A Palestinian man was found dead in a park in the Belgian city of Antwerp with his hands and feet tied, leaving the cause of his death a mystery amid authorities’ suggestion that it may have been a suicide.

“Suicide.”

  • barsoap
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    15 days ago

    If you’re sitting between the Soviets and the Nazis and saying “Well, I can’t say which is the lesser evil”, you’re no one I would sit at a table with.

    If you’re sitting at a table with the Soviets saying “Well, I can say they’re better than the Nazis”, you’re no one I would sit at a table with.

    At some point the evil is so bad that lesser evilism doesn’t work, you have to fight on both fronts, sooner or later, anyway. Ask Makhno. Best you can do is play them against each other.

    Not to mention that the Soviets and Nazis were fucking allies.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      If you’re sitting at a table with the Soviets saying “Well, I can say they’re better than the Nazis”, you’re no one I would sit at a table with.

      So you wouldn’t sit at the table with the Western Allies in WW2?

      • barsoap
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        15 days ago

        The right outcome of that war would have been both Germany and the Soviets getting rolled by everyone else for invading Poland. But authoritarians were appeased, and thus we got the Soviet-Western alliance.

        So, no, I wouldn’t have because the need would never have arisen.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          If I were the US I would’ve entered the war early, and rolled all the way to Moscow.

          I suppose the lives of the entire Polish nation are a small price to pay for moral purity?

          How many more years do you think WW2 would have went on had the Soviet Union collapsed in the absence of American lend-lease, and the UK and US been left to fight the Axis on their own? How many more years of the Holocaust burning ‘undesirables’ in the furnaces are acceptable to not have to sully your hands by joining with the Reds?

          I have no doubt that the US and UK retained the material capacity to win (the will? That’s a different question). But there’s a multi-front, multi-million soldier deficit to be made up there, and the Nazis aren’t going to be idle in their new lebensraum. How many lives are worth playing “Both Sides” games with two legitimately gruesome but-in-no-way-reasonably-comparable authoritarian states?

          • barsoap
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            15 days ago

            I suppose the lives of the entire Polish nation are a small price to pay for moral purity?

            The Soviets invaded Poland, remember. Maybe you’re blanking out on that one, somehow under the impression that the Soviets “freed” Poland from the Nazis or something.

            At that point in the war there were no multiple fronts, there was no lend-lease, there were the Nazis and the Soviets getting away with carving up a sovereign country.

            So don’t fucking “Polish lives” me here. If you care about Polish lives you hate both Nazis and Soviets.

            • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              The Soviets invaded Poland, remember. Maybe you’re blanking out on that one, somehow under the impression that the Soviets “freed” Poland from the Nazis or something.

              No, I’m under the impression that the Polish nation survived under Soviet oppression; something which would not have happened under Nazi oppression. Do you not know what Generalplan Ost entailed?

              If you care about Polish lives you hate both Nazis and Soviets.

              I do hate them both. Just not equally. The Nazis are worse, without ambiguity.

              • barsoap
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                15 days ago

                I’m under the impression that the Polish nation survived under Soviet oppression

                With time, they would’ve killed it, with deportations, settlements, language policy, etc. Poles are more numerous than e.g. Lithuanians but Russia has wanted to Russify the whole area for centuries now. And the Soviets were nothing but the continuation of the genocidal, colonial, Russian empire with a different coat of paint.

                They probably would’ve treated Poland like Ukraine and worse right from the start if the Nazis hadn’t tried a very similar thing directly beforehand: Poland had a very active and well-organised resistance, had the Soviets started out with their usual genocidal programme the Polish resistance would’ve fought right back. So they bid their time, first carefully cultivating an image as liberators.

                • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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                  15 days ago

                  With time, they would’ve killed it, with deportations, settlements, language policy, etc.

                  The Soviets had 50 years, and didn’t manage it. The Nazis had five years and managed a fifth of the fucking population.

                  Pretty sure the Nazis put a higher priority on genocide than the Soviets did. Guess what? That makes them worse. And looking at those numbers, considerably worse.

                  They probably would’ve treated Poland like Ukraine and worse right from the start

                  They did treat Poland like Ukraine.

                  if the Nazis hadn’t tried a very similar thing directly beforehand: Poland had a very active and well-organised resistance, had the Soviets started out with their usual genocidal programme the Polish resistance would’ve fought right back. So they bid their time, first carefully cultivating an image as liberators.

                  The Polish Home Army was a nonentity by the end of the war due to the Sovs stabbing them in the back, and the Cursed Soldiers of the next decade achieved little. It wasn’t that the Polish people just suddenly ‘forgot’ about what the Soviets had done to them - it was that the Nazis were unamfuckingbiguously worse.

                  • barsoap
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                    15 days ago

                    They did treat Poland like Ukraine.

                    Did you blank out on the Holodomor or are you denying it?

                    We’re talking about Soviets vs. Nazis here, not “Who did worse, specifically, in Poland”.