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The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-54
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Mexico:
Skripal affair:
Dugin:
Quake:
Use as open (not Ukraine related) thread …
@ Piotr Berman | Mar 5 2023 16:22 utc | 6
With regard to the western MSM attempt to use the word “authoritarian” as the new term of abuse against all who try to oppose or withstand the discourses promoted by the imperial system, and in contrast to “democratic,” it is interesting how futile their search for such vocabulary has become.
During the Cold War, it was easier to distinguish the “communists” from the “freedom-loving good guys,” because the communist states literally called themselves communist and were ruled by the Communist Party in each case. With the end of the Cold War, and with Russia and China trying to join the world economic system, the label “communist,” although still formally applicable in the case of China, completely lost its previous pejorative effect. So how to distinguish those opposers of US hegemony and aggression, those who actually want political and economic parity, equality, and respect?
All the system and its MSM have come up with is “authoritarian” versus “democratic.” Too bad this rings hollow, as the behavior of the so-called “democratic” regimes themselves becomes increasingly authoritarian, exposing the establishment rulers and media as hypocrites and liars. This is found out too easily by many people, and also “authoritarian” just has no punch anyway, because it would take a long time through constant propaganda over years to develop that, and time those in power don’t have.
Indeed, everyone who reflects can see their own western so-called “democratic” dispensation is essentially authoritarian, or rather totalitarian, a word used in the Cold War that they haven’t tried much to return to using. But totalitarian is appropriate as a description of the would-be US “full-spectrum dominance” of the world. After all, in our vaunted “Great Republic” in the US here, how much democracy and freedom is there really? Despite elections, which are carefully-managed affairs, the citizen has no input, and especially not on foreign policy. Indeed, the elected politicians have little say either, because the main policies, economic, military, and foreign, are controlled by unelected elites who hector any politicians who step out of line with their Great Wurlitzer scream machine of the media.
However, beside the citizen’s lack of influence, there is also the other fact of economic feudalism, which engulfs every citizen, even those who have no ambition to influence anything. So, here on the one hand you have the claim that we live in the US in untrammeled freedom and can do whatever we want, including speak freely, but on the other hand we have a completely undemocratic corporate dispensation, where each corporation is controlled by a totalitarian chief, where there is no freedom to dissent, and where the ruler of the corporation, while not able to execute dissidents without trial, can fire them without trial, thus depriving them of their livelihood, only a step away from capital punishment. How can this be construed as democratic and not totalitarian? In our moneyed system, everyone has to work to be able to live, so woe to those who cannot find a living, and there are plenty of examples of people who have been persecuted in this very way, Norman Finkelstein, Steven Salaita, etc.
Furthermore, because of the functions of property rights, ownership, and taxation, it is very hard for a person or a family or a group alternatively to set themselves up independent of the system, like someone going to live in the woods as a hermit, unless that person is independently wealthy, which itself could only come about through some connection with the system. Maybe some traditional exceptions have been grandfathered in, like the Amish, but anyone trying to set themselves up that way now would have a really hard time.
Indeed, neoliberal full-spectrum dominance demands the subordination of every human individual, even every grain of sand, to the system. It has to be a total, hence totalitarian, full-spectrum mobilization. So they have a lot of impudence trying to attribute “authoritarianism” to any except themselves, the totalitarian masters. Too bad for them their system is completely unsustainable and doomed. Anyway, for us for the time being, it is good and right to throw “authoritarian” right back in their faces, along with “totalitarian” too.
Thanks to Piotr Berman for mentioning the two terms, which gave me my take-off point here. I always appreciate your contributions to MOA.
Posted by: Cabe | Mar 5 2023 17:17 utc | 7
Of all things I’ve spent the afternoon watching Navalny themed videos including his campaign platform when he entered the Presidential race in 2017, I think. Of course there’s also the many videos of him comparing residents of the Caucasus to cockroaches and marching with Nazis complete with swastikas and ‘heil’ signs. Also some stuff about his anti-corruption activities, which seem to have been legit in many cases. So I was wondering, who the hell really is this Navalny character? The so-called planks in his campaign seemed very reasonable and to the left of Putin’s government and he got his start in left wing politics (and was kicked out for being a Nazi). So in the framework of Russian politics, where is Navalny really?
Also stumbled across this old Peter Hitchens copy/paste history of Crimea. Pretty fascinating and seems very comprehensive. https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/02/a-not-so-brief-history-of-crimea.html
Much space in his daily comments and replies is dedicated to answering questions from pro NATO automatons. Scroll down for some interesting back and forth. https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
Here’s an example:
DS:
Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong. Like many, probably most Western observers, I held out little hope for Ukraine once the drums of war began to beat in earnest. A couple of days after Mr Putin’s brutal invasion began, I wrote a bullish essay looking back at Ukraine’s history of suffering and resilience. But even as I was agonising over my prose, the bleak news continued to pour in. “Now, while I have been writing, Russian tanks are rolling into the suburbs,” I wrote at one stage. Did I think they would be driven back? I didn’t. “Kyiv will rise again,” I wrote at the end. Stirring words, or so I hoped. But the person I was really trying to persuade was myself, and I didn’t succeed.
In truth, I underestimated the Ukrainian people’s resilience, their courage, their love of country. And I was wrong, too, about the Western alliance. After more than a decade of drift and inaction, from the shameful failure to respond to the seizure of Crimea to the near-criminal indifference to the suffering in Syria,
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PH: This is where Mr Sandbrook’s article really began to puzzle me. I must admit to being unaware of his having had any major interest in this region until now. Yet he is plainly emotionally engaged in some way, using the partisan ‘Kyiv’ spelling of the Ukrainian capital, which is favoured by Ukrainian nationalists, and which the Ukrainian foreign ministry had been trying (not very successfully) to get western journalists to use for many years before 2022. It is absurd for western journalists or historians to use this spelling as it would be for them to refer to the Russian capital as ‘Moskva’ (more correctly ‘Maskvah’), or to the capitals of Poland and Czechia as ‘Warszawa’ and ‘Praha’. (See also https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/09/the-beijing-kowtow-and-the-mumbai-jumbai-cringe-more-on-the-strange-renaming-of-cities-.html
for a discussion of how we refer to foreign cities). His qualification to write about this from a lofty quasi-judicial height, such as his tone implies, is surely that he is a historian, who might therefore be expected to be dispassionate about major events now in progress, sceptical of received wisdom and careful to examine matters fully. The use of ‘Kyiv’ instead of ‘Kiev’ is a bit like wearing those Vietnam Solidarity Campaign badges I was so fond of in the 1960s. It’s enjoyable to identify with the cause of the moment, but not very historian-like.
The history of Crimea, for instance, is highly complex. Leaving aside the much-discussed transfer of that peninsula from Russia (not a sovereign nation) to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (not a sovereign nation) in 1954, it *is* now largely populated by ethnic Russians and even a fair referendum under strict NATO supervision would probably have endorsed its return to Russia in 2014. Given the widespread support in the West for multiple adjustments to the map of Europe since the Yugoslav wars, mainly from the Yugloslav Federal Republic to the European Union, but most strikingly the independence of Kosovo (with its famously democratic 99.98% vote in favour of secession), is anyone in the NATO region much of a position to say this is illegitimate elsewhere?
Does Mr Sandbrook know that Crimea was disgracefully prevented, by threats of ‘bloodshed’ (unspecified) made by the Kiev government, from holding a referendum on seceding from Ukraine in 1992? I suspect not. It is not widely known, but I have researched it and it is so. See https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/02/a-not-so-brief-history-of-crimea.html This prevention was paradoxical, since Ukraine itself had seceded from Moscow rule the year before, through a referendum, and Russia had made no threats of this kind, before, during or after. Though it had, very briefly, expressed concerns that the borders of the new sovereign Ukraine might cause trouble.
There is also a bit of a specific difficulty for NATO, one of whose members, Turkey, seized North Cyprus by force of arms in July 1974. The pretext for this, protection of the Turkish minority, was not dissimilar to Moscow’s pretext for taking possession of Crimea. (But unlike Turkey, which mounted an actual invasion, Russia had troops in Crimea, quite lawfully at the time, under the Kharkov agreement). The thing is that Turkey is still very much there in North Cyprus, almost 50 years later, , and no serious efforts have been made for years by NATO to dislodge her. One might add that , like Portugal, Turkey has not always been especially democratic or free, and NATO did not at its foundation demand especially high standards of governance as a condition of membership. As Mr Sandbrook surely knows, absolutes are hard to find in the histories of nations and alliances. There are few saints among the nations. One other thing: rather than get drawn into the maelstrom of Syria, which he mentions, may I just urge him to look up the CIA operation known as Timber Sycamore, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore which played such a large part in events in that complex country. Very far from being indifferent, the ‘West’ intervened powerfully and in my view very damagingly in Syrian affairs. I could also tell a tale about allegations of chemical warfare use, and the objections to them of conscientious non-political OPCW inspectors, which would take up many pages. If he wishes for a wider discussion of the West’s curious selective rage against Syria’s despotism, while cheerfully nurturing violent, cruel tyrannies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt etc, I am happy to engage in it. But perhaps some other time. In the meanwhile, I would once again urge any historian to apply caution before rushing to judgement.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 5 2023 22:53 utc | 32
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