No. 243 – Russia Invokes a Holy War Against the West
Dear James,
We are at a turning point in Putin’s War. A battle of massive significance not just for the Ukraine but also for the whole free world is upon us. The outcome of this battle will demonstrate the competing strengths of the democratic and the authoritarian worlds. It is a clash of philosophies concerning the sources and legitimacy of power. It’s the battle of the next thirty years.
So far Russia’s dictator has failed in all his efforts to take over a free and independent nation. Over the last six weeks he has been humiliated, has withdrawn from Kyiv, lost the Moskva, the pride of his Black Sea Fleet, and is now facing the full effects of international sanctions with Russia’s GDP forecast to drop by 11% this year. Putin has become an international pariah and will soon be subject to investigations into his multiple war crimes. Yet this strange demi-man only has two strategies when he is in a hole. Escalate and double down. He cannot use his demoralized troops and so resorts to shelling civilians. Now he is using the ultimate form of brainwashing to convince his people that the war in Ukraine is ‘going to plan’. He is declaring ‘Holy war’ against the West.
Vyacheslav Nikonov, a political scientist and member of the Russian parliament said recently that, “in reality, we embody the forces of good in the modern world because this clash is metaphysical…. We are on the side of good against the forces of absolute evil…. This is truly a holy war that we’re waging, and we have to win it and of course we will because our cause is just. We have no other choice. Our cause is not only just, our cause is righteous and victory will certainly be ours.” He was defending the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which Russian troops have razed cities, murdered thousands and raped and tortured Ukrainian citizens.
Russia’s is a reactionary regime which turns reality on its head and claims that black is white and vice versa. In this way it is similar to right wing regimes everywhere. They glorify their pasts and do everything to rebuild towards those golden days. In the USA, the Republican Party under Trump, is fighting to subvert democracy, amongst other things by suppressing voting rights of blacks and other minorities. The US Supreme Court is dominated by ‘Constitutional Originalists’ who believe that the US constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding at the time of adoption i.e over 250 years ago. In France, Marine Le Pen is threatening the EU and in Hungary’, Viktor Orbán, an ally of Putin’s, is determined to suppress LGBT rights in favour of “the Christian family model.” Even in our own nation your very own Oliver Dowden, Tory Chairman, last year railed against the ‘painful woke psychodrama’ sweeping through the West. Tory ideology suggests that too much compassion creates weakness and that liberal democracy makes us all ‘soft’. Tell that to Volodomyr Zelensky! He shows us that a nation can be compassionate and strong simultaneously. Zelensky is formally powerless, compassionate, yet immensely strong. Putin is formally immensely strong, yet is fundamentally weak for he has only false compassion for and legitimacy amongst the people he governs.
Another advisor to Putin, Serge Karaganov, has predicted the end of western democracies. He claims that democracy is failing and authoritarianism rising because of democracy’s bad moral foundations. Dictators, he suggested, will take over. At the moment Putin’s War in the Ukraine is demonstrating the opposite. That free nations flourish while the dictators flounder in their one-man megalomanias and rigid views of long lost worlds. The free world is dynamic while the unfree world is static and fossilised. Oliver Dowden attacks our ‘social justice warriors’, ‘woke aggression and ‘cancel culture’, failing to see that, according to a recent study, people feel better under more egalitarian systems than under systems based upon extremes of wealth and concentrated power.
Right wing parties do not like forward change. They crave the certainties and comforts of the past. James, almost half of Tory voters are now over the age of 65 and 83% are over 45. Young people don’t share your obsessions with ‘woke’ culture and the nastiness implicit in the Brexit vote. In 1983, 42% of those aged between 18 to 24 voted Conservative. By 2019 that figure had shrunk to 21%.
Today, the brave Ukrainians are showing the world what social justice really means. They are not harping back to a long lost past. Instead, they are building a new nation before our very eyes. We are seeing a true, people’s democracy flourish in the nightmare face of Russian autocracy. It’s a battle for the future of the world, James. Слава Українi!! ‘Glory to Ukraine!
BH – Your Concerned Constituent.