Documenting sabotage, killings, influence and other covert operations performed
by Russia’s state actors. Useful resources: - The Insider investigations
[https://theins.press/en/inv] - Bellingcat investigations
[https://www.bellingcat.com/?s=russia] - The Christo Files
[https://www.youtube.com/@thechristofiles/videos] on YouTube - The Agency
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html] Rules: - No
trolling, disingenuous and low-effort arguments, off-topic posts, whataboutism
or manipulation. - No racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia and the like.
If you want a serious answer, let’s start with the fact that humans are inherently xenophobic. Hundreds of thousands of years ago humans who didn’t defend themselves from other tribes that looked a bit different from them got plundered and died of starvation. Xenophobia got nurtured in that manner for tens of thousands of years.
In the modern age there is little to no reason to hate people who’s ears are tilted in a slightly different way than your’s, but the mechanism is still deeply ingrained in your brain and wants to be useful. So it starts working the other way. We find those who we don’t like and start finding coincidental traits in their appearance that are common between them. Now instead of disliking people by views we start disliking anyone who has these traits, then the confirmation bias kicks in.
There are stupid and evil people, but these adjectives discribe what’s going on inside their skull, not outside. Works the other way, too. However beautiful the person looks like, they may very well have views of the biggest piece of shit you ever met.
If phrenology isn’t real why do all the top republicans look like their mothers tried to abort them with a coat hangar?
I’m half joking
Fascism is a hell of a drug.
If you want a serious answer, let’s start with the fact that humans are inherently xenophobic. Hundreds of thousands of years ago humans who didn’t defend themselves from other tribes that looked a bit different from them got plundered and died of starvation. Xenophobia got nurtured in that manner for tens of thousands of years.
In the modern age there is little to no reason to hate people who’s ears are tilted in a slightly different way than your’s, but the mechanism is still deeply ingrained in your brain and wants to be useful. So it starts working the other way. We find those who we don’t like and start finding coincidental traits in their appearance that are common between them. Now instead of disliking people by views we start disliking anyone who has these traits, then the confirmation bias kicks in.
There are stupid and evil people, but these adjectives discribe what’s going on inside their skull, not outside. Works the other way, too. However beautiful the person looks like, they may very well have views of the biggest piece of shit you ever met.