volvoxvsmarla

I cut ties with a friend my age (early to mid 30s) who grew up in Germany but had Ukrainian roots, and family in Ukraine next to the border. He also didn't believe what "Western media" said and only what his family on the border is telling him and "they know who is bombing whom". He has a Master's degree in psychology. It completely fucked me up.

My parents also have friends living in Krim who were super happy about the takeover in 2014, and they are there, so they must know better, right?

And there is some truth to that: We are also not immune to propaganda and of course Western media has its biases. I am confident that we too are being fooled here and there. You can see this in a very one sided media coverage of Gaza in German news. Most Ukrainian refugees I've met do indeed just want the war to end and some openly don't care whether their land will belong to Russia afterwards. They just want their relatives not to die. Zelensky is being heavily criticized and he is also not immune to corruption, while the internet thinks he is some god like hero with unquestionable integrity and balls of steel. He is also just a human and a politician. Ukraine is no moral safe haven and we have to remember that. My husband's cousin should not have been drafted, but he was drafted right away, because obviously someone bought themselves out and the place had to be replaced. Not everyone wants to fight for their country, but some were forced to, still. His second cousin was only drafted a year later, although he should have been in the first or second wave.

That "evil NATO, nobody got jailed" theme of your parents sounds very much like what my family would say, all of it. And it is hard to counter and admittedly it was a narrative I believed until I went to Russia in 2016 for a semester, met people, saw the country, talked to locals, met my husband. My strongest tip for you is therefore - don't get sucked into it. First and foremost be sure in what you believe in. Be sure that there are indeed people who oppose the regime and the war. Be sure they do exist. I know this sounds trivial, but sometimes it is easy to start questioning yourself when your own knowledge doesn't come from local sources. After all, your parents probably have more ties to Russia and Russian media, so they have an "insight", while you might actually really be manipulated by second hand Western media, right? ...

I've been thinking a lot whether I can give you any resources on how to counter pro Putin or pro AfD arguments. I'll start with the latter: Geld für die Welt is a youtube channel I stumbled across shortly before the election, and it has some great videos exposing illogical arguments (there is a great one about money as mentioned in my previous comment that I can link if you want).

As for Putin's propaganda: I'm not sure I know many good first hand sources. Obviously Ekaterina Schulman's podcast Status (статус) has great insights, and I recommend listening to her speech как это пережить that came out three years ago. It gives you some kind of comfort. OVD Info - which you can support via Global Giving btw, strongly recommend that - has stats and information on political imprisonments and therelike. Most information I get is actually from telegram channels, which I started following about a year ago. There are also groups of the Russian opposition (Idk where you live, but here in Leipzig there is a great one, and the chat often posts links to articles, videos and other resources). As someone who only recently got into Russian oppositional media and activities (and having limited reading/understanding abilities), I cherish these kinds of insights by people who are much more in touch with what is happening. Most have been political activists for years and many have fled from political persecution. Basically, I know I can trust their sources. Maybe it is worth asking for resources there. There is also Team Navalny in Germany and Demokratie-Ja. Medusa etc is also a classic news source.

But then again, I would not try to "debunk" or "show facts", I don't think this works well in general. It reminds me of a John Oliver episode - was it on UFOs, conspiracy theories, or vaccines? - where he has a great bit on how to talk to people who believe in such things without being condescending or just showing them "facts". They are not dumb. They believe what they believe because of subconscious fears, experiences, manipulation. No one is immune to this and it is important to meet the people where they stand and with respect and understanding and an open ear.

This has little to do with a flight being international or not, or where it starts. It depends on the airline and its policies. For example: Aeroflot serves "real" food starting from 3 hour flights. Munich to St Petersburg is 2 hours 55 minutes, so you get a horrible sandwich that haunts me to this day. But at least you get non alcoholic beverages for free. If you fly this route with Lufthansa, you get a warm meal with a free beer.

The flight I was referring to (Rome - New York and back) was a Lufthansa flight, but operated by Eurowings. They are a cheap airline, and it depended on your ticket whether or not food and one beverage was included or not. Most people did not have food included in their ticket, they still could buy some on board for like 18€. Only a small bottle of water was provided, although the flight was 6 hours.

Munich to Brussels is 55 minutes. Lufthansa gives you crackers and a non alcoholic beverage for free, and they struggle for their lives to get that to you in such a short period of time.

Same. Plus I can tell the parent that they are doing great. Maybe even help somehow, even if it is just to open the snacks.

What? I flew Rome to New York and everyone got a tiny water bottle for the entire flight and all other drinks (including more water) were crazy expensive

Is "here" in the US? Or somewhere else in the West? I'm mostly asking because I could probably give more concrete tips if it were in Germany.

Have they ever met a refuge from Ukraine? Did they talk with them?

As for things like wind parks or climate policies or economics I think it is important to find a way to present that as "this is directly financially beneficial for you". Here in Germany, let's say, different independent financial institutions have calculated the total tax burden based on your income bracket if different parties were in power and went through with their plans. And lo and behold, of course FDP, CDU and AfD would have very much increased the tax burden on low to middle income people. Or they calculated that the great sounding plans of these parties would cost like 150 billion euros - which is an incredibly high sum - and explaining this away with "oh we'll make the economy prosper" doesn't work either (more calculations that are irrelevant if you're not in Germany).

My honest tip is don't make it about ideology. If you want to keep talking about politics, don't talk about liberation. Don't talk about foreigners, nazis, climate change, DEI or LGBTQ. Your best bet is money. And safety maybe. But as others have suggested - reconsider whether you even want to throw pearls at swine and try to convince them of something different.

And don't forget that a lot of behavior is a reaction of fear. In the beginning of the war there was a great podcast episode of Екатерина Шульман where she tried to emphasize that in times of aggression, it is a very natural response of the psyche to align with the aggressor. Your parents neither want to see the country they came from, love and probably idealize (as we always do with our past, especially when we don't fully beling somewhere new) as the Bad Guy, nor do they want to be scared - for their country, for their future, for their relatives, for you.

Also, I just want to say, my condolences, and I deal with similar stuff. My family is either apolitical or opportunistic, and the best case scenario is "well both sides are bad". I've been scared to call my grandpa who has первый канал running 24/7 for a year after the war started, I can guess what side he is on. If you ever want to just vent about how awful and difficult it is, feel free to write me.

That purple apartment was rent controlled because officially Monica's Nana was still living in it and the janitor knew and used this as leverage to make Joey dance with him so that he could impress a girl. Iirc...

I mean that's not the point but I just wanted to add this. You're of course correct that times have changed dramatically.

In their defense, the AfD did indeed get over 20% of the votes, and won almost every single district in former East Germany.

Most people are trying to be somewhat proud of their country of origin. And basically every country in the world does have some cool stuff in their history to be proud of. Be it Russia, Germany, the USA - every country's history has dark sides as well as achievements (non political) to be proud of. At the end of the day, it is a longing for community and identification with one's community. If you are Russian, as a part of Russia, then it is also your people, your homies, who built sputnik or sent Jury Gagarin into space.

At the same time, overidentification with a national identity is odd in itself. You may be proud that your country invented something 100 years ago or pioneered into space, has cool traditional clothing or dances, but this has little to do with you specifically, or with the state of the country today.

People who say they are ashamed to be Russian (or any other nationality) usually say this in reference to either the negatives in their country's history (e.g. slavery in the US, WWII in Germany, Stalinism in Soviet Russia), or in reference to their current government. But a government is not the same as the people, history and culture.

But most importantly, these things don't exclude each other. You can both be proud to be a Russian as in not hating your genes, your heritage, your identity and ancestry, cherrypicking achievements and parts of culture, as well as condemn the current government and state of the country, while simultaneously seeing your nationality as an abstract part of your identity. Your passport or your MyHeritage results do not make you who you are. What you believe in, what you care about and how you act do.

For me it's the other way around. That pizza is looking at me replacing the finished pea package yet again for months and months on end.

This will be a stable, centrist, boring government, typically German. Too little progress, but no catastrophe

And this will be the problem and drive even more people to the AfD. If nothing ever changes, people want to look for something else. For an alternative. And on the surface some points of AfD sound appealing, and if you aren't a foreigner, you can "turn a blind eye" on the nazi stuff. With a Groko and standstill for 4 more years, I'm afraid that next time we won't be so lucky and AfD will actually be the strongest party.

It is very ironic because for the first time after 16 years things did change but somehow the government was still blamed and bashed. Let alone that the biggest problem was not SPD and Greens but that the minister of finance was only focused on politics for the minister of finance. I'm happy this fuckwit finally resigned, but we could have had a great minority government that would have actually enabled change if he had just decided to do this earlier. Instead, thank you Christian, you've driven the whole country down a path where we are supposed to be happy that a conservative party who fucked the country for 16 years is the strongest power yet again and that "they promised" to not form a coalition with AfD. DeMoCRaCy wOn.

Best case scenario this will not end well for Elon. Worst case scenario this will not end well for the world and we'll all die in nuclear war or something.

Thank you!