Am I the asshole for being insistant about “wanting to murder the entire Romanov family”?
Around 4 months ago I was invited to see the school musical “Anastasia” by some theater kids that were friends of mine. I already knew the framing and content of the play is utter reactionary nonsense, but I decided to actually go yesterday night to watch to support my buddies.
The musical itself had good production quality, and there were some great unintentionally funny moments in there, too. I was dissapointed that the one communist didn’t brutally blow Anastasia’s brains out, but I definitely think the play gave me some resolve and inspires violence in me.
Anyway here is the main part, lol. It isnt the most precise retelling of events, but generally what went down, spare the details. After the play I was chatting with a bunch of the cast, and apparently one of them heard that I would have shot the Romanov family, if I was in the position to, (which they heard from a seperate friend that is actually socialist. ) I didn’t deny it, and I actually fully leaned into it. “The Romanovs had no qualms on the treatment of their people. There would be no room for abdication, no humbleness to step down, obly death, ETC…” One giggled, another person gasped, “Do you feel no sympathy for them?” My friend (who played Tzar Nicholas) asked me something like:"Would you shoot the Romanov’s even if it was me?! " “No sympathy. And yes, I would shoot regardless of personal connections” and I quickly left into the crowd. Since then, my friend has been avoiding me? idk he seems not happy with me. Am I the asshole here?
Either way, I would rather be perceived as an asshole than be a liberal in content.
You probably should have elaborated a bit more instead of going, “yeah, I wouldve shot you, too”
Well, you did basically tell your friend who just literally pretended to be Tzar Nicholas that you’d be willing to shoot them, right to their face. Haha
I would have just said something like, “I wouldn’t be friends with you in the first place if that was the kind of person you were, so the question is irrelevant.”
You could’ve been kinder to your friend, who is now either offended or scared of you (but that’s kinda funny, to be honest).
But are you the asshole for insisting to kill the Romanovs? NTA!
“Thanks for not telling people you would’ve gone on a murder spree against the Romanov family during our time at the musical, honey. I know that took restraint.”
Yeah, lol. OP could’ve just picked another time to go off. Real life isn’t hexbear. (unfortunately) I can’t go around saying Stalin did nothing wrong in public place filled with (what I assume are) mostly liberal people.
This is why the “look, this is just a shitposting forum!” defense of maximally hot takes has always rung hollow to me. Everyone spends a ton of time online these days, and if you say something all day every day online long enough, eventually at least a sliver of it is going to come out in real life. Maybe it’s in a conversation like this, maybe it’s after a beer or two.
Yeah, it would’ve been smarter to make your case explaining what kind of society the Tsar upheld and represented
I think my friend is more offended/annoyed at me. I probably should have rejected the question, or explained myself better. But we’re beyond that now, lol 😅
“Would you ahve shot the Romanovs, even if it was me?”
“Yes”
No matter how many cute musicals, movies and TV series they make, id do it in a heartbeat.
There are no stupid questions.
Would you shoot Hitler even if it was me?
There are some stupid questions.
My friend (who played Tzar Nicholas) asked me something like:"Would you shoot the Romanov’s even if it was me?! "
Czarist detected
On a serious note your response is a bit too harsh. I think the correct thing to do is to not entertain that scenario because logically it makes no sense. Your friend and Czar Nicholas are two completely separate people. If he was Nicky then he wouldn’t be himself and therefore not your friend.
Yeah. I suppose I could have just rejected the premise of the question…
I am going to talk with him later today, so hopefully it’s less awkward, and I could explain that…
Would you shoot the Romanov’s even if it was me?!
Would you ride a bike even if it was your grandma with wheels for legs?
Hypothetically killing teenagers without remorse may socially ostracize you, yes
also if a play incites you to violence then who is the reactionary?
You had an opportunity to make people reconsider the glorification of monarchs. Instead you allowed the conversation to move from being a hypothetical about historical figures to being a concrete situation about your immediate friends. And then you doubled down on murdering one of those friends, whose connection was that he was playing a character in a play. It’s not your fault that you got such a loaded question, but the only appropriate response was to deconstruct that question. I think you could’ve steered that conversation differently.
If it’s a surprise that your friend is avoiding you, then I think you’ve had a lapse of empathy while gaining precisely zero ground in people understanding your position better. Whether your care about him avoiding you is your prerogative. But it shouldn’t be a surprise.
You told your friend you would shoot him, lmfao.
I think it’s not a good look to say you’ll shoot a classmate, even in hypothetical, I think it was better dismissing the hypothetical as nonsense, which it is, answering it with the question, would you condemn your population to violence and hunger? Otherwise yeah it’s not wrong to have that stance just think you could go about it a little more gracefully, cause one problem is that when we are THE communist some people know they’ll judge communism based on US and the optics of how you went about it might lead them to believe communists are more trigger happy then they are.
NTA, the Romanovs had it coming and so does anyone who still defends them, especially the ones who think they’d leverage a friendship that CERTAINLY WOULD NOT EXIST if the petitioner were a Romanov
You could have been a bit more diplomatic with a friend. Dishonest a bit but it would have been a chance to swerve and say that if you were their friend it wouldn’t likely get to that point, that you’d convince them to abdicate or that if you were their friend you’d likely have similar class interests and not want to shoot them so it’s a moot point. Pivot then to how much you value them as a friend but they should really read up more on the truth of the matter and that particularly ugly royal family. But it’s not always easy to keep one’s cool and be collected in the moment with the perfect things to say.
Still you should apologize and try to explain a bit. Reframe it and explain how awful the Romanovs were as people and how you don’t see them as being like that at all.
Romanovs did deserve it though and not the asshole for holding that point of view.
I would shoot
You’re right, your friend is just a liberal in need of education on what the Romanovs were actually like.
The form of your opinion makes sense, but your delivery was brusque, immature and alienating. Propaganda is a skill, and I hope you can learn some good lessons from here. In general, you are going to seem nuts rigidly and dogmatically relitigating historical events. It’s better to deflect around these sort of questions and talk concretely about contextually relevant issues.
If you lead off the bat with the most extreme and least relevant example, you will probably foreclose the opportunity to build the prior beliefs necessary to support this less relevant position.
