Russian, Ukrainian and Polish are the same language.

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Is it just me or does none of this tweet make sense?

    If you were trying to raise money for a military truck why would you give a discount? How does giving away Russian language books raise money? If the bookshops are reselling those Russian language books and then donating those profits to the military truck, how is recirculating those books sticking it to Putin? If they’re actually recycling them, how is that raising money? Why would Putin care about a truck or second hand books or any of this?

    • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netM
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      5 months ago

      Yeah, it made very little sense when they did it during the beginning of the SMO. It was just a dumb propaganda stunt in two parts to eliminate Russian language media in Ukraine and simultaneously drum up support for the war machine. The main goal was to destroy any media in the Russian language and build support for that book destruction by saying that it would in some way help the military, even though the connection there is tenuous at best.

      About a year ago the Ukrainian government also banned (and destroyed) about 19 million books for either being in the Russian language, being Soviet literature, or for covering history they don’t like (unsure what history exactly the ban referred to as I cannot find the official list or any media in a language I can read or search in that has covered that aspect of the ban) all the while claiming that the Russian military has been indiscriminately confiscating and burning all books.

      The evidence given was the relatively empty shelves in libraries after they themselves banned and destroyed approximately half of the books in libraries and schools throughout the country without any real plans to even replace those books with Ukrainian-language books for the maybe 60% of people in the nation who speak that language.

      • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        Thanks for the extra context. I remember the government book banning and destruction last year. Is this just bookshops continuing the trend then or a government backed thing?

        • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netM
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          5 months ago

          Seems to be kind of an ongoing public-private thing where everyone just seems to be going “oh boy I sure do love destroying books!” Whether it’s coordinated or not, it seems to be a major trend.

          Book stores selling more books by offering a discount, people wanting to use that discount instead of waiting for the government to just make the destruction of those books mandatory and thus ineligible for a discount, government stripping libraries bare.

          Not a good sign.

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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      5 months ago
      1. Have a bunch of books that you can’t sell.
      2. Reduce the price with a patriotic excuse.
      3. People use their money to buy the books.
      4. Now you have money instead of books and can use it to buy a truck.
  • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    The bookshop is stockpiling Russian editions so it has some good books to sell in case the Russian military rolls up.

  • beef_curds [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    This kind of virality is so interesting. Where there’s this photo and it’s definitely a photo of something, but it’s immediately obvious what’s claimed in the caption is mostly-to-entirely fake… just because it doesn’t hold up to a single thought. It’s not even a good lie.

    It wants to act as background noise that you half-remember, but not as something you actually read into. It reminds me of the scams with intentional misspellings to bring in the most gullible.

    It was the same with the DPRK trial photo with prop cuffs, or a bunch of stuff Israel churns out, or a million other stories.

  • Sephitard9001 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    They recycle books which . . . . generates money? To purchase a truck with? By recycle do they mean you give them a book for free and then they resell it? I actually agree with the tweet, I definitely do not understand.

    • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netM
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      5 months ago

      You give them a non-government approved book which they give to the government for destruction. They may or may not be paid a bounty by the government. In exchange for your book, they offer you a small discount towards buying a different book from them which is government approved. Even if the government doesn’t pay a bounty for these books, they take a slight reduction in profit but sold a book you otherwise wouldn’t have bought netting them a profit nonetheless. As part of the propaganda stunt they also give a chunk of the profits to the military to buy a truck.

      The goal here is coercing the nation into willingly destroying huge quantities of books that the government wants destroyed for being in Russian, for being Soviet or communist literature, or for having an accurate portrayal of history prior to the current mass propaganda campaign.

        • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netM
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          5 months ago

          The government is maybe paying a bounty for books because they want to destroy books. Idk if they still are doing that. The book store is giving some of its profits to buy a truck. It’s all roundabout nonsense economics tied into a bizarre propaganda program. “It is patriotic to give money to the war effort. It is patriotic to destroy books. Thus destroying books is part of the war effort. Destroy all Russian language media and speak only Ukrainian, this is how you do your part in winning the war.”

          Nationalism doesn’t make a lot of sense under even the lightest analysis, and this is no exception.

        • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          It’s highly unlikely enough Ukrainians are engaged in this convoluted scheme for the government to generate any kind of meaningful revenue. This is likely just a logically stupid propaganda campaign to boost morale, and when some western country sends Ukraine trucks, they’ll thank the citizens for sacrificing their hard earned cash for the trucks lol.

    • LanyrdSkynrd [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      I think the bookstore is basically having a sale and donating the profits towards the tank. It’s like bringing a soda can to get a discount at Six Flags except the profit for that day goes towards war. The soda can has no actual value to Six Flags, it’s just a weird kind of coupon.

  • Raebxeh@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Russian, Ukrainian and Polish are the same language.

    The idea that Slavic languages are just different dialects of each other was actually one pushed by some Ukrainians chauvinists in the early 1900’s trying to get Rusyns to speak and write in Ukrainian.

    Mutual intelligibility with Russian of around ~75% isn’t bad, and the difference between a sister language and a dialect of the same language is admittedly blurry, but this just strikes me as a weird place to make such a strong claim.

    • kot [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      They aren’t just blurry, it’s pretty much impossible to objectively determine what is a dialect and what is a ‘separate’ language, because those things are always politically motivated. “A language is a dialect with an army and navy”, as Max Weinreich said.

    • worldonaturtle [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      It doesnt matter if these languages are mutually intelligible or not, it helps Russia to say they are. If it helped Russia to say the languages were different then the languages are different. The truth does not matter, Russia steamrolling through Europe destroying NATO and US hegemony is all that matters. As long as Russia doesnt become more right wing as the United States it’s the lesser of evils.

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    i would also like to understand the Ukrainian economy. my guess is it would be akin to something like the economy of Iowa if it declared itself separate from the United States, banned all economic associations with Chicago, and started buying weapons from a right-wing militia of Sovereign Citizens based out of Alberta using a line of credit extended from some bank in the Panama Papers.

  • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Russian, Ukrainian and Polish are the same language.

    Unhinged take. I do not understand Russian or Ukrainian in the slightest beyond single words, besides one’s a west Slavic language and the other two are eastern Slavic!

    You probably said that because you disapprove of Polish and Ukrainian nationalism, but that’s no reason to abandon investigation and speak with confidence anyway.

      • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        why-post-this

        To indulge in personal attacks, pick quarrels, vent personal spite or seek revenge instead of entering into an argument and struggling against incorrect views for the sake of unity or progress or getting the work done properly. This is a fifth type [of liberalism].

        Liberalism…is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. … It is an extremely bad tendency.

        Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second, and this gives rise to ideological, political and organizational liberalism.