Marxist-Tolkienist-Zelenskyist 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇵🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

because you know, if there's one thing Russia needs, it's A Guy To Idolise Uncritically

like believe it or not almost no one among the descendants of the White Guard Emigrés got political power in Russia after 1991 either

the greatest folly of this strategy is of course expecting the west to intervene in even a collapsing russia to install them lmao

Like many from Russia's neighbours, I disliked Navalny's views on a raft of things and regarded him as an insufficient break from Russian imperialism. But I respected his courage and decisiveness. What he did mattered even if it wasn't enough.

Navalnaya just gives press releases.

Continents are not equivalent to tectonic plates!!!!!!!!!

It's fucking not!!!!!

At least her husband constantly acted as a thorn in the regime's side however he could. She just waltzes around Western Europe giving pretend ted talks.

Leaving all else about the Navalnyye aside, way that she talks and behaves gives someone who loves attention, not someone who wants to lead a revolutionary change in Russian society.

a common feature in the old religion

It's really quite modern(ist), when you think about it. And probably why it failed, because that kind of social engineering is only possible with the tools of the modern state.

The reason they're so well-known for anti-Catholic persecution can also be seen in that light - the Goths were content for Arianism to remain an essentially cultural creed for themselves, but the Vandals proactively wanted to unify their population behind a new idea that would break ties with Rome.

The Goths, both east and west, were more content to allow their subject Romans to be Romans just as they were, pledged nominal allegiance to the Eastern Emperor, etc. The Vandals seemed much more proactively interested in actually enforcing a clean break with the past.

They are the most interesting post-Roman kingdom to me mainly because they seemed peculiarly concerned with what we might describe as actual nationbuilding as opposed to trying to not rock the boat too much.

See eg. Erastothenes's map

There was a narrow and a generic meaning

hey what the fuck. turns out the name "Lydia" is actually derived from historic Lydia, in Anatolia, of Herodotian fame?

it's an arbitrary term, there can be arbitrary discussions about its arbitrary boundaries innit

Look I'm sorry but leaving aside all weird cultural nitpicks at the end of the day the Taurus Mountains are far more of a real geographical barrier than the Aegean

i honestly think that the main reason besides for racism why we don't consider anatolia part of europe is literally just being too sunk-cost married to that ancient greek definition of Asia as "Asia Minor and everything beyond"

There were a lot of outposts like that for factions on the other side of the Med in the Middle Ages. Ceuta and Melilla are reminders of this I guess

I enjoyed visiting Eze and reading the info plates about how even when Provence writ large fell into Frankish hands Arab pirates had just perched themselves on that hill and wouldn't be dislodged.

And in the Canary Islands, it is fairly common for Canarian nationalists (who are all Spanish speakers natively themselves due to historic forced assimilation) to say they are just assimilated Guanches

Andalucian nationalists apparently semi-regularly convert to Islam for nationalist reasons

You probably can't /revive/ it as such but you can certainly synthesise your existing cultural norms with those of a dead culture to produce a new third thing

As a complete rejecter of the notion that culture is genetic, I must recognise the possibility of assimilating into a dead culture

if the Russians of Kaliningrad declare they are in fact the heirs of Herkus Mantas, start speaking Old Prussian and keeping pet grass snakes, I will count this as an absolute win and welcome them as Baltic brothers long lost

i fully endorse it btw, both because i am a carthaboo and more importantly because i like the idea nothing ever really dies

it's funny but every regime that has ever ruled what is now tunisia thinks carthage is so cool and carries such panache that they claim succession to it even if it's sort of vaguely far-fetched. the vandals used to mint coins saying "felix carthago" and "in year x of the redemption of Carthage"

maybe he thought st augustine was bosniak during tito's era

It was more specifically the phrase "ethnically Muslim" that made me lose my mind