The “orc” comments began with Ukrainian fascists’ dehumanization of Chechens, which included but was not limited to people in the Russian military. This became popular in Western communities around the same time as the islamophobic pork fat bullet-dipping incident that was endorsed by the UA MoD. It spread to include all Russians, though it is used primarily by the most vehement Russophobes and simply tolerated by your average cheerleading liberal.

Name calling aside, I think it’s incredibly dishonest to term the rooting and supporting for Ukraine as “jingoism” when that word describes what has been happening in Russian society for the past year far more appropriately.

This is a form of absurd binary thinking. I am not required to “both sides” my criticisms in order to be honest, particularly when what I am criticizing is the dominant and uncritically accepted narrative, including what this post - and the vast majority of comments rezoonding to it - is literally an example of.

If it makes you happy, okay cool Russia is also jingoistic. Now answer me this: do you see any Russian nationalist statements in these threads?

The American invasion of Iraq was bad and jingoist rhetoric was used to justify it, yes, but the exact same has been happening in Russia to a far more extreme degree during this war.

I’m describing a repeated phenomenon in the exact same society to people who absolutely don’t think of it that way. American collective consciousness is very poor at learning past lessons and applying them to current events. One reason is that they don’t teach this stuff in school.

Please feel free to make this case to any Russians here that think their nationalism isn’t comparable to bad examples of prior Russian nationalism.

How can you ignore that while denouncing mere name-calling on social media and passive support in the war from the side of the West?

You said you oppose dehumanization, but here you are minimizing to call it mere name-calling.

Interesting.