Dear Anti-Empire, We Owe You a Huge Apology — Comment Section Snowflakes
If you weren't insolent, entitled children we wouldn't need to have this conversation
Imagine being served cutting-edge information and analysis. Imagine knowing a site that serves up the correct take — the take that will be later proven right — while nearly every other website is still in blissful ignorance or deep denial.
Imagine having the rare privilege of having a bookmark to this little-known but fantastic web page. Now imagine reacting to this wonderful resource at your fingertips by…throwing a hissy fit.
Who would do such a thing?? Only an entitled, unbalanced child. And also the Anti-Empire comment section snowflakes.
Imagine accessing top rate reasoning and information — assembled completely free of charge to you, funded by other readers — only to feel personally offended and threatened by it and reacting to it with torrents of poor attempts at abuse. Imagine being that much of a brat. Imagine being a comment section snowflake.
It’s hilarious really. There are alt-media brains who were still making definite statements about Russian escalation being impossible as late as the day before the war commenced.
Anti-Empire by contrast treated it as a possibility that deserved consideration since December. And tried raising alarm about it being a possibility that wasn’t being taken seriously enough for the past two months.
In my naivete I thought that when I published the case that Russian-initiated escalation is a real possibility people would read it, consider it, and move on.
I thought the real danger was that some readers might come to love the idea of such an escalation and start rooting for it to happen. I thought that my role would be to try to remind the reader of the human cost of war, and dampen that enthusiasm a little bit.
Instead, my suggestion that in light of evidence Russia enlarging the war in Ukraine had to be treated as a real possibility was met with hatred, hysterics, and meltdown. Apparently, the mere idea that Moscow could move to enlarge the war threatened the fragile identities of some.
As I grew more concerned and worked tirelessly to warn of the war risk from as many angles as I could think of, each was received with butthurt, malice and attempted insult. The state of denial was such that I had to resort to laying out the case for a war that I didn’t even favor, just so I could show that the pro-war case was a compelling one and the war risk real.
Some of the angles I tried in order to get the danger across were:
Putin’s Next Move Is a Mystery. Just the Way He Likes It.
Russian Land Army Has 168 Maneuver Battalions. 60 of Them Are Within 300 KM of Ukraine
Every Russian Soldier Is Required to Read This 2021 Putin Article on Ukraine
Dugin: Having Pulled the Gun Russia Must Shoot or Lose
A Large War in Europe Is Now the Most Probable Outcome
We Are in Unknown Territory — Russia Is Acting in Unprecedented Ways
Putin Has Already Revealed That Russia Can Not Afford Not to Act
The Russians Have Either Biden or Zelensky Completely Duped
Lukashenko: Ukraine Will Be Returned to the ‘Bosom of the Slavs’
HUGE: Russia to Start Paying Out Pensions of Donbass Retirees
Dmitry Trenin: “Great Powers Don’t Bluff”
Russia’s Eastern Military District Has Migrated to Belarus
NATO United Around Giving Russia a Free Hand in Ukraine
‘Russia Is Behaving Like a Country That If Necessary Can Afford to Wage War’
Alexander Dugin: ‘Why a War Will be Good for Russia’
Russia Has Assembled a Fleet of Landing Ships in Tartus, Syria
Hands Up If You Were Ever Surprised by a Putin Move
41% of Ukrainians Feel They and the Russians Are the Same People
US Intel Echoes Anti-Empire’s Estimate From 2 Weeks Ago That Russians Are 70 Percent Ready
3 out of 4 Russian Cruisers Are Now Either in the Med or the Black Sea
TASS: Ukraine Requested US Deploys THAAD Missile Defense Systems in Kharkov
Putin: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Serbia Have Seen How “Peaceful and Defensive” NATO Is
Russia’s Fleet of Landing Ships Is Crossing the Straits Into the Black Sea
UK to Arm Ukraine With Anti-Ship Missiles
In Two Months Ukraine Will Have Its Own Domestic Medium-Range Cruise Missiles
The Only Argument Against Russian Escalation in Ukraine Is Humanitarian
War Will Not Start With a Ukrainian Provocation
Zelensky Blocks 6th Pro-Opposition Channel in 12 Months
Oops! Turns Out Ukraine Is in the Russian Sphere of Influence After All
“If You Won’t Talk to Lavrov, You Will Talk to Shoigu”
Russia Expels Britain From the Ukraine
A Brilliant Move for Ukraine to Defang Russia, Avert War
Financial Times: Many in Odessa Would Welcome the Russians
Oligarchs Are Leaving Ukraine on Charter Flights
Russia Moved a Record 5200 Railway Cars Loaded With Military Gear in a Week
Americans Are Smashing Computers and Ripping Out Telephones From Walls in Kiev Embassy Evacuation
20 Years After Germany Bombed Belgrade Scholz Can’t Conceive of European War in Our Time
Russia Backs East Med Cruisers With Naval Bombers and Kinzhal-Carrying MiG-31s
Biden Suddenly Discovers That Russians, Ukrainains Share “Deep Ties of Family, History, and Culture”
Russia Is Launching a 200-Million East Slavic Superpower, Probably This Month
Russia’s “Withdrawal” Is Indistinguishable From Misdirection
Lukashenko Hints That Russian Forces Could Remain in Belarus Past February 20 Exercise-End
Surkov: It Is High Time Russia Reverses the Obscene Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918
I am not even going to link to all the warning articles from the last 7 days before the war because this list is already too long.
Fundamentally AE’s position was no more than that since there was clear open-source evidence that Putin was building up a force that would allow him to escalate, the possibility that he was in fact contemplating doing so could not be discounted.
And it was this profoundly conservative take that drove comment section snowflakes into a delirium of vitriol and meltdown that would make a 4-year-old blush. Pathetic.
My take was fundamentally nothing more but cautious logic. It did not claim any special knowledge.
It was precisely the people who claimed there couldn’t possibly be a Russian war who were asking you to trust their special crystal ball.
I even kept publishing some of the commentators whom I continue to respect who didn’t think such a war was likely. I studied the case they were making with interest and tried to relay it to you as best as I could. (Is Russia Only Really Aiming for the Small-Fry Stuff in Its Ultimatum?)
That’s because an adult human being is supposed to be able to reserve judgment, and not fly off the handle the first time he hears something that goes against his hunch.
That’s another thing. Anti-Empire has been around for some time now. For nearly 3 years and over 6K headlines. How long has an average snowflake been visiting?
How many times in the past did the average snowflake read something on AE with interest and benefited from it?
And then, the very first-time snowflake eyes gaze upon something not to their liking the reaction is to vandalize the comment section.
That would have been unjustifiable even if AE had been wrong, but it wasn’t even wrong. It was 100% correct and it was the snowflakes who embarrassed themselves not only with their lack of class, but their ignorance and self-delusion.
Of course, doubtlessly now that the war has kicked off, many of the people who were the most insistent that Russian escalation was impossible and that AE was out of line will now turn on a dime and become the war’s loudest and most radical cheerleaders.
Likewise, all the commentators who go this so horribly wrong. All the writers who spent two months repeating every day how ludicrous the idea of the war was — will now overnight become huge “experts” on this war and claim to have enormous understanding of it.
Such enormous understanding in fact, that they will very soon be making bold predictions once again and with utmost confidence.
I will give you some conservative and logical advice:
1. Keep reading widely and remain curious. Follow multiple outlets, including some of the ones who got it wrong this time.
At the same time:
2. Ninety-five percent of the alt-media was wrong. But Anti-Empire was right. It was right and it started raising the alarm sooner and more relentlessly than any other alt-media outlet that I know. It would probably be logical and conservative to take your AE bookmark and place it above any of the others. To read widely but start your day with AE. At least on this subject.
It’s not even so much the case that Anti-Empire was “right”, but that unlike so many others this site hates faking special knowledge, discounting possibilities in advance, or making crystal-ball predictions.
I don’t have the time to dunk on everyone who was wrong (nor do I have the desire to, since many of them I continue to respect), but somebody sent me this and it’s golden:
What happened to Comrade Alabama? He used to be the shizzle. Has his “Lockdown Is Not Enough” COVID communism melted his brain? Looks totally out of his depth here. Incredibly dogmatic and set in his ways. Has he learned anything new in a decade? Can he muster some much-needed humility and use it to get back on track, or has time run him over for good?
Now I’m off to study this actual war, and to see what can be pieced together since we can no longer trust Comrade “State-Kidnappings-Are-Good” Alabama to do it for us.
I stopped reading MoA when he went Covidian. If he was looking for a way to disqualify himself, he found it.