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?

  • OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    6 days ago

    Russia hosts the most Ukrainian refugees out of any other country. If Ukrainians wholly viewed Russia as the problem would they really move into Russia? The reality is that there’s 2 types of Ukrainians: those who see Ukraine as a continuation of the Ukrainian SSR, and a brotherly people to the Russians, and those who see Ukraine as a new nation that has been liberated from the clutches of the evil Russians, and can now forge ahead, pure and independent, as Bandera envisioned. Your friend’s Ukrainian friends are likely of the second type.

    The problem with your friend, like many other people, doesn’t really understand the complexity of the issues and doesn’t know much about what’s going on, besides what they are being told by mainstream media. And it’s very likely they instictively trust mainstream media. By nature, humans are open to adapting the first opinion they hear about something, and then they become really defensive when other contradictory opinions come in.

    Trying to convince people of something is a very slow process, and it doesn’t happen while you are around. All you can do is present them with the evidence, give them an easy-to-follow rundown of the nuances, and explain why their opinion is uninformed. Patience and calm is actually more helpful in getting them to open up and listen to you. If you get angry, they get angry, and nobody can be convinced of anything while angry. During your discussion, they are still very unlikely they’ll actually turn around their opinion. If you did a good job presenting your view, then there’s a chance they’ll keep thinking about it. Eventually, they might do their own research. And then they might decide they agree with you, or not.

    A nice way to induce this self-assessment of opinions held, is to ask questions. When they tell you something that’s blatantly false, ask them questions about it. This helps to lower their defensiveness, and helps them realize they probably shouldn’t be so certain about what they heard.

    That’s the only advice I can give. Don’t start these discussions expecting to convince anybody else. Start them because you want to discuss what’s going on. Don’t hang up on things you disagree. Just use it as a jumping point to discuss the situation further. If you are lucky, then maybe you’ll turn them around. But that’s not something you should worry about while holding the discussion. It just makes things frustrating.