Author: TheConversation

Hybrid Warfare: How Ukraine is winning the hearts and minds of Americans to offset Russia’s propaganda

By Michael Butler, Associate Professor of Political Science, Clark University Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dominated headlines since late February 2022. The war struck a nerve among Western audiences, evoking a high degree of support for Ukraine. The reasons for the prominence of the war in the West are many and varied. A ground war in Europe launched by a major military power evokes the ghosts of World War II. This is especially true when the attacking country has designs on territory it considers integral to its nation, and is led by a personalist authoritarian regime where all power...

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Can’t handle the truth: Why people prefer ghosting when they lack ability to have honest conversations

By Royette T. Dubar, Professor of Psychology, Wesleyan University Check your phone. Are there any unanswered texts, snaps, or direct messages that you are ignoring? Should you reply? Or should you ghost the person who sent them? Ghosting happens when someone cuts off all online communication with someone else, and without an explanation. Instead, like a ghost, they just vanish. The phenomenon is common on social media and dating sites, but with the isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic – forcing more people together online – it happens now more than ever. I am a professor of psychology...

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Slavery by another name: When Juneteenth celebrated resilience amid the failure of full Emancipation

By Kris Manjapra, Professor of History, Tufts University The actual day was June 19, 1865, and it was the Black dockworkers in Galveston, Texas, who first heard the word that freedom for the enslaved had come. There were speeches, sermons and shared meals, mostly held at Black churches, the safest places to have such celebrations. The perils of unjust laws and racist social customs were still great in Texas for the 250,000 enslaved Black people there, but the celebrations known as Juneteenth were said to have gone on for seven straight days. The spontaneous jubilation was partly over Gen....

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An inhuman scheme: When Russia’s goal for war is to depopulate Ukraine and render it uninhabitable

By David Roger Marples, Distinguished University Professor of Russian and East European History, University of Alberta The Russian war on Ukraine has lasted well over 100 days. It has exacerbated a critical demographic situation in Ukraine, one that saw its population fall from 52.5 million in 1991 at the time of independence to a projected 43.2 million in 2022 prior to the outbreak of war. The population fall was attributed to a low birth rate, high mortality rate and emigration. During the presidency of Petro Poroshenko from 2014 to 2019, Ukraine became the poorest country in Europe, surpassing Moldova...

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Why Putin’s genocide in Ukraine is rooted in a long tradition of dehumanizing former Soviet cultures

By Kseniya Oksamytna, Lecturer in International Politics, City, University of London Former war crimes prosecutor Sir Howard Morrison recently highlighted the dangers posed by the negative, often insulting and dehumanizing, statements made by some Russian politicians and media personalities about Ukraine and its people. “Genocide is often rooted in the way that one nation or one ethnic group views another and how it describes them,” Morrison said, citing the way Nazis referred to the Poles as “subhuman” before and during the second world war, or the way Hutu elites in Rwanda referred to Tutsis as “cockroaches” before the 1994...

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Army of Thieves: Putin’s military weakness follows a long history of corrupt Russian regimes

By Tony Ward, Fellow in Historical Studies, The University of Melbourne In explaining the reasons for Russia’s unexpected military weakness in Ukraine, few have expressed it better than “The Economist.” The magazine noted “the incurable inadequacy of despotic power” and “the cheating, bribery and peculation” that is “characteristic of the entire administration.” Peculation means embezzlement. It is a word rarely used nowadays; these words were in fact published by “The Economist” in October 1854, when Russia was in the process of losing the Crimean War. But they might just easily be about Russia today, under Vladimir Putin, and the mess...

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