Putin vs. Voltaire, Žižek

22 02 2023

Putin, yesterday:

The West started to turn Ukraine into anti-Russia. This project started back in the 19th century, started by Austria-Hungary Empire and Poland.

Putin, Feb. 21, 2022:

modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.

Voltaire, in 1731 (in his Histoire de Charles XII):

“Ukraine has always aspired to freedom.”

May be an image of text that says 'L'Ukraine a toujours aspiré à être libre: mais étant entourée de la Moscovie, des États du Grand Seigneur et de la Pologne, il lui fallu chercher un protecteur, et, par conséquent, un maître dans l'un de ces trois États. Elle se mit d'abord sous la protection de la Pologne, qui la traita trop en sujette; elle se donna depuis au Moscovite, qui la gouverna en esclave autant qu'il le put. D'abord les Ukrainiens'

Žižek, “The Dark Side of Neutrality” (responding to Roger Waters, last week, also readable here):

As an independent voice who follows Russian media very closely, I am well acquainted with what Putin and his propagandists “actually say.” The major TV channels are full of commentators recommending that countries like Poland, Germany, or the United Kingdom be nuked. The Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, one of Putin’s closes allies, now openly calls for “the fight against Satanism [to] continue throughout Europe and, first of all, on the territory of Poland.”

Indeed, the official Kremlin line describes the war as a “special operation” for the de-Nazification and de-demonization of Ukraine. Among Ukraine’s “provocations” is that it has permitted Pride parades and allowed LGBTQ+ rights to undermine traditional sexual norms and gender roles. Kremlin-aligned commentators speak of “liberal totalitarianism,” even going so far as to argue that George Orwell’s 1984 was a critique not of fascism or Stalinism but of liberalism.

[. . .]

Those who would claim neutrality forfeit their standing to complain about the horrors of colonization anywhere. […] It is obscene to blame Ukraine for Russian acts of destruction, or to mischaracterize the Ukrainians’ heroic resistance as a rejection of peace. Those, like Waters, who call for “an immediate ceasefire” would have Ukrainians respond to redoubled Russian aggression by abandoning their own self-defense. That is a formula not for peace, but for pacification.


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