The Creeping Influence of "Ruscism" and the Peril to Western Democracies

[Social Media]

Historian Dr Thomas Clausen assesses the fallout such a victory would have on European politics if Russia were successful in its war

 

The death of Western democracy is now a conceivable threat, with a resurgence of authoritarian strongmen no longer seeming like a far-fetched fantasy. The term "Ruscism" has emerged to describe the sinister ideology underpinning Russia’s genocidal campaign in Ukraine. As Putin’s rhetoric infiltrates political movements in Germany’s AfD, Austria’s FPÖ, and even fringes of the US Republican party, it is evident that this toxic blend of Russian nationalism and fascism is becoming an influential export in the West.

 

If Putin triumphs in Ukraine, expect this ideology to spread even further. The history of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s offers a valuable lesson about the threat posed to liberal democracies by fascist-style parties. Contrary to Woodrow Wilson’s hope that the First World War had made the "world safe for democracy," most European democracies had died by 1940. The West is not immune to a similar fate today. Currently, the West displays a dangerous level of complacency reminiscent of the early months of the Second World War. In a speech at Westminster on April 3, 1940, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain confidently declared that Hitler had "missed the bus." Less than three months later, the Nazis held their victory parade in Paris. The French historian Marc Bloch, who witnessed the collapse of the French army firsthand and was executed for his role in the Résistance in 1944, offered a compelling analysis of the reasons for defeat: "Our leaders, or those who acted for them, were incapable of thinking in terms of a new war."

 

More than ten years since Putin’s soldiers first invaded Ukraine, annexing Crimea, Western politicians still struggle to comprehend the reality that the Russian leader has forced a new type of war on the West. "The very 'rules of war' have changed," observed the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, General Valery Gerasimov, in 2016. "The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness." NATO’s economic and technological superiority, let alone the nuclear umbrella, has made Western leaders complacent about the prospect of a Russian victory—not just in Ukraine, but across Europe.

 

Putin’s key to victory lies not in an all-out war against NATO, but in the use of non-military weapons and the subversion of democratic polities. In short, Putin wins once liberal democracies lose the will to fight—and that day might be catastrophically close. If it comes, it is only the beginning of the spread of a dangerous new ideology unseen for decades.

 

Putin has already succeeded in muddying public discourse in the West. While Russian state TV prepares its domestic audience for war and genocide, pro-Putin voices in the West denounce as "warmongers" those who want to support Ukraine with the means for self-defense. Ruscism has also been injected into the culture wars. False promises of "national rebirth" and "traditional values" appeal to disenchanted conservatives in the West, while the Left feeds on anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. As recent Ivy League protests have shown, there is even a willingness to embrace terrorist groups such as Hamas, a close ally of Iran—which, in turn, supplies Russia with the Shahed drones used for murdering Ukrainian civilians.

 

Another success for Putin is the enlistment of key figures in the West. In Germany, this is evident in some infamous cases. It is less important whether they are "useful idiots," paid-up lobbyists (such as former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder), or (alleged) recipients of bribes. What matters is that the democratic discourse has been compromised by agents willing to do the bidding of Ruscism. The "fascistisation" of populist movements is likely one of the most significant developments in recent years. For over a decade, scholars have debated whether nativist, illiberal, and anti-elitist positions could be termed fascist—and all too often, the term has been abused to denigrate opinions outside the political mainstream. Russian influence, however, has changed everything—and the fact that Putin has infiltrated opposition voices across Europe and the United States might turn out to be his most clever investment.

 

The German AfD is a case in point. Founded in 2013, the party was led by liberal and conservative economists who argued that the euro was incompatible with notions of national sovereignty and, in addition, economically harmful to both Greeks and Germans. Having missed the electoral threshold by a narrow margin in the same year, the party benefitted from Angela Merkel’s response to the refugee crisis in 2015. In 2017, the AfD entered the Federal parliament for the first time and has since become a fixture in German politics.

 

At the beginning, the AfD’s positions appeared to be not that dissimilar to those of conservative parties outside Germany: hostile to overreach from Brussels, critical of unrestricted immigration, and fiscally conservative. The AfD professed to merely occupy right-of-center positions vacated by Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Quickly, however, it became clear that the AfD was anything but conservative. In 2018, its chairman Alexander Gauland declared that "Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of birds*** in over 1,000 years of glorious German history." As most moderate voices left over the years, the influence of the extreme right and the Thuringian party leader Björn Höcke, who wants to fuse the national and the social, grew stronger. "The most important book published in 2018," according to Höcke, was aptly entitled "solidarity patriotism."

 

More recently, Höcke has told Elon Musk on Twitter that provisions in the German criminal code, which ban Nazi slogans, "aim to prevent Germany from finding itself again." His usage of the Nazi stormtrooper catchphrase "Everything for Germany" has since earned him a hefty fine by a German court. At the same time, Ruscism has entered the party. In 2014, the AfD firmly rallied behind NATO, declaring that the party was "firmly committed" to binding Germany to the West. But only a few months after these "guiding principles" were accepted by the party congress, very different voices became louder, defending Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In the following years, pro-Putin positions became dominant.

 

In 2016 and 2018, the young MP Markus Frohnmaier visited occupied Crimea while some of his colleagues even made it to Donetsk and Luhansk. His former aide, Manuel Ochsenreiter, was even suspected of having committed arson in Ukraine as part of a false-flag operation (he died—mysteriously—in Moscow in 2021). In 2023, one year into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the party chairman Tino Chrupalla attended a reception at the Russian embassy in Berlin while another MP, Steffen Kotré, was a guest on Vladimir Solovyov’s propaganda show on Russian prime-time TV. The fact that Solovyov routinely threatens Berlin with nuclear annihilation seems to be of little concern to the self-avowed "patriots."

 

The question of how far right-wing (and left-wing) populist parties in Germany have been subverted by Russian influence will remain a key issue for years to come. What is clear, however, is that allegiance to Putin has transformed parties that were critical of mainstream positions into something much more sinister. Already in August 2022, merely six months after Putin’s full-scale invasion, the AfD was not ashamed to ask the German government about "Ukraine’s rapprochement to NATO." Since then, they have become one of Putin’s most reliable voices in German politics—much to the chagrin of minority voices within the party, including General Rüdiger Lucassen, who accused his own party members of "treason against the people" in 2023. More recently, he backtracked, lauding the "pluralism" in his party.

 

Putin’s success in influencing and, perhaps, taking over populist parties in the West has been one of his biggest achievements, because his grand prize and the openly stated goal of his war is the dismantlement of NATO and the European Union. Such a scenario is anything but far-fetched. Earlier this year, Donald Trump even encouraged Russia to attack NATO countries if they failed to "pay their bills." Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen might well win the French presidential election in 2027. While she has recently adjusted her message, her long-held admiration for Putin and her party’s links to a Russian bank are well documented.

 

The democratic doomsday scenario involves a number of unlikely—but far from impossible—steps: Putin overwhelms Ukraine and pushes to Moldova and the Suwałki gap, Trump removes the United States from NATO, and Europe’s only nuclear deterrent, the Force de frappe, is controlled by Le Pen. This would leave Europe’s eastern flank dangerously exposed, while extremists from the left and right might play the role of Ephialtes, who betrayed the Spartan position at Thermopylae.

 

"Every time you sacrifice one of your potential allies to this pathetic desire to appease the tyrants you merely bring nearer and make more inevitable that war which you pretend you are trying to avoid," the Labour MP Josiah Wedgwood presciently told Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Hitler’s (temporary) victory in 1940 was only made possible due to the inaction of the West after the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, the dismantlement of Czechoslovakia, and the "phoney war" following the attack on Poland. The same holds true for Putin’s war of expansion. With impunity, Putin has been allowed to level cities, murder opponents (even on NATO territory), and slaughter civilians. Neither the war against Georgia in 2008 nor the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the killing of 298 passengers of flight MH17 has kept the West from guzzling up Russian gas, courting Russian money, and enjoying the 2018 World Cup.

 

So far, the price for this moral and strategic failure of the West has mostly been paid by Ukrainians. Should Putin be allowed to succeed, it will likely embolden him to test the limits of Article 5 and to intensify the hybrid war that he has already been waging for decades. Finally, it will strengthen the Ruscist acolytes who have already made their way into Western parliaments and who eagerly proclaim the end of the "multipolar world order" (a shorthand for denying most states their right to self-determination).

 

It is therefore high time to enable liberal democracies to robustly defend themselves from their internal and external enemies. If Putin wins, Europe’s fascist future awaits.

 

Credit: Daily Telegraph 2024-06-01

 

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[Tug]

Scary times indeed thanks for posting this compelling reading in my humble opinion.

[thaibeachlovers]

32 minutes ago, Social Media said:

The death of Western democracy is now a conceivable threat

IMO not a threat, but inevitable.

To any that have eyes and a will to look beyond the facade, western civilization is rotten to the core, obsessed with greed, materialism, and false idols.

When the idea that there are more genders than 2, or that driving an EV will "save the planet", the end is IMO near. They are symptoms of a greater malaise that grips the western world, and that malaise is going to see it follow the Greeks, the Romans and all the other once powerful empires into the bin of history.

We may not watch people being ripped apart by lions for entertainment anymore, but we are nations of bread and circuses, just like the Romans at the end of their long decline from power.

 

There is nothing unusual about it- it's not as though we are the first civilization to fade away, and the progress from power to inconsequence is well known.

 

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

[Hummin]

48 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

IMO not a threat, but inevitable.

To any that have eyes and a will to look beyond the facade, western civilization is rotten to the core, obsessed with greed, materialism, and false idols.

When the idea that there are more genders than 2, or that driving an EV will "save the planet", the end is IMO near. They are symptoms of a greater malaise that grips the western world, and that malaise is going to see it follow the Greeks, the Romans and all the other once powerful empires into the bin of history.

We may not watch people being ripped apart by lions for entertainment anymore, but we are nations of bread and circuses, just like the Romans at the end of their long decline from power.

 

There is nothing unusual about it- it's not as though we are the first civilization to fade away, and the progress from power to inconsequence is well known.

 

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Still the alternatives is worse! A totalitarian controlled organ, you think is better than having  more than two genders! 

 

Just think about what you feelis bad about today's system, you can say in public, write in social media with no consequences. You cant do that in Russia!

[swerve]

Uncontrolled wokism, too many people, poor weather, very expensive prices, excessive tipping charges, not enough accom, and extravagant taxes are weaknesses of most Western countries.  Other than that what's not to love?  Unless people live there for family/education/health I see no reason to live in the West.

 

 

[stoner]

28 minutes ago, Hummin said:

You cant do that in Russia!

 

nor would you in a communist controlled place either. 

[Dcheech]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

IMO not a threat, but inevitable.

To any that have eyes and a will to look beyond the facade, western civilization is rotten to the core, obsessed with greed, materialism, and false idols.

 

And Russia, China, ethno nationalist authoritarian states are better?! Good deal you live in the west then. I don't see you making it in China or Russia. You can whinge to high heaven here, but if over there and you did the same, you most likely would get some state approved thought correction or a 'struggle session' therapy. That might be the better alternative, than the 'rehab option' of a volunteer to stop LGBT western godless hordes in the Ukraine. May be old but, mine clearing troops have always had a valued place in the Russian army.  They called them 'tramplers'. 

 

 

Edited May 31 by Dcheech

[rocketboy2]

Russia and Ukraine all just a small blip on the world, more of a distraction.

It's the religious nuts that you need to worry about, they are slowly destroying everything they don't like.

 

[impulse]

5 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

IMO not a threat, but inevitable.

 

Who was it that, thousands of years ago, predicted that a democracy will fail when people can vote themselves money from the treasury?

 

Politicians are giving away money in return for votes and campaign donations, bankrupting the treasury.  In return, voters who want their benefits to continue and their student loans to go away are voting for them, and corporations who want favorable policies are donating to them.  And millions more are illegally crossing borders for the freebies, who will eventually become voters.  Probably sooner than the law currently allows.

 

Edited June 1 by impulse

[newbee2022]

7 hours ago, Social Media said:

Historian Dr Thomas Clausen assesses the fallout such a victory would have on European politics if Russia were successful in its war

 

The death of Western democracy is now a conceivable threat, with a resurgence of authoritarian strongmen no longer seeming like a far-fetched fantasy. The term "Ruscism" has emerged to describe the sinister ideology underpinning Russia’s genocidal campaign in Ukraine. As Putin’s rhetoric infiltrates political movements in Germany’s AfD, Austria’s FPÖ, and even fringes of the US Republican party, it is evident that this toxic blend of Russian nationalism and fascism is becoming an influential export in the West.

 

If Putin triumphs in Ukraine, expect this ideology to spread even further. The history of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s offers a valuable lesson about the threat posed to liberal democracies by fascist-style parties. Contrary to Woodrow Wilson’s hope that the First World War had made the "world safe for democracy," most European democracies had died by 1940. The West is not immune to a similar fate today. Currently, the West displays a dangerous level of complacency reminiscent of the early months of the Second World War. In a speech at Westminster on April 3, 1940, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain confidently declared that Hitler had "missed the bus." Less than three months later, the Nazis held their victory parade in Paris. The French historian Marc Bloch, who witnessed the collapse of the French army firsthand and was executed for his role in the Résistance in 1944, offered a compelling analysis of the reasons for defeat: "Our leaders, or those who acted for them, were incapable of thinking in terms of a new war."

 

More than ten years since Putin’s soldiers first invaded Ukraine, annexing Crimea, Western politicians still struggle to comprehend the reality that the Russian leader has forced a new type of war on the West. "The very 'rules of war' have changed," observed the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, General Valery Gerasimov, in 2016. "The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness." NATO’s economic and technological superiority, let alone the nuclear umbrella, has made Western leaders complacent about the prospect of a Russian victory—not just in Ukraine, but across Europe.

 

Putin’s key to victory lies not in an all-out war against NATO, but in the use of non-military weapons and the subversion of democratic polities. In short, Putin wins once liberal democracies lose the will to fight—and that day might be catastrophically close. If it comes, it is only the beginning of the spread of a dangerous new ideology unseen for decades.

 

Putin has already succeeded in muddying public discourse in the West. While Russian state TV prepares its domestic audience for war and genocide, pro-Putin voices in the West denounce as "warmongers" those who want to support Ukraine with the means for self-defense. Ruscism has also been injected into the culture wars. False promises of "national rebirth" and "traditional values" appeal to disenchanted conservatives in the West, while the Left feeds on anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. As recent Ivy League protests have shown, there is even a willingness to embrace terrorist groups such as Hamas, a close ally of Iran—which, in turn, supplies Russia with the Shahed drones used for murdering Ukrainian civilians.

 

Another success for Putin is the enlistment of key figures in the West. In Germany, this is evident in some infamous cases. It is less important whether they are "useful idiots," paid-up lobbyists (such as former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder), or (alleged) recipients of bribes. What matters is that the democratic discourse has been compromised by agents willing to do the bidding of Ruscism. The "fascistisation" of populist movements is likely one of the most significant developments in recent years. For over a decade, scholars have debated whether nativist, illiberal, and anti-elitist positions could be termed fascist—and all too often, the term has been abused to denigrate opinions outside the political mainstream. Russian influence, however, has changed everything—and the fact that Putin has infiltrated opposition voices across Europe and the United States might turn out to be his most clever investment.

 

The German AfD is a case in point. Founded in 2013, the party was led by liberal and conservative economists who argued that the euro was incompatible with notions of national sovereignty and, in addition, economically harmful to both Greeks and Germans. Having missed the electoral threshold by a narrow margin in the same year, the party benefitted from Angela Merkel’s response to the refugee crisis in 2015. In 2017, the AfD entered the Federal parliament for the first time and has since become a fixture in German politics.

 

At the beginning, the AfD’s positions appeared to be not that dissimilar to those of conservative parties outside Germany: hostile to overreach from Brussels, critical of unrestricted immigration, and fiscally conservative. The AfD professed to merely occupy right-of-center positions vacated by Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Quickly, however, it became clear that the AfD was anything but conservative. In 2018, its chairman Alexander Gauland declared that "Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of birds*** in over 1,000 years of glorious German history." As most moderate voices left over the years, the influence of the extreme right and the Thuringian party leader Björn Höcke, who wants to fuse the national and the social, grew stronger. "The most important book published in 2018," according to Höcke, was aptly entitled "solidarity patriotism."

 

More recently, Höcke has told Elon Musk on Twitter that provisions in the German criminal code, which ban Nazi slogans, "aim to prevent Germany from finding itself again." His usage of the Nazi stormtrooper catchphrase "Everything for Germany" has since earned him a hefty fine by a German court. At the same time, Ruscism has entered the party. In 2014, the AfD firmly rallied behind NATO, declaring that the party was "firmly committed" to binding Germany to the West. But only a few months after these "guiding principles" were accepted by the party congress, very different voices became louder, defending Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In the following years, pro-Putin positions became dominant.

 

In 2016 and 2018, the young MP Markus Frohnmaier visited occupied Crimea while some of his colleagues even made it to Donetsk and Luhansk. His former aide, Manuel Ochsenreiter, was even suspected of having committed arson in Ukraine as part of a false-flag operation (he died—mysteriously—in Moscow in 2021). In 2023, one year into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the party chairman Tino Chrupalla attended a reception at the Russian embassy in Berlin while another MP, Steffen Kotré, was a guest on Vladimir Solovyov’s propaganda show on Russian prime-time TV. The fact that Solovyov routinely threatens Berlin with nuclear annihilation seems to be of little concern to the self-avowed "patriots."

 

The question of how far right-wing (and left-wing) populist parties in Germany have been subverted by Russian influence will remain a key issue for years to come. What is clear, however, is that allegiance to Putin has transformed parties that were critical of mainstream positions into something much more sinister. Already in August 2022, merely six months after Putin’s full-scale invasion, the AfD was not ashamed to ask the German government about "Ukraine’s rapprochement to NATO." Since then, they have become one of Putin’s most reliable voices in German politics—much to the chagrin of minority voices within the party, including General Rüdiger Lucassen, who accused his own party members of "treason against the people" in 2023. More recently, he backtracked, lauding the "pluralism" in his party.

 

Putin’s success in influencing and, perhaps, taking over populist parties in the West has been one of his biggest achievements, because his grand prize and the openly stated goal of his war is the dismantlement of NATO and the European Union. Such a scenario is anything but far-fetched. Earlier this year, Donald Trump even encouraged Russia to attack NATO countries if they failed to "pay their bills." Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen might well win the French presidential election in 2027. While she has recently adjusted her message, her long-held admiration for Putin and her party’s links to a Russian bank are well documented.

 

The democratic doomsday scenario involves a number of unlikely—but far from impossible—steps: Putin overwhelms Ukraine and pushes to Moldova and the Suwałki gap, Trump removes the United States from NATO, and Europe’s only nuclear deterrent, the Force de frappe, is controlled by Le Pen. This would leave Europe’s eastern flank dangerously exposed, while extremists from the left and right might play the role of Ephialtes, who betrayed the Spartan position at Thermopylae.

 

"Every time you sacrifice one of your potential allies to this pathetic desire to appease the tyrants you merely bring nearer and make more inevitable that war which you pretend you are trying to avoid," the Labour MP Josiah Wedgwood presciently told Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Hitler’s (temporary) victory in 1940 was only made possible due to the inaction of the West after the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, the dismantlement of Czechoslovakia, and the "phoney war" following the attack on Poland. The same holds true for Putin’s war of expansion. With impunity, Putin has been allowed to level cities, murder opponents (even on NATO territory), and slaughter civilians. Neither the war against Georgia in 2008 nor the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the killing of 298 passengers of flight MH17 has kept the West from guzzling up Russian gas, courting Russian money, and enjoying the 2018 World Cup.

 

So far, the price for this moral and strategic failure of the West has mostly been paid by Ukrainians. Should Putin be allowed to succeed, it will likely embolden him to test the limits of Article 5 and to intensify the hybrid war that he has already been waging for decades. Finally, it will strengthen the Ruscist acolytes who have already made their way into Western parliaments and who eagerly proclaim the end of the "multipolar world order" (a shorthand for denying most states their right to self-determination).

 

It is therefore high time to enable liberal democracies to robustly defend themselves from their internal and external enemies. If Putin wins, Europe’s fascist future awaits.

 

Credit: Daily Telegraph 2024-06-01

 

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Very good expertise describing Europe's (West's) situation.

There was a time when Putin knocked at the door of EU and NATO. However, we denied entry. Fatal mistake I think.🙏. Now he's declared our enemy instead a partner. 😕

 

[rudi49jr]

7 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

IMO not a threat, but inevitable.

To any that have eyes and a will to look beyond the facade, western civilization is rotten to the core, obsessed with greed, materialism, and false idols.

When the idea that there are more genders than 2, or that driving an EV will "save the planet", the end is IMO near. They are symptoms of a greater malaise that grips the western world, and that malaise is going to see it follow the Greeks, the Romans and all the other once powerful empires into the bin of history.

We may not watch people being ripped apart by lions for entertainment anymore, but we are nations of bread and circuses, just like the Romans at the end of their long decline from power.

 

There is nothing unusual about it- it's not as though we are the first civilization to fade away, and the progress from power to inconsequence is well known.

 

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

So the guy who supports a wannabe dictator and claims the people who wanted to stage a coup in Germany were completely harmless thinks the death of Western democracy is inevitable. Wow, what a shocker. You’d probably be the first to dance on its grave, wouldn’t you?

Edited June 1 by rudi49jr

[NORDO]

Problem with Democracy is our punishments for violating our laws don't mete the nature of the crime.  Thus we attract scum that robs, rapes and pisses on us because they wont be exterminated for their crime against democracy.   If we want a sustainable democracy that provides a safe haven for citizens, then we must exterminate the threats.   Basic “survival of the fittest”.   Or the concept of every living thing on this planet.

 

Lovin and huggin and forgiven, just wont do it.   Dictators figured that out a long time ago.

[charleskerins]

Great article  we have folks posting on here that are enemies of Democracy,

[thaibeachlovers]

10 hours ago, Hummin said:

Still the alternatives is worse! A totalitarian controlled organ, you think is better than having  more than two genders! 

 

Just think about what you feelis bad about today's system, you can say in public, write in social media with no consequences. You cant do that in Russia!

Oh dear I wrote a long reply to that but it just vanished, and I ain't writing it again.

The jist was that we are not as free in the west as some think we are.

 

Ask Julian Assange if he thinks he can publish whatever he likes in our "free" society.

Edited June 1 by thaibeachlovers

[Hummin]

Just now, thaibeachlovers said:

Oh dear I wrote a long reply to that but it just vanished, and I ain't writing it again.

The jist was that we are not as free in the west as some think we are.

Yes we are, but we are making bad choices with he freedom we have. Lazy and greedy choices, spoiling our great opportunities and neglect our responsibility as grown up adults to preserve what we have! 

 

People are pure stupid when comes to vote the right people to protect their values and rights! 

 

Always being tempted by empty words and promises. 

 

People make bad choices, and lately driven by click baits and simple brainwashing tools

[thaibeachlovers]

4 hours ago, newbee2022 said:

Very good expertise describing Europe's (West's) situation.

There was a time when Putin knocked at the door of EU and NATO. However, we denied entry. Fatal mistake I think.🙏. Now he's declared our enemy instead a partner. 😕

 

NATO needs an enemy or they have no reason to exist. Of course they didn't let Russia join the club.

[thaibeachlovers]

1 minute ago, Hummin said:

Yes we are, but we are making bad choices with he freedom we have. Lazy and greedy choices, spoiling our great opportunities and neglect our responsibility as grown up adults to preserve what we have! 

 

People are pure stupid when comes to vote the right people to protect their values and rights! 

 

Always being tempted by empty words and promises. 

 

People make bad choices, and lately driven by click baits and simple brainwashing tools

In a free society everyone has a choice of what they do, even if others think it's stupid. If we don't it's not a free society. You can't have it both ways.

[SiSePuede419]

2 hours ago, charleskerins said:

Great article  we have folks posting on here that are enemies of Democracy,

They're like cigarette smokers who throw down cigarette butts on the beach.  They're selfish and lazy "thinkers". 😄

[newbee2022]

10 hours ago, rocketboy2 said:

Russia and Ukraine all just a small blip on the world, more of a distraction.

It's the religious nuts that you need to worry about, they are slowly destroying everything they don't like.

 

You're right. Abolishing Christianity will be a good start?😳

[rocketboy2]

Just now, newbee2022 said:

You're right. Abolishing Christianity will be a good start?😳

I'm ok on that. 

But I'm,  full on for the abolition,  of the religion of, peace and under standing, first.  .

[Hummin]

30 minutes ago, newbee2022 said:

You're right. Abolishing Christianity will be a good start?😳

The intellectual have been doing that for years, and now you see the results.

 

A fraud wh claim himself to be Christian, embracing extreme Christians, and shows good and clear support for Israel

[newbee2022]

1 hour ago, Hummin said:

The intellectual have been doing that for years, and now you see the results.

 

A fraud wh claim himself to be Christian, embracing extreme Christians, and shows good and clear support for Israel

You don't support Israel?

[Hummin]

9 minutes ago, newbee2022 said:

You don't support Israel?

Why should I support Israel? 

 

 

[NativeBob]

16 minutes ago, Hummin said:

Why should I support Israel? 

Obvious! be cause: 
"in the war between __________ and ______________ support __________________"

Support Israel and say Shalom!

Edited June 1 by NativeBob

[newbee2022]

14 minutes ago, Hummin said:

Why should I support Israel? 

 

 

It seems to be quite common nowadays not to answer a question but answer with another question. A pity.

[newbee2022]

6 hours ago, charleskerins said:

Great article  we have folks posting on here that are enemies of Democracy,

Democracies are not very famous at present. The trend is going to autocracies. 

(If Trump wins, even US is in danger to be changed into an autocratic leadership)

[Hummin]

1 hour ago, newbee2022 said:

It seems to be quite common nowadays not to answer a question but answer with another question. A pity.

I do not Support Israel,  Hamas, or Russia.

 

 

 

[JonnyF]

This article is the biggest pile of nonsense that I've had the misfortune of reading in ages.

 

Sounds like something Ash Sarkar would write after 3 days on ya baa.

[charleskerins]

9 hours ago, JonnyF said:

This article is the biggest pile of nonsense that I've had the misfortune of reading in ages.

 

Sounds like something Ash Sarkar would write after 3 days on ya baa.

and where is the nonsense?

[stevenl]

1 hour ago, charleskerins said:

and where is the nonsense?

Difficult question for Jonny since it is his own bible spewing the nonsense.