In de Engelse vertaling van zijn bestseller Reizen zonder John deed Geert Mak volop mee aan het demoniseren van de Russische Federatie door te stellen:
Russia is on the move again. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire it wants to start history once more, and how! Old myths about Russian greatness and the Russian soul are being dusted off. Borders are being redrawn, spheres of influence determined by force — it's as if we're back in the nineteenth century, complete with rigid and short-sighted tsarism. Russians have a sense that the Western world, including Western values and Western ways of thinking, are no longer paramount.
Als oude vriend van mij weet ik dat Mak niet durft af te wijken van de officiële versie van de werkelijkheid zoals het westerse establishment zich die voorstelt, want een dissidente visie is slecht voor zijn portemonnaie en zijn imago. In persoonlijke gesprekken met mij was hij snel geneigd mijn op feiten berustende argumenten over te nemen, maar dan alleen zo lang het gesprek duurde. En zeker nu, als EU-propagandist, moet hij met zijn simplistisch manicheïsme Rusland wel afschilderen als het grote kwaad in de wereld. En omdat hij geen intellectueel is maar een broodschrijver verneemt zijn publiek al snel dat het qua oppervlakte grootste land ter wereld de onbeschaamdheid heeft om ‘opnieuw geschiedenis te willen maken.’ Dit toont onmiddellijk aan hoe beperkt de context is van de oubollige opinies, waarmee hij de bevolking en de autoriteiten behaagt. Het probleem van een dergelijke houding werd al tweeënhalf millennia geleden beseft door de Atheense blijspeldichter Aristophanes toen hij schreef dat om mensen te winnen, men iets voor hen moet koken dat ze lekker vinden. Welnu, in een consumptiemaatschappij wil de massa patat en geen kaviaar, een delicatesse die zij niet kent. Omdat de massamaatschappij nu eenmaal tot nivellering van de smaak en het oordeel leidt krijgen de Makkianen de volle ruimte, terwijl de gedachten van onze grote dissidenten gecensureerd blijven. Aldus versterkt zich de verpaupering. Wanneer de hersenen zich niet dagelijks inspannen dan verzwakken ze, net als de spieren van een profvoetballer die niet meer dagelijks traint. Het gevolg is dat een aanzienlijk deel van de Europeanen en bijna de voltallige politieke kaste van het Avondland nu volkomen weerloos het bellicose beleid van Washington en Wall Street accepteren. Daarom is het van vitaal belang te weten welke macht de leiders van de Europese Unie volgen? Geen betere bron denkbaar dan de Amerikaanse journalist en auteur Chris Hedges, die vijftien jaar lang een gerespecteerde buitenland-correspondent was van The New York Times. Op 8 januari 2023 schreef hij de volgende necrologie van zijn land:
Governance (bestuur. svh) exists. But it is not seen. It is certainly not democratic. It is done by the armies of lobbyists and corporate executives, from the fossil fuel industry, the arms industry, the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street. Governance happens in secret. Corporations have seized the levers of power, including the media. Growing obscenely rich, the ruling oligarchs have deformed national institutions, including state and federal legislatures and the courts, to serve their insatiable greed. They know what they are doing. They understand the depths of their own corruption. They know they are hated. They are prepared for that too. They have militarized police forces and have built a vast archipelago of prisons to keep the unemployed and underemployed in bondage. All the while, they pay little to no income tax and exploit sweatshop labor overseas. They lavishly bankroll the political clowns who speak in the vulgar and crude idiom of an enraged public or in the dulcet tones used to mollify the liberal class.
In dit absurdistisch theater wordt ‘in imbecilic clichés’ gesproken. Bovendien heeft het:
political vacuum spawned anti-politics, or what the writer Benjamin DeMott called ‘junk politics,’ which ‘personalizes and moralizes issues and interests instead of clarifying them.’ Junk politics ‘maximizes threats from abroad while miniaturizing large, complex problems at home. It’s a politics that, guided by guesses about its own profits and losses, abruptly reverses public stances without explanation, often spectacularly bloating (opgeblazen. svh) problems previously miniaturized (e.g.: [the war in] Iraq will be over in days or weeks; Iraq is a project for generations).’
‘A major effect of junk politics — its ceaseless flood of patriotic, religious, macho and therapeutic fustian (retoriek. svh) — is to pull position after position loose from reasoned foundations,’ DeMott noted.
The result of junk politics is that it infantilizes the public with ‘year-round upbeat Christmas tales’ and perpetuates the status quo. The billionaire class, which has carried out a slow-motion corporate coup d’état, continues to plunder; unchecked militarism continues to hollow out the country; and the public is kept in bondage by the courts and domestic security agencies. When the government watches you twenty-four hours a day, you cannot use the word ‘liberty.’ That is the relationship between a master and a slave. The iron primacy of profit means that the most vulnerable are ruthlessly discarded. Supported by Republicans and Democrats, the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to slow economic growth and increase unemployment to curb inflation, exacting a tremendous cost on the working poor and their families. No one is required to operate under what John Ruskin (Engelse kunst- en maatschappijcriticus. svh) called ‘conditions of moral culture.’
But the second result of junk politics is more insidious (verraderlijk. svh). It solidifies (consolideert. svh) the cult of the self, the amoral belief that we have the right to do anything, to betray and destroy anyone, to get what we want. The cult of the self fosters psychopathic cruelty, a culture built not on empathy, the common good and self-sacrifice but on unbridled narcissism and vengeance. It celebrates, as mass media does, superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant (voorliefde. svh) for lying, deception and manipulation; and an inability to feel guilt or remorse. This is the dark ethic of corporate culture, celebrated by the entertainment industry, academia and social media.
The essayist Curtis White argues that ‘it is capitalism that now most defines our national character, not Christianity or the Enlightenment.’ He assesses our culture as one in which ‘death has taken refuge in a legality that is supported by both reasonable liberals and Christian conservatives.’ This ‘legality’ ratifies the systematic exploitation of workers. White excoriates our nationalist triumphalism and our unleashing of ‘the most fantastically destructive military power’ the world has ever known with the alleged objective of ‘protecting and pursuing freedom.’
‘Justice, under capitalism, works not from a notion of obedience to moral law, or to conscience, or to compassion, but from the assumption of a duty to preserve a social order and the legal ‘rights’ that constitute that order, especially the right to property and the freedom to do with it what one wants,’ he writes. ‘That’s the real and important “moral assessment” sought by our courts. It comes to this: that decision will seem most just which preserves the system of justice even if the system is itself routinely unjust.’
The consequence is a society consumed by excessive materialism, pointless soul-destroying work, suffocating housing developments closer to ‘shared cemeteries’ than real neighbourhoods and a license to exploit that ‘condemns nature itself to annihilation even as we call it the freedom to pursue personal property.’
Ziehier: ‘the land of the free, home of the brave,’ in een bezeten jacht op een nachtmerrie die doorgaat voor ‘The American Dream,’ beschreven door een dissident die de 'vrije pers' verliet omdat hij niet langer meer de werkelijkheid mocht beschrijven. Nog steeds betovert deze nachtmerrie mijn oude vrienden in de 'corporate press' die inmiddels de schaamte mijlenver voorbij zijn, en die gezien hun standpunten gerekend mogen worden tot een bende criminelen. Zij ondersteunen een systeem dat door de meest vooraanstaande Amerikaanse opiniemaker, Thomas Friedman van The New York Times, als volgt wordt aangeprezen:
Massaal geweld is vanaf de stichting van de staat de kern geweest van de Amerikaanse buitenland-politiek. De liberal Friedman, wiens bijnaam ‘the imperial messenger’ is, wees er dan ook op dat:
This is too easily forgotten today. For too many executives in Silicon Valley, there is no geography or geopolitics anymore. There are only stock options and electrons. Their view that Washington is the enemy, and that any tax dollar paid there is a tax dollar wasted, is grotesque. There is a saying in Silicon Valley that ‘loyalty is just one mouse-click away.’ But you can take that too far. Execs there make boasts like: ‘We are not an American company. We are I.B.M. U.S., I.B.M. Canada, I.B.M. Australia, I.B.M. China.’ Oh, yeah? Then, the next time I.B.M. China gets in trouble in China, call Jiang Zemin (de toenmalige president van de Volksrepubliek China, benevens de voorzitter van het Centraal Militaire Comité. svh) for help. And the next time Congress closes another military base in Asia, call Microsoft's navy to secure the sea lanes of the Pacific.
https://archive.globalpolicy.org/nations/fried99.htm
We needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble… What they [Muslims] needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying ‘Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we're just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this!’ That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia! It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.
Charlie Rose. (TV-Programma). 30 May 2003.
Makkianen die de zogeheten commerciële pers vormen, conformeren zich graag aan de eisen van ‘de groep,’ in plaats van op te komen voor hun tot vervelens toe geclaimde ‘normen en waarden’ van de door hen superieur geachte westerse beschaving. Of zoals Mak na de aanslag in Parijs begin 2015 op het weekblad Charley Hebdo het onmiddellijk formuleerde: ‘De kracht van onze westerse samenleving is onze democratie, onze variatie in ideeën, onze tolerantie, onze openheid tegenover andere culturen.’ Wel, ’suck on this!’ Dit is het niveau van wat in de lage landen doorgaat voor ‘de politiek-literaire elite,’ die ‘Sinds de publicatie van zijn boek “In Europa”' door de mainstream wordt ‘beschouwd als een van de scherpste analisten van ons continent.’
https://www.tijd.be/dossier/europareeks/geert-mak-veenbrand-woedt-onder-europa/9587187.html
Aangezien Mak in zijn warrige beschrijvingen vaak de plank mis slaat, zou het verstandig zijn als de polderpers eens buitenlandse bronnen aanboort, zoals bijvoorbeeld Benjamin Abelow, van wie begin augustus 2022 het uitgebreid gedocumenteerde boek verscheen How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe. ‘Abelow has worked in Washington, DC, writing, lecturing, and lobbying Congress about nuclear arms policy’ en afgestudeerd is aan ‘the Yale University School of Medicine.’ Zijn boek begint Abelow met de volgende op feiten gebaseerde uiteenzetting:
For almost 200 years, starting with the framing of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has asserted security claims over virtually the whole Western hemisphere. Any foreign power that places military forces near U.S. territory knows it is crossing a red line. U.S. policy thus embodies a conviction that where a potential opponent places its forces is crucially important. In fact, this conviction is the cornerstone of American foreign and military policy, and its violation is considered a reason for war.
Yet when it comes to Russia, the United States and its NATO allies have acted for decades in disregard of this same principle. They have progressively advanced the placement of their military forces toward Russia, even to its borders. They have done this with inadequate attention to, and sometimes blithe (onverschillige. svh) disregard for how Russian leaders might perceive this advance. Had Russia taken equivalent actions with respect to U.S. territory — say, placing its military forces in Canada or Mexico — Washington would have gone to war and justified that war as a defensive response to the military encroachment of a foreign power.
When viewed through this lens, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is seen not as the unbridled expansionism of a malevolent (kwaadaardige. svh) Russian leader but as a violent and destructive reaction to misguided Western policies: an attempt to reestablish a zone around Russia’s western border that is free of offensive threats from the United States and its allies. Having misunderstood why Russia invaded Ukraine, the West is now basing existential decisions on false premises. In doing so, it is deepening the crisis and may be sleepwalking toward nuclear war.
This argument, which I now present in detail, is based on the analyses of a number of scholars, government officials, and military observers, all of whom I introduce and quote from in the course of the presentation. These include John Mearsheimer, Stephen F. Cohen, Richard Sakwa, Gilbert Doctorow, George F. Kennan, Chas Freeman, Douglas Macgregor, and Brennan Deveraux,
allen gerespecteerde Angelsaksische intellectuelen, die als hoogleraar of hoge beleidsbepaler weten wat er zich achter de schermen afspeelt, en die, in tegenstelling tot de polder-Makkianen, contact onderhouden met functionarissen van de Amerikaanse Deep State. In de introductie: ‘How the Narrative Drives the War’ schrijft Abelow:
‘Everything we are doing, rather than accelerating an end to the fighting and some compromise, seems to be aimed at prolonging the fighting, assisting the Ukrainian resistance — which is a noble cause, I suppose, but… will result in a lot of dead Ukrainians as well as dead Russians.’
Freeman’s observation points to an uncomfortable truth: America’s two war aims are not really compatible with each other. Whereas a humanitarian effort would seek to limit the destruction and end the war quickly, the strategic goal of weakening Russia requires a prolonged war with maximum destruction, one that bleeds Russia dry of men and machines on battlefield Ukraine. Freeman captures the contradiction in a darkly ironic quip: ‘We will fight to the last Ukrainian for Ukrainian independence.’
America’s new military objective places the United States into a posture of direct confrontation with Russia. Now the goal is to cripple a part of the Russian state, its military. Since the start of the war, the Biden administration and Congress have allocated over 50 billion dollars in aid for Ukraine, the majority of it military. U.S. officials have revealed that American intelligence enabled the killing of a dozen Russian generals in Ukraine, as well as the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, killing 40 sailors and wounding 100. America’s European allies fell into line, greatly increasing the number and lethality of the weapons they are shipping. British leaders have sought to expand the battlefield, openly encouraging the Ukrainian military to use Western weapons to attack supply lines inside Russia.
On February 27, three days after the Russian invasion began, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that, in response to ‘aggressive statements’ from Western leaders, he had raised the alert status of Russia’s nuclear forces. In May, a close media associate of Mr Putin warned the British prime minister that his statements and actions risk subjecting England to a radioactive tsunami from one of Russia’s land-attack nuclear torpedoes. This and other Russian warnings about nuclear war have been dismissed by most of the Western media as mere propaganda. Yet within 24 hours of Mr Putin’s February 27 announcement, the U.S. military raised its alert status to Defcon 3 for the first time since the 2001 attack on the World Trade Towers. The result is that both countries are closer to a hair-trigger launch policy, increasing the chance that an accident, political miscalculation, or computer error could lead to a nuclear exchange.
Further, one must consider what would happen if Russia started to lose, and its overall military capacity was degraded to the point where Moscow perceived itself as vulnerable to invasion. In that situation, Russian planners would surely contemplate using low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons to destroy enemy forces. Thus, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in May, stated that Mr Putin might use nuclear weapons if there was ‘an existential threat to his regime and to Russia, from his perspective.’ This could occur if ‘he perceives he is losing the war.’ If Russia did use nuclear weapons, the pressure for a Western nuclear response, followed by further escalation, might be irresistible. Yet that situation — Russian loss and depletion — is exactly what the new U.S. policy is seeking to achieve.
Finally, we must ask what would happen if the war dragged on to the point where opposition to Mr. Putin within Russian elites led to his removal from power. Here we are talking about the vaunted goal of ‘regime change,’ which in the United States is sought by an informal alliance of Republican neoconservatives and Democratic liberal interventionists. The assumption seems to be that Mr. Putin would be replaced by a docile, effete puppet subservient to American interests. Gilbert Doctorow — an independent, Brussels-based political analyst whose PhD and post-doctoral training are in Russian history — comments:
‘Be careful what you wish for. Russia has more nuclear weapons than the United States. Russia has more modern weapons than the United States. Russia can level to the ground the United States in 30 minutes. Is this a country in which you want to create turmoil? Moreover, if [Mr. Putin] were to be overturned, who would take his place? Some little namby-pamby (timide ventje. svh)? Some new drunkard like [first Russian president Boris] Yeltsin? Or somebody who is a Rambo and just ready to push the button? […] I think it is extremely imprudent for a country like the United States to invoke regime change in a country like Russia. It’s almost suicidal.’
Whether or not, eviscerating (het breken. svh) Russia’s military has been the American plan from the outset, the policy is not surprising because it follows logically, even predictably, from an overarching (overkoepelend. svh) Western narrative about Russia that has already been widely accepted. According to this narrative, Mr. Putin is an insatiable (onverzadigbare. svh) expansionist who lacks any plausible national security motivations for his decisions. This narrative portrays Mr. Putin as a new Hitler, and the Russian move into Ukraine as akin to the Nazi aggression of World War II. Likewise, the narrative portrays any Western desire to compromise and negotiate a quick end to the conflict as wishful thinking and appeasement. America’s new military objective thus emerges directly from Western perceptions about Moscow’s motivations and the causes of the war.
And so a crucial question comes into focus: Is the Western narrative about the Ukraine war correct? If it is, then Western policies might arguably make sense, even if they entail some risk of nuclear conflict. But if the narrative is wrong, then the West is basing existential decisions on false premises. If the narrative is wrong, a quickly negotiated compromise, one that would spare the lives of combatants and civilians alike, and simultaneously greatly reduce the risk of nuclear war, would not represent appeasement (het ten onrechte vermijden van oorlog door concessies te doen aan de tegenstander. svh) Rather, it would be a practical necessity, even a moral obligation. Finally, if the Western narrative about Russia’s motivations is wrong, then the actions the West is taking now are likely to deepen the crisis and may lead to nuclear war.
In this book, I argue that the Western narrative is incorrect. In crucial respects, it is the opposite of truth. The underlying cause of the war lies not in an unbridled expansionism of Mr Putin, or in the paranoid delusions of military planners in the Kremlin, but in a 30-year history of Western provocations, directed at Russia, that began during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and continued to the start of the war. These provocations placed Russia in an untenable situation, for which war seemed, to Mr Putin and his military staff, the only workable solution. In arguing this case, I pay special attention to the United States — and subject it to particularly sharp criticism — because it has played the decisive role in shaping Western policy.
Die langdurige ‘provocaties’ sinds de val van de Sovjet Unie zijn het resultaat van het levensgevaarlijke voornemen van de Amerikaanse Deep State om de alleenheerschappij over de gehele wereld met geweld af te dwingen. En de EU-politici zijn nu bereid het risico van een kernoorlog te accepteren om, overigens vergeefs, op die manier de VS tot machtigste natie in de geschiedenis te kunnen maken en de eigen Europese bevolking aan dit gewelddadig streven op te offeren. Hoe meer het Westen -- dat wil zeggen: de politiek verantwoordelijken en hun NAVO -- de proxy-oorlog in Oekraïne militair blijft steunen des te dichterbij komt de Derde Wereldoorlog. Het enige dat de toekomstige slachtoffers kunnen doen is nu zo snel mogelijk massaal over te gaan tot burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid in alle landen van de Europese Unie. Volgende keer meer over de NAVO-oorlog in Oekraïne om het corrupte Zelensky-regime in het zadel te houden, en een regime change in Moskou te forceren.
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