World News

38969 readers

2600 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

285

In Belarus, the native language is vanishing as Russian takes prominence (apnews.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When school started this year for Mikalay in Belarus, the 15-year-old discovered that his teachers and administrators no longer called him by that name. Instead, they referred to him as Nikolai, its Russian equivalent.

What’s more, classes at his school — one of the country’s best — are now taught in Russian, not Belarusian, which he has spoken for most of his life.

Belarusians like Mikalay are experiencing a new wave of Russification as Moscow expands its economic, political and cultural dominance to overtake the identity of its neighbor.

It’s not the first time. Russia under the czars and in the era of the Soviet Union imposed its language, symbols and cultural institutions on Belarus. But with the demise of the USSR in 1991, the country began to assert its identity, and Belarusian briefly became the official language, with the white-red-white national flag replacing a version of the red hammer and sickle.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Fun fact, cultural erasure is a form of genocide.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Oof, France has been committing genocide for hundreds of years then lol.

It has been trying to eradicate all regional languages outside of Parisian France for a long time now and still refuses to sign the European Charter for Minority and Regional Languages. Only recently did they start recognizing them and not banning the use of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France

https://guides.loc.gov/french-literature-and-language-learning/regional-minority-languages-france

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

OK, now do China.

I kid, I kid.

They remove the people: no people, no language.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I mean China definitely does it.

Tibeten "re-education" anyone? They stole the playbook for Tibet right from america dealing with native Americans, but with a little less outright killing. Uyghurs is less language genocide and more actual genocide and concentration/slave camps.

America did it and does it with native americans. Americans did it with literally every single group that came into the country with their whole "English isn't our official language but you better speak English or be ostracized" through its history.

Literally every nation has tried at one point.

I am pretty sure language erasure is not "a form of genocide", but "a component of recognizing genocide" or something that states thag commit genocide commonly do. I have looked at a bunch of definitions and genocide definition seems to always involve actually killing people:

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.[3]

My point was that every nation does it simply because of nationalism and ease of administration. Governments already run bad enough without having to keep 25 running translations of every document.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

France's historic language policy is certainly highly problematic yes. Although the point is not genocide but class warfare and/or colonialism, not that it's much of an improvement.

And now do Belgium. French is the language of the elites (the monarchy and, historically, the aristocracy and bourgeoisie) but also a minority regional language. Is Flanders banning French on public signage a form of oppression? I personally think it's stupid Flemish nationalism but I wouldn't call it oppression.

So how about we stop making blanket statements. Moscow's erasure of Belarusian identity is at least oppressive and imperialistic and follows a long history of oppression. IDK if that qualifies as genocide (IMHO that undermines the gravity of something like the Holodomor), but something not strictly being genocide doesn't make it unimportant.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

First of all, great job whatabouting. Second of all, yes, that is a form of genocide.