This is a lenghty post on Sunday, and somehow Sundays tend to coincide with my best days to finalize novelette-sized schizo ramblings thoughts. Assuming there’s a future for this format, this is BSP#1, Big Sunday Post number one.
Why would Sweden want to be part of NATO? To be (or move up) on the Russian nuclear target list? Russia obviously can’t conquer even a next door neighbor, let alone Sweden. Unless Putin gets a self-replicating robot army, Russia can’t repaint the map of Europe, as Russia is a two generation-long loser in a demographic war. Russia can only hurt, but can’t keep. It lacks the excess, quality warm bodies to do so. Bangladesh has more able young man to be boots on the ground than Russia.
Command and Conquer: Red Alert! More like Adult and Diaper.. fart noise(?). No bladder Control or ability to Conquer. Return to Castle Alzheimer. Return to Castle Alzheimer 2: No Recollection. Return to… Methyl of Alcohol: Khrushchyovka Staircase Assault Tom Clancy’s Retirement Plan.
There are more unborn, emigrated or prematurely dead Russians on that chart, missing since the mid-80s than their losses in WWII. (We can assume that the data is corrected for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, otherwise the 1991 drop would be 40+ million just for losing Ukraine alone.)
Nigeria’s population has just exceeded 200 million, the plurality of those must be children, but wait 5-10 years and you have a lot of able young Nigerians; wait 5-10 years and Russia will have a lot more decrepit pensioners and even emptier kindergartens. Hypersonic missiles can do a lot of damage, but they can’t hold ground, they can’t conquer.
It’s not just Russia, it’s all of Eastern Europe
Neither can the Ukrainians, who now have to deal with an even greater emigration than their peactime drain of the young and able was; whatever the outcome of this war, Ukraine won’t be an attractive place to settle in.
Some dissident Russian nationalists claim that Putin wants to create an empire, therefore Russian demographics don’t matter to him, he’ll just import warm bodies who wish to be part of the meme. If this is Putin’s goal, his meme is not very attractive to begin with, and multikulti, so far, seems to weaken national unity. Western Europe doesn’t even deny this effect, they’re kind of proud of it, or were, until this February. Pleasure-chasing individualism is attractive, while it’s offered, but by definition it’s not something the takers would be willing to make sacrifices for.
A long as you have a high TFR, you can lose a war, get bombed, get gassed, you’re still winning the long game (see: any conflict in the Middle East), you nation, your people have a future. Even if you happen to be without a country at the moment (see: Kurds). If you have a low TFR, you can conquer the whole World, but your empire won’t last. The locals can just wait out your demographic implosion and gain independence, without ever firing a shot.
Within Eastern Europe, conquest by shooting war is a demographic impossibility.
The Great Post-Soviet Demographics War (1985-2100)
In the current shooting war, two of the biggest losers in the Great Post-Soviet Demographics war are fighting each other, while other big losers contemplate how to get a win out of it. It’s a shitshow.
You can only secure a win by willing to exist harder than the others. In Eastern Europe, “Make love not war!” is the true imperialist’s call to arms.
The only practical way to occupy a territory for good is by having an army of children to call it home, not by keeping foreign-bred boots on the ground. Russia kind of understood this, as their claim for the special operation was the ethnic Russians living on Ukrainian soil. It’s the same reason the Baltics can’t sleep well, having to coexist with all that possible, future casus beli. However, as long as you’re losing the demographics war, you’re imploding; any war for territory, at home or abroad, is doomed to fail.
The incident in Transcarpathia
I don’t need to tell you about Transcarpathia, you’ve all became instant experts on Ukraine overnight in late February. I get the impression that I know less about that place, which was right next door, all my life, than some pit mommy from Ohio with a blue-yellow flag in her Twitter bio. I’m sure she does, but I might still be able to provide some insight on top of your vast knowledge, esteemed Slavic studies professors of the internet.
Bomb the Russki! - a game for the whole family
I have a concept for this holiday season: it’s a board game, the center piece is electronic, it speaks and does basic voice recognition (runs on 2 AA batteries, not included).
The goal is to climb the hierarchy in the USG, starting as an intern at an LNG export firm to eventually become Secretary of State.
The game will text-to-speak a random place name, either from Ukraine or Russia (fifty-fifty), and the players, depending on their gut feeling deep geographic knowledge have to decide whether it’s one from the bad side or the good one, by either shouting “Bomb the Russki!” or “Slava Ukraini!”
A sub-game involves Hunter Biden going from place to place to get meth, and you have to find him before he becomes collateral damage. He’s only hiding in Ukraine, so if you know your geography, you can avoid being responsible for accidentally killing him. That would put a dent in your career, Jack!
The center piece starts playing the midi version of Lawyers, Guns and Money louder and louder as you’re getting closer to him. Bomb the place that he just previously visited to get a bonus for destroying evidence, but be careful!
So in Transcarpathia (The westernmost part of Ukraine, former Hungarian clay), in Munkács (formerly Hungarian city), this Thursday (not 1933), Ukrainian nationalists did a shocking, or in their frame a fairly reasonable action: removing a Hungarian symbol and replacing it with a Ukrainian one.
It’s a Hungarian mythical bird on top of a (formerly Hungarian3) castle.
In a sudden decision, the Municipal Council of Munkács removed the iconic statue of Turul from the castle and replaced it with the triple trident of the Ukrainian coat of arms.
The sculpture was simply sawed off its pedestal in a barbaric manner, with the bird's talons still on the column, while the nearly one-tonne work of art was thrown into the moat. All this was done with lightning speed in a country where a simple pothole can take months to repair.4
Wait why is a Hungarian castle in Ukraine in the first place?
The answer to the eternal question of the Butthurt Belt, whose historic clay who’s trampling on, in every case boils down to demographics: once this territory was part of this nation, but then the ethnic group in the region representing the original nation became a minority, or vanished altogether, either through a long, protracted decline (most of Greater Hungary), or overnight by being put on trains, urged by bayonets (Kaliningrad), and the ownership was transferred to the new, dominant group.
Wars can redraw borders, but in order for those borders to last, the new map needs to be downstream of demographics. East and West Germany reunified without a hitch, as far as ethnic tension and outsider claimants are concerned.
Any map redrawing that ignores demographics must therefore either needs to imply or be followed up by ethnic cleansing. (See: Kosovo, but really, see any border change just within our lifetimes, let alone the past century).
Transcarpathia used to be Hungarian, but it won’t be Hungarian again any time soon. If it becomes so, it won’t became through war. It can also become Polish, or Inuit. Whoever can become a dominant ethnic group there will have the most powerful claim (See: Tibet).
How did Munkács go minority-Hungarian? That’s another demographic war’s result, the Post-Ottoman one. Once the Turks left, the multi-ethnic race to repopulate the Carpathian Basin began. The end result matches the post-WWI borders pretty well, any discrepancy is usually at the expense of Hungarian enclaves stuck in neighboring countries.
Look up the ethnic distribution in our region if you want to go wild on the topic, I myself received a lifetime dose of dwelling on past injustices against Hungarians, so this substack will be a refuge from that spiritual cancer.
Meet the Russkies
What happened at that (formerly) Hungarian castle this week is barbaric, chauvinistic, but not surprising at all. It’s as delicate as anything a Russki does. To us, all those people are the same. We would have trouble winning the board game proposed above. Before any Westerner, offended on the Ukrainians’ behalf starts to lecture us about their deep knowledge on Kyiv or whatever the new name of Kiev is and its difference from Moscow, I must object, as gently as possible. (Other Hungarians might not be as gentle).
Unlike most of you lot — terminally online Twitter people in the West — wehave first hand experience with them: they came as Soviets, and they were indistinguishable. We called them Russkies then. Then we’ve spent half a century in forced proximity, which should be plenty of time for nuances to be noticed setting Russians, Belorussians or Ukrainians apart, yet none surfaced. They remained alien and homogenous to us, so we still call them Russkies. Their current cousin war doesn’t change that. All that’s barbaric about a Russian is present in a Ukrainian and vice versa.
A familiar tone
If this single action doesn’t convince you that they’re an unsavory bunch, remember the tone that their diplomats use: it’s rough, it’s dirty, they’ll tell anyone to fuck off in an instant, and slam their shoe on the table when they demand something, which is everything, immediately. Not really the manners you would expect from a nation pleading for help. What country does it remind you of most?
“But-but they’re at war! You can’t expect them to be diplomatic!”
Yeah, maybe in the beginning, when they were panicking, niceties became secondary, although I don’t recall former Yugoslavian nations telling their neighbors to go fuck themselves when they needed help to fight against Belgrade. At this point, Ukraine’s high-level foreign communication is as unrestrained and as subtle towards any perceived slight as Kanye West’s, just before he was banned from Twitter. At the tiniest sign that someone isn’t a 100% dedicated fanboy of their cause, when they notice that someone isn’t clapping as hard as they’re supposed to, they immediately go death con 3. At this point, they’re supposed to be winning, yet their tone is getting ever more outrageous, so you can’t write it off as panic induced straightforwardness. What happens if they “win”? Romania was supposed to be the Eric Cartman of Eastern Europe, now Kiev’s behavior makes Bucharest look like it might actually have been the Paris of the East all this time after all.
Romanians do like to falsify history, everyone in Hungary know this because it’s aimed to erase ours, focusing on Transsylvania, which is a 30,000 year old Romanian clay. Fuck it, make it 50,000 years, why not. Due to this, we treat falsifying history with contempt, as a petty and barbaric act.
Everyone does this though, all around us, not just the Romanians, we’re just less aware. Everyone except us: thanks to our Hungarophobe intelligentsia, there’s no place in our official history for grandeur, only for guilt. Credit’s due to those fuckers for once, for elevating us above our primitive neighbors!
Mainstream Hungarian history is cold, self-critical and cynical. Injustices accepted as fait accompli, nothing to see there, acknowledge and move on. Somewhat unpleasant, but it gives you clarity, and a clear consciousness. We do sleep well, better than most in the Butthurt Belt.
No fake heroes, no stolen valor weigh our identity down. It is what it is, we are who we are, good and bad, big or small. Even remembering certain national tragedies is suspicious and déclassé to the intellectuals. A bit like how the Germans are with their past; identity-wise it’s unhealthy to some extent, but it helps to set you apart from the Action Slavs. Whenever any helter skelter gets near the region, our brains don’t suffer from the red fog that descends on theirs.
God bless our self-hating intellectuals, even if they reject Him!
You newfound adoration from afar of Ukrainians is just as misguided as someone loving bear-riding, hypersonic Putin. You want to divide everyone into Russophile or Russophobe; pro-Ukraine or pro-Russia; we just want their oil and gas, without much love or hate for either.
A parable about the wisdom of entangling yourself, an outsider, in a conflict of insiders. About the shortcomings of progressive moral absolutism. About many things.
The pipelines come from Russia through Ukraine, so you see, from our perspective, it comes from the Russkies. We never looked at those pipes as if they’re transiting a mythical fairy (aryan) Slav Switzerland once they’ve departed the dirty, Real Russia further east. The only mythical thing about Ukraine was their baffling ability to be more dysfunctional than certain African countries.
“But-but the Kiyv Pride! They celebrated it, in the subway! Isn’t that progressive? Doesn’t that set them apart?”
Nigga, if Khaddafi was still alive, he’d be leading the Tripoli Pride if that’s what it takes to stay on the good side of the US, meanwhile the Libyans who get in his way would keep going missing in the desert, per usual.
Everyone knows what the baizuo wants to see. That shit is for export. The ugly, genocidal cahuvinism that resulted in vandalizing that sculpture: that’s the real thing, that’s for domestic consumption. Maybe a message to Hungarians as well, approved by America, the message being fuck you or something (a bit redundant to be honest, we get it, but thanks, again!).
It’s not a new message, not even for the bronze bird of our story:
The Turul statue of the castle was erected in 1896, as one of the seven millennium monuments. The Czechoslovak authorities dismantled the monument in 1924, and the SovietRed Army, which marched into the countryside, melted down the almost one-tonne bronze statue in 1945. A copy of the statue was made by the sculptor Mihály Belény. The restoration project was fully financed by Hungarian-American businessman Imre Pákh in 2008.5
The Ukrainians are repeating what others have done before. It’s nasty, but it’s a familiar nasty. This is what you get when you lose the demographic war. Hungarians, in Transcarpathia, were already beaten by 1896. Ukrainians are just the current chauvinists in a long line of chauvinists controlling that region who remind us of this fact. It’s nasty, it’s not 21st century, it’s not Europeanne, but it’s nothing to get angry about.
As you see from the quote above, the Russkies are no worse than what the Czechoslovaks used to be, not so long ago. I mean, used to act, when they had the opportunity, maybe they’re still just as nasty, they just lack the power and learned to be better at PR. Prague is so nice!
It’s not all bad though: we also have a very positive, empathic stance towards the Russkies, the former Soviets, Ukrainians and Russians alike, which overshadows the malignity of our — forcibly — shared 20th century history. Quite magnanimous of us to let bygones be bygones (tapping myself on the back 😎), and it deserves its own, future article. It’s also worth noting, demonstrated by our treatment of Ukrainian refugees, that no one considers Ukrainian people responsible for any of this mess: they, just like the little people throughout history, are there to bear the cost of decisions made by a select few, not the blame. The only anger I’ve ever encountered towards individual Ukrainians in Hungary was aimed at “refugees” coming in luxury SUVs and behaving, well, like Russkies with money do. Hungary, for all its faults, left the stage of societal anarchy behind where that raw, boneheaded intimidation tactic once granted power to sociopathic thugs.
Russkies never had the fortune to experience that in their history. Their monarchs were replaced by communists. Western tinkers will remind you that the lack of experience in liberal democracy is partly to blame for Russians falling for Putinism, or the Belorussians accepting a tractor mechanic as their absolute ruler. I agree, but don’t forget, they’re not the only post-Soviet people to lack such experience. Transcarpathia, the Westernmost region with the most potential to integrate Westward, judging by the actions of the Munkács city council is clearly not on the path to become the Netherland of the Carpathians6. Don’t be fooled by pride parades and Star Wars t-shirts: in real life, in Ukraine, the nastiest, old school Balkan chauvinism is allowed to run wild.
Encouraged even, but I don’t want to go too far, I want to be proven wrong, I want Kiev to admonish them for this incident. Munkács is not an independent city state. Based on all the love Kiev gets from Western progressives, they surely wouldn’t want this fiasco, right?
Ambassador Cool Kid
Should I blaime the local Ukrainian nationalists who did this? No, their country is at war, and Kiev is in absolute control. If Kiev didn’t approve of this, they wouldn’t dare to play international politics at the expense of a neighboring nation (NATO and EU member).
So do I blame Kiev? Since 2014, Kiev can’t even wipe its own ass without the State Department’s knowledge and approval, so no, I won’t hold them responsible either.
I blame David Pressman, the new US ambassador to Hungary.
Who is not the State Department, and not even assigned to Ukraine, and didn’t have anything to do with this particular incident. However, he was sent here to perform a software upgrade — quite a few, we’re a bit behind — on our Progress. To do so, he showed up, all hip and cool and forthcoming, completely indifferent to what his colleagues are doing a country over: stamping approval on the ethnic cleansing of Hungarian minorities, while he acts in Budapest as if everything’s alright and all Hungarians need is some Obama era entertainment.
David Pressman is the closest guy we have to the decision makers who let Ukrainian nationalists go Balkan on our people and culture in their Slavic startup project, so before he does any more skateboarding with a boombox to a sick hip-hop beat from 1989, he should answer for Washington’s decisions. (Answer what? What’s the question? I don’t know, “How dare you?”, I guess. If it’s good enough for Greta, it’s good enough for me.)
How do you do, fellow 90s kids?
America has its stamp of approval on this incident, as on every severe action against Hungarians in Ukraine since 2014. A country in Ukraine’s position wouldn’t fuck with a NATO and EU member’s minority this way, unless someone higher up greenlit the action. Who else could that be, the Vatican?
Don’t let Ambassador Cool Kid off so easy! He wanted the attention, so ask him the though questions!
But hurry, because the window to commit atrocities against Hungarian minorities is closing. Not because any justice is incoming: soon there won’t be any left in Ukraine to molest.
Why aren’t You there?
Here’s a question to all the angry Hungarian nationalists out there: would you stay in Transcarpathia to represent Our old claim on that land, on the city of Munkács, the castle above it and that inanimate bird, or would you say “fuck this” and emigrate to your nation state that is right next door? I know the answer, you know the answer, but let’s review the Human Centipede of Power that leads to Transcarpathia to understand your place on the world stage, should you chose to stay:
Lizard People from Tau Ceti7 => Joe Biden’s reanimated corpse => US State Department => Glow-in-the-dark mormons staffing the Kiev black site => Ukrainian government => Transcarpathian local government => Ultranationalist thugs with a licence to go Balkan on minorities => minorities [you are here]
Yeah, I would leave too.
“But-but the gloriovs statve, Big Hungry clay eternal uwu 💪🏿🇭🇺”
Fuck that sculpture. They can melt it down for buttplugs for all I care, because they are losers, the biggest losers in fact in the Post-Soviet Demographics War. If the shooting war ended tomorrow with a Ukrainian victory, they would still be Ukrainians: it would be the return of the same disfunction that haunted them before the war, the same bleak societal atrophy to look forward to, and any money pumped in to help would only make the rich local predators even richer. They attack us by toppling that sculpture, just like Putin’s cruise missiles attack them, the same impotent rage on a smaller scale, two doomed nations lashing out in anger. The trident that replaces the Turul is not celebrating anything, there’s nothing to celebrate. It’s a depressing gesture. Four days after the Russian missile salvo against Ukraine, the council of Munkács decides to deface a Hungarian symbol in retaliation, even though we have less to do with it than the Lizard People from Tau Ceti. It’s sad and pathetic. We’ll still help the region and any Ukrainian in need, but the evolved, capital Europeans in us we’ll do so from a condescending position, shaking our heads at the barbarity of the Russkies. Good job sawing off a statue and making yourselves appear as the dumb, primitive fucks we’re all so familiar with.
It’s not your strength that you have proven, it’s any illusion about you being different from the worst aspects we would expect from Russkies you’ve just just disproved. If Putin controlled all of Ukraine and thus Transcarpathia, and came under delusions of historical revisionism, that insane Monkey Napoleon Hitler, the very same incident would have happened, approved by the same council members, now being pro Soviet Restoration, or whatever Putin wishes them to be. So why should we care which barbarian is being barbaric over there? I’m happy that we can discard an obviously false illusion, because I prefer clarity above all.
Clarity above delusion, clarity above all
This post might sound blunt to some readers, but I’m still more sensitive than Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister. I’m no foreign minister, and I have even less blame for this whole mess, so if you like Kuleba, and I have to give it to him, he’s a straight shooter, then you shouldn’t be upset by a Hungarian also being a straight shooter. No need to agree, just appreciate honesty.
Regarding Orban’s recent German interview, chock-full of taboos and real talk, some Western talking heads objected to it even taking place, that allowing such conversations might hurt the Ukrainians.
If you’re one of those, worry not: if Kiev feels like they’re hurt by anything the West does (save for Washington), they will let you know, on the highest level, in a crystal clear message. They don’t need your advocacy.
Baby has an online, government-sanctioned kill list, baby doesn’t need you to be step mommy if someone makes baby cry.
(I think it’s cap bussin fr fr btw. Every country in Eastern Europe should have an official kill list. It’s the coolest thing about the Clintons.)
Maybe that’s one positive aspect of this conflict, Ukrainian diplomatic language becoming normalized, a general return of real talk. You all seem to like old school real talk. So do I! If you want more, subscribe, cyka blyat! It’s free, you assfaced whoredogs! May your daughters marry Romanians, if you don’t type your email and hit that motherkurwa button:
Get yourself on the coolest East European kill list! It’s free!
Us, Hungarians, shouldn’t be upset. If Transcarpathia was as Hungarian as East Germany was German, it would have become part of Hungary already in 1991, without a hitch. It wouldn’t have stopped being part of Hungary in the first place. In any case, it would be, by default, Hungarian, bird statue or not, and any border temporarily separating it from us would need active and unwelcome enforcement. But it’s not, demographics say so.
It’s both Ukrainian and also up for grabs; just like any place in Hungary, anything anyone in East Europe has today; it’s all game in the great Post-Soviet Demographics War, and the winners will be those whose descendants inhabit the future.
A dying nation at war with a dying nation replaces the symbol of a third dying nation. Who’s the winner?
There are Ruthenains living there, maybe they’ll end up inheriting it, but I assume their TFR is in the shitter too. All of Eastern Europe is spiralling down the toilet.
David Pressman wants progress? From the Czechs through Latvia and down to Cyprus, a monster still lurks: the opportunistic ethnic cleanser mindset. Hungary has a chance to present progress to the West by discarding the opportunity to meet this escalation.
Back to board games for an analogy: the Ukrainians, doing this old school, chauvinist provocation want to drag us back to square one: an invitation to regress back to the endless, East European Butthurt Cycle. A fatal distraction.
Do we still host the monster within us that is waiting for a time when the world isn’t looking, or even better, gives explicit permission to genocide those whose presence we find troubling? I want to believe that we’re beyond that. I see the Ukrainian provocation, and I refuse to engage. This post is a stoic as I ever get.
If you’re angry, you lose
That castle won’t stay Ukrainian forever, because Ukraine is dying out, just like the rest of us, if only a bit faster. It might become Inuit. If you’re a Ukrainian nationalist living in Munkács, enjoy looking up at your national trident while your young and capable leave to the West, never to come back.
Same for Russians: Putin launched a war to annex a few million extra pensioners. Genius. Greece and Spain gets that without a war, and they bring British and German pensions with them to pump into the local economy.
The Ukrainian nationalists are defacing something they’ve inherited without any merit. Just like the Russians, they only have an ability to destroy, not to conquer.
Hungarians erecting a mighty reminder of their past glory in 1896, and the Ukrainians toppling it in 2022, viewed from the 22nd century
The right answer to this “outrageous provocation”
You’re a Hungarian nationalist and want to take action? Do it in the bedroom, and make it count! At least that’s a positive attitude, unlike whining non-stop about past injustices. Do it well enough, and we can conquer all of Eastern Europe, if the rest keep having a low fertility rate. In two generations we can just walk in, plant our flag, and ignore the angry, old locals, the few young ones they’ll still have won’t even bother turn off their VR Porn Metaverse implants.
Your grandchildren will be able to put Turuls everywhere!
On the other hand, if we lose the demographics war, no one will be left to care. I already started not caring, and will keep not caring until that mothafukin’ TFR goes above replacement rate.
If Hungary was a dark green patch on that map, our neighbors would be shitting bricks now. The whole of Europe would. The future would be more Hungarian than not. Conquest requires no hypersonic wunderblyat, just to multiply like rabbits.
So, to end on a positive note, my message to all the Hungarian nationalists out there: stop caring about provocations abroad, stay home and go fuck yourselves!
Update: Gallup, October 18: ”Support for continuing to fight is stronger in regions farthest from the ground war and weaker in parts of Ukraine where people are closest to the action.”
It’s hard to read your excellent analysis when I encounter your appraisal of the Butthurt Belt and drop the phone because I have lolled involuntarily.
“The answer to the eternal question of the Butthurt Belt, whose historic clay who’s trampling on, in every case boils down to demographics…”
This is glorious and also true. PS Kanye did nothing wrong. Regards, Le Noticer