Hexbear might actually be one of the most non-bigoted places on the internet. we are militantly against bigotry. no epic logical debates here, you just get smacked in the fucking face by a banhammer if you try that shit here
You have no idea the restraint it took for me not to post the "Estonians are slop-eating Hungarians" tweet at the lem.ee admin during that whole debacle
I'm not sure quite what to think about the Baltics. Obviously fuck their governments, and the numerous institutions pushing Holocaust revisionism and denial and re-writing 20th century history. But blanket-condemning little countries like that, no matter how shitty their government is, feels different from blanket condemning the US or UK. They're under the NATO umbrella but despite being little pissant countries with fash governments they're not exerting hegemonic power and are at most expendable speed bumps for Imperialism. I can't imagine it's fun or say being a dissident in the Baltics. hell, I don't even think it's legal, is it? Yeah, looks like they've got some blanket laws they use to hunt down Communists and, probably, anyone they think is communist
I still wanna know what was up with that. I honestly haven't had a single thought in my head about Estonia since I skipped a lecture to go see Encino Man in the 90's.
Eh. The Baltics are very small countries with... what's the nice way to say this... Fascist collaborationist governments that have worked hard to control the narrative, erase the crimes of the 30s and 40s, and create a questionable view of 20th century history. It's like any other country - Shitheads, none shitheads, and regular people in between. The official government line and the views of many citizens are hard right-wing, holocaust denial, and support for Nazi collaborators. You're going to run in to a lot of fash and fash-adjacent assholes.
Edited bc I realized I've been saying Balkans instead of Baltics all day.
Just gonna also throw out that a ton of the world's stateless people live in the Baltic countries because they denied ethnic minorities citizenship after the fall of the USSR unlike every other former Soviet country. IIRC Lithuania isn't involved in that at least, I think just Estonia and Latvia.
I remember that. That was really fucked. Political exiles in the democracy loving freedom of speech west? Hardly surprising but very against the marketing. I still don't entirely understand what their purpose is with that. Is it a way to reinforce anti-immigrant rhetoric in preparation for some kind of V for Vendetta more fascist Britain thing?