TheLastHero

CIA saw he was getting too close to grilling enlightenment and hit him with the stroke gun

wow a chaotic, violent event creates unsubstantiated rumors and passionate but baseless accusations? no shit, I thought people only did that when the train is running late

imo it was all invented by a bunch of powerless monks or whoever coping that their oppressive king would surely face justice somehow because they could do nothing about him killing and robbing their compatriots. It's understandable, but it's the same simple fantasy that we post here about Biden getting a brain aneurysm or trump dying of covid or whatever. There is no heavenly salvation for the blessed nor eternal punishment for the greedy parasites, unless we make it happen ourselves.

The political landscape in Russia is much different than America, you can't analyze it the same way. The best way to understand this phenomenon in Russia is through the lens of anti-liberalism/anti-westernization. For centuries this has been a major divide in Russian politics. Their nation is on the periphery of Europe and there has always been a fight between Russians over whether to try to move closer to the rest of Europe culturally or if Russia should try to embrace it's own Slavic identity (aka Slavophilia). You can call it the Russian culture war if you really want to use American vocabulary.

This divide doesn't fit neatly over political ideology. Lenin's application of Marxist theory arguably made him a westernizer while Stalin very much turned the party towards Slavophilia by relaxing persecution of the Orthodox Church and enacting a number of natalist policies, among others. One isn't necessarily better than the other, it's just a different vision of Russian national identity. Though if you live in the west you are obviously going to find the westernizer view more familiar.

The 1990s quite obviously made western and liberal values very unpopular in Russia, and now the war in Ukraine is often seen as a war against the the West itself and a defense of Russian sovereignty. Medvedev is one of the biggest propagandists of this, he posted "I hate the West. They are bastards and scum. They want death to us, Russia, and as long as I’m alive, I will do everything to make them disappear.”

So when Russians talk about anti-"modernity", you can basically just replace that with anti-liberalism, anti-western. They aren't "red fash." They view LGBTQ as a "Western import" and thus reflexively reject it, same with tolerance of Islam. On the other hand they love the USSR and workers right's because that's loving Russia and their Slavic identity. It may seem like nationalistic conservatism to us now, but that's mostly because Putin is a nationalistic conservative and has dominated Russian politics, so he's been able to exploit this divide very well. As a macho conservative he has no love loss for LGBTQ rights and he's happy to scapegoat them as Western agents trying to destabilize the country.

But we know that's not true, queer people in Russia are as homegrown as anywhere else. So it's a real damn shame that in recent decades LGBTQ rights have become so wedded to liberalism, that anaemic fucking ideology, because liberalism is dead and beaten in Russia now. Theoretically there could be an anti-western, pro-LGBTQ movement in Russia that could maybe overcome this (as we know despite western talk LGBTQ rights aren't great there either), but with the level of targeted state repression in Russia it's hard to see that happening anytime soon, it would also probably look really damn weird from the outside.

unless this is movie about the pool ladder serial killer I fail to see what interesting plot hooks the Sims provides since it's uh, you know, just a simulation of normal western life?

they claim everything, for a terror group like that it's good for their "clout", I'd like to see some evidence first before I believe it

we see rogue terrorist individuals in the US all the time of course, but a team of three to five goons armed with explosives and incendiaries? That is a level of complexity that is rarely seen without some sort of outside backing, though we don't have any that evidence about who that backer could be yet.

"with the Nazis" seems to imply they're Polish, and the red army hadn't completed its mass motorization yet in 1939, so it could have been taken for logistics or sent to a farm in Ukraine as a draft animal or something

we can be pretty abrasive but also we have some very knowledgeable and funny people. Just be willing to listen and engage in good faith. We save the worst of it for annoying redditors with the same half dozen sophomoric points we've all heard a million times before because we have no interest entertaining them here.

the libs are cooked folks, he has achieved CRANIOMETRIC PERFECTION

I must say I find it very funny and enjoyable that Russia has their own version of US-style "sovereign citizens" who start quoting Soviet law whenever they get a speeding ticket

it's the apple of Eden from assassin's creed, was just hanging off a random dude's truck the whole time