Kyiv Calling

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Flex
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by Flex »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 5:49pm
This speaks to the problem that (a) our role models or inspiring figures aren't saints; and (b) criticism too often slides into demanding that sainthood and, finding it absent, emphasizes sins. In practice, we compartmentalize and accept contradiction. If we didn't, we'd succumb to nihilism or amoral despair. We make choices and tough ones when it comes to who we draw inspiration from. To be moral beings, we're obliged to constantly interrogate these choices, less to rationalize those choices than to measure principle against experience. Discourse is so important for this, and it sucks when others make it a status thing to disparage you rather than challenge your thinking (i.e., politics as fucking usual). If there were perfect heroes, we wouldn't have to challenge ourselves and what we believe is good and just. It's the essence of living in the real world and not deflecting to abstraction.
Hmmmmm... what I'm taking from this is that more people need to start venerating me, Flex, the Perfect Hero. :cool:
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

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Flex
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by Flex »

Low Down Low wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 5:46pm
I agree with a lot of that, probably all of it. I doubt there's a country in the world where a certain collective amnesia doesn't exist in relation to complex historical figures of their past, I alluded to Churchill above as just one example and you have listed several more. And the part of the band's statement i heartily endorse is the bit about having a debate about this and working through the complexities. In practice, is this really likely to happen, though? And, as you rightly point out, it's the veneration that is the real sticking point. Michael Collins is a venerated hero of my own country's past, a cold blooded murderer, and I'll admit to being conflicted about this, but you won't ever find me going around wearing a t-shirt bearing his image and i would look disdainfully down on those who do.
This is outside the role of national identity, but I used to wear a Che t-shirt which is something I'd think better of now (I still have my copy of The Che Guevara Reader which I find useful, despite his problems). But I get your point, there's sort of a spectrum of engagement with these myths. As I said, it feels like "being an active banderite" would be a fairly easy line to draw in the sand and straightforwardly condemn even as a sympathetic outsider, but maybe things do get muddier in the middle. How do I feel about people who wear american flag clothing? The answer is mixed.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Flex wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 6:04pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 5:49pm
This speaks to the problem that (a) our role models or inspiring figures aren't saints; and (b) criticism too often slides into demanding that sainthood and, finding it absent, emphasizes sins. In practice, we compartmentalize and accept contradiction. If we didn't, we'd succumb to nihilism or amoral despair. We make choices and tough ones when it comes to who we draw inspiration from. To be moral beings, we're obliged to constantly interrogate these choices, less to rationalize those choices than to measure principle against experience. Discourse is so important for this, and it sucks when others make it a status thing to disparage you rather than challenge your thinking (i.e., politics as fucking usual). If there were perfect heroes, we wouldn't have to challenge ourselves and what we believe is good and just. It's the essence of living in the real world and not deflecting to abstraction.
Hmmmmm... what I'm taking from this is that more people need to start venerating me, Flex, the Perfect Hero. :cool:
Please list your qualifications and I'll send it to Nancy, who'll add it to the agenda of a future meeting.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Marky Dread
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by Marky Dread »

All I know is I hate nazi's and I hate Thatcher and I probably hate you!
Image

Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

coffeepotman
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by coffeepotman »

Marky Dread wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 7:17pm
All I know is I hate nazi's and I hate Thatcher and I probably hate you!
Preach brother!

Marky Dread
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by Marky Dread »

coffeepotman wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 7:20pm
Marky Dread wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 7:17pm
All I know is I hate nazi's and I hate Thatcher and I probably hate you!
Preach brother!
:mrgreen:
Image

Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

Low Down Low
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by Low Down Low »

Flex wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 6:13pm
Low Down Low wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 5:46pm
I agree with a lot of that, probably all of it. I doubt there's a country in the world where a certain collective amnesia doesn't exist in relation to complex historical figures of their past, I alluded to Churchill above as just one example and you have listed several more. And the part of the band's statement i heartily endorse is the bit about having a debate about this and working through the complexities. In practice, is this really likely to happen, though? And, as you rightly point out, it's the veneration that is the real sticking point. Michael Collins is a venerated hero of my own country's past, a cold blooded murderer, and I'll admit to being conflicted about this, but you won't ever find me going around wearing a t-shirt bearing his image and i would look disdainfully down on those who do.
This is outside the role of national identity, but I used to wear a Che t-shirt which is something I'd think better of now (I still have my copy of The Che Guevara Reader which I find useful, despite his problems). But I get your point, there's sort of a spectrum of engagement with these myths. As I said, it feels like "being an active banderite" would be a fairly easy line to draw in the sand and straightforwardly condemn even as a sympathetic outsider, but maybe things do get muddier in the middle. How do I feel about people who wear american flag clothing? The answer is mixed.
I remember those Che t-shirts, they were extremely popular where I grew up. I never wore one myself but I definitely did have a quite romantic view of Latin and Sth American revolutionaries, helped no doubt by listening to S! and watching Oliver Stone movies. I would never venerate Che, but I can understand him on the basis he had studied his colonial history and had been in Guatemala in 1954 and seen how passive resistance had got them absolutely nowhere, so his subsequent brutality and ruthlessness can be viewed through that lens. That's not to excuse or forgive, merely to understand. Later, they tried to warn Alleged that the same thing was coming for him in chile, but Allende ignored them and got steamrolled. It's with Allende, though, where my heart really lies in all of this.

Mark^Bastard
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by Mark^Bastard »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 5:49pm
Flex wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 5:28pm
Low Down Low wrote:
22 Mar 2022, 4:55pm
I can't find how to link it from facebook, but I see the band has released a further statement clarifying their association with Bandera and acknowledging he is a controversial figure. They talk about it being a complex situation which in some ways I can agree with (c.f. Winston Churchill, for one) but on another level, it's simply a fact he was a racist, right wing fanatic, happy to collaborate with the Nazis when they were picking on minorities who were his fellow citizens, only turning against them once they became invaders impinging on his sense of Ukrainian nationalism. I mean, how complicated do you need to make this stuff?
I've been thinking about this and I dunno, national myths are extremely animating. To take one example, the Democratic Party still holds Jefferson-Jackson dinners that plenty of people I know attend and venerate - hell, I think if we go back in time long enough we can find posts from me and a few other posters here expressing admiration for TJ for his democratic agrarianism (and I'm just picking two fairly representative characters in out national myth-making. We could do this exercise credibly with almost any founding father, most of our presidents and historical figures like Chris Columbus almost all of whom were world-history-making genocidal maniacs).

I think folks doing this veneration are wrongheaded about it, but I don't take an average person's admiration for these types of characters as proof that they themselves are pro-genocide or slavery or what-have-you. They're just extremely wrong to venerate these sorts of people. I dunno, maybe I'm too charitable to people who aren't sufficiently critical of national myth, and I should be condemning bucketloads more people as irreparably genocidal and racist, but I'm uncomfortable being too condemnatory of people falling into a way of thinking that I think is pretty common, bordering on universal (and that I've fallen into myself in the past, being honest about it).

All this is just taking the band's statements and self-professed commitments at face value, of course. Maybe they're actually committed Banderites who support the whole program and just don't want to see their moment in the sun fucked up.

Faux Addendum: Another example that I'll cop to for myself is that I would consider myself influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who I consider a foundational figure in anarchism. He was also a horrible anti-semite. I support - and consider myself part of the intellectual legacy of - proudhon without considering myself aligned with his bigotry. Not as extreme an example as a Ukrainian looking admirably at Bandera, but probably not as far off as I may like to tell myself.
This speaks to the problem that (a) our role models or inspiring figures aren't saints; and (b) criticism too often slides into demanding that sainthood and, finding it absent, emphasizes sins. In practice, we compartmentalize and accept contradiction. If we didn't, we'd succumb to nihilism or amoral despair. We make choices and tough ones when it comes to who we draw inspiration from. To be moral beings, we're obliged to constantly interrogate these choices, less to rationalize those choices than to measure principle against experience. Discourse is so important for this, and it sucks when others make it a status thing to disparage you rather than challenge your thinking (i.e., politics as fucking usual). If there were perfect heroes, we wouldn't have to challenge ourselves and what we believe is good and just. It's the essence of living in the real world and not deflecting to abstraction.
Couldn't agree more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinist ... andinistas

What would Joe think about Sandinistas gulagging people? Thankfully he is from a different era where nuance was allowed to exist

APACHES67
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Re: Kyiv Calling

Post by APACHES67 »

The Ucrainian Brigade Azof are neo nazi killers...i don't add anything else

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