I'm just a bit too young to recall either Hitler or Stalin in the flesh -- Hilter, of course, didn't survive WWII ("they say"/s) and Stalin was dead before we got us a teevee at our house, so the only time I saw images of them was in the newsreels and the propaganda movies -- which were ubiquitous in those days.
I've written many times about American propaganda in the 1950s-- primarily anti-Communist/anti-Soviet -- but it's hard to imagine what it was like if you weren't there or don't recall living through it. People who have no memories of those days like to think we're living in the most oppressive and propagandized era of American history, and it's just not so. It's laughable, really. Practically every previous era in American history has been worse when it comes to matters of oppression, conformity and propaganda.
That's as may be, and it doesn't mean we are not living in a heavily propagandized, surveilled and controlled society. Of course we are. The point is that, as bad as it is, this isn't the worst of all possible worlds, and it isn't in part because we have so many informational tools -- and the freedom to use them -- which we didn't have in the 1950s and early 60s, and if we have any critical thinking skills at all (sometimes I wonder), we are far more likely to recognize propaganda as such now than we were able to then.
The question is whether we can think critically any more and whether we can ask the right questions when we question authority.
Since the advent of the horror show called The Great and Glorious War on Terror(ism), Americans have once again been immersed in propaganda which has involved some of the most egregious lies and deceptions we've been subjected to in generations, lies and deceptions leading directly to international catastrophe after catastrophe.
One of the recurring features of this propaganda campaign is the declaration that this or that dictator who must be removed is the modern equivalent of Hitler or Stalin, sometimes elided into a hybrid creature: "Hitler-Stalin" or "Stalin-Hitler" depending on whether the Evil One is more Nazi or more Communist.
Right now, the prime candidate to be the modern "Stalin-Hitler" is Vladimir Putin, "dictator" of Russia, aka the "Soviet Union." It's hilarious in some ways. I saw Ray McGovern defending Putin and Russia on DN! last night, but referring to the "Soviet Union" quite unconsciously as if it still existed. People of a certain age do this all the time. They cannot let go of what they were socialized and propagandized to believe in earlier times, and the notion that there is no Soviet Union any more doesn't compute. McGovern ran the Soviet Desk at the CIA under Bush the Old, and even though he didn't see the Soviets as enemies then and he doesn't see Putin as an enemy now, he's unable to let go of the "Soviet" images he was immersed in when time was.
Many anti-Putinists and anti-Russian commentators, especially on the so-called "left," seem more than eager to pretend that Putin is a reincarnation of Stalin who wants to re-constitute the Soviet Union entire or in stages, and his "invasion" of Ukraine is "only the first step." Well except for the others. Before this one. That is.
In fact, there was a fellow droning on and on about this very thing while McGovern was trying to figure out what's wrong with saying "Soviet Union." It was funny and sad at the same time.
As far as I'm concerned, Putin is not Stalin and he's certainly not Hitler. The comparisons and conflations are stupid. The Soviet Union no longer exists, it's gone, and there is no way I know of to reconstitute it, especially given the fact that a) Russia today is far more in sync with its Tsarist predecessor, and b) it is suffused with religious nonsense.
They hide Lenin's Tomb during parades in Red Square, as if the Communist era never happened. That seventy years has been largely erased from Russian history -- except when it is convenient to recall it, typically as something too horrible to believe. There is no going back to Stalin, let alone Lenin. The idea is absurd.
Instead, if anything is a revival in Russia, it is a semblance of the last phase of Tsarist rule, say from Alexander III through Nicolas II as if, somehow, WWI had never happened and the Revolutions that followed had not succeeded.
That's what I see in Russian culture and psychology today. It's imperial, yes, but not at all what our propaganda interests want us to believe it is. It's not Soviet, it's not Fascist. It's royal and imperial, something we haven't seen on the world stage since the collapse of the British Empire.
Showing posts with label Russia Today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia Today. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Парад Победы
This is really very moving. Most Americans have probably never seen anything quite like it.
The video is of the opening of this year's Annual Victory Parade, May 9, celebrating the Allied victory over the Axis powers in Europe. There are some 20,000 troops from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, and from all over Europe and from the United States, too -- the most ever gathered for a Victory Parade they say -- marshaled on Red Square to be reviewed by the Defense Minister and the Colonel General of the Armed Force before marching in parade before the assembled dignitaries arrayed in front of and beside Lenin's Tomb -- which has been decoratively covered by a Russian Federation themed shroud in honor of the day.
A number of things: there seems to be somewhat more Soviet imagery than I recall seeing in previous Victory Day Parades held since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Defense Minister greets the troops: "Товарищи!" "Comrades!" I like it. He and the Colonel General are swanned around the Square in Soviet Era parade cars. While this may seem retro, it's actually good because most of the veterans of the Great Patriotic War on the reviewing stands were Soviet citizens. You cannot have a Victory Parade on Red Square without acknowledging the Soviet Union was the victor and it is the Soviet Union's victory that is being celebrated.
It's interesting how the modern Russian Federation integrates Soviet imagery -- and avoids some of it, too -- in these annual events, and it is interesting to see how it changes over time.
Here's a video of the 1945 Victory Parade, Uncle Joe Stalin officiating. It is quite different, yes, and yet not that much different at all:
For Americans, WWII was all about US fighting the perfidious Nazis and Japs. I'm of the Post War/early Cold War generation, and there was little or no acknowledgement of the Soviet sacrifice and ultimate victory over the Nazis. But they were the ones who took the brunt of the War, losing tens of millions of troops and civilians, seeing almost the entire European portion of the nation destroyed. As bad as the situation was in post War Europe, it was much worse in the Soviet Union. Of course, we learned nothing about this in the 1950s; the Soviets were our blood enemies, and their suffering during and immediately after the War was simply not mentioned. I didn't really learn of it until I was in college.
And then, so much of the anti-Communist propaganda we'd been fed throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s made a kind of inverted, sad sense. And it was then that some of us began to realize that the Soviets were not a threat to the United States, and that their "chiding" -- shall we say -- of America's civil rights and other failures and criticism of American impulses toward Imperialism were actually tonics that helped Americans find ways to improve.
We don't have that Soviet mirror any more, and the current Russian Federation version of it is hardly of the caliber of the former Soviet Union.
I've spoken with some of the survivors of the Great Patriotic War, men and women who came to this country mostly as religious refugees from the Soviet Union. When they think back on what they lived through, what they survived, how they did it, who they fought, they have immense and justifiable pride in what they were able to do against all odds, and when it came to that War, they were without question loyal and patriotic Soviet citizens. Even if later their Republic (most of those I've interviewed were Ukrainians) would rebel.
The shame was that the Better World that was supposed to rise after the Victory began to fall apart almost immediately and for too many, it has become or is becoming a nightmare.
We deserve better.
-----------------------
My sort of half-assed translation of the Defense Minister's statement to the troops:
"Greetings Comrades!" They respond something like: "Greetings, Comrade Defense Minister!" He then says something like, "Felicitations on the Anniversary (66th? couldn't quite make it out) of Victory in the Great Patriotic War!" Then the troops commence to roar. You don't see that every day.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Russia Today Explains It All For You
This video of a rather lengthy discussion on Russia Today TV about "Soviet Amerika" might be illuminating to anyone who questions the notion that the United States is an Empire, behaving as an Imperial Power, and is falling into many of the same traps and hazards Empires of the past have been prey to, most tellingly, the former Soviet Union.
One of the main problems with maintaining the Founders' vision of their new republic -- and one of the main reasons it has failed -- is the matter of scale. The United States is simply too big, and constantly strives to become much bigger (either literally or by proxy), to maintain the kind of rugged quasi-libertarian republic the Founders set in motion. The Imperial idea was there at the beginning, of course, given that the Rebellion, the Revolution, was an act of liberation from the British Empire. But not -- at all -- for the purpose of ending Imperial ambition. Instead, it was to take control of the Imperial impulse in this hemisphere at any rate from the hands of the British and to conduct the Imperial enterprise the way the men of substance who precipitated and engaged in the Revolution desired.
But you can't really have an Empire that's close to the People except as tyranny. The Republican ideal and Imperial tyranny are simply incompatible. What do you do?
Initially, Americans tried to resolve the incompatibility by expansion -- which in time included, of course, the genocide and extreme resource exploitation, extraordinary levels of immigration, numerous wars of aggression and conquest and so on that characterize America's expansionary period. It also included a devastating Civil War.
I've commented in the past about the telling irony of the Gold Rush. Arguably, America was a Libertarian Paradise, say from 1800-1850, and yet, when gold was discovered in the newly conquered territory of California, hundreds of thousands of Americans packed up and left their Paradise -- at immense expense and risk to life and limb -- and headed out to California, where many of them simply died, if they made it at all.
And I've asked why. Why would they do that if they already lived in Paradise? While there was gold to be found, to be sure, the individual Argonaut was in no position to find much of it, and certainly was not going to hold on to it if he did. Most of these Argonauts knew that when they set out, or if they didn't know it, they came to understand it on the trek. If they survived the trip, they were generally impoverished, famished, and worn out by the time they got to California, and many were so disappointed by what they found, and so filled with foreboding and loathing they promptly died.
Few of the survivors ever made more than the meanest living in California, and such living as they were able to make required the constant replenishment of the population with newcomers. That's been the basis of California's "prosperity" all along. Attract a constant stream of immigrants, and by this means, some of those who arrived earlier are able to "prosper" by exploiting the newcomers. If that fails, as it does from time to time, bar the door.
Speeded up and in microcosm, that's the story of the United States.
But what happens when that endeavor reaches the end? The net has to be cast farther and farther afield, and the Empire has to grow either physically or by proxy outside the boundaries of the territory already claimed and settled.
But that sets in motion instabilities that can easily lead to collapse.
The Rugged Yeoman of yore cannot individually seize some foreign land and rule and prosper as potentate -- and still preserve anything of the Republican ideal of the Founders.
The Rugged Yeoman becomes a Tyrant. His Republic becomes an Empire. The scale of the endeavor metastasizes.
Our friends in Russia have tried to approach the problem from the reverse direction, going from Empire to Republic, and in doing so, have somewhat reduced the scale of their political enterprise by spinning off many of the "Republics" that once constituted the Soviet Union and before that, the Russian Empire. Yet they still face the tyranny of their own Oligarchs and their republican political efforts are primitive at best. It sort of works -- and doesn't. The urge to Empire is still very strong within Russia today.
On the other hand, the United States has formed a political and economic axis with the United Kingdom, at least at the elite levels, which is practically a unity. The dissolved British Empire is being revivified through the Power and agency of the United States, with a specific concentration on those areas of the globe where the British failed to impose their benevolent rule: Iraq, the Yemen, Somalia, the Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and so forth. All of these were failed British colonial outposts or failed clients of the British Empire when time was. Their continued assertion of independence is being directly challenged by American (primarily) military might and technology, with Israel's annoyance and tag-along in the Middle-East.
And the comment from observers abroad is that this is absurd and self-destructive. Don't do it! And yet it is being done. Without let or hindrance. Those who have been down this path before go unheard and unheralded.
Study and consider.
As always, the question remains, What do you do about it?
The always upbeat and cheery Chris Floyd (heh) provides plenty of additional cogency. I can only take him in small doses, but he's right you know. His buddy Arthur Silber (also right, you know) I can't take at all.
One of the main problems with maintaining the Founders' vision of their new republic -- and one of the main reasons it has failed -- is the matter of scale. The United States is simply too big, and constantly strives to become much bigger (either literally or by proxy), to maintain the kind of rugged quasi-libertarian republic the Founders set in motion. The Imperial idea was there at the beginning, of course, given that the Rebellion, the Revolution, was an act of liberation from the British Empire. But not -- at all -- for the purpose of ending Imperial ambition. Instead, it was to take control of the Imperial impulse in this hemisphere at any rate from the hands of the British and to conduct the Imperial enterprise the way the men of substance who precipitated and engaged in the Revolution desired.
But you can't really have an Empire that's close to the People except as tyranny. The Republican ideal and Imperial tyranny are simply incompatible. What do you do?
Initially, Americans tried to resolve the incompatibility by expansion -- which in time included, of course, the genocide and extreme resource exploitation, extraordinary levels of immigration, numerous wars of aggression and conquest and so on that characterize America's expansionary period. It also included a devastating Civil War.
I've commented in the past about the telling irony of the Gold Rush. Arguably, America was a Libertarian Paradise, say from 1800-1850, and yet, when gold was discovered in the newly conquered territory of California, hundreds of thousands of Americans packed up and left their Paradise -- at immense expense and risk to life and limb -- and headed out to California, where many of them simply died, if they made it at all.
And I've asked why. Why would they do that if they already lived in Paradise? While there was gold to be found, to be sure, the individual Argonaut was in no position to find much of it, and certainly was not going to hold on to it if he did. Most of these Argonauts knew that when they set out, or if they didn't know it, they came to understand it on the trek. If they survived the trip, they were generally impoverished, famished, and worn out by the time they got to California, and many were so disappointed by what they found, and so filled with foreboding and loathing they promptly died.
Few of the survivors ever made more than the meanest living in California, and such living as they were able to make required the constant replenishment of the population with newcomers. That's been the basis of California's "prosperity" all along. Attract a constant stream of immigrants, and by this means, some of those who arrived earlier are able to "prosper" by exploiting the newcomers. If that fails, as it does from time to time, bar the door.
Speeded up and in microcosm, that's the story of the United States.
But what happens when that endeavor reaches the end? The net has to be cast farther and farther afield, and the Empire has to grow either physically or by proxy outside the boundaries of the territory already claimed and settled.
But that sets in motion instabilities that can easily lead to collapse.
The Rugged Yeoman of yore cannot individually seize some foreign land and rule and prosper as potentate -- and still preserve anything of the Republican ideal of the Founders.
The Rugged Yeoman becomes a Tyrant. His Republic becomes an Empire. The scale of the endeavor metastasizes.
Our friends in Russia have tried to approach the problem from the reverse direction, going from Empire to Republic, and in doing so, have somewhat reduced the scale of their political enterprise by spinning off many of the "Republics" that once constituted the Soviet Union and before that, the Russian Empire. Yet they still face the tyranny of their own Oligarchs and their republican political efforts are primitive at best. It sort of works -- and doesn't. The urge to Empire is still very strong within Russia today.
On the other hand, the United States has formed a political and economic axis with the United Kingdom, at least at the elite levels, which is practically a unity. The dissolved British Empire is being revivified through the Power and agency of the United States, with a specific concentration on those areas of the globe where the British failed to impose their benevolent rule: Iraq, the Yemen, Somalia, the Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and so forth. All of these were failed British colonial outposts or failed clients of the British Empire when time was. Their continued assertion of independence is being directly challenged by American (primarily) military might and technology, with Israel's annoyance and tag-along in the Middle-East.
And the comment from observers abroad is that this is absurd and self-destructive. Don't do it! And yet it is being done. Without let or hindrance. Those who have been down this path before go unheard and unheralded.
Study and consider.
As always, the question remains, What do you do about it?
The always upbeat and cheery Chris Floyd (heh) provides plenty of additional cogency. I can only take him in small doses, but he's right you know. His buddy Arthur Silber (also right, you know) I can't take at all.
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