On Reddit, there are two ways to see Russian people: Brainwashed toddlers who have no idea what’s going on in Ukraine or hordes of viscous, evil orcs (the amount of Tolkien lingo I’ve seen to describe this conflict is disturbing. I don’t think he’d want anything to do with it.) that should be destroyed. On Twitter, it’s common to see Ukranian journalists, probably Nazi simps themselves, call for the average Russian civillian to be punished and equate their culture to some warlike barbarian tribe. And on Facebook, you can just say “Kill all Russians” and get away with it.
Like I always knew that the West was slowly sliding into fascism, but I did expect it to happen this quickly.
A Chinese writer’s perspective on this was that this wave of dehumanising was so fanatic and rabid because Russians were still somewhat ‘western and christian’. There are a sizable amount of the far right which sees Russia as the last bastion against Western ‘depravity’ (in this context they’d mean fighting against LGBT+ rights for example). As such the west desperately needed to paint them as impure barbarians with Mongolian genes fighting against the sacred ‘western civilisation’.
They also note that the same probably wouldn’t need be done against Chinese people (and Indian people for example as well) as their regular programming has already painted most of the non-angloid peoples as uncultured savages.
With many of the coddled westerners’ only contact with violence being through media such as Star Wars or LOTR with a clear ‘good vs evil’, it makes it easier for them to believe that they are morally just against those resisting their imperialist rule.
This does make sense, although I can say the average murican still views Russian people with the same lens they did as during the cold war: godless asiatic commies.
The generic action hero story schema in movies, anime, and video games do enforce the ego-centric “we good, opposition bad” mentality, but there are also types of story like a genre of comidic parody that makes fun of established themes in generic stories like “Adam Ruins Everything”. There are new isekai anime/manga that question the ego-centrism like “Konosuba” or “Death Mage Doesn’t Want a Fourth Time”.
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I love how libs go an use Star wars as an example of good vs evil, when its so fucking obvious on how the movies connect with reality: the empire is clearly an militaristic fascist state, that can be related with tons of fascists from real life (bri’ish empire, USA, nazi germany, emperial Japan, etc) and the rebels are clearly partisans and guerrila fighters fighting against the obviously fascist all by their own, and winning, with can be related to things on real life like the italian partisans, and the Vieht Kongs from the vietnan war.
The prequels are even more obvious: there is an corrupt and inneficient republic that works for imperialists and mega corporations, the first episode is an mega corporative monopoly doing an illegal invasion on a planet and almost getting away with it, the anti slavery laws are worthless outside the core (with is an literal emperial core lol) the jedis are pragmatistics, egotistical assholes who where so blinded by their arrogance they where not able to see an multigallactical war and an mass purge happening literally under their nose. The republic has no problem in using an literall slave army. And the CIS is really based if you cut off the greedy capitalists trying to make money out of the war and the sith manipulation, its mainly an revoluctionary army fighting for the independence of the planets outside of the core, that have been exploited and abused for literall centurys.
George Lucas is an very smart person, he knew very well what he was doing when he builded the lore, but neckbearded nerds that can only see big ecplosions on the screen are incapable of connecting the dots with the real life they live on.
Yep, if I recall correctly George Lucas modelled the Empire vs the Rebels after the US vs Vietnam during the Vietnam war.