The logics of violence are fundamentally different between the two. Both are violent, yes, but the US invades Iraq for different reasons than Iran executes political prisonrs, for example. One is about the survival of the state, one is about advancing the conditions for capital accumulation.
The latter wasn’t what we were talking about.
Ah shit I got rid of it by accident you’re kidding me. Ok sorry. I put it back. I copy-pasted the reply a bunch of times so I messed it up. I don’t care if you don’t believe me as I know it’s true.
Though executions are a shit metric anyway because US doesn’t use that for political control it uses the police extrajudicially. Whereas obviously executions are used for political control by, say, Saudi/Iran.
The edit was to edit the number of people Iranian police killed during the Jina Ahmini protests because I read it wrong. IDK how to confirm it.
If you do not think that some states are more violent in their methods of control than others then I don’t know what to tell you tbqh.
I wasn’t referring to the US as one of the ‘less murder-y’ ones because it is a settler-colonial state. Though those killed by law enforcement in Iran are still considerably higher, e.g., during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month. Saudi not so much as the level of political opposition is lower. This is even if you count literally every US police murder as part of a campaign of political repression, of which plenty were but certainly not all.
I never claimed otherwise?
IDK how anyone-whether Hexbear or not-can possibly deny the fact that different governments rely on coercion to differing extents to maintain control.
I wasn’t referring to the US as one of the ‘less murder-y’ ones because it is a settler-colonial state. Though those killed by law enforcement in Iran are still considerably higher, e.g., during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month. Saudi not so much as the level of political opposition is lower. This is even if you count literally every US police murder as part of a campaign of political repression, of which plenty were but certainly not all.
I never claimed otherwise?
IDK how anyone-whether Hexbear or not-can possibly deny the fact that different governments rely on coercion to differing extents to maintain control.
I wasn’t referring to the US as one of the ‘less murder-y’ ones because it is a settler-colonial state. Though those killed by law enforcement in Iran are still considerably higher, e.g., during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month. This is even if you count literally every US police murder as part of a campaign of political repression, of which plenty were but certainly not all.
I don’t know why you thought I was as I didn’t even remotely begin to say it?
IDK how anyone-whether Hexbear or not-can possibly deny the fact that different governments rely on coercion to differing extents to maintain control.
Some governments are more willing to resort to violent repression against their domestic enemies than others, though.
For instance: In 2022, Iran had minimum 596 executions (likely more), Saudi Arabia had 146, the US had 18,
e.g., places like Iran, Saudi are quicker to do so than most, even for internal enemies of equivalent threat to the state itself.
For instance:, during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month.
All states and all governments use violence or the threat of it to uphold their rule, but some are more reliant on violence versus other methods of control than others…
Plus some are more willing to use violence in foreign policy vs domestic policy.
I think a lot of people might think…well why does it matter anyway if the words aren’t being used right as long as it gets through to people? But I think from a social-scientific perspective, and from the PoV of actually wanting to eliminate genocide as a practice, it is important.
Let’s use a medical analogy. You cannot treat cancer without knowing exactly what cancer is-when something is cancer and when it’s something else, and the specific mechanisms through which cancer occurs and becomes fatal. If you are an activist and you see every serious ailment as cancer and go “we need to treat this cancer, now!” and people take you seriously, then you will not understand the cancer, nor know how to prevent/cure it.
It’s the same with genocide. You cannot have a “cure” or a “preventative technique” for genocide unless you study it. Study how it occurs, why it occurs-the specific causal factors that lead to political elites making the decision to commit genocide. For this-because we never have experimental conditions in the social sciences-we need to use comparison. We need to compare between cases to determine common factors that are specific (probabilistically rather than deterministically, in reality) to genocide. You need to be able to have a list of cases you can compare between to do this, and you need to be able to have a boundary within which these cases exist, and outside of which you can put everything as “not genocide”. If this boundary is wrong (e.g., if you put every case of persecution in the ‘genocide’ case list) then you’re going to end up msunderstanding every little thing about genocide, and you’ll never get any closer to figuring out how to stop it or prevent it.
Thus ipso facto making a political/activist call of ‘genocide!’ to get attention is actually extremely harmful, and it is a key part of the social scientist’s job to determine whether X or Y case can be considered genocide because, if we consider genocide an ontologically specific phenomenon (e.g., it has its own mechanisms and processes separate to that of, say, general repression), we need to keep false positives outside of our case list which will make it harder to uncover the causal logics of genocide in the first place.
Theoretically he could still be right but there is no reason to believe he is. He doesn’t speak any local languages, has never done any fieldwork in the region, and his methodology/analysis is extremely unscientific and poor. I would encourage you to read his articles and see for yourself-it’s based on extremely shoddy and weak correlations w/ no serious causal connection whatsoever. I was honestly shocked at how poor the “scholarship” was considering how many people take it seriously.
There’s obviously extensive evidence of persecution and forced cultural assimilation, but that is not genocide. These things matter.
Considering there is absolutely no scholarly consensus on Xinjiang (my very own former genocide studies teacher, Dr Jens Meierhenrich, does not consider it genocide, for example. He is not a ‘tankie’, he is an extremely well-regarded political scientist who has taught at the best universities in the world) being a genocide it is pretty silly to support defederating because of it. Adrian Zenz is not a valid researcher as he’s done no fieldwork, doesn’t speak any local language, is a Christofascist fundamentalist (look up some of the stuff he’s written about Jews), and his methodology + analysis is extremely poor. I’ve read through all his papers to see what the big deal was and I found it was completely unscientific and was just based on some very lousy correlations. The UN investigation simply did not find proof of genocide and did not claim to. It said there is evidence of human rights abuses which is something most will agree with.
I have no doubt there is genuine persecution + forced cultural assimilation against the Ughyur-I have a friend whose wife is an Ughyur who fled the region because of it-but there is simply not evidence of genocide.
No, I do not agree w/ most Hexbears on China because I do not believe it is democratic, but that doesn’t mean China’s political system is beyond discussion, does it?
People being rude and mean is not good and I do not suppor them. Hopefully Hexbear admins will ban them or whatever.
I think this does not constitute a valid reason for deferation whatsoever. It just feels like people are not open to seeing other opinions that they’re not used to.
That’s fully understandable and probably the better take tbh. If I was in social science mode I’d agree with you, this is just my rough vibe from collating stuff so I fully appreciate that.
Tbf both were a sign of a troubled state but the Wagner mutiny was waaaaaaaaayyy more serious than Jan 6.
If he manages to wiggle out of this one I will lose it I swear haha.
I have a few friends who do that I trust in this matter + I follow a lot of people on both sides of the war (support-wise) who do speak Russian and who report it into English. While this doesn’t give as good a view as someone who actually speaks Russian, it still provides a good view overall and I haven’t had any reason to doubt my conclusions on this matter accordingly.
Of course, you are under no obligation to believe me, and I obviously wont take offence or whatever if you disagree, it’s just what I believe based on the evidence I have collated. It’s impossible to be certain until proper quantitative data is put together in a good study, though.
There has been no quantitative data released but based on solid reporting in re-taken areas e.g., Bucha it is evident that there were large-scale arbitrary executions.
By contrast, Russian media has presented little evidence of large-scale executions. There have been individual cases but there is no evidence to suggest it is as systemic.
While you are right to critique my claim, which I should not have made with such certainty perhaps, one can collate the available evidence and make a claim with reasonable-albeit not total-confidence. If Russia did have evidence of large-scale execution of PoWs, they’d obviously put it in their own friendly media outlets + it would be in Russian Telegrams.
Very good point-a way of connecting communities on Reddit that seems fairly innocuous but is actually a massive means of the “transmission” of users between communities, allowing users to find communities they like quicker and thus making them more likely to stay.
Very good point that I didn’t think of tbh.
Bad source for sure though there is ample evidence (you can watch videos of it) of quite large-scale execution and torture of PoWs among Russian and Wagner troops. It has happened on both sides but certainly far more on the Russian side…
I don’t think volunteers in the army itself count as mercenaries. Certainly I see no reason why international law as such doesn’t apply to them.
I really don’t think it is good to justify arbitrary executions of PoWs.
The Taliban were willing (after a bit of threatening and cajoling) to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third party for him to go to trial. There was no need to invade based on the justification as the Taliban were genuinely afraid of the invasion and were willing to co-operate, just as they have been now. In the end, the invasion did nothing anyway and Al Qaeda’s peak came AFTER the Taliban was toppled. There was never any chance of a cohesive post-Taliban government emerging from the Northern Alliance. By this point the US had decided on war and the whole MIC machinery was rolling, so it was too late to turn back (as US leaders thought, with their reliance on a captured media and lobbying from the MIC creating strategic liabilities within the US state).
The invasion was not necessary for US security aims and certainly could never have bettered Afghanistan, though.
I never liked the pig. It’s gross :(