Russia isn’t last. Color me surprized. Would’ve thought that magnitude of assholery (millions of victims) gets some recognition from anyone with a sense of self preservation.
I think at least some of it is based on what people expect vs. what the country actually does. Israel talks about freedom and democracy, then kills Palestinians for sport. Russia’s lies are so obvious that it’s not like they’re even trying to be deceptive.
So, Israel is worse than people thought it was, whereas Russia’s exactly as bad as people expected.
There’s also recency bias. Most people these days have no clear concept how bad things like the Holodomor actually were but they do have an idea of how bad it is in Gaza right now.
Then there’s the fact that some of Russia’s worst actions were actually perpetrated by the USSR so you could argue it was a different country and that they’ve changed like Germany argues it did. Of course the USSR was run bv Russia and there’s a long list of post-Soviet Russian behavior that suggests they didn’t change all that much. But, weak as it is, that argument can be made.
It’s much more reasonable to blame Israel for something that is currently happening vs something that happened almost a century ago.
Blaming Russia for things it is doing in Ukraine today is a fair comparison.
How far back to blame a country for something is hard to say. Is it reasonable to blame Israel for something it did 15 years ago? Almost certainly. Netanyahu was in charge then, and he’s in charge now. What about blaming Hungary for something it did 5 years ago. Well, that’s harder, there has been a major change of leadership in the country since then.
The BRIC nations have been subject to sustained negative press in the western world. The English colonial history and everything that flowed from it should place the anglophone world at the bottom of this list but only America seems to be significantly weighed by their recent hegemonic ambitions. People have short memories and don’t read history.
Russia isn’t last. Color me surprized. Would’ve thought that magnitude of assholery (millions of victims) gets some recognition from anyone with a sense of self preservation.
I think at least some of it is based on what people expect vs. what the country actually does. Israel talks about freedom and democracy, then kills Palestinians for sport. Russia’s lies are so obvious that it’s not like they’re even trying to be deceptive.
So, Israel is worse than people thought it was, whereas Russia’s exactly as bad as people expected.
There’s also recency bias. Most people these days have no clear concept how bad things like the Holodomor actually were but they do have an idea of how bad it is in Gaza right now.
Then there’s the fact that some of Russia’s worst actions were actually perpetrated by the USSR so you could argue it was a different country and that they’ve changed like Germany argues it did. Of course the USSR was run bv Russia and there’s a long list of post-Soviet Russian behavior that suggests they didn’t change all that much. But, weak as it is, that argument can be made.
It’s much more reasonable to blame Israel for something that is currently happening vs something that happened almost a century ago.
Blaming Russia for things it is doing in Ukraine today is a fair comparison.
How far back to blame a country for something is hard to say. Is it reasonable to blame Israel for something it did 15 years ago? Almost certainly. Netanyahu was in charge then, and he’s in charge now. What about blaming Hungary for something it did 5 years ago. Well, that’s harder, there has been a major change of leadership in the country since then.
The BRIC nations have been subject to sustained negative press in the western world. The English colonial history and everything that flowed from it should place the anglophone world at the bottom of this list but only America seems to be significantly weighed by their recent hegemonic ambitions. People have short memories and don’t read history.