Also “ethnocentric”. But as usual, we first need to have a shared definition of fascism. If we use Eco’s Ur-fascism, many aspects are there (the moral and cultural decadence of the West, which is both too strong and too weak)
For not being fascist, the propaganda and general 'optics' and messages coming out of Russia sure look a lot like Germany in the 1930s, and Ukraine is basically the same playbook as Sudetenland - both started with a claim that a suppressed German/Russian minority must be protected from atrocities by the Czechoslovakian/Ukrainian 'aggressors' by integrating those lands into the 'Reich'. Thankfully Putin is by far not as successful bringing a much smaller country to its knees than Hitler was.
the guiding intellectual stream of the Russian government is Dugan, as best exemplified in Foundations of Geopolitics.
Dugan is unambiguously hard right and has intellectual ties to other openly fascist types. His ideology is explicitly ethno-centric and has a strong resemblance to classical Fascism (in the Ur-Fascism sense), and a looser one to German-style National-Socialist thought, esp. as it relates to Russian ethnic domination of Europe
Also, most recent developments on the battlefield are driven by Ukraine's own innovations - better drones, interceptor drones, their own cruise missiles, etc. All the lessons are being absorbed by Europe and the US.
By far most credit should go to the Ukrainians. They are the ones under attack, they are the ones defending democracy and freedom, and they are the ones who are resisting the Russians against all odds.
The US is providing some help but less so than Europe and much less so than what Ukraine is contributing.
And by saying "to the last Ukrainian" you're spreading a Russian-propaganda narrative. This slogan has been repeatedly used by Russian officials (including Putin, Peskov, Zakharova, Matviyenko), it's a recurring theme in the Russian information space and it's used by Russian bots.
Yes, but he has access to free information, so can easily check what is the current and historical Russian contribution to the world. At that point, siding with Russia is of course an active stance of supporting the crimes of Russia. Patriotism is not a valid excuse if your motherland is always the aggressor.
Well, true, Russia has a long history so I was overly broad. Aggressor in almost all conflicts is more accurate.
In WW2 it was the second major aggressor of course. WW1 Germany declared war before Russia invaded, so debatable. Wasn't an aggressor in the Napoleonic wars as far as my history knowledge serves me.
I don't think Demis wants to be CEO of all of Google. He wants to focus on DeepMind and AI. He has a life goal of inventing AGI and using that to solve the world's biggest problems. Leading Google gets him further not closer. He doesn't give a shit about ads and ads is Google's biggest money maker.
I think, for some definition of “banned”, that’s the case. It doesn’t stop the Chinese labs from having organization accounts on HF and distributing models there. ModelScope is apparently the HF-equivalent for reaching Chinese users.
I think in the West we think everything is blocked. But for example, if you book an eSIM, when you visit you already get direct access to Western services because they route it to some other server. Hong Kong is totally different: they basically use WhatsApp and Google Maps, and everything worked when I was there.
But also yes, parent is right, HF is more or less inaccessible, and Modelscope frequently cited as the mirror to use (although many Chinese labs seems to treat HF as the mirror, and Modelscope as the "real" origin).
I've seen it on Insta as well, but I think the authors use some very clever processing to hide it from the detection algos, and it quickly gets reported and taken down.
Most CSE issues are in the UK are on Snapchat, followed by Instagram, a few others then X - I’m imagining Apple doesn’t delete these apps because it’s smarter to target the abusers.
I agree with the sentiment, but nobody even needs to make these sort of threats or asks anymore.
It is all a well-defined implicit caste hierarchy at this point and anyone with enough net worth and a willingness to publicly fellate the orange dong gets a protected spot on the 2nd tier of the pyramid.
In her book she writes how in Egypt, to get a job as police, you need to bribe your boss and pay a monthly tribute. Being a cop was a chance to join the Mafia squeezing the public for bribes. Your boss pays his boss, and so on to the top. So when the public protested against the regime, the police were especially brutal against them, because all the cops were in on the scam and wanted to preserve it/if the regime collapses their necks are also on the line.
Looking forward to the ICE thugs beating and shooting Americans who want to bring down the current lawless regime... Or is that already happening?
Trump hires fuckwits like Noem or Hagseth who (probably) knows they're dumb fucks who would never otherwise be in their positions, and they would suck any dick, metaphorical or even perhaps real mushroom-sized ones, to remain in power.
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