Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen, yet these did not elicit the pious posturing of Europeans and Americans as Russia-Ukraine has. The mindset remains the same: wars are justified and tolerated if led by the West because it supposedly has a noble mission.
This is reinforced by propaganda about liberating repressed peoples from fascists, communists, or religious fanatics, which helps the Western public disregard atrocities committed by their governments. This willful ignorance is also fueled by a deep-seated belief in the Western public's psyche that white lives are more precious than those of others living in shithole countries. The hypocrisy and racism of reporting on Russia-Ukraine has made this abundantly clear.
For the first time, this duplicity has been exposed to the global majority by social media and other tech-enabled forms of communication. Hundreds of thousands of videos and messages have reached every corner of the world, as Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Africans, South Americans have the scale of this hypocrisy made crystal clear.
This is helping to combat centuries of Western propaganda, which portrayed white Westerners as superior, righteous, civilizing and the natural leaders of the world -- a perpetuation of white privilege stemming from brutal colonial exploits.
The sheer influence of this system was previously only recognized by some, but now there is a global conversation taking place about why the West is depicting the civilian tragedy of this conflict as somehow incomparable to other conflicts. This discourse is leading hundreds of millions to new understandings of current events and to not simply accept the one-sided Western version.
No one denies that it is utterly horrifying and inexcusable that people are dying. But the virulent reactions by Western media, politicians and businesses have completely blanketed attempts to understand Russia's motives and the events leading up to the war. What about NATO expansionism and provocation, the preexisting separatist movements in Ukraine, or the white supremacy of Ukrainian politics? How can we achieve peace without understanding these key elements?
Yet other conflicts are passed over. Take Yemen, for example. NATO navy participated in the Saudi-led naval blockade, which humanitarian organizations have argued was the main influencing factor to the outbreak of famine, which 5 million faced during the civil war.