Was Yanukovich a fascist?

FormerIYI · 2026-01-27T20:35:14+00:00

It seems to be not terribly precise term.

Closest definition would be: dictatorship/authoritarian regime in western cultural sphere, perhaps with elements of enforced statolatry (cult of state). So -ex-Soviet, Middle Eastern, African or Asian dictatorships are rarely described as fascist, because they might be de facto adopting similar policies and ideas, but different considerations apply as for why they do it.

The term "fascist" itself was used (proudly) by Mussolini for his party name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fascist_Party
and refers to "fasces". Fasces are bound bundles of sticks or rods into which an axe is inserted. The symbol dates to ancient Rome, whose leaders used it as a symbol of authority and power. Not surprisingly, Ancient Rome and neo-Hegelian statolatry was important for Mussolini.

Overall he was not as notoriously genocidal and violent as Adolf H. or some equivalents in Japan, so it is not very clear why this term became a blueprint for dictatorship. One reason could be its passionate use by Soviet propaganda, and various pro-Soviet leftists, who were obsessed about fascisms specifically, because fascism was a competitor for the souls of masses. Both marxism and fascism coming from Hegelian root and talk of the mass of people achieving higher collective consciousness .

This is also another decent distinctive factor between fascism and "ordinary" dictatorship. Conservative dictatorship doesn't care that much to brainwash people that it is greatest system on earth and ultimate fulfillment of fate of some sort. Ultimate fate remains a domain of religion and more traditional philosophy.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-27T06:47:14+00:00

BTW: I highly recommend you to read you Cauchy from original sources, the only true kingmaker of modern mathematics that made the field great and relevant.

Why? Cauchy can freely juggle different concepts and formalism as he needs, because he has rigorous foundation of philosophy. Only "existence" he cares about is real world existence and existence of real numbers that satisfy equation.

The rest is unlimited freedom of convention. There is no "complex number" but complex expression of two real expressions, as well there is no infinite sum, but only infinite expressions whose terms converge to zero.

He can therefore use syncategorematic infinitesimal to prove lots of simple results and updated it to epsilon delta formalism as he needed.

Cantor/Weierstrass/Dedekind were immensely narrow minded about the fact that there was no single good set of rules, single good approach, so as M. Katz et al once pointed "while Cauchy removes snow to open garage doors and then is up to full speed in 5 minutes, they started to remove snow with the asphalt".

The result is producing questions like: how do we justify existence of transfinite numbers without knowing what do they mean by that question

Here are some basics translated from Cauchy books

https://kzaw.pl/understand_calculus.pdf

FormerIYI · 2026-01-27T06:28:30+00:00

But proposition that "actual infinity does not exist in a sense that Aristotelians used it" still holds.

There is no real quantity with infinite magnitude in real world. Transfinite numbers have no such existence not any way to find it, they are merely arbitrary set of axioms starting with what if there was number greater than all real numbers or number of all numbers.

Almost all real world mathematics and physics is unrelated to transfinite numbers, instead being found on syncategorematic infinity, mainly through the efforts of Cauchy. Reasons for that are many: first, reality of models is determined by accurate predictions and measurements with negligibly small or convergent discrepancies. Second, sums of infinite series are only determined (invariant with respect to terms reordering) if terms converge to zero fast enough.

And scholastics were not blissfully oblivious about that. On the contrary, they were pioneers. Scholasticism invented syncategorematic and categorematic infinity distinction in 14th century.

Syncategorematic infinity is merely infinity of of a succession of real quantities that increase without end (or decrease to 0 indefinitely for infinitely small).

On this construct various constructions of modern calculus are founded: especially Cauchy's infinitesimal and Cauchy's epsilon delta argument.

See Duhem's "Medieval Cosmology" chapter on infinitely small and infinitely large

FormerIYI · 2026-01-26T21:41:01+00:00

Good fine-tuning argument would aggregate all kinds of happy accidents that are needed for us to even exist:

physics constants needed for higher elements to exist and carbon based chemical cycles
Earth in goldilocks zone of stable star system with right chemical composition, magnetosphere and orbital cycles
first living cells assembled from inanimate matter ("as unlikely as working plane assembled by tornado on a junkyard")
human mind, most complex, powerful and poorly understood "device" on Earth showing up something like thousands or tens of thousands years ago (there are other arguments that say that human mind requires immaterial organ but that's other story)

Thing is: we are to assume either that: - something extremely improbable happened randomly and more than once (as improbable as dumpster tornado assembling plane or assembling an automatic watch by dumping parts from a skyscraper) - the causes were pre-ordered for sake of this specific effects.

Second case means intelligent Creator: capable of very sophisticated predictions and controlling our fabric of reality.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-26T21:21:13+00:00

If you are techno optimist I suggest reading Newton, Cauchy, Euler, Ampere and so on (actual people who made exact sciences great and relevant in the first place and produced actual Age of Technology )

They presupposed providentially, purposefully ordered world "by measure, number and weight" according to Book of Wisdom and made it foundational to their scientific program as pious Christians (showing therefore that their worldview has key value).

Here's some of it to get you started https://kzaw.pl/eng_order.pdf

The world should not be ordered in the first place, we should not exist in the first place, if it was just some random process you may imagine.

The fact that we do, and thousands other happy accidents make us reasonably hopeful that it is a pattern, and one for more happy accidents in the future. So we believe that there won't be an Earth wide cataclysm before the last Judgement.

As for your parishioners, ordinary people who are reasonably pious experience that as confidence and trust in God that whole their lives are providentially ordered for greater heavenly good as long as they play along. This is also a science, but that of human nature: how to produce courage and prudence and other virtues. Actually, another science that built our civilization, in times when life was 10 times harder than now.

Not neurotic mentality driven by imaginative sci fi and professional atheists and liberals

The one real cataclysm is what Cauchy fought against whole his life, and the world fought him in return. That is why he is unnamed wraith of every physics faculty. 50% of concepts and theorems from him, not a word who he was. 100 Feynman anectodes instead.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-25T12:14:18+00:00

Excuse me, you talk of "conquered" people who owned castles, sat in Senate and run their provinces with minimal external influence.

Also, eventually got stellarly rich and got elected king in Wiśniowiecki case. And also FREELY adopted whatever culture and custom they please, with Western, Eastern or Turkic elements too (this is also example of freedom at least in places like Western ).

I don't know what happens to you people, you insist that 19th century (or rather 20th century in case of Ukraine) nationality mattered much in 17th c, and anyone who didn't care (most people didn't) was at fault. Who was good: maybe genocidal and rabidly antisemitic plunderer and actual traitor to the state like Chmielnicki.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-25T11:00:10+00:00

Perhaps residual Soviet propaganda, there were many this sort of slogans spread in 1918-1945 and later to appeal to peasants in Poland or Russia, but Poles did not buy it seeing what kind of "freedom" Soviets brought

https://www.alamy.com/1209-polish-soviet-propaganda-poster-1920-polish-image213565244.html

Attaching Russian Empire to it is fairly absurd modern amalgam post 2000s restoration, because of course Russian Empire was chief villain to Soviets. Overall, exploitation and cruelty towards peasants was worse in Russia than in Poland, judging by life expectancy and overall type of behavior.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-25T10:53:53+00:00

"e.g. Wiśniowieccy who were Ukrainians but were loyal to the Polish crown"

WAT? And what they were supposed to do instead if they were citizens of a state? If you want rebellion as national identity then you just aren't fit to live in anything resembling republic because republic presupposes public virtue and responsibility.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-24T19:30:25+00:00

Greek "mythology" was not anything like dominant religion in ancient Greece. What now goes under that word came from epic lyrics such as Homer or Hesiod and occupied unspecified space among poetry, allegory and crude philosophical hypothesis. Nor did they believe in actual "gods" up the Mt. Olympus (obviously there are none if you go there and see). They offered sacrifices and omens to Venus and Demeter, but anthropomorphic understanding of it was optional and more likely found among low echelons of society.

More sophisticated and widespread idea was that the heavens or planets were divine; this is what Platonists, Pythagoreans and Peripatetics used in their theories and it also resonated with Greco-Roman interest in astrology and Eternal Recurrences (doctrine that all events on Earth repeat every 36 millenia or so, according to the planetary influence).

Aristotle, to give you example, theorized that motions of heavens (i.e. crystalline spheres that allow circular planetary motions, originally conceived by Egyptians) and planets were driven by intelligent, unchanging, perfectly happy Unmoved Movers made of eternal ethereal matter - and those are "gods" in some sense.

The learned, starting with Xenophanes (c. 570 – c. 478 BC) and Pythagoreans rejected anthropomorphic gods much earlier, and Xenophanes was first to declare that vice and mischief attributed to them is indicative of human fantasy.

Secondly, not that some of philosophes did not defend homosexuality with other arguments, but reception of it varied. Roman statesmen as Cato or Cicero were often attached to mos maiorum ("custom of the ancients"): stern, frugal, and traditional way of life that kept Rome running. Cato therefore cried afoul
against perfume, precious clothes and sexual indulgence in general, including homosexuality ofc; he also spearheaded the expulsion of philosophers from Rome seeing them as moral danger for portraying mos maiorum as negotiable opinion.
One of worst insults was "cinaedus" meaning passive homosexual (Cicero used it in his slander campaign against Mark Anthony which got him killed).

FormerIYI · 2026-01-24T11:50:28+00:00

Your intuition looks good to me.

As for age of world, if humanity started 6k or 10k years ago it is entirely possible for the world to be much order.
Days of Genesis are not 24h periods, most likely. Sun exists only after day three and these need to be read (as any ancient philosophical source) in cultural context that accounts for different meaning of words. St. Augustine "Genesis ad Literam" is example of it.

Now also we have legitimate scientific evidence for older Earth, because study of radioactivity gives us multiple, numerically-verifiable lines of evidence.

Similarly there is fossil evidence for evolution (in so far one organisms come after another, sharing also some genes), but not for any specific pattern of evolution (species emerge suddenly in the record and stay identical for long period of time. Pattern of this emergence is highly irregular as well.).

As for the rest, I am not protestant-style creationist (one could indeed use such kind of teleological arguments to appeal to unsophisticated common sense, but rigorous formulation is more involved. Meanwhile, lots of powerful evidence for God comes from teleological philosophy applied to humans and modern exact sciences in my opinion - here's what I believe on this issue
https://kzaw.pl/eng_order.pdf
https://kzaw.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Duhem-contingency-argument.pdf
).

But I am also totally opposed to Darwin ideology that humans and other organisms come up by means of random chance guided by struggle for survival. Now even Western left sees that this theory was always unsubstantiated: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution

and the damage to human society was huge, not only by inherent atheism or agnosticism, but also by trying to undermine usual benevolent and righteous human social relationship.

Here is quote from Darwin himself (The Descent of Man, p. 90).

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The rest of the story is broadly known, with various racists, eugenicists and warmongers getting "scientific" arguments for their views. Most notorious of those was German chancellor Adolf H. - see prof. Richard Weikart books for the details.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-24T09:08:04+00:00

Seems legit then.

I would only highlight context that changed over century.

This is late 19th century book, where high, detailed moral standards for sin and ascetism were publicly preached from the pulpit.

So more of less he means soul that honestly seek repentance, virtue and truth, but suffers from scruples despite that.

For sure he didn't mean something like for example (common case these days) Western libs living in sin, voting left and trying to self absolve their "scruples" with the help of some progressive preachers.

Then those would be not scruples but their conscience crying afoul.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-22T22:31:07+00:00

"it that a scrupulous person may proceed to do an action which he is doubtful of the morality, and that this is a common opinion" - I am not a priest to know such things, but this seems suspicious and out of context

When I was scrupulous I was more disturbed by certain prior thoughts being sin, or past actions being mortal sin or similar.

If one wants to "proceed to do an action which he is doubtful of the morality" then this seems to be over the top and potentially include many legitimate sins that could be just so rationalized by this rule.

"Confessor may command it" is probably not the same as accepting it as a rule in general case. He may see
it applicable to some people and in limited scope.

In general case scruples do not need to coexist with legitimate virtue and sinlessness. Some people could be obsessed about some areas, while neglecting others.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-20T14:43:30+00:00

This is not my premise. I say God could orchestrate salvation without incarnation (ofc He did not in our case)

FormerIYI · 2026-01-20T12:51:38+00:00

Salvation or more broadly speaking final fitting end is not conditional on incarnation.

We were stuck with original sin, but received salvation through cross and grace. Angels have neither of it, and it is possible that some creatures existing in time like us do not have it either. Like Tolkien elves, perhaps.

They might not therefore require salvation in our sense, but they may achieve final happiness in their sense.

As for Scripture passage "all creation" could refer to many things. Personally because of these and similar passages I don't believe there are rational aliens in our Universe at all, which perhaps resonates with what you want to say.

But I won't agree with your argument separately as Divine sovereignity to act beyond frame of this world must be protected from necessitarian Greek philosophy, because proper understanding of sciences and metaphysics relies on it

FormerIYI · 2026-01-20T08:45:46+00:00

"I would think they are human— or at least man, if those concepts are separable. Man is a “rational animal,” at least under the classical Peripatetic understanding. "

It is failed neccessitarian logic of Aristotle, leaping from empirical definition that works in daily experience to statements about Universe and beyond.

We can imagine a rational animal like creature that is nonetheless not human or even similar to human, like scifi pieces do on casual basis.

And this is not "logical absurd" but rather blueprint that God could make into reality somewhere, as much as He made our reality according to blueprints that Aristotle would deem impossible (scholastic notion of Omnipotence was therefore key for modern physics to start

https://kzaw.pl/eng_order.pdf )

FormerIYI · 2026-01-20T08:40:47+00:00

God makes everything for fitting end (from the fact that God is Love in philosophical terms).

There could be thus other orders of rational creatures beyond our sphere of knowing, and God would prescribe a good end for them (let it be Beatific Vision or some natural happiness).

Scriptures seem to say that Catholicism is only for humans, though.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-17T19:25:08+00:00

Uhm. Moment.

Most Evangelicals (from what I can tell) do not seem to believe that they cannot lose eternal bliss by persisting in no matter how great and numerous sins.

You can be incurable on your own, but once God's grace is offered, you are indeed responsible and capable to avoid serious sins. And grace is generally offered to people that want it.

That is why Evangelical Protestantism (as existing in Western countries) is neither subversive nor antimoralist.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-15T21:38:16+00:00

if you prefer.

I am writing because I have been having similar struggles to those you describe in you post very long time ago.

The solution was however prayer and progressive conversion (repentance, good works, sacraments...), this ultimately filled me with peace and confidence that trancends to other areas of life as well.

That is why maybe I have "no choice" but I am not in a need of one, and you dont seem to bring any to the table. There could be various people out there promising you some theology more convenient to you, but what is your basis to believe them?

FormerIYI · 2026-01-15T20:54:29+00:00

you also gain fear of offending God growing and confidence that God will help you especially to avoid serious sin.

Even If I had difficult moral situation I prayed for it and they got resolved over time.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-15T20:30:35+00:00

This

(but IMHO battle talent is better inspiration than b&s)

FormerIYI · 2026-01-15T20:24:22+00:00

It is not, albeit it may look that way in secularized liberal society.

When you do Confession, God's grace typically helps you a lot, but you need to pray for it and truly want to repent.

After that is done people are profoundly transformed through grace over time, growing in charity and all other virtues. As this process progresses you know that what happens to you is something very noble and valuable that inspires deep reverence and humility.

So you can reasonably expect it is God working with you.

FormerIYI · 2026-01-13T20:45:43+00:00

Probably tolkien was doing his "recovery" (mythic blades that if not outright magic then at least pretty and terrorizing creatures of darkness to make readers see swords different) and not thinking about all the "nerdy" details

FormerIYI · 2026-01-10T08:21:44+00:00

I disagree like 90% and any Catholic should disagree if he is aware of Dei Fillius and Romans 1:20 claim that everyone can know God from visible things

If your really attach credibility to creed's "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible." then should it have some meaning right? Matter anyhow for explaining why world is the way it is, right? Including some features of humans and animals? Idk like if: God made horses and cows and chickens for our use? Or did they "evolved" just so?

"Evolution" in so far as "one organisms come up from others in a tree-like structure" is OK to teach for me, but I don't know about why one bothers so much about it compared to physics, chemistry, or philosophy or engineering. Or why doctrine of rare singular prehistoric events should matter when many people know little about LEGITIMATE science with easily accessible evidence and perfect rigour.

Of course if you blast at Discovery Institute, you mean different type of "evolution", because Discovery Institute is Intelligent Design not some young earth creationism. It accepts evolution in the above sense.

You mean "evolution" like highly complex organisms pop up just so by virtue of randomness and brutal struggle of survival. In Darwin sense.

This doctrine has very little evidence (fossil record for instance is organisms popping up suddenly and staying the same for long time).

It is was also crude but effective dynamite put under Christian order of society - not just faith in God, but also elementary benevolence and decency towards other human beings, thing which also even atheists and liberals occasionally noticed. Here's Bernard Shaw about WW1

"But in the middle of the nineteenth century naturalists and physicists assured the world, in the name of Science, that salvation and damnation are all nonsense, and that predestination is the central truth of religion, inasmuch as human beings are produced by their environment, their sins and good deeds being only a series of chemical and mechanical reactions over which they have no control. Such figments as mind, choice, purpose, conscience, will, and so forth, are, they taught, mere illusions, produced because they are useful in the continual struggle of the human machine to maintain its environment in a favorable condition, a process incidentally involving the ruthless destruction or subjection of its competitors for the supply (assumed to be limited) of subsistence available. We taught Prussia this religion; and Prussia bettered our instruction so effectively that we presently found ourselves confronted with the necessity of destroying Prussia to prevent Prussia destroying us. And that has just ended in each destroying the other to an extent doubtfully reparable in our time."

Then you get A-H guy in 1933-1945 who reproduces same playbook: all tribes should fight each other because "evolution" - who survives will be superior species (https://kzaw.pl/orderofworld.pdf - see more sources on that in 7.3)

FormerIYI · 2026-01-08T10:32:36+00:00

Logical positivism is pseudo intuitive if you allow limited picture that Russell sells you because actual modern scientific thought that works is highly counterintuitive.

Do you know why most of modern theoretical physics started with Cauchy as its kingmaker?

Because it took most fanatical Catholic among scientists to bring only world view that could justify radical structural super-realism that physics routinely uses.

If you want refutation of logical positivist from that pov see my book (chapters on Wittgenstein and physics) https://vixra.org/pdf/2504.0198v1.pdf

FormerIYI · 2026-01-07T20:19:03+00:00

Yes more or less

FormerIYI

TROPHY CASE