Watching The War (Part 2) ft. Milo Edwards
Added 2022-03-18 13:24:47 +0000 UTCMilo (@Milo_Edwards) joins us once again to talk about the ongoing war in Ukraine, and how its being presented online. In this episode, we talk about how the war has shaped the Russian internet, and whether Putin's plans to build a localised, domesticated internet is even possible, as well as the weird parts of the Russian internet that simply cannot be contained, despite how many wires are cut. We then talk about Russia and Ukraine's digital strategies in promoting propaganda, and the limitations of "winning the social media war" when posts are ephemeral, instantly forgettable and, crucially, too abundant.
Comments
If I had to slightly disagree I'd say that it existed to an extent as a localised early 20th century phenomenon is that the german general staff spent the first decade of the 20th century pushing for a war because they were convinced they need to launch a preventitive war or else Russia would overwhelm then and you get these concerns in Austria and to a limited extent in Britain that Russia would seek to go further west and they needed to be pushed back and that this was in some ways sold by generals to civilian politicians as defending against a vague ideology of "Russian Autocracy" (for an example the SPD was talked into backing war in 1914 as they where sold on the need for a war against tsarist autocracy and fear of cossacks)
Alfie Hall
2022-03-22 12:51:29 +0000 UTCThe Russian Empire was seen as a real or potential threat based on imperial rivalry and balance of power concerns, but was simultaneously seen as the front line defender of Christendom in the East (but not TOO successfully, otherwise the Western European powers would turn on the Russians just to preserve the balance of power and their separate imperial interests, e,g. the Crimean War and the Great Game). Crucially, though, there was never any sense that the Russian Empire was an *ideological* threat to Western Europe. Unlike with the USSR, where the greatest fear if anything was always that Western Communists and other “subversives” would undermine the West from within. In that sense the USSR was a convenient foreign Other whom left-wingers of any kind within the Western bloc (and the non-aligned world) could be lumped in within as existential enemies/traitors/etc.
Allen
2022-03-18 20:32:19 +0000 UTC
