Sorry, I was under the impression that you hadn’t read the study because of our vastly different takeaways.
And strawman was probably the incorrect term in that context.
By external factors and social influences, I mean the social consensus that going against the government is unsafe.
That presidential candidates who have any chance of beating Putin are banned from the ballots, jailed, or coincidentally die before they’re able to build a large enough following.
That it’s safer to just play along than to put a target on your back.
If you were unable to piece together what I meant in the context of this conversation, I’m not convinced this discussion will lead anywhere productive.
Given that the study makes no claim that the statistics accurately represent the true beliefs of the Russian population, I’m suggesting that taking those numbers and concluding otherwise so you can justify calling the overhwelming majority of Russians ‘genocidal imperialists’ is irresponsible at best.
I’ve also never stated that Russians who genuinely support genocide should not be held accountable for their actions. Maybe this is a better example of a strawman argument?
Checking the latest released polls from levada, you can see that the majority of polled participants indicated support for what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
Yet, further down, it shows more participants indicated support for diplomatic resolution over military action.
I see this as a reasonable indicator that the majority of Russians are not genocidal.
And taking preference falsification and levada’s polling methods into account, the numbers could be even more in favour of both diplomatic resolution and disapproval of the war as a whole.
Maybe the overwhelming majority don’t want change in their society, or maybe they don’t have a choice (I’m talking about rigged elections, in case you were struggling to figure out the context again).
I have no idea when any societal changes within Russia will happen, I don’t happen to own a time machine.
I can only guess and assume that there won’t be any substantial publicly-expressed change in ideology while Putin is still in charge.
I’ll let people in those countries make up their own minds about what they should do, and I would hope the rest of the world will continue to support them with whatever that may be.
I’m not sure why you’re asking me these things, they aren’t really relevant to any of the points I’ve been trying to make.
I appreciate you sticking around for this argument, but I think I’m done.
Llewellyn@lemm.ee 2 months ago
How would you sort those who support war from those who don’t?
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It would depend on the geo-political context, currently there are less viable options.
In a different context, beyond the main mass of hardcore criminal (several million russian) that require strict punishments, you could leverage a legal proof method.
Every russian signs a legal paper outlining and their overall support for genocidal imperialism, putin, knowingly promoting false russian propaganda and so on.
Based on the of level severity of their support for genocidal imperialism, they would have to pay financial compensation and engage in global community service work (de-mining in Syria, junior janitor in an infectious disease hospital in rural Africa).
The legal paper would have a clause stating that if you claim you never supported genocidal imperialism (as certified in the legal paper), but later evidence comes up that you were actually supportive of russian degeneracy, you lose all your assets and will be required to do two decade of global community service (or go to jail). This clause would be valid indefinitely for the life of the person.
Note, I am not saying the above-mentioned approach is viable right now. I am trying to show that there methods to create incentives for russians to be open about their support for genocidal imperialism.