Why do you think the western public was more receptive to imperial propaganda for the russo-ukrainian war then for the israel-palestine war?
Why do you think the western public was more receptive to imperial propaganda for the russo-ukrainian war then for the israel-palestine war?
they are not my friends, but i know some libs that cosplay as leftists and they completely bought into the nato-framing of the russo-ukrainian war from the jump, while they are generally opposed to what is happening in Gaza.... but not enough to voting for Genocide Joe, ofc.
for russo-ukraine, it was a part of the world they have fuck all analysis about but the news footage really played up how sympathetically white ukranians are. like one admitted that the footage of ukranians being displaced bothered them more, on an emotional level, than the US invading and displacing iraqis. major
vibes. combine that casual racism with the fact that there was no geographical placeholder information for them about eastern europe. NATO aggression? what's that? total clean slate for the media blitz to fill.with Gaza, the extermination and land grab has been a project for a long time. these libs have met muslims since 9/11 and heard voices contradicting state department messaging about the middle east, a place the US has been terrorizing and bombing and invading multiple times in our lifetimes. they have developed their own opinions in that time and there is even acknowledgement of Biden's enthusiastic role in the 2003 invasion of iraq.
of course, they are libs so A Dang Cheeto In The White House is more of a threat to their comfortable brunching than Genocide Joe exterminating Gazans, so their aversion to genocide isn't that motivating.
i will never, ever forget something i think Christman said about how genocidal war was not a problem for Europeans/The West until Hitler committed the unpardonable crime of doing it to Europeans. i have never heard a more succinct framing for perennially fickle western outrage about slaughter.
Decades of stressed attempts by journalists to highlight plight in Palestine means people are inevitably aware that Palestinians might actually be people after all.
Absolutely zero coverage of the ethnic Russians/Russophones in Ukraine being discriminated against / outright murdered means nobody realises there was even a reason the Russo-Ukrainian war started and so are left to conclude Putin is INSANE.
Because Russia (at least according to the propaganda) is a threat to US hegemony, even though this is disregarding the fact that Russia is economically on a far smaller scale than the US and its allies.
Everyone knows Palestine and Cuba cannot possibly fight back against the empire, so in the back of their minds, the ultimate defeat of the brave, noble underdogs is guaranteed so it’s easy to find pity with them
Give Palestine and Cuba the firepower of Russia who can actually fight back against their oppressors and see how quickly the Western public change their tune.
70 years of cold war propaganda.
Media about Palestine in the West was infinitely more than Donbas (literally nothing)
Also big strong countries bad and scary (like China despite doing literally nothing), weak and underdog countries good (notice how nobody supports Yemen because they're a real threat)
Cold war brain never really stopped even if it makes no sense to continue having cold war brain. As far as most are concerned russia is still the USSR even if its evidently not.
Edit: oh and post cold war the media created where russia is the bad guy kept going. Its hard to think of a movie or game where russia isn't the bad guy
With imperial propaganda over Ukraine, it's easy to metabolize it without seeming like an open racist
But with Palestine it's impossible, a lot of the western public still value the masks they wear when it comes to race and many liberals aren't comfortable tearing them off just yet to support Israel, even if they're generally supportive and enthusiastic about Israel's warcrimes
So that translates roughly into a general apathy in the west concerning the genocide, which some leftists have confused for widespread discontent over western support for Zionism, which is an illusion generated by social media and bad poll reading
Ukraine piggy backed off cold-war & neo-cold war propaganda decades in the making. theres been a basically unbroken stream of anri-russian media since 1917
Israel ooth doesn't always enjoy such bias, when the proverbial 'chips are down' the imperialists back them but there's plenty of liberal scolding and bones thrown to arab allies in intervening years. there's also something abt all the cameras israel is just gleefully advertizing genocide on that makes it hard for anyone plugged into anything besides cable news to ignore
Imo it's at least partly because of the immense amount of grassroots leftist advocacy theres been for Palestine for decades in the west that means soft leftists can't really get away with open support for Israel, a lot of them tried though in the first week or two after October 7th before realising they had to shift to being less bloodthirsty after facing backlash from it. It's the same deal with why the western soft left has a much more positive view of Cuba than it does of North Korea.
Everyone knows what russia is and 'know' about it being bad and evil and violent, very few actually knew much about israel and palestine other than that it was 'complicated', and basically no one knew what a "Hamas" was, that makes it a harder narrative sell on its own, but then you have just the sheer absurdity of the disproportionate violence and blatant lies, fucking "Voldemort knows evil" shit lmfao
Zelensky looking much better than Netanyahu might've helped
People usually meet more Arabs and Muslims in everyday life compare to Ukrainians or Russian (I don’t think white people can tell white people apart, but they can certainly assume someone is Arab with 70% accuracy).
It’s harder to say something like “All the Palestinian orcs must be slaughtered like a lamb” when an Arab is staring at you vs. being comfortable to say “all Russian orcs must be slaughtered like a lamb” when there are no Russians or Ukrainians nearby.
Additionally, western media hype Ukraine up and say they’re winning and killing 5000 Russians a day. While Hamas boasts confidence in their propaganda, neither Hamas nor Palestinian officials are afraid of disclosing their death counts. People see this and it’s harder to hide from reality when even your enemy is admitting that their people are being massacred by you.
And I know Ukrainians also disclose when citizens die - sometimes - but Ukraine keeps saying it’s winning whereas Gaza is simply disclosing the numbers. Hamas says it’s winning, and maybe it is, but what they say vs. what government officials are saying + media coverage paints a bleak image no matter how far your support is for Palestine. But with Ukraine, everyone is saying they’re winning and the media follows along. Only recently has western media been more critical about their military strategies and governing.
And maybe the answer is much simpler. Maybe Americans see the irony of a country meant to be a safe haven from annihilation committing the same act on another group. The sad part is that they’ll just be in denial or actively cheer it on.
Cause ukranians are white
@EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website has deleted their user account:
$ curl -sI https://startrek.website/u/EmergMemeHologram | head -n1 HTTP/2 500You don’t remember the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war when western news anchors were shocked and nearly speechless, only able to say how horrible it is that this is happening to people who “look like us” ??????
The basic optics are:
"Russia invaded Ukraine." Big country with huge military invaded a small country with a small military. There's two organized armies fighting each other but one is a smol bean who the USA must help out.
"Israel invaded the Palestinian territories." Israel has a standing military with mandatory service, the Palestinians aren't supposed to be able to have an organized military force to match it. After a successful series of raids by a few thousand members of an organized military force the Israel military has spend the last few months obliterating civilians, civilian infrastructure, and all the places that are supposed to be immune to intentional targeting (schools, hospitals, sources of water, sewage treatment, religious places, evacuation corridors, etc). So if the USA'ians are supposed to support the underdog... like as is the case with Ukraine... it makes it hard to support Israel.
because israel is just on its face so much more evil. like, ukraine is very bad, but they aren't run by azov guys openly talking about how it's good to kill children for fun every single day at every single level. zelensky isn't going on talk shows saying "please let me slaughter children in the streets :((((" he's managing to convincingly act the victim. and russia is just on its face much less of a victim than palestine. russia has a military, and isn't being invaded and having all its infrastructure destroyed and children murdered in the streets on the scale that it's happening in palestine. they managed to keep donbass completely out of the limelight
I think at least some of it is the extreme, outrageous, unbelievable levels of incompetence from the Israeli propaganda machine. There's a lot more clear evidence of straightforward war crimes coming out of Palestine, and much of that evidence is posted to Twitter by Israeli soldiers. If there was a daily drip feed of, say, Ukrainian soldiers just setting children on fire for fun, I think you'd see a dip in the public support of that war also. Israel was so convinced that they had the unwavering support of the
to do whatever they wanted that they really have made no effort to do genuine propaganda or cover up their worst excesses. It turns out that they were right to be convinced of that, since nobody has actually done anything about it, but their laziness has eroded their popular support.Most of the really awful stuff coming out of Ukraine requires you to be familiar with fascist iconography (the Black Sun, wolfsangel, etc.) to appreciate and find horrifying. In contrast, to be horrified by Israel you only need to have eyes and not be really super racist.
because libs have been indoctrinated with 'russia bad' for the past century
I think the audience was prepared for a long, drawn out war between Russia and Ukraine.
I think in October ‘23, even the most loyal Zionists in the U.S. and Western Europe were expecting a military operation similar to previous invasions and incursions into Palestinian areas, as Israel had been doing between roughly 2000 and 2021. (I’m using the language of a typical assumption, so I apologize as this does dehumanize and minimize the value of Palestinian lives.) The fighting might be ugly, but it would be contained, a few mid-level leaders would be targeted, and Israel would rebuild their “security apparatus” and leave within a few weeks.
As the human cost in terms of the suffering of the sick and most vulnerable, the disproportionate deaths of children, the targeting of whole families became clear through better technology channels, I think the libs who already were sick of Netanyahu got tired of a strategy that was at once brutal and ineffective.
Cold war brained.
Because the US was preparing for a proxy war with russia, and had a planned propaganda camplaign in place to keep domestic discord suppressed.
In contrast, Hamas had been planning Al-Aqsa flood and had prepared to spread their propaganda well ahead of time, while the occupiers and the US were caught flat-footed.
Hamas knew the importance of contrilling messaging, and used social media to get out shocking images the people have a hard time ignoring, as well as heroic combat footage.that people are eager to share.
By the time social media companies had prepared to suppress the info, it was too late.
This is what they mean when they say that information campaigns are a huge part of modern warfare