This article has been anonymized because of hundreds of threats against the author of a special letter about the war in Ukraine.
A post is going viral on Social Media that was allegedly written by either the half-Ukrainian [name removed] or a Russian troll myth. It is an authentic-sounding story about Russian-Ukrainian solidarity and an indictment of the fact that the EU is now suddenly profiling itself when previously there were all kinds of reasons to stand up for citizens. Only: that would not have been anti-Russian. Now it does, and that plays into the hands of anti-Russian EU sentiments. Suddenly, the EU has moral problems with acts of war and massacres.
What makes the letter strong is that it sounds like written from the heart by a committed Dutchman with Ukrainian roots. She has felt the Ukrainian problems from the inside her whole life and at the same time considered the developments from a distance from the Netherlands. I had the text read by an anti-Putin political scientist friend. His fair question:
And you don't think that this mix of bad Dutch and so extensive is a sign of the Russian troll factory?
That was the reason for me to ask a number of copy-pasters if they had checked that "[name removed]". The Russian troll farms a reality to be reckoned with.
[name removed]
Propaganda from Russian trolls? No problem!
None of the Facebook copy-paste posters knew who it was about and whether it really existed. Most even thought that it was just as strong a text to send around, even if it were Russian propaganda. In this way, we ourselves become the media for Russian war propaganda.
We are now doing exactly what we accuse the Dutch State Media of doing: indiscriminately pumping around information that is pleasing to us. Do we remember the riot of that Kerkraad gp, who finged a telephone conversation in front of the camera in which she reported another corona death? The world was too small.
Is it different now than it was then with Covid-19, can we now violate the truth in the fight for the good cause? I find it disappointing to see how people, from whatever side, always cling to a narrative and even openly admit not to take it so closely with the truthfulness "as long as there are good things in it". That means: "if it suits my stall". People don't realize that they're actually pushing for war that way.
Kuipers lies for the good cause. Do you?
The fact that war doubters explicitly indicate in this way that they want to cooperate in spreading war propaganda may perhaps arouse some understanding for what took place in the Corona battle. In the same way, a picture was painted that was not truthful but credible, pitiful, shocking and so on. In short: lies have been spread to implement an ideology. Totalitarian ideologues (we can also call them "good people") have no problem with that.
The coronajunta that spread the lies, such as Kuipers recently before the Senate, knew that they were lies, just as the copy-pasters on social media now do not care whether the message is authentic. "Does it matter?" was the literal defense of one of the posters. Yes, the distinction between fact and fiction matters, which is not to say that fiction cannot be more instructive than facts. It matters as much as that Anne Frank's diary does not really turn out to be of a Jewish girl but was written in 1946 by W.F. Hermans, his best kept secret. If the same book had been published as a fictional diary novel, it would have been forgotten by now. That book really derives its power from 'true events', from 'real existence', from authenticity.
Search for [name removed]
I searched on LinkedIn, Google, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, Twitter. It turns out to be a common name, especially if you take into account possible obvious spelling mistakes such as [name verw(ei)(ij)der(t)(d)]. In the first screenshot above, the name is already written incorrectly. Below is a selection of the results with only the correct spelling.
[image deleted]
In the end, I found the almost certainly correct [name deleted] with a specific search.
Facts I found online were consistent with the contents of the letter. So have it, and a look at the timeline leaves no doubt.
She has been standing up for Russians and Ukrainians for many years, a recurring theme on her timeline. She waves at cows (then someone can't break me anymore). Even more details fall into place [I've deleted them here]. If this is a troll, then I live in The Matrix.
This is truly an engaged citizen with their hearts in the right place. Scroll through her timeline and understand a little better what happened around Ukraine and how politics has dealt with it, with the soap opera around Halbe Zijlstra as one of the sad highlights on a very ordinary timeline.
I don't know exactly how this contributes to a solution, but trying to understand facts from different perspectives always seems important to me – if you want to come together.
[image deleted]
Below is the viral message of [name deleted]. Among them, for those who don't have FB, some screenshots of the timeline of the one and only [name deleted], author of a letter with impact.
"As many of you may know, my mother was born in the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, where my sizeable family is a mix of Russians and Ukrainians. I therefore feel compelled to give my views on developments in Ukraine.
With my Russian/Ukrainian roots, I love both peoples dearly, for centuries brother peoples who mixed with each other. If you asked my Ukrainian-born mother if she felt more Russian or Ukrainian, she replied: 'That's a weird question that I don't have an answer to. There is a difference in our language, our music and dancing but our hearts are one...'And that's how I was raised and for 40 years I experienced the most beautiful holidays of my life, in love and togetherness, in Russia and Ukraine, in the Soviet Union.
- It's great that everyone in the Netherlands is now speaking out against waging war, who is in favour of that?
- But why only now?
- Why was everyone silent when that war started 8 years ago?
- Why did everyone remain silent in the slaughter of thousands of civilians in eastern Ukraine?
- Why did everyone remain silent about Ukraine's non-compliance with the Minsk agreements?
- Where was everyone who looked away when 52 people in Odessa were burned alive?
- Where was everyone who was fine with the democratically elected government being overthrown in 2014?
- Where was everyone who was fine with a bunch of neo-Nazis taking power?
- Where was everyone when the Ukrainian regime deprived Russian Ukrainians of their basic human rights: speaking Russian was banned, the right to a pension disappeared for Russian speakers and children who spoke Russian and had Russian names were no longer welcome at school.
- Where was everyone when torchlight parades were organized by neo-Nazis with slogans like "Russians on the gas"?
- And finally: where was everyone who remained silent when large parts of this beautiful country, once the granary of Europe, were sold for an apple and an egg to banks and investors for. exploitation for genetic manipulations of Monsanto and the cruelest mega-factory farming in Europe?
My cousin in Ukraine saw such a mega stable appear in front of her house. The screams and screams of those animals stacked on top of each other, and then those great ominous silences... Note: in Ukraine there was only a small-scale cattle breeding, before the land came into the possession of Western graziers. Ukraine has become a wingewest of the west for 8 years. A colony. And all this at the expense of people, animals, nature and the environment.
So why only now, that compassion for the people, that anger against the war? The Ukrainian population has been living in war for 8 years, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have already fled to Russia. So are family members of mine, such as my niece and her family.
Of course, I know that most Dutch people have no idea about this side of the story because our news provision gives a one-sided picture of the situation. I am now providing information from the other side. Do with it what you want, but silence is no longer an option for me.
Furthermore, I can only hope that peace will soon come to ALL Ukrainians, Russian and Ukrainian speakers.
Finally, I have been a member of a political party for 20 years. With pain in my heart and a great illusion poorer, I have just resigned my membership of the party. Unfortunately, in the last 8 years I have hardly heard 'my' party about the violations of people's rights and other essential matters that are just as important for the Netherlands as for Ukraine.
That is why I have no choice but to withdraw myself, if I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror. And I don't want to do any injustice to my deceased mother posthumously. After all, from her I learned everything about respect for every human being, regardless of his origin.
I will delete responses with threats, name-calling and cries such as 'All Russians dead'. I've already received too much of that in my inbox. Just like many Russians living in the Netherlands."
[image deleted]
Well, when you see this kind of thing again.... can't you speak of anti-Russian sentiment? Or that they directed it? Or that they never stood up for Russians but they did stand up for Ukrainians – if that means extra NATO territory, that is?
[image deleted]
Just the depiction of a smiling Putin is seen as Pro-Putin treason. At least that's what I notice in myself. There will be readers who think that of me. "A nice picture of Putin, gatverdamme". Can you see how biased we are – or indoctrinated?
And yes, if I hadn't found her, I would have made a blog about it. The criticism remains: Do not go along with any story. Always look for one or more sources. Always do a double check to bring out the truth more clearly, then misunderstandings get less and less chance.
Indeed, partly due to the information filtered by politics and media, we do not always have an eye for the other side of the coin and the historical background. But there are limits. You don't invade a country of 44 million people to subdue it, you don't drive 3 million people to flee, and you don't bomb their homes. Annexing, making Russia "great" again and later appearing in the history books is Putin's real motive. The fact that thousands of Russian speakers died is actually a nice bonus, but if that had not happened he would have found or manufactured something else. Putin really does fit in the list of Stalin, Hitler, Pol-Pot and contypes.