#the great purge

[dindjarindiaries]

Can you remind me what the Great Purge is again? I’m so forgetful of canon events 😂

No worries, dear! There's a lot of lingo to go around in Star Wars!

The Great Purge is the event during which the Empire, notably Moff Gideon, blasted the surface of Mandalore in an effort to wipe out the Mandalorians in entirety. They looted the planet and left it as a wasteland.

[mrs-homemaker]

You’re probably overwhelmed with cleaning & clutter, because you have too much stuff.

Get ahead of the NY resolution to have a more orderly home by starting to declutter items in your home now.

Donate, sell, give away or simply throw out/recycle.

If you haven’t used it in over a year, you’re probably not going to.

[theculturedmarxist]

The currently "Most Popular" piece at the National Interest website has a somewhat intriguing title:

The Source of Russian Brutality Russia’s military operates on a Soviet, totalizing view of war that ignores distinctions between soldiers and civilians.

That is of course news to me as well as to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Right which is counting civilian casualties.

From 24 February 2022, which marked the start of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation, to 24 September 2023, OHCHR recorded 27,449 civilian casualties in the country: 9,701 killed and 17,748 injured.

Meanwhile the military casualties in the war exceed several 100,000nds. Compared to any other modern war the ratio of civilian casualties to military casualties is thus extremely low. How is that demonstrating 'Russian brutality'?

So lets see what the author, one Ivan Arreguin-Toft, is alluding to:

One need not be an expert on international law to understand how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March of 2022 has violated the laws’ core principles. The Kremlin’s pretexts, the alleged violation of Russia’s “sphere of influence,” cited by, for example, international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, remain inadequate to justify the invasion of an internationally recognized sovereign state.

Russia's reason for the war is the threatened entering of its neighbor country Ukraine into an aggressive NATO.  The Secretary General of NATO recently said so. That may(!) be "inadequate" to justify a war. But what about a war over fake WMD claims in a country on the other side of the planet? Has any U.S. reason for waging wars ever been "adequate"?

On top of that, in its prosecution of an illegitimate war, Russia continues to practice war crimes—systematically and deliberately attacking noncombatants, including medical personnel and facilities. We may continue to debate whether allowing Russia to reclaim the USSR’s sphere of influence is acceptable as a tradeoff to prevent a global conflict. Still, there can be no question that Russia’s continual rape, torture, and murder of noncombatants is illegal and damages Russia’s reputation on the world stage.  The question, then, is, what explains Russia’s behavior?

Those are strong claims. Strong claims require strong evidence. But the link under "continual rape, torture, and murder" does not go to any evidence. The link instead goes to an overview of the Geneva Convention. In fact - the whole piece does not contain ANY evidence of 'Russian brutality'. ZERO! NONE!

So without presenting any factual evidence, statistic or even anecdote the author simply claims that Russia's behavior is somehow different from others.

He is then off to find something that would explain his farcical claim.

During the entire rule of Russia’s Tsars—from the very founding of the Russian state until 1917, Russia’s military was no more or no less brutal toward noncombatants than the militaries of any other state or empire. But the Russian Revolution and the horrific civil war that followed changed everything.

The first part might be true. All militaries were (and are) generally brutal against noncombatants. They often had to 'live off the land' they marched through and that includes robbing and killing everyone who had not left.

But the second part of the above claim, that the revolution and civil war changed that, is strange. Lets look for evidence:

In place of an aristocratic code of honor, Russia’s surviving officer corps were loyal to the person of Josef Stalin (although in 1938, he had three-quarters of them above the rank of lieutenant executed for treason) and, more broadly, to the international communist movement, which they believed was destined to liberate the world from its capitalist and imperialist chains.

Did any "aristocratic code of honor" ever stopped an aristocrat from killing a peasant? I doubt that.

Stalin's Great Purge was actually against Trotsky and others which wanted to spread communism around the world while Stalin preferred a socialism in one country policy of putting the Soviet Union first. Officers who preferred Trotsky's ideas were indeed purged but the numbers Ivan Arreguin-Toft puts into parenthesis are just totally nuts.

Here is what the purge of the army actually did:

The purge of the Red Army and Military Maritime Fleet removed three of five marshals (then equivalent to four-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to three-star generals), eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting their opportunities for foreign contacts), 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.

That sounds like high numbers but more importantly we are taking General ranks here and not all 'people above the rank of lieutenant'. Moreover most of the purged were not executed. The total numbers were also much smaller than had been perceived:

At first, it was thought 25–50% of Red Army officers had been purged; the true figure is now known to be in the area of 3.7–7.7%. This discrepancy was the result of a systematic underestimation of the true size of the Red Army officer corps, and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the Party. Thirty percent of officers purged in 1937–1939 were allowed to return to service.

How can one get from those historic facts to "three-quarters of them above the rank of lieutenant executed for treason"?

One can't. And that is why one should stop reading that trash piece right there. The rest gets only worse.

During the cold war Ivan Arreguin-Toft had learned Russian while in the U.S. army. His duty included signal intelligence in Germany. We can be sure that he was also given the usual indoctrination lectures about the 'deviant Russian mind'. Since then he has dabbled in cyber-security which he is currently teaching somewhere. I find no evidence that he, at any time. has learned about history or sociology. The piece he delivered shows no such knowledge.

How all that qualifies him to make evidence free claims that Russia is extraordinary brutal is beyond me. Especially when his underlying theory is not based on historic facts but pure fiction.

What is most astonishing though is that there seems to be a market for such dreck.

Posted by b on September 30, 2023 at 14:16 UTC

[kick-a-long]

my favorite defector, Miloš Forman, directed Amadeus and One flew over the Cuckoo's nest.

pick you're favorite!

The thing is, I have nothing against socialism or communism as a political ideology; trust me, I'm as anti-capitalist as they come. The leftism is really not the problem here.

The problem is when in their leftism, people – Americans, really, and western Europeans – use the ussr as this sort of goal, this complete antithesis to the modern capitalist society, this almost-utopian place to live. They use hammer and sickle symbol, the ussr anthem; sometimes, as a joke, sometimes, not so much.

Not only that clearly shows that they know absolutely nothing about the ussr – it's also spreading russian propaganda, whether it's on purpose or not, which is especially insidious now, when russia is literally committing a genocide.

The ussr wasn't a socialist utopia where everyone is equal. It was a totalitarian dictatorship, responsible for colonisation and genocide of multiple people and cultures. Just like the russian Empire before it. Just like modern russia continues to do now.

For many Eastern European and Central Asian people, hammer and sickle is not just a symbol of a political ideology. It's the symbol, under which people were starved to death, imprisoned or executed for daring to write in their own language; in which cultures were erased, people – forcefully assimilated, stripped of their own national identity.

It's the propaganda of being "the same people, the same nation" that russians love to use; that westerners love to believe, for the sole reason of the oppressed daring to look similar to the oppressor; for the sole reason of Americans being unable to look past their own history and realize oppression comes in many shapes and forms.

By using the ussr symbols in your political movement, you're denying the atrocities commited under that symbol and spreading russian propaganda, whether it's on purpose or not.

It's not "progressive" to wave around a hate symbol.

Do your research.

[cartoonsinthemorning]

Since you guys liked Marcille as Kermit that much, it seems fitting to thank you for my 12k milestone with MORE Kercille. And this time, Miss Falin is also here.

Thank you so much again everybody! MWAH 💗

[historydailyfrancischappellblack]

Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and a group of seven other senior officers from the Soviet High Command were found guilty and executed at a show trial. They were accused of coordinating a German-funded military plot inside the Red Army. June 12, 1937.

Subscriber Content Add content here that will only be visible to your subscribers. Payment Image: Tukhachevsky with the other first four Marshals of the Soviet Union in November 1935. (l-r): Tukhachevsky, Semyon Budyonny, Kliment Voroshilov, Vasily Blyukher, and Aleksandr Yegorov. Only Budyonny and Voroshilov survived the Great Purge. (Public Domain) On this day in history, June 12, 1937,…

[lifeintheapiary]

Wasn’t Shostakovich close friends with a general who was discredited and then executed by the government too? I think the trials and executions were called the Great Purge.

The fact that Aziraphale chose to listen to Shostakovich among all other classical composers says a lot.

Shostakovich was one of the brightest musicians of his time in the USSR. His ideas and music had revolutionary themes and pictures repressive power of Soviet Leaders.

Back then, Soviet Union eliminated anyone who thought differently or had different opinions on how the state should be governed and how people should live in there.

Shostakovich was terrified of the government and, for a while, stopped releasing his creative music, instead keeping a low profile and went with the flow until he didn’t.

I DONT KNOW WHAT THIS BASTARD IS DOING. But I believe in him. I think he has a plan.

Aziraphale, you go, girl ✨

[mysticalblizzardcolor]

MANY Will Be Leaving Soon - Archangel Michael 2023

[the-one-with-spider-brainrot]

I don’t have a clever caption for this it’s just brothers being brothers

[kateis-cakeis]

Do you guys ever think about how Merlin was only born because Arthur was born?

Two babes born who never should have existed, pulled from the very fabric of the world, magic.

One born from a ritual fraught with consequences, a mother dead, a terrible retribution sought.

One born after a man was forced to flee, the last of his kind, taken in by a woman across the border.

And while it is possible Balinor could have made it to Hunith regardless, it seems it was only the terrible circumstances that led to him going to Ealdor at all.

Arthur and Merlin, two sides of the same coin, soulmates right down to their mere existence at all.

[lonewolflupe]

Some post-Order 66 clarity and regrets and heartbreak for y'all

[adhd-merlin]

if you must hate Gaius at least do it for the right reason (gaslighting Morgana)

[ddeck]

it's that time of the year when i remember i have clone ocs as well

[stevenslittleshop]

Listen, I love going “the people of Camelot must’ve been so oblivious” just as much as the next person

But think about it

You’re living in a time of constant crisis. People are getting accused of magic, most of those people barely even know what magic looks like. People are killed, every day, just because they were accused of something they couldn’t disprove.

And in comes this young lad. This awfully cheery little man who takes his punishments with a smile and is slowly turning the future king into an actual person instead of some little spoiled twat. And everyone loves him. It’s the most joyous Camelot has been since the queen died.

And yes, maybe his eyes glow a little sometimes, and maybe things move on their own when he’s around, but he’s a good person and hes not hurting anyone, quite the opposite in fact.

So at a time where Merlin could’ve been killed if you said the wrong thing to the wrong person, nobody was gonna say a damn word because they did not want to see this boy, practically the one who kept the place running, the light of Camelot, burned at the stake.

They weren’t oblivious. They knew. They just refused to believe it, because if they did, then the great purge would most likely restart and Camelot could fall.

[pendragonsclotpole]

rewatching an episode of season one of merlin right now, i have a lot of thoughts (arthur legit looks so young it’s messing with my mind realizing how much the characters grow over the seasons and oh my lordy merlin used to be so pure, so trusting, so naive *ugh*) but one thing that just popped into my head: how small Camelot looks.

this is probably due to budget reasons, but the fact that random people can show up and demand an audience with uther or appear mysteriously and meet with a prince, it just makes me wonder what that must have been like for merlin both during his time in camelot and after

we’re talking a kingdom’s whose golden age was in an era of petty states and kings, a few centuries after the fall of the roman empire. merlin fics sometimes bring up how popular merlin is among the people of camelot. it highlights the unspoken notion that camelot and its nobles and royals aree within degrees of separation.

the world, after arthur’s death, must have gotten so frightfully big for merlin. i just think, what if merlin had served arthur or another such king in a later era when the size of the kingdom was so much larger? remove the feudalistic background, if that is what they were going for in the series, and who is merlin? its for that reason that i love the joke that merlin would lowkey be a monarchist because yeah, merlin lived an early era of kings where royals could be in such close proximity and held to the standards of their people.

[vool-zam]

she kisses like a melting nuclear reactor ☢️💚