Hey, just made an account after lurking here for like a year or so. Anyway, I just got out of a rather exhausting conversation with some friends where the topic of Ukraine came up and I tried my best to give a reasonable overview of why people in Crimea/DPR/LPR would support joining Russia, complete with several sources on the brutality of the Ukrainian government in the years since Maidan. Almost immidiately I got hit with “Well I have Ukrainian friends who say that Russia is the problem.” I’ve noticed very often that people will trust what they’ve heard personally from people they know over any evidence you give them. My question is, has anyone found an effective way to get through to people who entirely base their stance on an issue on what the people they know personally have to say? How do you show someone that they need to look beyond what their token friend has to say and actually study the topic themselves?
Most of the time Ukraine is going to be a tough sell. If the rest of the group is not into the discussion its better to leave it alone and hope that your historical materialism trumps his story of having a ukrainian friend.
If you want to push back, point out their lack of information on the issue and his readiness to accept a biased view by turning it on its head.
If the group is into the discussion you can counter a dive into “anecdotal lived experience” by pulling the focus back to the grand scale. Ask about their opinions the usa’s wars on Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq? Ask them why they would believe there are no nazis in ukraine when they were told that by the same people who said there were WMDs in Iraq. Those same people also screamed about 40 decapitated babies on october 7th.
What about when the usa sold crack cocaine to americans to support the fascist contras in Nicaragua? or when they assisted the coup in Indonesia that lead to the mass slaughter of over a million people. What about when usa invaded Libya and turned it into a perpetual warzone with open air slave markets? What about all the african warlords that america trained that went on to commit mass murder?
Why would the people responsible for supporting every perpetrator of violent deaths in the last 80 years choose to be on the right side this one time? If usa ever cared about international justice, territorial integrity, and peace why are they funding a genocide in gaza?