Because it's a containment site when compared to the reach of the main players?
The main virtue of Gab is that by building, owning, and maintaining it's own infrastructure it's free. It's also relatively isolated, because that freedom has been used to not bend the knee to the app stores-- the ones which the lion's share of tech illiterate normies use to access social media.
Leaving anything up to Western Moralists isn't wise. 'Progressive' Western Moralism itself is a mistake. They can't even decide whether a child is a boy or a girl, ffs.
Snark aside, I appreciate your perspective on a region of the world I know little about.
Cheers.
Influence and control over who gets to speak in the 'public square' is something quite valuable when your ideology doesn't stand on it's own merits.
I wonder how much money Elon would have to spend to maintain a free corner of social media? I bet TPTB would rather destroy him than find out.
Spoliers ahead:
He's fighting the Banlog now.
Instead of falling into pit of obscurity, he makes a deal with the Banlog and returns-- Bandalf the Gay becomes Bandalf the Blight.
Things will get worse.
Consider yourself forewarned.
That's why I cited the Russian strategic needs, (which you ignore.) Sure, yap about international law not mattering-- I agree. International law is a fig leaf covering realpolitik. Always has been. Don't mistake me for saying otherwise.
Focus on what matters: the big floppy sausage of Russian needs and what they're willing to do to realize them, international law or no. There's no legal framework for Russia's actions outside of might makes right or mutually assured destruction.
A slow enough boil prevents the frog from leaving the pot.
Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, and Normalization-- one degree at a time.
I’m just wondering how long that degree of anarcho-tyranny can possibly last.
It will last until we've normalized heat to the point of being cooked.
You're correct. But as a temporary measure to stop people dumping Rubles, offering gold as an incentive is clever. As you say, whether that makes sense longer term is questionable.
Being cut off from a financial system that's actively internationalist and opposed to you isn't a negative if you're ultranationalist and have already accepted that those goods have too many strings attached.
It's a game of chicken, and honestly Russia can turn off the oil & gas pipelines next winter if they're still being locked out of the international marketplace. Germany will cry uncle faster than Russia goes bankrupt. Any move that gets them closer to that point, short term, is a win for them.
Arguably because the politically and culturally dominant force in the US is dual-national, rather than nationalists.
I don't need to say which nation.
You have to go pretty far back to get the US ruled by US nationalists. Teddy Roosevelt at least, IMHO.
'The Right' is an awful big tent, and (thinking about it) includes a lot of disillusioned/failed/exiled leftists. It's not surprising that there are a lot of leftist ideological points represented in that plurality ex-leftists who find themselves 'on the right'/'thrown in the pit with the rest of us' when the Overton Window slides left (again and again.)
Given the ideological scattering of anti-leftists, and the fractured nature of the right, is there even any way to stop this kind of ideological pollution? Can we even purity test when the only definition of Conservative or Rightist is relative to to the sliding of the Overton Window?
Part of me wonders what the world would look like if they didn't invade their neighbors and galvanize the world into war against them.
Yeah. How would the Nazis have failed internally, if they'd not been forced into collapse due to foreign factors? It's a question we'll never have a proper answer to, but worth asking. Here's another one: what would happen to the Third Reich after the power vacuum of Hitler dying? Interesting moot questions.
White South African immigrants blowing up the neologism "African-American" makes me smile.
Hyphenated-Americans were a mistake. They don't have dual loyalties, they have a primary ethnic loyalty, which comes before their loyalty to the US-- despite linguistic protestation to the contrary after the hyphen. If it weren't so, they'd be satisfied being just plain "American," as the rest of us are.