The
BBC has published
an article titled “How
Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon” about
the Kremlin’s latest addition to its horrifying deadly hybrid
warfare arsenal: comedy.
The
article is authored by Olga Robinson, whom the BBC, unhindered by any
trace of self-awareness, has
titled “Senior
Journalist (Disinformation)”. Robinson
demonstrates the qualifications and acumen which earned her that
title by warning the BBC’s audience that the Kremlin has been using
humor to dismiss and ridicule accusations that have been leveled
against it by western governments, a “form of trolling” that
she reports is designed to “deliberately lower the level of
discussion”.
“Russia’s
move towards using humour to influence its campaigns is a relatively
recent phenomenon,” Robinson
explains, without speculating as to why Russians might have suddenly
begun laughing at their western accusers.
She gives no consideration
to the possibility that the tightly knit alliance of western nations
who suddenly began hysterically shrieking about Russia two years ago
have simply gotten much more ridiculous and easier to make fun of
during that time.
Couldn’t
possibly have anything to do with the emergence of a demented media
environment wherein everything around the world from French protests
to American culture wars to British discontent with the European
Union gets blamed on Russia without any facts or evidence. Wherein
BBC reporters now
correct guests and caution them against
voicing skepticism of anti-Russia narratives because the UK is in “an
information war” with that nation. Wherein the same cable news
Russiagate pundit can claim that both Rex
Tillerson’s hiringandhis
later firing were
the result of a Russian conspiracy to benefit the Kremlin.
Wherein mainstream
outlets can
circulate blatantly false information about Julian Assange and
unnamed “Russians” and then blame the falseness of that reporting
on Russian disinformation.Wherein Pokemon
Go,
cutesy Facebook memes and $4,700
in Google ads are
sincerely cited as methods by which Hillary Clinton’s $1.2 billion
presidential campaign was outdone. Wherein
conspiracy theories that Putin has infiltrated the highest levels of
the US government have been blaring
on mainstream headline news for
two years with absolutely
nothing to
show for it to
this day.
Nope,
the only possibility is that the Kremlin suddenly figured out that
humor is a thing.
The
fact of the matter is that humorous lampooning of western
establishment Russia narratives writes itself. The hypocrisy is so
cartoonish, the emotions are so breathlessly over-the-top, the
stories so riddled with plot holes and the agendas underlying them so
glaringly obvious that they translate very easily into laughs. I
myself recently
authored a satire piece that
a lot of people loved and which got picked up by numerous alternative
media outlets, and all I did was write down all the various
escalations this administration has made against Russia as though
they were commands being given to Trump by Putin. It was extremely
easy to write, and it was pretty damn funny if I do say so myself.
And it didn’t take any Kremlin rubles or dezinformatsiya from St
Petersburg to figure out how to write it.
“Ben
Nimmo, an Atlantic Council researcher on Russian disinformation, told
the BBC that attempts
to create funny memes were part of the strategy as ‘disinformation
for the information age’,”
the article warns. Nimmo, ironically, is
himself intimately involved
with the
British domestic disinformation firm Integrity Initiative, whose
shady government-sponsored
psyops against the
Labour Party have
sparked a national scandal that is likely far
from reaching peak intensity.
“Most
comedy programmes on Russian state television these days are anodyne
affairs which either do not touch on political topics, or direct
humour at the Kremlin’s perceived enemies abroad,” Robinson
writes, which I found funny since I’d just recently read an
excellent essay by
Michael Tracey titled “Why has late night swapped laughs for
lusting after Mueller?”
“If
the late night ‘comedy’ of the Trump era has something resembling
a ‘message,’ it’s that large segments of the nation’s liberal
TV viewership are nervously tracking every Russia development with a
passion that cannot be conducive to mental health – or for that
matter, political efficacy,” Tracey
writes, documenting numerous examples of the ways late night comedy
now has audiences cheering for a US intelligence insider and Bush
appointee instead of challenging power-serving media orthodoxies as
programs like The
Daily Show once
did.
If
you wanted the opposite of “anodyne affairs”, it would be
comedians ridiculing the way all the establishment talking heads are
manipulating their audiences into supporting the US intelligence
community and FBI insiders. It would be excoriating the media
environment in which unfathomably powerful world-dominating
government agencies are subject to less scrutiny and criticism than a
man trapped in an embassy who published inconvenient facts about
those agencies. It certainly wouldn’t be the cast of Saturday Night
Live singing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” to a framed
portrait if Robert Mueller wearing a Santa hat. It doesn’t get much
more anodyne than that.
Russia
makes fun of western establishment narratives about it because those
narratives are so incredibly easy to make fun of that they are
essentially asking for it, and the nerdy way empire loyalists are
suddenly crying victim about it is itself more
comedy. When Guardian writer Carole
Cadwalladr began
insinuating that
RT covering standard newsworthy people like Julian Assange and Nigel
Farage was a conspiracy to “boost” those people for the
advancement of Russian agendas instead of a news outlet doing the
thing that news reporting is, RT rightly made
fun of her for it. Cadwalladr
reacted to RT’s mockery with a claim
that she was a victim of “attacks”,
instead of the recipient of perfectly justified ridicule for
circulating an intensely moronic conspiracy theory.
Ah
well. People are nuts and we’re hurtling
toward a direct confrontation with
a nuclear
superpower.
Sometimes there’s nothing else to do but laugh. As
Wavy Gravy said, “Keep your sense of humor, my
friend; if you don’t have a sense of humor it
just isn’t funny anymore.”
I
have recently had the pleasure of watching a short presentation by
Professor Stephen F. Cohen entitled “Rethinking Putin” which he
delivered on the annualNation cruise
on December 2, 2017 (see here for the original Nation
Articleand original
YouTube video).
In his short presentation, Professor Cohen does a superb job
explaining what Putin is *not* and that includes: (but, please do
watch the original video before proceeding).
He
is not the man who de-democratized Russia (Elstin and the White House
did)
He
is not the leader who created corruption and kleptocracy in Russia
(Elstin and the White House did)
He
is not a criminal leader who ordered the murder of opponents or
journalists (no evidence)
He
did not order the hacking of the DNC servers (no evidence)
He
was not anti-US or anti-West from the get-go (Putin changed over
time)
He
is not a neo-Soviet leader (he is very critical of Lenin and Stalin)
He
is not an aggressive foreign policy leader (he has been a reactive
leader)
He
is not somehow defined by his years at the KGB.
Professor
Cohen ended his talk by suggesting a few things which might form a
part of a future honest biography:
As
a young and inexperienced leader placed at the helm of a collapsing
state:
He
rebuilt, stabilized and modernized Russia in a way to prevent future
collapses
He
had to restore the “vertical” of power: “managed democracy”
(i.e. restored order)
He
needed a consensual history patching up Czarist, Soviet and
post-Soviet eras without imposing one, single, version of history
He
needed Western support to modernize the Russian economy
He
wanted Russia to be a great power, but not a super-power
He
never favored iron-curtain isolationism; he is an internationalist
(more European than 90% of Russians, at least in the beginning).
The
key thesis is this: Putin began as a pro-Western, European leader and
with time he realigned himself with a much more traditional, Russian
worldview. He is more in line with Russian voters today.
Professor
Cohen concluded by addressing two topics which, I presume, his
audience cared deeply about: he said that, contrary to Western
propaganda, the so-called ‘anti-gay’ laws in Russia are no
different from the laws of 13 US states. Secondly, that “by
any reckoning, be it flourishing inside Russia or relations with
Israel, by general consent of all, nobody denies this, Jews under
Putin in Russia are better off than they had ever been in Russian
history. Ever. They have more freedom, less official anti-Semitism,
more protection, more official admiration for Israel, more
interaction, more freedom to go back and forth”.
This
is all very interesting important stuff, especially when delivered to
a Left-Liberal-Progressive US audience (with, probably, a high
percentage of Jews). Frankly, Professor Cohen’s presentation makes
me think about what Galileo might have felt when he made his own
“presentations” before the tribunal of Inquisition (Cohen’s
articles and books are now also on the modern equivalent of
theIndexLibrorum
Prohibitorum).
In truth, Professor Cohen is simply true to himself: he opposed the
crazies during the old Cold War and now he is opposing the same
crazies during the new Cold War. His entire life Professor Cohen was
a man of truth, courage, and integrity – a peacemaker in the sense
of the Beatitudes (Matt 5:9). So while I am not surprised by his
courage, I am still immensely impressed by it. Some might think that
delivering a short presentation on a cruise-ship is hardly a sign of
great courage, but I would vehemently disagree. Yes, nobody would
shoot Cohen in the back of the neck like, say, the Soviet
ChK-GPU-NKVD would have done, but I submit that these methods of
“enforcing” a single official consensus were far less effective
than their modern equivalents: the conformity imposition techniques
(see: Asch
Conformity Experiment)
so prevalent in the modern Western society. Just look at the results:
there was far more reading and thinking (of any kind) going on in the
Soviet society than there is today in the modern AngloZionist Empire
(anybody who remembers the bad old USSR will confirm that to you). As
one joke puts it: in a dictatorship, you are told to “shut up”,
while in a democracy you are encouraged to “keep talking”. QED.
Turning
to Professor Cohen’s talking points, numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 are
basic facts. Nothing to be debated here – Cohen is plainly setting
the factual record straight. Number 5 is much more interesting and
controversial. For one thing, we are talking views/intentions, which
are hard to judge. Was Putin ever pro-Western? Who knows? Maybe his
closest friends know? My own belief is that this question must be
looked at in combination of issue #8: Putin’s service in the KGB.
There
is still a huge amount
of misinformation about the old Soviet KGB in the West. To the
average American a “KGB agent” is a guy called Vladimir, with
steel gray-blue eyes, who beats up dissidents, steals Western
technological secrets, and spies on the wives of politicians (and
even beds them). He is a hardcore Communist who dreams about nuking
or invading the USA and he speaks with a thick Russian accent.
Alternatively, there is Anna Kushchenko (a.k.a. Anna
Chapman)
– a devious sex doll who seduces Western men into treason. These
prototypes are as accurate as James Bond is an accurate
representation of MI6. The reality could not be more different.
The
Soviet KGB was first and foremost a huge bureaucracy with completely
different, and separate, directorates, departments, and sections.
Yes, one such Directorate did deal with dissidents and anti-Soviet
activists (mainly the 9thDepartment of the 5th Directorate) but
even within this (infamous) 5th Directorate there were some
Departments which, in coordination with other KGB Directorates and
Departments, dealt with more legitimate tasks such as, for example,
the early detection of terrorist organizations (7th Department).
Other Directorates of the KGB dealt with economic security
(6th Directorate), internal security and counter-intelligence
(2nd Directorate) or even protection of officials
(9th Directorate).
Putin
was an officer (not an “agent” – agents are recruited
from outside the
KGB!) of the First Main Directorate (PGU) of the KGB: foreign
intelligence. Putin himself has recently
revealed that
he was working inside the most sensitive Department of the PGU, the
“Department S” which are “illegals”. This is very important.
The PGU was so separate from all the other Directorates of the KGB
that it had its own headquarters in the south of Moscow. But even
inside the PGU, the Department S was the most secret and separated
from all the other PGU Departments (no less than 10). As somebody who
has spent many years as an anti-Soviet activist and who has had
personal, face to face, dealings with KGB officers (of various
Directorates) I can confirm that not only did the KGB as a whole get
some of the best and brightest in Russia, but the PGU got the best
ones of those and only the very best ones from that select group ever
made it to the legendary Department S. Now let’s look at what kind
of skill-set was required from PGU officers in general (besides the
obvious two: being very bright and very trustworthy).
First
and foremost, a PGU officer has to be a top-notchspecialist
of his area of expertise (in
Putin’s case: Germany, of course, but also the rest of Europe and,
since Western Europe was – and still is – a US colony, the USA).
While Soviet people were told that the
West was the enemy, the PGU officers had to
understand why and how the
West was that enemy.
In
practical terms, this implies not only knowing and understanding the
official cultural, political, social and economic realities of the
enemy’s polity, but also the real power relations inside that
polity. Such an understanding is not only useful to approach and
evaluate the potential usefulness of each person you interact with,
but also to be able to understand in what environment this person has
to operate. The notion of PGU officers being bigoted commies is
laughable as these men, and women, were very well read (they had
unlimited access to all the Western information sources, including
anti-Soviet ones, classified reports, and all the anti-Soviet
literature imaginable) and they were ultimate realists/pragmatists.
Of course, like in any organization, the top leaders were often
political appointees and the bureaucrats and counter-intelligence
officers were much less sophisticated. But for officers like Putin
to reallyunderstand the reality of the
Western society was a vital skill.
Second,
a good PGU officer had to be likable; very, very likable. Being liked
by others is also a crucial skill for a good intelligence officer. In
practical terms, this means that he/she has to not only understand
what makes the other guy tick but how to influence him/her in the
right direction. When dealing with ‘illegals’ that also meant
being their best friend, confessor, moral support, guide and
protector. You can’t do that if people don’t like you. So these
intelligence officers are masters of being good friends and
companions; they are good listeners and they know a lot about how to
make you like them. They also understand exactly what you like to
hear, what you want to see and what words and actions place you in a
relaxed and trusting mode.
Now
combine these two: you have a man who is top notch specialist of the
West and who is superbly trained to be liked by Western people. How
likely is it that this man had many illusions about the West, to
begin with? And what if a man like that did have misgivings – would
he have shown them?
My
own gut feeling is that this is not very likely at all.
What
is far more likely is this: Putin played the “West best’s friend”
role for as long as possible and he dumped it when it was clearly not
productive any longer. And yes, in doing that he did realign himself
to the mainstream Russian public opinion. But that was just a useful
side-effect, not the cause or the goal of that realignment.
Look
at the Professor Cohen’s points 9-13 above (I would summarize them
as “fix Russia”). They all make sense to me, even that “he
was a young and inexperienced leader”.
There is a huge difference between being a skilled PGU officer and
being the man who rules over Russia. And even if Putin did lose some
of his illusions, it would have been primarily because the West
itself changed a great deal between the 1980s and the 2010s. But
Putin must have indeed always known that to implement Cohen’s
points 10-13 he needed the West’s help, or, if that was not
possible, at least the West’s minimal interference/resistance. But
to believe that a man who had full access to the real information
about the two Chechen wars would have any kind of illusions left
about the West’s real feelings about Russia is profoundly
misguided. In fact, anybody living in Russia in the 1990s would have
eventually come to the realization that the West wanted all Russians
to be slaves, or, more accurately, and in the words of Senator McCain
– “gas
station”
attendants. Putin himself said so when he
declared,
speaking about the USA, “they
don’t want to humiliate us, they want to subjugate us. They want to
solve their problems atour
expense, they want to subordinate us to their influence“.
Putin then added, “nobody
in history has ever succeeded in doing this and nobody will ever
succeed“.
First, I submit that Putin is absolutely correct in his understanding
of the West’s goals. Second, I also submit that he did not suddenly
“discover” this in 2014. I think that he knew it all along, but
began openly saying so after the US-backed coup in the Ukraine.
Furthermore, by 2014, Putin had already accomplished points 9-13 and
he did not need the West as much anymore.
Now
let’s look at points 6 (Putin’s view of the Soviet period), 12
(consensual history) and 14 (Russia as a great power but not a
super-power). And again, let’s consider the fact that officers of
the PGU had total access to any history books, secret archives,
memoirs, etc. and that they were very free to speak in pragmatic
analytical terms on all historical subjects with their teachers and
colleagues. Here I submit that Putin had no more illusions about the
Soviet past then he had about the West. The fact that he referred to
the breakup of the Soviet Union (which, let’s remember, happened in
a totally
undemocratic way!)
as a “catastrophe”
which was “completely
unnecessary”
does in no way imply that he was not acutely aware of all the
horrors, tragedies, waste, corruption, degradation and general evil
of the Soviet regime. All this shows is that he is also aware of the
immense victories, achievements, and successes which also are part of
the historical record of the Soviet era. Finally, and most
importantly, it shows that he realizes what absolute disaster, a
cataclysm of truly cosmic proportions the break-up of the Soviet
Union represented for all the people of the former USSR and what an
absolute nightmare it was for Russia to live a full decade as a
subservient colony of Uncle Sam. I am certain that Putin studied
enough Hegel to understand that the horrors of the 1990s were the
result of the internal contradictions of the Soviet era just as the
Soviet era was the result of the internal contradictions of Czarist
Russia. In plain English, this means that he fully understood the
inherent dangers of empire and that he decided, along with the vast
majority of Russians, that Russia ought to never become an empire
again. A strong, respected and sovereign country? Yes. But an empire?
Never again. No way!
This
fundamental conclusion is also the key to Putin’s foreign policy:
it is “reactive” by nature simply because it only acts in
response to when (and what) something affects Russia. You could say
that all “normal” nations are “reactive” because they have no
business doing otherwise. Getting involved everywhere, in every fight
or conflict, is what empires based on messianic ideologies do, not
normal countries regardless of how big or powerful they are. For all
the sick and paranoid hallucinations of Western Russophobes about a
“resurgent Russia” the reality is that Russian diplomats have
often mentioned what the goals of Russian foreign policies truly are:
to turn enemies into neutrals, neutrals into partners, partners into
friends and friends into allies. And this is why Professor Cohen is
absolutely correct, Putin is no isolationist at all – he wants a
new, multi-polar, international order of sovereign countries; not
because he is a naïve wide-eyed idealist, but because this is what
is pragmatically good for Russia and her people. You could say that
Putin is a patriotic internationalist.
And
now to the homosexuals and Jews. First, both assertions made by
Professor Cohen are correct: homosexuals and Jews are doing great in
modern Russia. I would even agree that they are doing better than
ever before. Of course, both Professor Cohen and I are being factual
and very superficial when we say that. And since I discussed both of
these topics in some detail in the past (see here and here)
I won’t discuss them here. Rather, I would simply state that in
both cases we are talking about a rather small minority of whose
treatment is, for some reason or other, considered as THE measure of
humanity, kindness, civilization, and modernity in the West. Well,
okay, to each his own. If in the West, the treatment of these two
minorities is The One And Only Most Important Topic In The Universe –
fine. I personally don’t care much (especially since I don’t feel
that I owe any special consideration to either one of them). This
being said, I would also claim that Putin’s number one concern is
also not for any specific minority. However, and that is where this
is indeed very interesting, his concern for the majority does not at
all imply any kind of disregard or disrespect for the fundamental
freedoms and rights of the minorities but includes his concern for
all minorities (and, in this case, not just two minorities which are
treated as “more equal than others”).
This
is where various right-wingers and assorted Alt-Righters completely
“lose” Putin. The very same Putin who told an assembly of
Orthodox Jews in Moscow that 80-85% of Bolshevik leaders were Jews
(see subtitled video here),
the same Putin who crushed the (overwhelmingly Jewish) oligarchs of
the Eltsin era as soon as he came to power, and the same Putin who
completely ignored all the hysterics of Bibi Netanyahu about the
Russian role in Syria is also the same Putin who went out of his way
to protect Russian Jews inside Russia and who considers that Jews and
Russians are forever joined in their common memory of the horrors of
WWII.
[Sidebar:
I personally wish that Russia would denounce Israel for what it is,
an illegitimate racist rogue state hell-bent on genocide and
expansion, but I don’t have relatives there. Neither am I the
President of a country with very strong ties to the Russian-speaking
Jewish communities worldwide. In my opinion, I am accountable to
nobody else but my conscience and God, whereas Putin is accountable
to those who elected him and still support him].
Guilt
by association, the punishment of all for the actions of some,
scapegoating, the vicious persecution of minorities in the name of
some ideal – this has all been tried in the past, both in Russia
and in the West. The Nazis did that and so did the Soviets. And both
the Nazis and the Soviets inflicted untold horrors upon the many
peoples of the Soviet Union and beyond. Putin is acutely aware of the
dangers of nationalism, just as much as he is aware of the dangers of
imperialism, and he said so many times: Russia cannot afford any more
nationalistic conflicts as they almost completely destroyed Russia in
the 1990s. Just look at modern Ukraine and you will see what a Russia
torn apart by nationalist ideologies could have looked like had Putin
not cracked down, hard, on various nationalists (including and mostly
Russian ones).
Far
from catering to (an admittedly powerful) Jewish lobby in Russia,
Putin is, in fact, trying to assemble as many
different peoples and minorities as possible to his project of a New
Russia; and that project includes Russian Jews, not only for the sake
of these Jews, but mainly for the sake of Russia. The
same goes for another crucial minority in Russia – Muslims. They
also very much form a key part of the project Putin has for Russia.
Of course, racists, nationalists and other less than bright folks in
Russia will still dream about expelling all Jews (or Muslims) from
Russia. Simply put – that ain’t happening (for one thing this
would be physically impossible) and Putin and those who support him
will fight such projects with every legal tool at their disposal.
Here again, you could say that Putin is a patriotic internationalist.
In
the meanwhile, the West is still stuck in its old, ideological ways:
imperialism, nationalism and messianic exclusivism on one hand, and a
complete surrender to post-modernism, cultural self-hatred, petty
minority politics and moral relativism on the other. It is,
therefore, no surprise whatsoever that both mainstream camps in the
West completely misread Putin and can’t figure out what he is up
to.
Professor
Cohen is right: the real Putin has absolutely nothing, nothing at
all, in common with the pseudo-Putin the Western media presents to
its infinitely gullible and zombified audience. Alas, nobody will
listen to Cohen, at least not until the regime in Washington DC and
the power structure which supports it, and whose interests it
represents, come crashing down. But I do believe that Professor Cohen
will eventually go down in history as the most intellectually honest
and courageous Russia expert in the USA.
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