General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis War Should Be a Wake-Up Call About the Russification of the West
Link to tweet
https://eand.co/this-war-should-be-a-wake-up-call-about-the-russification-of-the-west-dcf539100bb5
One of the lesson from Russias bloody and indecent war of aggression on Ukraine should be obvious only I dont think it is. It goes like this. Our societies in the West are in the process of being Russified and one of the Wests great challenges this decade will be undoing its own Russification.
What do I mean by Russification? Think of Western life a decade or two ago. It was very, very different. Overnight, in a historical sense, things have changed. Everything. Politics, society, culture, economics, finance. And not for the better.
By Russification, I mean that Western societies increasingly mirror Russia, in social, political, economic, and financial terms. Many Westerners wont like to hear that. Theyre right not to want to hear that, because its not a good thing it represents regress, destabilization, fracture, division.
Russification is a spectrum, of course, not a binary. And on it, some Western societies have been able to resist fairly well while others are in the advanced stages of Russification. Societies, of course, like America which Ill use as an example.
*snip*
old as dirt
(1,972 posts)Perhaps Putinism is the Trumpification of Russia.
TheRealNorth
(9,425 posts)And the inability of the Justice system to hold the wealthy and powerful accountable when they break the law.
Cha
(295,543 posts)Rt💕🤷♂️TY
💙💛
anarch
(6,535 posts)and direct manipulation of Western nations' political machinery by Putin's agents, arranging things as much as possible to benefit Putin's agenda.
Then again some of this stuff just seems like the natural and inevitable progression of capitalism--concentration of wealth into fewer hands, repression of democracy, etc.
ymetca
(1,182 posts)it's just the latest incarnation of racketeering, similar to the Italian mafia, the Yakuza, and so on.
Russia embraced almost anarchist capitalism, then used those skills to start coercing the whole system itself. Payback's a bitch!
Let's remember that most of the Wall Street high-speed trading was coded by Russian programmers, built and bankrolled by Robert Mercer, who made Buku bucks off of the whole scheme --a nerdy weirdo genius with a rich daddy and lots of free time.
"How to Skim Off the Top of Every Transaction Without Anyone Knowing". Lot's of well-heeled, well-connected, players started to figure that one out. Let's flash-crash the shit out of this place!
We still don't know what was transmitting between those computers in Trump Tower, Betsy DeVos's server, and Alpha Bank in Moscow, but I'm betting it was routing codes and account numbers.
Behind every great crime there's an even greater crime, which almost always includes genocide back in there somewhere. I'm sure the Dutch East India Trading Company has a stake in it, probably nestled in some obscure account in Lloyd's of London, eh? Or the Vatican Bank? Who knows!
When you start following the money it doesn't take very long before some district attorney decides not to pursue it. And then that door closes for good.
moondust
(19,896 posts)If that's what he means--the massive inequality created by neoliberal deregulation and corruption--it should be noted that in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere it is, ironically, largely the product of the "great Soviet enemy" Reagan and his pal Thatcher.
erronis
(14,853 posts)I'm not sure that Thatcher, Reagan, NeoCons, NeoLibs, just about all of that class -
didn't have skin in the game.
The game might be just one. The game masters?
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)Orrex
(63,057 posts)Not one. Full stop.
Petty self-interest and ignorant bigotry will drown out any calls for change that don't come in the form of a massive cataclysm that allows only change with no other way forward. And even then, people will only be dragged kicking and screaming into improvement.
Russification is a nice buzzword for it, but the problem is that too many people are desperately searching for a fascist dictator to rule them, and we all know the quote about how fascism will arrive in the US.
It's here.
L. Coyote
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erronis
(14,853 posts)Always amazed at (his) output and very cogent discussions.
I stopped reading because I just couldn't keep up with the daily feeds; and a feeling that there's something else going on here. These are not the individual rants of a very educated person - these have a driving reason.
Let me know what you find out, please.
Baked Potato
(7,733 posts)Putin represents corruption, indulgence, waste, and everything else TFG is/was/has been.
The world doesnt want them, but they will keep on coming.