this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
302 points (95.8% liked)

World News

39004 readers
2691 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Archive Link

In a recent appearance on Russia's state-run television, Russian political scientist Sergey Mikheyev suggested that the country's "empire" should grow to encompass three American states.

"I want the Russian empire with Alaska, Hawaii, California, Finland, and Poland," he said, as translated by Gerashchenko for the clip he shared. "Although Poland and Finland are so stinky, I'm not sure, to be honest. We'll clean them."

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

hey they can just have new jersey if they want it

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Near the end of the clip, the host of the program was quick to deflate Mikheyev's comment as "wishful thinking" divorced from actual politics.

"Yes, but again, wishful thinking is one thing and actual politics is another," the host said.

Gerashchenko, meanwhile, was less keen to write off the political scientist's comments as fantasy.

I mean, glad to see that even some Russian propagandists expect some of their viewers to have functional brain cells.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Yeah good luck with that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Protecting the Russian speakers right?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

All of these locations (Alaska, California, Hawaii, much of eastern Europe) are ones that Russia has at one point in its imperial or soviet history had either outposts or territorial claim to. Of course, much of Eastern Europe was as recently as the 1980s under the Kremlin's direct control, either as puppet states or as territory Russia or the USSR directly claimed. Finland and Poland in particular have both been completely invaded by Russian forces multiple times, but at the moment they are built up defensively in ways that Russia quite honestly has zero chances of winning against.

Alaska was territory that imperial Russia claimed before any European country did. It was sold to the US during the Crimean war (1853) because Russia needed the money and in all likelihood it was going to lose it to Britain. Russia established early trading outposts in Alaska and California but sold or abandoned them after wiping out the fur animals they'd come to harvest and trade.

This talk for the benefit of Russian audiences is about reminding Russians of former imperial or soviet glory, but the problem with that historically is that it wasn't actually glorious.

The current propaganda push to get Russians thinking they really have a shot at rolling back the map changes since Imperial times is just an effort to sustain Russia's modern project: dismantling the post-WWII order in which the West (the US, in particular, but NATO and much of the UN) upholds alliances that Putin sees as against Russia's interests.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

All of these locations (Alaska, California, Hawaii, much of eastern Europe) are ones that Russia has at one point in its imperial or soviet history had either outposts or territorial claim to.

Come on dawg, you can't just drop Hawaii in there and not tell us what the fuck the Russians were doing over there!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Sorry- I didn't know that part off the top of my head But since you asked, Russia's presence in Hawaii was sort of like its presence in Alaska and California: early 1800s outposts established by agents acting on behalf of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian-American_Company, which the Russian Crown had granted a monopoly on operations in North America and the Pacific but was unable to back or support such claims.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You mean something like a third Reich?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

You mean something like a third Reich?

Well, yeah. In very real ways WWII was about upending the post-WW1 order (which was punitive of Germany generally). It's really interesting to understand how crazy the flows of money were, and how badly the US in particular bungled its role as the issuer of the world's de facto reserve currency at the time- in the aftermath of WWI, Germany and its allies were made to pay reparations, France occupied the industrial territory on their border, and any money France or Belgium or Holland received in reparations promptly went to American banks, to repay war bonds borrowed to finance the fighting (which had, in turn, been spent in American factories on war materiel, weapons, munitions, etc).

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/the-real-story-of-how-america-became-an-economic-superpower/384034/ (sorry this is paywalled now, it was a really good read when it was available so I'll summarize briefly)

By the end of the first world war, all of the belligerent nations' economies were in tatters, their leadership were forced to inflate their currencies to make payments- but the US declined to inflate its own currency to make it workable for them- and when the US didn't think about its new role in maintaining a viable world order, it put everyone that owed it anything in the position of paying their debts not in their own inflated currencies, but in US dollars. This essentially collapsed the German economy and its currency, and it was just unnecessary.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I’d love to see Putin spend a week in the wrong part of Los Angeles and have his a__ handed to him by some Mexican American gang, or black gang. You want California, dude? As a white (non-Russian) living here, I have had gangs threatened to shoot me about five times now, because I accepted a job assignment in an area they considered to be their turf.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Bunker rat is called bunker rat not for nothing.

load more comments
view more: next ›