January 31, 2024

Recently, Donald Trump Jr. responded to a question by Timcast IRL co-host Luke Rudkowski about Ukraine. 

‘);
googletag.cmd.push(function () {
googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268089992-0’);
});
document.write(”);
googletag.cmd.push(function() {
googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) {
if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”) {
googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”);
}
});
});
}

Trump Jr. said, “We’re creating a class of billionaire oligarchs in Ukraine” by way of the country’s corruption. 

Previously, he mocked Ukraine’s President Zelensky for seeming ungrateful for the aid received. Earlier, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis described Russia’s full scale invasion as a “border dispute,” then backtracked.

It’s disturbing to hear so many ridiculous talking points from channels that I’ve otherwise thought to be pretty good. It’s reminiscent of when Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014. Most of the libertarian communities I was part of immediately went off the deep end, inspiring me to write this trilogy of essays. 

‘);
googletag.cmd.push(function () {
googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609270365559-0’);
});

document.write(”);
googletag.cmd.push(function() {
googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) {
if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”) {
googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”);
}
});
});
}

Today, Russian propaganda is as prominent, brazen, and aggressive as it was in 2014, and as I imagine that it was it was during the 1930s Holodomor when Russia last tried to exterminate Ukrainians. 

Then, the New York Times denied that the Holodomor — the great famine — was happening, and the Welsh journalist who exposed it, Gareth Jones, was assassinated.

For a point of reference, and maybe a clue as to why Ukrainians are fighting so hard, my late friend and once-co-author, Russian-American economist, Dr. Yuri Maltsev estimated that the Soviet Union slaughtered 60 million people, and this barbarism neither started nor ended with the Soviet Union. Besides the Holodomor, there are a handful of genocides which I doubt most of the readers here ever heard of: the Circassian Genocide, the Genocide of the Don Cossacks (see The Cossacks by Shane O’Rourke), the 75% reduction of Kamchatka’s native population, the repeated 16th century massacres of Novgorod because of … get this … Western influence (read: “NATO Expansion”).

For much of Europe, and certainly Ukraine, this is the context in which this war is happening. 

Add to this historic observations of Russia’s relentless expansionism, their annexation of 20% of Georgia territory in 2009, and their brutality in Chechnya in the 1990s, possibly killing a tenth of their population, and their persistent calls for genocide of Ukrainians.

Here’s a playlist

[embedded content]