Acting like you can only hate Russians if your cousin died to a landmine in Donetsk or if some gopnik mugged you is ridiculous.
By what you're saying, this level of hatred existed for decades in all post-Soviet states, yet I have not seen this level of hatred towards all Russians, even the ones that had nothing to do with this war, until the invasion. Not even the Crimea crisis caused so many people to crawl out of the woodwork and unironically start calling for Russian genocide.
Tell me, why is it that for the eight years since the annexation of Crimea I haven't seen people yelling for the entire Russian population to be exterminated for being subhuman trash? I've heard so many times that that's when the war started, yet for those 8 years no one gave a damn about Russia, and for a period it was cool to be a squatting gopnik listening to hardbass.
It's ridiculous to assume that this sudden outburst of hatred is something natural. It isn't, and if you trace media articles, the rise of this negativity to Russia as a whole, not just Putin's regime, and praise of Ukraine absolutely blew up the very moment the war happened, even though this was Putin's decision, not the entire Russian population.
Another good example, Google Trends in Poland:
Only a few activity spikes and barely any real interest about Ukraine or Russia, and then the war happens, gigantic spike and continued attention afterwards. Again, if Russia was always evil and people despised it, and Ukraine was at war with Russia since 2014, then why is it that no one really paid constant attention to them and actively hated all of Russia
until the invasion?
You're just lying to yourself. If it weren't for the media reminding you daily who's the good guy and who's the bad guy, you would forget about Russia and Ukraine existing. You now care because the media conditioned you to care.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the hatred for Russia has always been artificial and they never did anything wrong, because I know people will jump to that conclusion. What I'm saying is that this amplified hatred of Russia that reaches the point of unironic calls for Russian genocide is artificial, and you can track it down to what the media were pushing out before and after the war. People's opinions get shaped by the mainstream media more than they think, and then they influence other views without being aware how those views are the media's views.
Case in point, anyone cheering for this attack where only Russian civilians died is a hateful idiot that abuses this conflict as a vessel to spew their hatred into the ether with impunity. They're as responsible for the war in Ukraine as Americans are for Iraq, Afghanistan and other wars caused by their government.
Yeah, but did you feel the need to post this in one of the anti-black or anti-semitic threads? It's notable that people spaz out over one or two people saying Total Russian Death, but are silent about entire threads filled with other bigotry. I've never seen anyone point out how unhinged the many users on this site are who got psyoped into developing a psychotic hatred for Ukrainian people.
You know why? It's because I have not heard a single thing about Ukraine or Russia before February 24th 2022, and the very moment
that happened, every single mainstream media outlet in my country constantly screamed "Russia bad, Ukraine good" every single day, and I couldn't escape this sudden influx even when I went to the Internet. You're bound to see that something's up when something like this happens and then you remind yourself that about a year ago there was no mass animosity to neither Ukrainians or Russians, despite them being at conflict since 2014, with the conflict being the result of politicians, not the people.
I don't feel like saying the same thing in anti-black or anti-semitic threads, because racism and anti-semitism isn't something that became the mainstream popular thing to do that's cool and not at all bad optics seemingly overnight. You can call me stupid, a russophile, a fencesitter, whatever. To me it's clear that if it weren't for all the western media reporting on this daily for two years, people would forget about this invasion just as they forgot the Crimea annexation, and only got reminded of it because the media showed Zelensky talking about it. Which, again, is something you can look up in Google Trends to see that people only cared about it when it happened, and then when the war happened.
FSB Director Bortnikov reported to the president about the detention of 11 individuals, including four terrorists directly involved in the attack.
