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?
Dat was voor mij reden om een aantal copy-pasters eens te vragen of zij die "[naam verwijderd]" hadden gecheckt. Al eerder waren de 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 het nu dan anders dan toen met Covid-19, mogen we de waarheid nu wel geweld aandoen in de strijd voor de goede zaak? Ik vind het teleurstellend om te zien hoe mensen, van welke kant dan ook, zich altijd weer vastklampen aan een narratief en zelfs openlijk toegeven het met het waarheidsgehalte niet zo nauw te nemen "als er maar goede dingen in staan". Dat betekent: "als het in mijn kraam te pas komt". Mensen beseffen niet dat ze op die manier daadwerkelijk op oorlog aansturen.
Kuipers lies for the good cause. Do you?
Dat oorlogstwijfelaars op deze manier expliciet aangeven mee te willen werken aan het verspreiden van oorlogspropaganda, kan misschien wat begrip wekken voor wat er in de Corona-strijd heeft plaatsgevonden. Daar is op dezelfde wijze een beeld geschetst dat niet waarheidsgetrouw was maar wel geloofwaardig, meelijwekkend, schokkend en noem maar op. Kortom: er zijn leugens verspreid om een ideologie door te voeren. Totalitaire ideologen (wij kunnen dat ook "deugmensen" noemen) hebben daar geen enkel probleem mee.
De coronajunta die de leugens verspreidde, zoals Kuipers onlangs nog voor de Eerste Kamer, wist dat het leugens waren, net zoals de copy-pasters op social media er nu niet om malen of het bericht wel authentiek is. "Maakt het uit dan?" was het letterlijke verweer van een van de posters. Ja, het onderscheid tussen feit en fictie maakt uit, wat niet wil zeggen dat fictie niet leerzamer kan zijn dan feiten. Het maakt net zoveel uit als dat het dagboek van Anne Frank niet echt van een joods meisje zou blijken te zijn maar in 1946 door W.F. Hermans is geschreven, diens best bewaarde geheim. Als hetzelfde boek als fictionele dagboekroman was uitgegeven zou het inmiddels vergeten zijn. Dat boek ontleent zijn kracht toch echt aan 'waar gebeurd', aan 'echt bestaan', aan authenticiteit.
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 - at least 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.
"Zoals velen van jullie wellicht weten, is mijn moeder geboren in de Sovjet-Unie, in Oekraïne, waar mijn omvangrijke familie een mix is van Russen en Oekraïners. Ik voel mij hierom geroepen mijn visie op de ontwikkelingen in Oekraïne te geven.
With my Russian/Ukrainian roots, I love both peoples dearly, brother peoples that mixed with each other for centuries. If you asked my Ukrainian-born mother whether she felt more Russian or Ukrainian, she would answer: 'That's a strange question that I don't have an answer to. There is a difference in our language, our music and dances, 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 solidarity, 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 okay 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 processions were organized by neo-Nazis with slogans such as '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 cries of those animals stacked on top of each other, and then those great ominous silences... Mind you: there was only small-scale livestock farming in Ukraine before the land fell into the possession of Western grabbers. Over the past 8 years, Ukraine has become a part of the West. 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, over the past 8 years I have hardly heard from 'my' party about violations of people's rights and other essential issues that are just as important for the Netherlands as they are 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.
Reacties met bedreigingen, scheldpartijen en kreten als 'Alle Russen dood' zal ik wissen. Daarvan heb ik al teveel ontvangen in mijn inbox. Net als vele in Nederland wonende Russen."
[image deleted]
Well, when you look at things like this... can't you speak of anti-Russian sentiment? Or that they made it happen? Or that they never stood up for Russians but did stand up for Ukrainians - if that means extra NATO territory?
[image deleted]
Alleen al het afbeelden van een lachende Poetin zien we al als Pro-Poetinlandverraad. Dat signaleer ik tenminste bij mijzelf. Er zullen lezers zijn die dat dan ook weer van mij vinden. "Een leuke foto van Poetin, gatverdamme". Kun je nagaan hoe bevooroordeeld we zijn - of geïndoctrineerd.
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.
