Crossed Wires

The bombing of the grocery store in the Kharkiv region isn’t an unusual development. Something like this happens every week. Russians target areas where civilians congregate. High-rise apartment buildings, hospitals, supermarkets, maternity wards. Time and again, for 18 months. Yet there are people who think this is good and should continue.

Lidia Falcón, a writer and the leader of Spain’s Feminist Party, looks at all this and writes an open letter supporting… Russia and blaming Ukraine into provoking Russia into doing this. She’s an old-school feminist in her seventies. She should know that a rape victim doesn’t provoke the rapist. This should be an instinctive response on her part. Falcón suffered from the Franco dictatorship. Her whole family was destroyed by it. Men executed, women driven to suicide. There’s literally no logical reason for her to be on Russia’s side. I know Falcón in person. I talked to her and she seemed completely normal. What glitched? Which wires got crossed in an otherwise normal brain of an otherwise good, moral person?

One thought on “Crossed Wires

  1. “Falcón suffered from the Franco dictatorship. Her whole family was destroyed by it”

    My guess (without knowing any more than what you’ve written) is that the lesson she took wasn’t:
    authoritarian = bad
    democratic = good
    but
    right wing = bad
    left wing = good
    She perceives russia as the heir of the soviet union and so will reflexively side with it. She perceives Ukraine as wanting to become part of an established power structure that isn’t explicitly leftist and so she reflexively sides against it.
    And she’s probably an American exceptionalist who can’t imagine that either russia or Ukraine really have any agency but are helpless puppets of the US.

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