> Russians are being dragged into this against their will by Putin.
Unfortunately, this is profoundly incorrect. I know a lot of young(-ish) educated Russians, and at least 50% (by my estimate) kind of agree with Putin that "they were left no other choice".
> I know a lot of young(-ish) educated Russians, and at least 50% (by my estimate) kind of agree with Putin that "they were left no other choice"
I grew up in South America. If you knew the kind of crap we are fed by our own very teachers that vilify american citizens as invading thieves without any care to make a distinction about the people and the government. I clearly remember during a certain heavy metal concert the keyboard player innocently tried to make a solo of the country national hymn followed by the american hymn and he was attacked by an angry mob of retards throwing things while literally chanting "Bin Laden". And yeah I was young and I thought "the yankee bastard had it coming".
I was in my 30s when I started realizing its all bullshit and the american people don't really have a say about the atrocities their government is causing in foreign lands. We've been fed with propaganda and programmed to hate people we don't know.
There is one thing I do not understand and I was hoping you (or any other person who knows a lot of Russians) can explain: I hear that Russia and Ukraine have many personal connections from the past. I happen to be from the Czech Republic and I imagined that it is probably similar to our relation to Slovakia - we used to be one state, many people having friends or relatives in the other country, mutually intelligible languages, mixed marriages... I always assumed that personal ties are stronger than propaganda (if I know that my Slovak brother in law and all of his friends are not fascists, I would hardly believe the propaganda claiming that they are). My view was obviously incorrect, but how? Did I overestimate the connectedness between Russia and Ukraine? Or underestimate the influence of propaganda? Or something else?
This is what propaganda will make. If you keep your population only speaking a language that the rest of the world does not use, it makes propaganda so much easier.
With enough determination (and it doesn't take that that much) you can make propaganda work just fine in any language. And that's they key part, it doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough. Look at Fox News or Alex Jones.
And even if you make the effort to evaluate both sides objectively, having too much information in any language doesn't work that great either. Most people aren't equipped to properly select their information sources, to parse everything and discriminate fact from feeling, propaganda from truthful reporting. To highlight how difficult it is, this happens at scale even in the most civilized of countries, with solid education systems, and freedom of speech and press.
Most people tend to choose sides which become core to their beliefs, and are reluctant to reconsider ever again. Once they picked a side it's "just" a matter of selecting the information that supports it. This is why the same person can read the same information and decide whether it's good or bad based on who did it rather than what was done? Some people read "country X bombed school in country Y" and purely depending on their "allegiance" will decide whether the school was full of terrorists or the bomb was launched by terrorists.
Whatever you do to change that will earn you the label of "other side's troll" (sometimes, ironically, from both sides) and you quickly learn that freedom of speech only works when you exercise it in your own bubble, thus reinforcing that bubble.
I hope it is not an argument againt freedom of speach?
I wonder what are your conclusion on how to tackle the problem? Because I ask myself this question regularly when I observe both sides arguing on the topic of free speach. But it’s very hard for me to be against free speach.
Education (and future to be invented tools) isn’t any magical stick, but the best I can think of for the long term.
possibly tools like: having feed filtering algorithms also implemented clients side. You’ll always be in some sort of bubble, but having more say in it (like many inventions have evolved). This of course creates new challenged, but that’s a natural thing
Yes, and the propaganda starts already before kindergarden and continues in school. And since the parents are already convinced by the propaganda, it's reinforced from there too.
Unfortunately, this is profoundly incorrect. I know a lot of young(-ish) educated Russians, and at least 50% (by my estimate) kind of agree with Putin that "they were left no other choice".