THE TOXIC TWINS, RUSSIA AND THE WEST, ARE NOT QUITE THE SAME

Also available on Archive

Russia has no allies, only Third World countries that believe its latest bullshit

by Colin Liddell

Russia should probably be destroyed as an overcentralised state and replaced with a range of smaller, pleasanter states. But why just Russia and not China, America, or some other "oversized" state? The answer is simple: toxicity. Russia has always been toxic in ways that its other oversized rivals have not.

This was not always apparent, and for a time - in the Zeroes - it even looked like Russia might possibly provide a healthy ideological counterweight to the toxic liberalism of the West. Yes, I also admit that the West is toxic. In fact, I have insisted on it for years. But there is toxicity and there is toxicity. Not all toxicities are the same. Some toxicities are "more equal" than others, and Russian toxicity is the worst.

Why is this?

Western toxicity has certain built-in constraints. However mad the West may be about its ideology of atomisation, LGBTQ+, individual rights, racial reparations, etc., that same individualist and expressionist ideology limits the degree to which it can weaponise and regiment its people to project its ideology. The poisonousness of the West mainly poisons itself, and, after a time, may even be supposed to produce a healthier backlash. 

In short, the West will not seriously fight to enforce its sick ideology, because even a few hundred body bags will become an issue, as will the lack of transgender facilities in the trenches. It is an unimperial empire. Effectively it has imprisoned itself in a kind of "Vietnam anti-war counter-culture" writ large. 

Another constraint on the West is its open society. The West can go mad, and we have seen various iterations of that, but there is always the capability for saner minds to push back. A few years ago, it looked like the woke mob was taking over completely, but now that term is almost always used in derision, and there is plenty of pushback. The tone of hysteria has also greatly diminished, if not completely. 

Russia lacks both of these constraints on its toxicity. The present war has shown that it can ruthlessly sacrifice tens of thousands of its citizens' lives with low political cost to its elites; while the more insane the state narrative becomes the less it is challenged by the so-called "saner" minds supposedly in Russia.

In fact, the main worry of many Russia analysts is that Putin may be forced out by an even harder hard-liner. Putin, it seems, represents the "mushy middle" of the Russian state.

Disposable Putin thug 

But let's focus more on the peculiar nature of Russian toxicity. What does it consist of? Quite simply: the total bending of truth to suit an anchored political narrative. 

If we try to focus on macro-essence and contrast this with the West's toxicity, the West represents the breaking down of truth/objectivity to suit economic interests, while Russia represents the same thing to suit political interests. This should not be surprising, as Russia is not an economy and never successfully became one. It has always been a polity and little else.

In themselves economic interests and political interests are not necessarily human interests, but economics has always been less able to escape the gravity of reality than politics. This is an important difference. Russian toxicity bends and twists the truth, while the West's toxicity breaks it down and disassembles it. This is a key distinction.

It is the nature of political toxicity to bend truth, to invert and contort reality into elaborate and outlandish patterns, and ultimately this is more dangerous and unhealthy.

Western toxicity, by contrast -- driven by economics and the economic urge to maintain flows -- tends towards the granular and the fluid. This allows relatively sane or non-toxic structures to be occasionally rebuilt, rather like sandcastles, although, like sandcastles, they are seldom strong. Russian toxicity, by contrast, is more like the heating and bending of ropes of glass. Yes, there too there is an element of weakness, brittleness to be exact.

All Russian distortions serve one purpose and one purpose only: the perpetuation and dominance of the overcentralised Russian state, whether boyar, tsar, commissar, or KGB flunky is in nominal charge.

When that state is weaker than its rivals, as today, the cry is "multipolarity", when it is equal it is "Eurasianism", and when it looks like it might be stronger then "Universal socialism" or "The Third Rome" is the refrain. The only constant is Kremlin interest.

Let us consider some examples: "Russia is the New Rome"! How ludicrous is that? Then we had the Tsars and their Germanic-led, Potemkin-village facsimile of European society (this is what Tartovsky's Solaris is really about), followed by the absurdity (and toxic potency) of the Soviet State as both "slave" and enslaver, and the encore by the Putinist State attempting to reheat all these broken shards and meld them into the present day absurdity of Russia as the anti-colonialist leader of "Pan Africanism." Yes, seriously!

Putin with African leaders sharing tips on corruption
and  kleptocracy (Russian "hostesses" not shown)

Putin has been hanging out with his African buddies in St Petersburg, and our old friend Alexander Dugin has now fully formulated this into his latest crackpot thesis for deployment by Russia's online army of shills and bots.  According to this nonsense, Africa is "oppressed" by the West and needs Chinese debt traps and Russian Wagner mercenary groups to ensure its "freedom," rather than simply getting its act together. 

Political toxicity of the kind Russia has been producing on an industrial scale for centuries is always worse than the West's  economic toxic by-product. One attempts to coil itself around the world and choke reality to death in a swirl of relentless and tedious distortions, memes, and propaganda aimed at the low IQ masses, while the other allows its "subjects" to vote with their feet and constantly walk back into the light, if they so choose. 

____________________

Follow @cbliddell

Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia).