But there are people who identify as left-wing who will support China and Russia while downplaying their authoritarianism.

That’s not something being invented as a boogeyman. Anyone can go to lemmygrad.ml right now to see it in action.

I’ve seen Sealioning used quite a bit in a particular Lemmy instance that would self describe themselves as Pro-Russia & Pro-China, as a way of shutting down discourse between people who disagree with them. There are people who disagree with a particular narrative, and they’re discounted immediately for wanting to know how someone would arrive at a pro-Russian & pro-China position.

Also they’ll just “whatabout!” and change the subject whenever unassailable critiques of these regimes come up. As if its is only possible to hold outrage in a single direction at a time.

I’ll have you know I’m capable of disliking EVERYONE mentioned in a given conversation.

Yeah and as smart as anyone is, they aren’t right all the time. As much as you can agree with his messaging, it’s important to critically assess everything said, regardless of who is saying it.

I can only urge you to diversify your news intake with non-social media sources, as social media is corrosive to media literacy.

Additionally here’s this article that pointedly refutes many of the main claims of Seymour Hersh’s article.

https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe

Also there’s only one anonymous source on Seymour Hersh’s article.

It’s plausible that the USA had a part in it, but hardly conclusive.

Seymour Hersh is a conspiracy blogger??? You want to tell me all the previous times when he was correct like was also conspiracy theories? My Lai, Watergate, CIA support for Pinochet, Israel having nukes, Abu Ghraib, etc. ???

I’ll fully admit that I hadn’t read the entire thing or did due diligence on the sources prior to my comment. That’s a mistake I just did, and I will not be removing my previous comment, but striking it out with an added a correction as an abject lesson & to walk back the clearly erroneously statement. This is a bad habit of mine when I see vitriol online, particularly when it has a flavor of Russian state Media talking points.

Thank you for pointing me to this guy’s blog. That is very promising to me, someone who likes to be informed by people who do their due diligence. (Hold up one more time! Here is a article that I found that refutes Seymour Hersh’s assertions. Also, we only have a single anonymous source of S. Hersh’s claims. https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe) I don’t like the idea that the US did this on Ukraine’s behalf, but that doesn’t make me think that Russia is the good guys, actually. The number of things that Ukraine and the United States would have to do to outweigh the atrocities that Russia has perpetrated, especially in starting this war for reuniting ‘Greater Russia.’ Not for standing against Capitalism, which is alive and well in the de facto fascist-oligarchy that is the modern Russian state.

This isn’t “horrible cycle of retribution”, this is ongoing imperialism and specifically USA efforts to maintain their global hegemony in the capitalist system - an infinite growth in finite planet. And even the hot part of that war wasn’t started by Russia, it was started by Ukraine attacking Donbas in 2014, Russian intervened in that in 2022.

Russia horribly mischaracterized a political pressure cooker, and made it tremendously worse by invading. You are repeating that purposeful propaganda in this moment. Protecting ‘ethnic russians’ was never the goal.

I suppose next you’ll tell me that the Crimean peninsula vote to join Russia was above board?

Some of those links are broken, but I’m getting the jist. Not all those links support your position, tho. Many that are not Russian news orgs are pointing the blame at Russia.

The politico article makes sure to point out that Russia is placing artillery in a position very close to the nuclear plant. That’s Bad, and inviting disaster.

The first link is a conspiracy blogger. this is patently not true! Leaving this up as an abject lesson in doing a little more reading before reacting to reflexive vitriol. I don’t particularly like that Ukraine shot at a nuclear power plant, but…

There is no real great answer to the question of “how do you behave when someone as a boot to your throat?” This war, started by Russia, is monstrous, in no small part because of the horrible cycle of retribution.

I didn’t know that Ukraine actually fired on Russian installations near a nuclear power plant. Thank you for informing me. I don’t like it, but I blame Russia for daring Ukraine to attack it.

In order of my google search’s results.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4043221-ukraine-kakhovka-dam-collapse-theories/

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-says-russia-admits-blowing-up-nova-kakhovka-dam-call-intercepted/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/16/world/europe/ukraine-kakhovka-dam-collapse.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65818705

Most of these articles admit that it is kind of impossible to know for sure in the middle of a warzone. It’s as likely that it collapsed due to lack of proper maintenance in the middle of a war.

What’s your source?

Maybe they did the pipeline, but none of that other stuff.

Either way you haven’t actually showed me where you got any of this info.

What I’m hearing is a tonne of supposition without backed up facts and hard reporting.

I would love to see a link to a news story covering the evidence. Otherwise this sounds like a social media consensus built in a speculation-echo-chamber.

She’s supporting the Ukrainians tho.

Are you actually saying that they did all this to themselves? That’s what the Russian state has been saying without credible proof.

Edit: I’d like to see where you got your info.