Generation "Z" And Putin's War On Reality

 

Watching this video of saluting youths in a shopping mall in Kazan wearing the Z Russian army logo side and then looking at the photographs coming out of Mariupol and it’s hard not to feel sick. pic.twitter.com/7N6QGdiJlc

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) March 9, 2022

These young people are totally concerned about Putin's claims to be "denaZifying" Ukraine. They probably have no clue what any of that means. Totalitarian regimes often apply "memory laws" to rewrite the past, even the relatively recent past. Sometimes the throttling of information focuses on journalism--like Anna Politkovskaya, who reported on the war crimes of Chechnya. They do away with lines of questioning they find uncomfortable. 

I really want my readers to kind of marinate about that. Of course, we wouldn't do that here, would we? (Glares in queer and anti-racist.) But in a totalitarian regime as Putin seems to have wrought for himself, of course queer people and ethnics can be minimized. 

I'm going to be an asshole and break down that there are reasons for believing the bullshit. Patriotism--wanting to believe, if Putin is not better than this, at least Russia is. Stockholm syndrome: understanding that the penalty for breaking away from the source of punishment is high, one prefers to agree than disagree, and even identifies with the abuser/terrorist/source of aggression. Simple skepticism of mainstream media because it was called into doubt that one time, and woof, grievances. 

So um, Ukraine benefits from hitting themselves to promote an anti-hitting themselves narrative, because Russia says they are hitting themselves, but my god, no one should ever be this stupid. Of course, the Russian aggression is a wave of terror and genocide because the Ukrainians failed to give up. Russia (Putin) thought they would just knuckle under and they didn't. Now, this warfare is like Syria.

They are referencing schoolyard-level bullying. Why is Ukraine hitting itself?  Long story short--they aren't. They are capably decimating Russia's supposedly 21st century army. But they have to pretend Ukraine deserves this. They have to make it seem like its Ukraine that needs to stop doing something. They have reversed victim and offender as abusers always do.

And the "even the Nazis never" argument is just ignorant of history: the Coventry blitz was bad enough but the Polish blitz was also brutal.  

So the reason for the maternity hospital terror is obvious if you aren't predisposed to accepting Putin's lies. They threatened the children. Like attacking other hospitals or kindergartens or other schools. They are trying to tell Ukraine that they really are attacking the future of their country. 

And there will be swag from it.  These kids in Russia are being taught to be monsters, because in order to keep committing atrocities, you need to feed people absurdities. But reality has a way of catching up.