe from Russia. Of course it’s gloriously ironic that Zelenskyy is Jewish and an actor with a law degree, whose first language was Russian. I do not forget that he lost two grandfathers to the Nazis or that Putin’s birthday is the same as the “distraction” war in Gaza.
Keith, I’m seeing all over again how your mind works! It’s that liberal arts education! Spoke to my Fulbright “Parrain” this morning, the eve of his 93rd birthday. Both of us laughed as we switched from French to English and back again, feeling younger as we did so. I was lucky as a naïve American girl living for the first time in a city, to have the companionship of an Ecole Normale Supérieure to Harvard Fulbright and a New Yorker, now emerita in Philosophy from CUNY (with whom I still talk and correspond). She fought to keep the core curriculum we love.
Thank you for bringing Maidan and Walter Benjamin together. Also with Sartre. What Marci Shore writes reminds me of something the Buddha says: to understand who you are, consider what you have done; to understand who you will be, consider what you will do. The past has a karmic facticity but this moment (the "now-time") always offers karmic freedom?
Prof. Snyder, could you write something explaining more fully how the story that the Maidan was orchestrated by Obama and the CIA (instead of the people of Ukraine) got started, and why so many people in the US believe it? Also, the story of the “Nuland phone call” that has Victoria Nuland as a mastermind who “handpicks” the new Ukrainian government in 2014. Far too many people in the US believe that as well, including the majority of the commenters in The Free Press. It’s possible that I am only getting that impression as a result of a few enthusiastic purveyors of the lie, but it is really disturbing to see these two tropes constantly rearing their ugly heads and negatively impacting our support for Ukraine. The GOP and their MAGA wing are highly motivated to abandon Ukraine and they seem oblivious to the repercussions that would have. Plus, I need something I can easily cite and quote from to offset the lies. Many thanks for all you do. And thank Marci as well!
A former KGB Officer, Putin understands how to use disinformation (deza), lies (vranyo), and compromise (kompromat) to create chaos in the West and home. 🇷🇺
“Find me a conflict zone, and I’ll find you a Kremlin operative with a blowtorch.” Greg Olear
In that 60 Minutes show, the interview with the RT lady was interesting. But as they later pointed out, RT will interview crazy people like Alex Jones, who doesn’t believe the Sandy Hook shootings happened (and had to pay a huge amount of damages as a result of pushing that lie). It’s hard for me to comprehend how people don’t see that none of this stuff is true, that they’re being had. It’s one thing to know what the Russians are doing. It’s another to know why it works.
Goebbels, who I always think of as the father of propaganda (probably because I learned his propaganda as a child, said that if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe you. It works!
Their social media trolls are easily recognizable, and when on Twitter and Fakebook, I succeeded in suspending many of the worst until their admin/infiltrators suspended me for harassing Nazis 😎 #StayNasty
Well, that still doesn’t explain why so many Americans believe the lies. And some of the opposition info isn’t coming from Russian trolls. For example, people cite the work of George Kennan for the proposition that Russia has, and is entitled to, a “sphere of influence” that includes the Baltic countries, Belarus, and Ukraine. We’re supposed to respect that sphere of influence and not touch those countries, much less get them into NATO. They cite John Mearsheimer at the U of Chicago, who says the exact same thing. If I quote Snyder, they quote Mearsheimer. He’s not a troll.
As for the “Nuland phone call” and Obama/CIA funding and provoking the Maidan revolution, there are numerous legitimate news sources that explain why that’s not true (the phone call happened, but Nuland didn’t control who got into the new government). And then there’s the “not one inch” alleged promise that Jim Baker made in 1990 about NATO not expanding past Germany. Both Baker and Gorbachev later denied that this meant the Baltic countries would never join NATO, and yet people continue to say that the promise was made, we broke it, and that justifies Russia invading Ukraine to keep it out of NATO.
It’s easy enough to find out exactly what happened in all these situations, so I just don’t understand why other people continue to believe the mythology. But I guess if you’re opposed to US involvement in Ukraine and a University of Chicago professor tells you it belongs to Russia, then you have a “source” who’s not a Russian troll to support that belief. It’s maddening.
Thank you Dr. Snyder and Dr. Shore. I watched the lecture you did during Dr. Snyder's class, "The Making of Modern Ukraine," and truly appreciate your understanding of the shift that occurred in Ukraine during the Maidan. Until victory! Slava Ukraïni 🇺🇦
I so love your writing, Professor Shore. I seek it out and read as much of it as I can.
Re: “They simply could not grasp,” one young woman described, “that we ourselves organized ourselves.” This bit of propaganda works very well with Americans because there is an unspoken assumption that nothing can happen in the world without us--you know, "the indispensable nation" and all that. Of course peoples in other countries often think the same, but the difference is that it's *unconscious* in Americans.
Going straight to amazon to order the updated ed. of your wonderful book.
Rose, I’m not sure that the incomprehension comes so much from a concept of the US being “the indispensable nation” as it does from a certain cohort of Americans being suckers for the latest conspiracy theory. I was just talking about this with my H, who reminded me that there were tons of people who believed that the moon landing was fake and had been filmed in a Hollywood studio. They’re still trying to find out “who really killed Kennedy”. The CIA is, of course, mythical in their alleged ability to overthrow other governments, and the fact that we have actually done so in the past adds credence to any suspicion that we’ve done it again. Mix all that up with the power of social media and radical news outlets and it lights propaganda on fire. Very difficult to put out.
This is among the horrors of people living in their “web.” There may be more disinformation than truth there these days. Add AI and we’ve got to go back to Walter Cronkite/Huntley-Brinkley days or earlier.
Very well put, Ann. I actually remember the 1969 moon landing and those Americans who thought it was staged. I was shocked to learn several months ago that some Americans still believe it.
Whenever the subject of conspiracy theories comes up, I always say the same thing: The best cure for conspiratorial thinking is to read history, where one finds that contingency, individuals, stupidity, vanity, and misunderstanding are the main characters. Mustafa Nayyem and Bohdan Khmelnytsky are examples of individuals. Walking in one direction and not another can mean the difference between life and death. It is contingency that most disturbs and makes us queasy, the knowledge that everything that happens is not necessary but could have gone differently that makes us go wobbly in the knees.
I didn't know the story and am grateful for the sharing. I too believe in humanity's ability to imagine a better world and for the collective spirit/force to move us beyond what's been known. It's needed in America and all over the world at this time. The tsunami that can be our collective power vs the stationary force that will be applied to maintain the status quo--mind over matter, the as-yet-to-be conceived future over the past. We are all living in a revolutionary moment.
I deeply appreciate both the tale of what led up to the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the opening of awareness to the power of the the decisions and actions made in the present to change what is possible in the future.
Interesting that it was an Afghan immigrant journalist that posted the “ likes don’t count”, calling everyone to protest. He did not grow up with that right in Afghanistan, where the Russians/USSR had been defeated, attempting to colonize, and grow their sphere of influence. The me could argue that the Ukrainian resistance was destined to happen, but it still takes a spark like that. I hope the irony is not lost on Putin.
The vast majority of Americans belong to some type civil society group but in the Soviet Union, in contrast, any effort by individuals to join together independent of the government was brutally stamped out, leaving citizens in the new countries without the experience or the skills to advocate - and if necessary agitate - for their interests.
- Marie Yovanovitch 📖 Lessons From The Edge. A memoir
1) Russian propaganda is so dumb. Euromaidan being somehow motivated by homosexuality is plausible? Or fascism. Or even more absurd, somehow an alliance both rather than a sweeping movement? It makes a better joke than anything.
2) Russian propaganda is so sophisticated. Manipulating thinking regarding self-organization is just absolutely critical to these propaganda efforts. I see it all the time in Trump world messaging. Trump pushes his followers to think just like that. He is the top-down savior they need. Because of these overwhelming opposing forces, also top-down, rather than self organizing democratic action. The suggestion is that such self-organizing, democratic action is incapable and inferior. Only top down organization could possibly be effective.
Examples: Its the nebulous and bad Democrats who cheated in the election, rather than came out to vote. Its the Biden admin top down pushing Trump’s prosecution, rather than prosecutors and judges acting independently. There is a global cabal of child rapists tanking our nation and calling the shots, rather than an internet jammed with abuse imagery from independent perverts, and mostly entrenched institutional interests calling the shots
When everything is a grand conspiracy with powerful players behind everything, this justifies a people’s champion, heavy handed “strong man” leadership to protect the in-group. And the messaging is both more stupid and more sophisticated than appears at first glance. Its a firehose of falsehoods - both drowning the truth and floating as many narratives as possible to appeal to as many perspectives as possible.
The Democrats who “cheated” were registered voters, mostly non-white and urban, who didn’t accept “conservative values” and refused to vote for Trump. Oh, yes, nebulous, too! Some of them were allegedly dead, besides.
Thanks once again for deepening the understanding of those of us who had no background knowledge of Ukraine up until the US (former) President tried to bully/blackmail President Zelenskyy... Reading about the Maidan explains so much about the Ukrainian national resolve today. Slava Ukraine!
I hope we here in the US have the strength and fortitude of our Ukrainian Counterparts to stand up against those who are attacking our democracy here. Amazing how singular moment(s) change the world.
Because no speech in Ukraine is complete without a reference to the great Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, I concluded with perhaps his most famous line: “Boritesya - poborete.” “Fight on and you will prevail.”
- Marie Yovanovitch 📖 Lessons From The Edge. A memoir.
After reading the TIME magazine November2023 cover article about Zelenskyy, this quote is essential.
Борітеся - поборете!
I have just had a second round of email exchanges with UNITED24. Daria promised that their weekly newsletter will contain the latest on the fundraising effort (this note added on 3rd December) .... Just a quick note so that we all are on top of things. According to the latest information, within a week, Professor Timothy Snyder's fundraising appeal gathered more than half of the requested sum. I wrote to United24 asking them to provide weekly updates. They promised they will let me have the info on how to access the latest results.
Their Newsletter usually comes out on Wednesdays. Donate here: https://u24.gov.ua/safeskies
And don’t forget Dems here too. We have to keep them in power to help Ukraine!
And to help America!
I, too, check the site every few days to note the status of the fundraiser as well as receive the weekly update. It is frustrating at times because I get the feeling Ukraine is not getting the attention and urgency it needs and deserves. Thank you, Prof. Snyder, for your knowledge and relentless effort to facilitate Ukraine victory.
Hi, Elizabeth. Another thing I've been thinking about is winter things. Remember last year that Razom placed the AFU's winter needs like sleeping bags, winter socks, portable charging devices, etc., on amazon. It gave me great pleasure to donate to this. I'm not seeing this on their website currently, though (https://www.razomforukraine.org/). I do know, from what I see on Twitter, that the AFU is in need of tourniquets. Razom is collecting money for this and other medical needs.
Hi, Rose, winter things are sorely needed. The Dailly Telegraph has daily podcasts on Ukraine and I heard about the need for tourniquets. Ukrainian citizens are supplying some winter stuff, but there's never enough. "Ukraine the Latest" from yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGFpfQhnmo4 An excellent resource.
Thanks, Elizabeth. I just googled, "razom for ukraine winter clothes amazon" and couldn't find anything. The Razom website popped up, but again I could find nothing about winter things. Thanks for the podcast. I didn't know the Daily Telegraph does daily podcasts on Ukraine. I'll listen to it it right now.
Rose, you may wish to know... Olga's little boy was born at the end of October. The family is in Lviv, safe and sound. Olga's teenage boy is also well and well-catered for in Finland.
I'm so happy to learn that, Elizabeth. Thanks for letting me know. Do take the very best care of yourself.
Thanks! I sacrifice little treats like takeaway coffees for special causes, and having early detections of drones & missiles has the possibility to save so many innocent lives, so a no-brainer!
I would appreciate Professor Synder’s insights about Ukraine’s situation today:
1)a likely winter military stalemate
2) the implications of major changes in Ukrainian military leadership;
3) the prospects that US and European support for Ukraine is weakening—US House and Ukraine funding, election in Slovakia;
4) longer-term possibilities of a united Ukraine against Putin’s Greater Russia.
As an historian and a former Foreign Service Officer (Congo-1960-1966) I am aware of the limitations of an historian projecting the future. However, as a FSO, I realized that in the real world, such three dimensional thinking is imperative.
I look forward to Snyder’s knowledgeable thoughts about what’s likely over the next year or two.
P. S. When I was rating the debt of sovereign states for Moody’s I was dealing with history, character, and finances in making major judgments about the future. In 1975, Iran had a whooping balance of trade surplus after the 1973 oil bump.
Merrill Lynch sought a $1 billion bond issue for Iran. I was concerned about the long-term political prospects of Iran. I told them that, were Iran to try to go to market, I would rate them below investment grade. In response to their protests, I advised them to look at Egypt’s Khedive Ismail, the Civil War cotton boom, and the Suez Canal.
My gut instinct, based on three-dimensional-history saved investors close to $1 billion.
Re Item 3, the German government announced last week that they are doubling military aid to the Ukraine in 2024. I am in Berlin at the moment and see no flagging of determination to support Ukraine. Ukrainian flags everywhere.No Russian items for sale, Aeroflot building boarded up.
Thank you for such good news from Germany!
My fear for Ukraine is not NATO, but US. Too many Americans can hardly think past the price of eggs (wheat, climate change, no biology courses, never saw a farm) to imagine the importance of keeping Russia within its borders until Putin is a bad memory.
Thank you, Keith. Having read both volumes of Norman Davies “God’s Playground” recommended by a Polish friend and “Moscow 1937” (until I couldn’t face another horror), I live in a place where the tribalism of Ukrainians who refused to join the Polish empire when Muscovy was a “rump state,” plus Stalin’s starving Ukrainians for his “Five Year Plans” make me wish for a Ukraine, with its own George Washington, safe from Russia. Of course it’s gloriously ironic that Zelenskyy is Jewish and an actor with a law degree, whose first language was Russian. I do not forget that he lost two grandfathers to the Nazis or that Putin’s birthday is the same as the “distraction” war in Gaza.
Is there really any other kind of history?
Keith, I’m seeing all over again how your mind works! It’s that liberal arts education! Spoke to my Fulbright “Parrain” this morning, the eve of his 93rd birthday. Both of us laughed as we switched from French to English and back again, feeling younger as we did so. I was lucky as a naïve American girl living for the first time in a city, to have the companionship of an Ecole Normale Supérieure to Harvard Fulbright and a New Yorker, now emerita in Philosophy from CUNY (with whom I still talk and correspond). She fought to keep the core curriculum we love.
Marci Shore also gave an amazing guest lecture in Professor Snyder's Yale classes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg_CLI3xY58
Thank you for bringing Maidan and Walter Benjamin together. Also with Sartre. What Marci Shore writes reminds me of something the Buddha says: to understand who you are, consider what you have done; to understand who you will be, consider what you will do. The past has a karmic facticity but this moment (the "now-time") always offers karmic freedom?
Prof. Snyder, could you write something explaining more fully how the story that the Maidan was orchestrated by Obama and the CIA (instead of the people of Ukraine) got started, and why so many people in the US believe it? Also, the story of the “Nuland phone call” that has Victoria Nuland as a mastermind who “handpicks” the new Ukrainian government in 2014. Far too many people in the US believe that as well, including the majority of the commenters in The Free Press. It’s possible that I am only getting that impression as a result of a few enthusiastic purveyors of the lie, but it is really disturbing to see these two tropes constantly rearing their ugly heads and negatively impacting our support for Ukraine. The GOP and their MAGA wing are highly motivated to abandon Ukraine and they seem oblivious to the repercussions that would have. Plus, I need something I can easily cite and quote from to offset the lies. Many thanks for all you do. And thank Marci as well!
A former KGB Officer, Putin understands how to use disinformation (deza), lies (vranyo), and compromise (kompromat) to create chaos in the West and home. 🇷🇺
“Find me a conflict zone, and I’ll find you a Kremlin operative with a blowtorch.” Greg Olear
In that 60 Minutes show, the interview with the RT lady was interesting. But as they later pointed out, RT will interview crazy people like Alex Jones, who doesn’t believe the Sandy Hook shootings happened (and had to pay a huge amount of damages as a result of pushing that lie). It’s hard for me to comprehend how people don’t see that none of this stuff is true, that they’re being had. It’s one thing to know what the Russians are doing. It’s another to know why it works.
“It’s Easier to Fool People Than It Is to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled.” – Mark Twain
Goebbels, who I always think of as the father of propaganda (probably because I learned his propaganda as a child, said that if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe you. It works!
Disinformation warfare and Russian hacking | 60 Minutes Full Episodes - YouTube 🇷🇺 #RT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-XtCstIaiE
Well. That was scary as hell.
Their social media trolls are easily recognizable, and when on Twitter and Fakebook, I succeeded in suspending many of the worst until their admin/infiltrators suspended me for harassing Nazis 😎 #StayNasty
Well, that still doesn’t explain why so many Americans believe the lies. And some of the opposition info isn’t coming from Russian trolls. For example, people cite the work of George Kennan for the proposition that Russia has, and is entitled to, a “sphere of influence” that includes the Baltic countries, Belarus, and Ukraine. We’re supposed to respect that sphere of influence and not touch those countries, much less get them into NATO. They cite John Mearsheimer at the U of Chicago, who says the exact same thing. If I quote Snyder, they quote Mearsheimer. He’s not a troll.
As for the “Nuland phone call” and Obama/CIA funding and provoking the Maidan revolution, there are numerous legitimate news sources that explain why that’s not true (the phone call happened, but Nuland didn’t control who got into the new government). And then there’s the “not one inch” alleged promise that Jim Baker made in 1990 about NATO not expanding past Germany. Both Baker and Gorbachev later denied that this meant the Baltic countries would never join NATO, and yet people continue to say that the promise was made, we broke it, and that justifies Russia invading Ukraine to keep it out of NATO.
It’s easy enough to find out exactly what happened in all these situations, so I just don’t understand why other people continue to believe the mythology. But I guess if you’re opposed to US involvement in Ukraine and a University of Chicago professor tells you it belongs to Russia, then you have a “source” who’s not a Russian troll to support that belief. It’s maddening.
In the age of information ignorance is a choice 😉
Thank you Dr. Snyder and Dr. Shore. I watched the lecture you did during Dr. Snyder's class, "The Making of Modern Ukraine," and truly appreciate your understanding of the shift that occurred in Ukraine during the Maidan. Until victory! Slava Ukraïni 🇺🇦
I so love your writing, Professor Shore. I seek it out and read as much of it as I can.
Re: “They simply could not grasp,” one young woman described, “that we ourselves organized ourselves.” This bit of propaganda works very well with Americans because there is an unspoken assumption that nothing can happen in the world without us--you know, "the indispensable nation" and all that. Of course peoples in other countries often think the same, but the difference is that it's *unconscious* in Americans.
Going straight to amazon to order the updated ed. of your wonderful book.
Rose, I’m not sure that the incomprehension comes so much from a concept of the US being “the indispensable nation” as it does from a certain cohort of Americans being suckers for the latest conspiracy theory. I was just talking about this with my H, who reminded me that there were tons of people who believed that the moon landing was fake and had been filmed in a Hollywood studio. They’re still trying to find out “who really killed Kennedy”. The CIA is, of course, mythical in their alleged ability to overthrow other governments, and the fact that we have actually done so in the past adds credence to any suspicion that we’ve done it again. Mix all that up with the power of social media and radical news outlets and it lights propaganda on fire. Very difficult to put out.
This is among the horrors of people living in their “web.” There may be more disinformation than truth there these days. Add AI and we’ve got to go back to Walter Cronkite/Huntley-Brinkley days or earlier.
Very well put, Ann. I actually remember the 1969 moon landing and those Americans who thought it was staged. I was shocked to learn several months ago that some Americans still believe it.
Whenever the subject of conspiracy theories comes up, I always say the same thing: The best cure for conspiratorial thinking is to read history, where one finds that contingency, individuals, stupidity, vanity, and misunderstanding are the main characters. Mustafa Nayyem and Bohdan Khmelnytsky are examples of individuals. Walking in one direction and not another can mean the difference between life and death. It is contingency that most disturbs and makes us queasy, the knowledge that everything that happens is not necessary but could have gone differently that makes us go wobbly in the knees.
Thank you for this. Sobering and so informative.
I didn't know the story and am grateful for the sharing. I too believe in humanity's ability to imagine a better world and for the collective spirit/force to move us beyond what's been known. It's needed in America and all over the world at this time. The tsunami that can be our collective power vs the stationary force that will be applied to maintain the status quo--mind over matter, the as-yet-to-be conceived future over the past. We are all living in a revolutionary moment.
Powerful. Ukrainians are true heroes to our world.
I deeply appreciate both the tale of what led up to the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the opening of awareness to the power of the the decisions and actions made in the present to change what is possible in the future.
Likes. Don’t. Count.
Interesting that it was an Afghan immigrant journalist that posted the “ likes don’t count”, calling everyone to protest. He did not grow up with that right in Afghanistan, where the Russians/USSR had been defeated, attempting to colonize, and grow their sphere of influence. The me could argue that the Ukrainian resistance was destined to happen, but it still takes a spark like that. I hope the irony is not lost on Putin.
The vast majority of Americans belong to some type civil society group but in the Soviet Union, in contrast, any effort by individuals to join together independent of the government was brutally stamped out, leaving citizens in the new countries without the experience or the skills to advocate - and if necessary agitate - for their interests.
- Marie Yovanovitch 📖 Lessons From The Edge. A memoir
Powerful piece, thank you!!
Two things strike me.
1) Russian propaganda is so dumb. Euromaidan being somehow motivated by homosexuality is plausible? Or fascism. Or even more absurd, somehow an alliance both rather than a sweeping movement? It makes a better joke than anything.
2) Russian propaganda is so sophisticated. Manipulating thinking regarding self-organization is just absolutely critical to these propaganda efforts. I see it all the time in Trump world messaging. Trump pushes his followers to think just like that. He is the top-down savior they need. Because of these overwhelming opposing forces, also top-down, rather than self organizing democratic action. The suggestion is that such self-organizing, democratic action is incapable and inferior. Only top down organization could possibly be effective.
Examples: Its the nebulous and bad Democrats who cheated in the election, rather than came out to vote. Its the Biden admin top down pushing Trump’s prosecution, rather than prosecutors and judges acting independently. There is a global cabal of child rapists tanking our nation and calling the shots, rather than an internet jammed with abuse imagery from independent perverts, and mostly entrenched institutional interests calling the shots
When everything is a grand conspiracy with powerful players behind everything, this justifies a people’s champion, heavy handed “strong man” leadership to protect the in-group. And the messaging is both more stupid and more sophisticated than appears at first glance. Its a firehose of falsehoods - both drowning the truth and floating as many narratives as possible to appeal to as many perspectives as possible.
The Democrats who “cheated” were registered voters, mostly non-white and urban, who didn’t accept “conservative values” and refused to vote for Trump. Oh, yes, nebulous, too! Some of them were allegedly dead, besides.
Firehose of falsehoods for sure.
Thanks once again for deepening the understanding of those of us who had no background knowledge of Ukraine up until the US (former) President tried to bully/blackmail President Zelenskyy... Reading about the Maidan explains so much about the Ukrainian national resolve today. Slava Ukraine!