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Slavoj Žižek, one of many main thinkers of the West, who has his origins within the “Communist East”, wrote the opposite day in The Guardian:
‘Sure, the liberal west is hypocritical, making use of its excessive requirements very selectively. However hypocrisy means you violate the requirements you proclaim, and on this means you open your self as much as inherent criticism – after we criticise the liberal west, we use its personal requirements. What Russia is providing is a world with out hypocrisy – as a result of it’s with out world moral requirements, practising simply pragmatic “respect” for variations. We have now seen clearly what this implies when, after the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, they immediately made a take care of China. China accepts the brand new Afghanistan whereas the Taliban will ignore what China is doing to Uyghurs – that is, in nuce, the brand new globalisation advocated by Russia. And the one strategy to defend what’s value saving in our liberal custom is to ruthlessly insist on its universality. The second we apply double requirements, we are not any much less “pragmatic” than Russia.’
Russians concern they’re shedding Ukraine for good
One of many nice causes of conflict – the Russians say it out loud – is the concern of shedding Ukraine for good. That’s, Ukraine has entered the section the place it will likely be misplaced eternally. And never essentially within the sense of an administrative territorial part, however in a a lot deeper sense.
We’re speaking about Ukraine being reduce off from Russia in an nearly metaphysical sense: of complete alienation, of getting radically completely different values. That, from a standard cultural house, it turns into a international and even enemy house. And it’s the identical with Belarus. Russia fears that it’s shedding its affect and attraction in an area it considers to be intimately part of itself. And that lack of id is their abyssal concern.
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This concern of a complete lack of Ukraine, out of attain of the “Russian world”, is a horrible Russian dread and anguish. Ukraine is a symptom of their concern of self-destruction. How actual this concern is I can not inform. However there is a vital trigger right here. In actual fact, there’s multiple.
I’ve had these discussions many occasions with Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian associates. For greater than 15 years.
Greater than ten years in the past I had espresso in Kiev and Minsk and talked with associates of my era. The factor that stood out to me was that every one the youth and all of the city hipsterism was linked to Warsaw, Berlin, London, Budapest, the Central European College, the USA.
Moscow and Saint Petersburg, which is simply across the nook from them and is their former outdated capital, was of their creativeness one thing additional away than New York. This distancing occurred in simply 20 years. Their dad and mom and grandparents who had been educated within the two capitals of the empire had grandchildren and kids who wished nothing to do with the 2 new centres.
The place is your comfortable energy?
I repeat, this occurred in 30 years at most, in the course of the Putin regime, even when it began within the Yeltsin period. The break started radically, with my era within the perestroika period, after we declared ourselves to be “the final Individuals” – we had been extra American than the Individuals. It is a lengthy story: in my guide, The Final Dingo Kids, I clarify this phenomenon.
My line is straightforward: rebiata, my expensive ones – you’ve got acquired the technique all improper. Which means you Russians, the Russian state, the 2 capitals, the foremost city centres, don’t have anything to supply them: “love by pressure is rape” says the Russian proverb. The place is your comfortable energy? Vâ je Imperia, sila? as Pelevin says in Technology P – aren’t you the Empire, a smashing pressure?
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