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dismalaftoday at 11:44 AM2 repliesview on HN

Horseshoe theory still undefeated. Both right-wingers who consume certain content as well as left-wingers in the pro-Palestine/Iran camp tend to be sympathetic to the Russian cause, as the Russians and Iranians fund specific influencers/political parties on both sides of the spectrum.

Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) are way more anti-Russia than the ones in the US.


Replies

pjc50today at 11:52 AM

Negative polarization is incredibly powerful. You can see all over the place how "X is bad" leads to people defining themselves as "anti-X" and then supporting the most extreme position against X rather than a moderate one, often leading them into supporting atrocities in the other direction. This is how we get people in the English Green Party (who I would like to support if they could be 10% less nutty fruitcake) ended up posting pro-Iran propaganda.

You also do have to keep track of internal factions. We're all, me included, using "country name" in this thread as a synechdoche as if all of a country had a unified political axis of action, when we know that's an oversimplification.

This is how we get Israel/Likud and Iran/IGRC who are practically co-evolved to escalate against each other, to which the only reasonable response of third parties is to acknowledge that both are bad and attempt to de-escalate, as in e.g. the Camp David Accords era, before either of those factions came to power.

> Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia)

I don't think enough was made of https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-v... - the amount of money involved was a significant fraction of the Hungarian budget.

fc417fc802today at 12:23 PM

This is a bizarre take. Despite propaganda to the contrary most "pro-palestine" takes are actually just anti-genocide and pro-human-rights. Similarly at least in the US this "iranian camp" you refer to is by and large an anti-getting-involved camp. Is it really pro-iranian to ask why the government is burning billions of dollars to destabilize the global economy?

Also I've yet to meet a single person who was "pro-palestine" and simultaneously sympathetic to russia. Quite the opposite.

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