Gangster soap opera plot twist
Back in the Obama years I guess some of us could have been partially forgiven for hoping that a sustained ideological challenge to the toxicity of the West could have been mounted from a place like Russia. Those days are long gone and clearly ended for all but the biggest idiots on the 24th February 2022, when Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine.
The latest orc-on-orc violence from the Russo-sphere, in which Putin apparently had a bomb placed on the plane of the Wagner Group's leadership, shows once again that Russia is nothing but a morally vacuous abyss, a hollowed-out gangster state, designed to keep the biggest criminals in power until they too fall foul of the power dynamic and end up charred to a crisp or tortured to death in some cellar.
In an immediate sense, this brutal act (assuming it is indeed by Putin and not, say, French intelligence, the CIA, or MI6, etc.) strengthens Putin's hand. It shows him getting his revenge on his rebellious underlings, and makes those around him more afraid of him.
But, fear is a two-edged sword.
In the less immediate sense, it actually makes Putin weaker, as those around him won't be able to stop seeing themselves in Prigozhin's shoes, who, when all is said and done, genuinely wanted "Team Orc" to win this war.
There are two ways in which this Kremlin Night of the Long Knives plays out for Russia, both extremely negative:
(1) Everyone in leadership positions will be even more terrified, so that no one will want to be the bearer of bad news or critical of the way things are being done. Basically, this is similar to what happened to Nazi Germany, especially after Hitler survived the July 1944 bomb plot, and the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev years. Most in management positions will just try to sit in place and hope for the best. Problems, failures, and weaknesses will go unchecked.
(2) Many in the leadership will also start working even harder on their exit/survival strategies. Inevitably this will involve all sorts of passive aggressive behaviour, heel-dragging, and even secretly wishing or working for the war to fail, so that they can get some distance from Putin by his failure, discrediting, and removal from power.
Needless to say, this process is unlikely to be smooth, and will, at the very least, result in Russia being defeated and humiliated in the war, and, at most, lead to the country disintegrating.
In fact, when you think about how this dynamic is likely to play out and why, you realise why democracies, although obviously toxic in lots of ways, are actually much more robust and successful at war and geopolitics than over-centralised, morally vacuous totalitarian states.
Meanwhile, what is Russia Today saying about the incident?
In an immediate sense, this brutal act (assuming it is indeed by Putin and not, say, French intelligence, the CIA, or MI6, etc.) strengthens Putin's hand. It shows him getting his revenge on his rebellious underlings, and makes those around him more afraid of him.
But, fear is a two-edged sword.
In the less immediate sense, it actually makes Putin weaker, as those around him won't be able to stop seeing themselves in Prigozhin's shoes, who, when all is said and done, genuinely wanted "Team Orc" to win this war.
There are two ways in which this Kremlin Night of the Long Knives plays out for Russia, both extremely negative:
(1) Everyone in leadership positions will be even more terrified, so that no one will want to be the bearer of bad news or critical of the way things are being done. Basically, this is similar to what happened to Nazi Germany, especially after Hitler survived the July 1944 bomb plot, and the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev years. Most in management positions will just try to sit in place and hope for the best. Problems, failures, and weaknesses will go unchecked.
(2) Many in the leadership will also start working even harder on their exit/survival strategies. Inevitably this will involve all sorts of passive aggressive behaviour, heel-dragging, and even secretly wishing or working for the war to fail, so that they can get some distance from Putin by his failure, discrediting, and removal from power.
Needless to say, this process is unlikely to be smooth, and will, at the very least, result in Russia being defeated and humiliated in the war, and, at most, lead to the country disintegrating.
In fact, when you think about how this dynamic is likely to play out and why, you realise why democracies, although obviously toxic in lots of ways, are actually much more robust and successful at war and geopolitics than over-centralised, morally vacuous totalitarian states.
Meanwhile, what is Russia Today saying about the incident?
Basically Andrew-Anglin-level trolling -- just to remind you what an unserious, cynical, post-truth, ideologically vacuous state the Kremlin has now become.
____________________
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).
Re "democracies"
ReplyDeleteAny alleged expert or layperson who talks about "democracies" AS IF a real democracy ACTUALLY EXISTS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD (or has existed at any time in 'human civilization') is evidently a fool who's repeating mindlessly and blindly the propaganda fed to them since they were a kid and/or is a member of the corrupt establishment minions whose job is to disseminate this total lie because any "democracy" of 'human civilization' has always been a covert structure of the rule of a few over the many operating behind the pretense name and facade of a "democracy": www.CovidTruthBeKnown.com (or https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html)
"There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. [...]. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies [...]. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable laws of business. The world is a business [...]." --- from the 1976 movie “Network”
"We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." --- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice
Does anyone still not see how the deadly game on the foolish public is played ... or still does not WANT to see it?
"We'll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---William Casey, a former CIA director=a leading psychopathic criminal of the genocidal US regime
Yes, we all know there is no such thing as a perfect democracy. I used the term in its commonly meant, somewhat soiled and compromised state, as an antithesis to the kind of state where saying the "wrong thing" gets you suspended on a meat hook or force fed a novichok sandwich.
DeleteYou're still in denial of what had been stated in that comment. There is NO democracy in whatever is peddled AS "democracy" because they are all oligarchic dictatorships. Yeah you do "know"... lol
DeleteThanks for saying nothing new and thus giving me an opportunity to re-use my previous comment:
DeleteYes, we all know there is no such thing as a perfect democracy. I used the term in its commonly meant, somewhat soiled and compromised state, as an antithesis to the kind of state where saying the "wrong thing" gets you suspended on a meat hook or force fed a novichok sandwich.