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The present war in Ukraine finds its parallel in the parting of ways between Russia and the West in all matters of culture. This found expression in 2021 when Russia’s Vladimir Putin, delivered an important speech at the Valday Club, an annual gathering of intellectuals, philosophers, writers, scholars, journalists, and politicians.[1] There Putin explained the current cultural trends in the West and compared those to the Russian experience. He spoke, for example, about the destruction of monuments in the United States, where the statues of past heroes were torn down, just as the monuments to the Tsars were destroyed in 1917, or monuments to Lenin after 1991. For the Russians that was déjà vu. Twice their old heroes became villains and the result was the politicisation of society and intolerance.[2]
Putin also spoke about feelings of guilt among Westerners concerning slavery. This, he said, has caused them to use reverse discrimination. These it is perfectly fine to deny a job to a white person in favour of a black person, that decision based purely on race. In today’s America race is everywhere. People proudly parade their skin colour and demand advantages based on pigmentation. This, according to Putin, is similar to the Bolsheviks moving out the aristocrats from their apartments and resettling the Bolshevik activists there for the sake of “social justice”.[3] And it is European guilt about the colonial past that makes them open their borders to millions of unskilled migrants from Africa and the Middle East, to the detriment of the native inhabitants.
Putin thus specifically criticised critical race theory, which rejects ‘colour-blindness’. The most famous expression of this concept was Martin Luther King Jr’s dream that his children would ‘one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’.[4] Putin said that King’s dream is rejected by critical race theory that argues for race consciousness and recognition of racial categories. He thinks that this is detrimental to social cohesion and the preservation of a more harmonious society. Indeed, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, the former a historian and the latter a mathematician by background, note the deleterious consequences of this insidious movement that is now so prevalent in the West:
By focusing so intently on race and by objecting to ‘color blindness’ – the refusal to attach social significance to race – critical race theory threatens to undo the social taboo against evaluating people by their race. Such an obsessive focus on race … is not likely to end well – neither for minority groups nor for social cohesion more broadly. Such attitudes tear the fabric that holds contemporary societies together.[5]
Putin said that critical race theory is a kind of Bolshevism. The West is going through a process of legitimising discrimination, which Putin refers to as a form of neo-Bolshevism.[6] If one substitutes the word proletariat with race, everything else looks pretty much the same. ‘We, the Russians, have seen it before. The oppressed proletariat (race) shakes off the chains of exploitation and asserts its rights’.[7]
But Putin’s sharpest critique is concerned with the assault on the family in the West. Under the guise of the struggle for tolerance, intolerance has been promoted through so-called “identity politics”. Homosexuality and other forms of LBTQI+ culture are now taught at schools regardless of the preference of parents. The traditional family is under assault. The words ‘father’ and ‘mother’ are being discarded and replaced by ‘parent one’ and ‘parent two’. Christian values are thrown out and anybody who dares to disagree is labelled a racist or a homophobic reactionary. As a consequence, intolerance is officially celebrated and compliance legally enforced.[8]
The vast majority of Russians are against legalising same-sex marriage, or any other form of recasting traditional family. Putin thus commented that Russia is not going to follow this destructive path of the West, which, according to him, is a form of neo-Bolshevism.[9] Interestingly enough, in our edited book Joshua Forrester and I called this new Western movement ‘Wokeshevism’, which is a portmanteau of ‘woke’ and ‘Bolshevism’.[10] ‘Wokeshevism’ thus denotes the woke’s revolutionary zeal of many contemporary Westerners to impose their radical worldview on all parts of society, and to crush any dissent. James Lindsay notes that:
The term ‘Woke’ refers to being ‘awakened’ or ‘woke up’ to the alleged realities of ‘systemic power dynamics’ that order society. These alleged power dynamics are said to create what sociologists call ‘stratifications’ in society, like kinds of upper and lower classes, depending on who has ‘privilege’ and who is ‘oppressed’ by various power dynamics like systemic racism (or white supremacy), systemic sexism (or patriarchy or misogyny), cis-heteronormativity, and so on … The Marxian flavour of this analysis – which sees them as structural and sites of necessary conflict – is also obvious but hard to pin down.[11]
And what about Bolshevism?
Bolshevism may be characterised by strong organisation, commitment to world communist revolution, and the rejection of objective morality as a form of ‘bourgeois oppression’.[12] Bolshevism was the political ideology and practice of the Bolsheviks, a radical Communist faction under the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The Bolsheviks embraced a Marxist philosophy of ‘merciless violence’ that strove for the complete annihilation of every actual and potential enemy. They displayed, according to the late Richard Pipes, ‘a philosophical inability to deal with opinions different from their own except by abuse and repression’.[13] For these reasons, Pipes added, ‘they should be regarded not as utopians but as fanatics: since they refused to admit defeat even after it stared them in the face’.[14] The Bolsheviks came to power during the Russian Revolution of 1917. For them, all moral questions were ultimately subordinated to revolutionary needs. Bolshevik leaders identified themselves as a moral and political vanguard, whose messianic sense of calling demanded that its members prove their worthiness to belong to that elite.[15] As history professor Orlando Figes points out:
Bolsheviks were expected … to be involved in the daily practice of its rituals – its oaths and songs, ceremonies, cults, and codes of conduct – just as the believers of organized religion performed their belief when they attended church. But the Party’s doctrines were to be taken as articles of faith by all its followers. Its collective judgement was to be accepted as Justice. Accused of crimes by the leadership, the Party member was expected to repent, to go down on his knees before the Party and welcome its verdict against him. To defend oneself was to add another crime: dissent from the will of the Party.[16]
The Russians, of course, have already seen all that and are immune to this new form of Bolshevism. In 2024, when Putin was elected to his (third consecutive) fifth term in office, he refused to debate his Communist challenger. His views, as opinion polls recurrently show, find genuine support from the Russian people. The Russians do not want to emulate the West.[17] Rather, political confrontation with the West has encouraged the idea of separate paths for Russia, breaking economic, political, and cultural ties with the “decadent West”.
To avoid the westernization of Russia and its decadent contemporary values, the activities of the Western-sponsor NGOs are slowly and surely being curtailed in Russia. Any ‘progressive’ organization that receives funds from the West is currently required to declare themselves as foreign agents. Russian pro-Western media outlets are not banned but they have to bear an inscription that they receive funding from the West or they are a foreign-sponsored entity.[18] This is partially in direct response to Western measures against the Russia Today media outlet that was banned in most so-called “Western democracies”.
These measures and President Putin’s criticism of the West’s contemporary culture as a form of neo-Bolshevism reveal that he has made a substantial break with the Westernisers, and all those who collectively are called “Atlantic integrationists”.[19] Instead, the Russian leader is now calling for a “healthy conservatism”, traditional family and Christian morality. From this perspective, Russia is not abandoning the cultural heritage of the West, but it is the West that has abandoned its own Christian heritage in favour of ideological values that mimic Bolshevism. If in the early years of Putin’s rule merging with the West was a goal, now a movement has begun to define Russia’s separate path. Russia wants to be a civilisation in its own right.[20]
Augusto Zimmermann is Professor and Head of Law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education. He is a former Associate Dean, Research, at Murdoch Law School. During his time at Murdoch, Dr Zimmermann was awarded the University’s Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2012. He is also a former Commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia (2012-2017).
Dr Zimmermann is the editor, together with Joshua Forrester, of ‘Wokeshevism: Critical Theories and the Tyrant Left’ (Connor Court Publishing, 2023). To order your copy, click here
[1] ‘Valdai Discussion Club Meeting’, YouTube, 22 October 2021, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctLOtI32cWY
[2] Vladimir N. Brovkin, From Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Putin (Routledge, 2024) 267.
[3] Ibid.
[4] ‘Read Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech In Its Entirety’, NPR (Web Page, 14 January 2022).
[5] Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody (Swift Press, 2020) 134.
[6] Vladimir N. Brovkin, From Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Putin (Routledge, 2024) 267.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. 268.
[9] Ibid. 267.
[10] See: Augusto Zimmermann and Joshua Forrester (ed.), Wokeshevism: Critical Theories and the Tyrant Left (Connor Court Publishing, 2023). See, in particular, ‘Introduction’, 17-29.
[11] James Lindsay, ‘Forward’ in Charles Pincourt and James Lindsay, Counter Wokecraft: A Field Manual for Combatting the Woke in the University and Beyond (Independently published, 2021).
[12] Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (Penguin Books, 2007) 33.
[13] Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (Vintage Books, 1995) 500.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid 34. This may explain why so many Bolsheviks surrendered to their fate in the purges under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, even when they were innocent of the crimes of which they stood accused.
[17] Vladimir N. Brovkin, From Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Putin (Routledge, 2024) 268.
[18] Ibid. 269.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid. 268.
“Russia wants to be a civilization in its own right”. That’s fine and good luck to them.
The problem is that Russian regimes, present and past, have a very poor record in the “civilized” line.
As for the opinions of the psychopath Putin, they are not worth two bob.
You really have no understanding at all of post-communist Russia. I teach the history of all the East Slavic lands, and am well aware of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Nicholas I, Stalin and co. and other strong despotic rulers, but you need to undertstand the reasons why Russia’s history is different from that of the West.
Please read this article on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to understand why your comment about Putin being a “psychopath” is just plain wrong.
https://freedomandheritage.org.au/russias-invasion-of-ukraine/
Good comment truman7 and very interesting historical account of Russia & the Ukraine etc from someone who obviously has the credentials to know what he’s talking about.
Excellent historical overview and rational background to the current Ukraine/ Russia conflict.
Well supported with useful maps. Recommended reading.
“Russian pro-Western media outlets are not banned but they have to bear an inscription that they receive funding from the West or they are a foreign-sponsored entity”
Come off it, Augusto. There aren’t any “pro-western media outlets in Russia”, or at least none that are critical of Putin and haven’t been shut down, appropriated or threatened and their people harassed, imprisoned or subjected to violence. Ekho Moskvy, TV Rain, Meduza, Novaya Gazeta, Moscow News, the list is a long one. Not to mention all the murdered journalists. And are you suggesting that there is some sort of orderly rule of law applies to the regulation of news outlets, enforced by independent courts?
I take the point about ‘woke bolshevism’ but don’t think the neologism will fly. It may have a certain analytic merit but it’s awkward. Also, as commenters are quick already to reply, there is still a lot of old-fashioned ‘defenestration bolshevism’, as I term it, in Russia. That cannot be admired. A return to familial values is one thing, and a good idea, but eternal and heavy-handed dictatorship is quite another kettle of rather odorous piscatory rottenness.
Thanks Mt. Zimmermann, a good article all in all. I actually give President Putin full marks for the great many good things he did for the Russian Federation, but of course don’t particularly like some of his more outrageous stuff, but then again we could counter attack some of our folks for defending the Democrats in the USA, our Federal Labor party, or even the ex Premier of Victoria, and hammer away about the Nuremberg decisions made after WW2 as a procedure re the terrible and very wrong decisions the various authorities made about Covid. Horses for courses perhaps but unlike many detractors of President Putin I did live and work in Russia from just after perestroika for many years and have an inkling of what went on and what goes on, whereas many in the West haven’t the faintest idea and work on the principle of the “white hats” of the USA as against the “black hats” of Russia, since Western brainwashing was probably more effective and more insidious than the Soviet one that had the tears of laughter coursing down the legs of most middle class citizens in Russia. You know, Yeltsin and “Gorby” didn’t do a lot for Russia, but Putin has done so and we might contemplate on –would a Putin replacement be better or worse for Russia–. I would caution those who urge military intervention by the West re the current Ukrainian situation to think about Napoleon and to remember what happened at Stalingrad.
Inevitably we are immediately besieged by Putin Derangement Syndrome. Impossible that a Russian could do any good I guess. That idea goes against all the propaganda of our sainted western establishment. As Sindri insinuates, we would NEVER imprison a political opponent in the west.
Elizabeth, ‘critical race theory is a kind of Bolshevism’, in the broad sense that both are the spawn of socialism.
But this:’ A return to familial values is one thing, and a good idea’. Good grief! It’s everything, when you actually mean it. It’s as anti-Socialism as Christianity itself.
Eternal and heavy-handed dictatorship? Is there a website of Anti-Russia cliches that everyone reads over their morning coffee?
When it comes to attitudes towards Russia, perhaps we could all use a bit of removing the log from our own eye.
And so, as expected, the usual coterie of Putin apologists appear as if on command. I call them Putineers as in –
Why did you climb up Putins arse ?
Because it’s there, stupid.
That about sums up the validity of their view.
Thankyou for proving my point.
Remarkably obtuse comment. You have zero undertstanding of Russia or of why Putin remains far more popular than just about any Western politician.
I’d rather Putin than Biden. Sorry if that offends.
The ad hominem argument has always been the weakest form of rhetorical argument but crude abuse doesn’t even count as rhetoric so isn’t worth “two bob”.
QUOTE BEGINS: To avoid the westernization of Russia and its decadent contemporary values, the activities of the Western-sponsor NGOs are slowly and surely being curtailed in Russia. Any ‘progressive’ organization that receives funds from the West is currently required to declare themselves as foreign agents…. This is partially in direct response to Western measures against the Russia Today media outlet that was banned in most so-called “Western democracies”. QUOTE ENDS
Zimmermann puts scare quotes around the terms ‘progressive’ and ‘Western democracies,’ arguably indicating that in his mind, both are highly questionable. Also, conspicuous by its absence, is any mention of Putin’s current murderous assault on the Ukraine, and one could easily conclude that Zimmerman endorses it. And as the arguable opposite in everyday speech of ‘progressive’ is ‘reactionary,’ it is also easy to conclude that Zimmerman endorses those of the latter persuasion.
This in my humble opinion places him in the ‘anti-progressive’ or reactionary camp.
Everyone is ‘woke’ to something, by the Zimmermann definition: QUOTE: The term ‘Woke’ refers to being ‘awakened’ or ‘woke up’ to the alleged realities of ‘systemic power dynamics’ that order society. These alleged power dynamics are said to create what sociologists call ‘stratifications’ in society, like kinds of upper and lower classes, depending on who has ‘privilege’ and who is ‘oppressed’ by various power dynamics like systemic racism (or white supremacy), systemic sexism (or patriarchy or misogyny), cis-heteronormativity, and so on …UNQUOTE.
No less than seven sets of scare quotes around words in that passage. That has certainly woken me up to the function of ‘woke’ in the ‘conservative’ lexicon. And why, one may ask, am I using them? Because the opposite of ‘woken’ is somnambulance, otherwise known as sleepwalking. I incline therefore to the conclusion that ‘conservatives’ would prefer the rest of the population to be obedient, agreeable zombies; anything but awake, and particularly to privilege and uneven distribution of power and wealth.
“Quadrant accepts unsolicited, previously unpublished articles that fit within its general profile of a journal of ideas, essays, literature, poetry and historical and political debate. Although it retains its founding bias towards cultural freedom, anti-totalitarianism and classical liberalism, its pages are open to any well-written and thoughtful contribution. Some of our writers are internationally renowned; some are previously unknown.”
(https://quadrant.org.au/submissions/ )
I suggest that the proof of that pudding is in the eating, and that it could do with being sent back to the kitchen for a major overhaul.
“founding bias towards cultural freedom, anti-totalitarianism and classical liberalism”.
Yes. That rumbling noise is James McAuley, Richard Krygier and others turning in their graves.
The enemy of my enemy – is probably still my enemy. That wokism is so daft that even Putin can see it means little.
A proverb which echoes down the ages of childish stupidity: There always will be better Communists outside Russia than in.
Excellent article, Augusto. The West is dying from a cultural death wish – Cultural Marxism, relativism, cultural pessimism, tolerance of Islamic invasion and intolerance, and junking of Christianity. On our present path, we are not going to make it.
On the other hand, today’s Russia shows virtually no cultural pessimism, rejects Cultural Marxism, and in huge measure has reembraced Christianity and lauds the country’s cultural achievements in literature, music and the arts generally. Russia is going to make it.
You could very well be right, truman7. Certainly, there are many respected commentators who have serious concerns about whether the West (and its ideals) can survive the wrong turn it made in the last two decades.
The West adopted that very ideological obsession (in “Wokism”) that they criticised in their enemy.
In adopting a market economy and restoring the importance of family and religion, Putin’s regime appears to have restored Russian belief in themselves. Incredible irony in all of this.
Democracy as a world culture is still historically recent. World War II established that democracies were strong enough to survive in the real world where borders are challenged by force. Free people will die for their freedom. The existential challenge is now from within: whether democracies can sufficiently distinguish true freedom from “license”. As Edmund Burke put it, “Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Or by Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh ….” I believe we still can. From the coalface, I can see that those churches that abandon ordinary sexual propriety are soon depleted of members. The only ones that will survive are those that remain firm on this and they are the ones that will be replenished upon a revival.
Of course, there’s much truth in Putin’s observations about the West — as is obvious to many of us who actually live here, and feel perpetually exasperated by the disintegration of our societies and their formerly effective institutions and leaders. But we mustn’t overlook the facts that Putin is a very cunning operator, and a prime exemplar of the Dark Triad, with emphasis on the Machiavellianism: “whatever it takes”. For a once-atheistic chief of the KGB and then its offspring to now profess deep Christianity is a farce, and just look at all his shifting excuses for invading Ukraine: removing Nazis, preventing NATO expansion, fighting Satanists and/or sexual decadence etc.. Family life in Russia, including Putin’s own, is no great example of Christian virtue. He fully recognises the supreme power of religion as a social glue, and a weapon of population control (it’s all about faith, against which it’s impossible to argue), and is in an intensely symbiotic relationship with Russian Orthodox church leaders. We must also remember that Putin is sucking up to the denizens of his few big cities, Moscow and Petersburg, whose aspirational lifestyles trend towards the Western model, whereas the poor buggers elsewhere confront third-world conditions (explaining why so many of their males make up the Russian Army). Much is rotten in the state of Russia, but the locals don’t know about it because of the strict control of their media — and because they’d rather not know, seeing there’s nothing they can do about it, and it would be dangerous to try, or even speak up.
Wow! Just as I guessed. Putin and Russia are the good guys now while the US and NATO are the new socialist Nazis.
We need Donald Trump to do a Javier Milei and bring the US back onto a conservative human path. We are also highly in need of a British uprising to bring back real conservatism to the UK. However, I don’t see much hope for Australia and NZ unless Canada manages to do a Javier Milei, too. We are also highly in need of a Japanese and a Korean awakening to the current Western new socialists Nazis.
We are truly in a global information war where truth seekers are the current guerrilla movements since all Western institutions and agencies are in the control of the new socialist Nazis.
Thanks Augusto. Putin strikes me as an old-fashioned Western politician. One who actually prioritises the national interest and Russian citizens. I’m jealous of the Russians.
Name me an “old fashioned Western politician” who locks up his political rivals, has assassinations carried out in foreign countries, and for good measure invades neighbouring countries. And if you a jealous of the Russians, go live there for a while, or maybe you already are there.
Putin “actually prioritises the national interest and Russian citizens”? You must be joking! The man actually prioritises the interests of one Vlad Putin; to hell with what the Russian citizenry wants — and what exactly is the nation, if not the Tsar himself? I don’t think the citizens wanted a war, but they’re no longer capable of thinking for themselves, and live in a dis-information fog. Is it any wonder that alcoholism and suicide are rampant in that country? If you’re jealous of the lucky Russians, have you considered moving there?
Thanks Augusto, good piece with much food for thought.
For me it sounds like a good speech Putin made to the Valday Club. The only world ranking leader in the West ( at least the English speaking West ) in the last few years I can think of that has come close to publicly calling things out like that has been Donald Trump…..and look at the lengths our free, fair and democratic friends of the left have been going to in order to get rid of him, & one can only assume it’s because they view him as a real threat to them.
Begs the question I think of just how far they would be prepared to go….i.e. if they felt they could get away with it ?
As to your last question, they certainly have a role model in Putin, don’t they?
Excellent article; as mentioned, food for thought!
perhaps time to remember that a lot of the current insanity was *funded* by Russia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_influence_on_the_peace_movement
To regard Putin as a jolly good chap with a moral backbone, or an “old-fashioned western politician” (Bob Menzies perhaps?) is absurd, unless old-fashioned western politicians acquired their moral compass in the Chekha, murdered and imprisoned their political opponents, embezzled state assets on a cosmological scale, utterly destroyed all press freedoms, systematically corrupted and neutered all the institutions that might otherwise impose a lawful check on their power and engaged in wars of aggression in which their troops were encouraged to engage in rape, murder and all kinds of brutality. And Putin’s personal morals, for what it’s worth, do not match his rhetoric either.
And this highlights a rather depressing phenomenon. Hitherto it’s been the habit of dismal lefties to engage in ludicrous moral equivalence. There’s lots rotten with western societies. The only grown-up solution is to fight to make things better, no matter how hard it is. For conservatives to suggest that the answer is crooks like Putin is navel-gazing of the worst kind.
The same phenomenon occurred in the 1930s, by the way. Lots of people thought Hitler was a bit of a thug, but by golly he had the right stuff, a moral backbone – until he started a war.
A good post, I should have read it before penning my own.
Thanks.
Dr Zimmermann and Quadrant are to be congratulated for facilitating this important debate, which begs the question as to why the Western establishment is so determined to stop us freely discussing the war in Ukraine? Why were we not allowed to discuss Covid? Usually there is something those in power are trying to conceal? Australian patriots need to ask what possible benefit there is for our nation in supporting what appears to be a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine? We allied with Stalin to defeat Nazi Germany – is anyone claiming Putin is worse than Stalin? Surely pushing Russia and China together is a geo-strategic blunder of the highest order? More articles like this please!
I wouldn’t be too worried about “pushing China and Russia together”. Xi has ambitious plans for eastern Russia, and Putin holds by far the weaker hand there. Their ostensible cooperation right now will be very shortlived. You can’t have two Mafia godfathers running an operation together for very long.
This article leaves me a little perplexed. Putin lecturing anyone about Western values, what would he know? Pre revolutionary Russia made the occasional contribution to Western civilisation through literature, music, and the performing arts. Soviet Russia likewise turned up the occasional contribution, and post Soviet Russia very little. So it has never been what one could describe as a major contributor to the civilisation that the whole world has relied upon since the beginning of the 20th century.
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For what reason does this article exist? To ventilate the views of a third world tyrant regarding the only political hemisphere with the proximity, will and power to oppose his excesses? Nothing he says about the West is original, ask anyone over 50 in a pub in Australia and you will get similar views. As for a Russian lecturing any part of the world on family values is risible. Post soviet Russia has been a meat market for mail order brides for about 30 years, and I suspect family life in Russia has a lot to do with it.
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So again what is the significance of a petty tyrants views on western social upheaval? Surely 30 mins watching a Jordan Peterson video would be far more edifying. Next we will be hearing about Xi Jing Pings views on the education system in the West!
Brilliant, Occidental! You took the words right out of my mouth . . .
Great essay Augusto. Top marks.
What it boils down too is that the USA and other NATO countries have lost the focus of cleaning up the immoral filth and decadence in their own backyards only to be bullying busy bodies in other nations private matters.
More Augusto Zimmerman essays are requested please.
For myself I am not much interested in what Putin says about the West, seeing it as a rationalisation of his emotional reasons for doing what he is about, which is compensating for his fears and anxieties, as identified by the CIA back in 2019.
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By the same token I don’t put much stock in the rationalisations put forward by the propaganda machine in the West, principally from the US.
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I am sure most know the facts but worth summarising to the effect that the conflict is one of old enmities originating in Eastern Europe: regions of what was once Poland; remapped to Russian control and various ethnicities given heavy handed treatment under Empress Catherine and successors not to mention the religious authorites; and then remapped to Ukraine post 1991; plus add on Crimea which was never Ukrainian in any sense having been a Muslim Khanate until taken over by Russia under Catherine who founded NovoRussia and Odessa on the Black Sea coast; then deemed part of Ukraine by Kruschev in 1954 for administrative reasons.
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Resolving these ethnic conflicts is none of Australia’s business just as it was none of Britain’s business to intervene in the Crimean War between Russia and the Ottomans. Even if it were there are the practical difficulties of resolving a multi sided struggle between several sides allied and at odds in shifting combinations. But it is none of Australia’s business.
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Nor does engaging in the conflict promote the interests of the people of the various nations now making up the people who are citizens of the US. There is an exception though in that unlike Australia the bundle of enmities and traumas generated in East Europe were carried to the US by waves of hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution from The Pale of Settlement over a century ago, supplemented by some more post WW2. These people have the same understandable response to traumas as any group signaled out for harsh treatment and like anyone carrying trauma directly or, by experiencing their parental inability to love on account of their direct trauma response, as an inheritance.
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Some of these people have hung on to their resentments in the new country and by virtue of their industriousness, hard work, commitment to education and sense of community solidarity that enabled them to survive in harsh conditions, a feature of semitic people, some of these are now in positions to influence US policy towards Russia. Like Putin it is their emotions, based on their past hurts, which drive behaviours and they do have an interest in resolving the conflict in Eastern Europe, resolving it in a manner which will remove the source of their fears and anxieties. These cannot be ignored if one is to understand the conflict. Rememeber Clausterwitz’s maxim was something along the lines of war is a continuation of politics with other means and to understand politics it is to understand emotional drivers.
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However for example in the freedomheritage link provided it mentions the US organising the 2014 coup in Ukraine but leaves out that the main activists in the US State Dept behind this coup was Victoria Nuland whose father had a nervous breakdown from growing up under his traumatised father, a Jew from Odessa. Her boss as Secretary of State in the Biden administration Antony Blinken has East European Jewish ancestry from both parents including from Kyiv. There is at least an appearance of conflict of interest with these two but nvere declared by either and as such this is a red flag which should be declared so that one can consider their advice to pursue Russia in Ukraine. Blinken was all for the 2003 invasion of Iraq so has a track record of misadventure. the link mentioned did mention Zelensky as being WEF but not that like Nuland and Blinken he also is of East European Jewish ethnicity. As the recent issue of Blinken allowing, or not as the case may be, demonstrates Zelensky does in fact have to take orders from the US, and why not. Going back to the dissolution of the Russian Empire in 1991 it was at that time that Paul Wolfhowitz, of East European Jewish descent, a Deputy Secretary in the US Defense Dept advocated that as an official policy the US should work towards breaking Russia up into smaller countries that would not threaten the US. He too advocated for the war in Iraq.
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These people are to be admired. They all stand by their nation, nation in its true meaning of being the largest grouping of people related by birth (family, clan, tribe and nation) and are doing all they can to advance the security interests of their nation using their public offices in US administrations.
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However it is not in the interests of the Australian government to adopt their interests as Australia’s interests, at least without conscious decision making to do so. “Putin is a gangster worse than Hitler” is no argument to do so.
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PS.
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By way of addendum the above text lists people in public office in the US who have a personal stake in the conflict in East Europe. But Deep State expands to The Swamp and one way that this has transpired is that Victoria Nuland’s sister-in-law Kimberley Kagan founded and presides over the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) whose spokespeople Andrew Bolt often has on his Sky show. Kimberley and her husband Robert are both of East European Jewish ancestry themselves and ISW is funded by the military industrial complex.
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Another way this is illustrated is that Antony Blinken’s step-father, of whom he has spoken approvingly, was holocaust survivor Simon Pisar of East European ancestry. Simon was US attorney for and confidante of Robert Maxwell who was a high level Mossad ‘agent of influence’ and father of Ghislaine Maxwell, both Maxwells having East European ancestry. What is someone so closely linked through common ethnic background to the external security arm of a foreign state (Israel) doing running US foreign policy? High profile Maxwell, together with Lesley Wexner, also of East European Jewish background, and a US billionaire recruited Jeffrey Epstein, also Jewish, as front man to the sexual blackmail operation they ran to gain leverage over people with influence with US administrations. Jewish commentator on the Deep State and Swamp Eric Weinstein has always pointed out that the operation was conducted for an intelligence service, without saying which one. Which service might three Jewish people be working for? One doesn’t have to be Einstein to work that out. Weinstein also said Epstein was a ‘construct’ and unknown as a fund manager to the uber rich until suddenly he was, and other commentators have said this too. If one reads up on Eli Cohen it is apparent that his ‘construct’ bears a striking resemblance to that of Epstein. Cohen was hanged in Damascus in 1965 and just a year later Israeli security took another hit when de Gaulle slapped am arms embargo on Israel for having use its French supplied military to strike Arab countries in the Six Days War. Mossad had to mount operations to retrieve Israeli naval boats from French shipyards. Israel subsequently turned to the US as arms supplier but it was incumbent upon Mossad to cover the hole in their security, the hole being the minds of the people providing the armaments. Thus Mossad organised ‘insurance’ in Washington lest like Paris they renege on their contracts to supply armaments. Again one has to admire how a small number of Jewish people cooperated to assist the survival of the Jewish people and the Jewish nation state. And Blinken has very close connections to these people.
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Naturally all of this is buried and all we hear of Epstein is that he was a convicted ‘paedophile’. That in itself signifies a smokescreen as it is false. Firstly no one is convicted of being a paedophile, instead Epstein was convicted of sexual offences against female adolescents under the age of consent. Being a paedophilia isn’t a criminal offence, it is a psychological / psychiatric determination of a subject as being soley or primarily being sexually interested in pre-pubescent children. Epstein’s many statements on the issue show that his interest was in post-pubescent adolescents. While Eli Cohen was able to run his operation employing prostitutes at his sex parties sadly by the late 90s in America the shame at being photographed enjoying their company no longer held the blackmail value it once had. Wexner / Maxwell / Epstein needed evidence of criminal sexual behaviour and that meant recruiting adolescent girls already in circumstances of moral danger, as was one said, who were below the age of consent. And of course the blackmail wasn’t to extort money, as the mafia used to do, but to have leverage over influential people in Washington should the political winds go against Israel.
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The Jewish people have survived as a resented minority middleman group by family and community values pursuing their interests but it is always necessary to understand whose interests are being served before engaging in foreign wars.
The theory, as I understand it, is that US policy regarding the war in Ukraine, and towards Russia generally, is directed by US Jews who are hostile to Russia, and their hostility is pathological and is caused by psychological trauma. That trauma is inflicted by the parents, passed down in each generation from ancestors who were victims of persecution in the Russian Empire.
I don’t know whether you are a psychiatrist or are otherwise qualified to hypothesise that persecuted parents or grandparents of Blinken, Nuland and Wolfowitz (let’s throw Albright into the mix too) have, as a result of their own psychiatric pathology, so traumatised their descendants as to pass on the same pathology, which in turn causes a hatred of Russia and a desire to break it up or subjugate it. The theory, so generally stated and so unsupported by any evidence, factual or medical, is self-evidently absurd.
I wouldn’t bother to respond, and would leave it to the Jews here to do so, except that it is a predictable manifestation of that bizarre tendency to blame Jews for all the ills of the world. The shame is that this sort of nonsense clutters up an otherwise intelligent site.