“We can look back on the WW1 situation and see very easily just how indoctrinated and propagandized and hysterical those countries really were.”
“But that’s what we are right now—we’re inside that same thing right now. And by historical standards, this war in Ukraine is actually a particularly awful situation in terms of the indoctrination and propaganda and hysteria.”
“There is a straightforward path to peace regarding the war in Ukraine, but it’s unlikely that we’ll pursue it if we can’t generate a resistance to the current intellectual and moral climate—let’s hope that we can break through our propaganda bubble before it’s too late and this ‘glorious enterprise’ kills us all.”
Our political discourse has completely collapsed to the point where an obliteration of nuance is maybe the least of our problems, but the destruction of nuance is definitely a problem when it comes to our political discourse—it’s very hard for people to entertain that all of the following things are true at the same time, since that’s just too much nuance for people to handle for some reason:
(1) Russia is an autocratic and kleptocratic state that oppresses its people and propagandizes its people
(2) Russia has committed various atrocities and war crimes
(3) Russia committed criminal aggression against Ukraine
(4) Russia has committed various atrocities and war crimes since the February 2022 invasion
(5) we have our own propaganda bubble that we’re stuck inside
(6) we are immersed in hysteria when it comes to Russia
It’s just too much nuance for people to handle—people think that saying (5) and (6) somehow entails that you’re denying or rejecting (1) and (2) and (3) and (4).
But we need more nuance. We need to have the ability to look in the mirror and understand how our own doctrinal system works—looking in the mirror and understanding our own doctrinal system doesn’t mean somehow adopting the Kremlin’s ridiculous propaganda system, or somehow denying or rejecting the facts about what kind of a society Russia is internally, or somehow denying or rejecting the facts about Russia’s foreign policy.
It’s just really hard to discuss Russia—people will interpret any departure from our propaganda bubble as somehow being pro-Kremlin apologetics.
We can—without going into a long discussion about why our society is so indoctrinated and propagandized and hysterical—easily observe that immersion in doctrine and propaganda and hysteria is a common historical thing. And as far as I know, there’s no more interesting historical example of this immersion than what happened during World War 1—I added hyperlinks to the following excerpt:
Well, what did happen to Bertrand Russell?
Russell was jailed during World War I along with the handful of others who dared to oppose that glorious enterprise: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Eugene Debs—who was even excluded from postwar amnesty by the vengeful Woodrow Wilson—to mention only the most famous. Some were treated more kindly, like Randolph Bourne, merely ostracized and barred from liberal intellectual circles and journals. Russell’s later career had many ugly episodes, including his being declared by the courts to be too free-thinking to be allowed to teach at City College, a flood of vilification from high places because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, scurrilous treatment even after his death.
Not all that unusual for those who break ranks, no matter how distinguished their contributions, as Russell’s surely were.
We can look back on the WW1 situation and see very easily just how indoctrinated and propagandized and hysterical those countries really were.
But that’s what we are right now—we’re inside that same thing right now. And by historical standards, this war in Ukraine is actually a particularly awful situation in terms of the indoctrination and propaganda and hysteria.
So in terms of hysteria, just look at these comments from Anne Applebaum that were published on 3 February 2022:
Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.
These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine.
And look at the following excerpt from an interview with Graham Allison that was published on 20 May 2022:
DER SPIEGEL: Professor Allison, five years ago you wrote: “However evil, however demonic, however dangerous, however deserving to be strangled Russia is, the United States must struggle to find some way to live with it.” How can the U.S. and Europe live with Russia after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?
Allison: That Putin is a demon, I think hardly anyone denies. And anybody with a soul will agree that his behavior is outrageous and unacceptable. On the other hand, Putin remains the leader of a nuclear superpower that has an arsenal that is capable of destroying every person in the U.S. and every person in Europe. If you and I both have superpower nuclear arsenals and you do your best to attack and disarm me, I nonetheless still have the capability to erase your nation from Earth.
We can’t engage in rational discourse in an atmosphere of hysteria. And we might all die if we can’t engage in rational discourse, since this war in Ukraine really does have the potential to wipe us all out—the stakes are much higher than the “glorious enterprise” of World War 1.
Inside our propaganda bubble, people haven’t the faintest concept of:
(A) the actual geopolitical background of the war in Ukraine
(B) the ways in which we’re blocking peace
(C) how hideous and ghastly and grotesque blocking peace is when 100s of millions or even billions of lives hang in the balance
People can’t discuss (A) and (B) and (C)—people instead can only engage in hysterical shrieks like “Putin is a demon” and “Russia must be strangled”.
Noam Chomsky describes the hysteria—and the irrationality—in his 2 June 2022 piece:
Proceeding with truism, to oppose or even act to delay a diplomatic settlement is to call for prolonging the war with its grim consequences for Ukraine and beyond. This stand constitutes a ghastly experiment: Let’s see whether Putin will slink away quietly in total defeat, or whether he will prolong the war with all its horrors, or even use the weapons that he indisputably has to devastate Ukraine and to set the stage for terminal war.
All of this seems obvious enough. Or it should, but not in the current climate of hysteria, where such near truisms elicit a great flood of utterly irrational reactions: The monster Putin won’t agree, it’s appeasement, what about Munich, we have to establish our own red lines and keep to them whatever the monster says, etc.
There is no need to dignify such outpourings with a response. They all amount to saying: Let’s not try, and instead undertake the ghastly experiment.
The ghastly experiment is operative U.S. policy, and is supported by a wide range of opinion, always with noble rhetoric about how we must stand up for principle and not permit crime to go unpunished. When we hear this from strong supporters of U.S. crimes, as we commonly do, we can dismiss it as sheer cynicism, the Western counterpart to the most vulgar apparatchiks of the Soviet years, eager to eloquently denounce Western crimes, fully supportive of their own. We also hear it from opponents of U.S. crimes, from people who surely do not want to carry out the ghastly experiment that they are advocating. Here other issues arise: the rising tide of irrationality that is undermining any hope for serious discourse—a necessity if Ukraine is to be spared indescribable tragedy, and even if the human experiment is to persist much longer.
If we can escape cynicism and irrationality, the humane choice for the U.S. and the West is straightforward: seek to facilitate a diplomatic settlement, or at least don’t undermine the option.
And anti-Russia hysteria goes way back—look at this fascinating excerpt from NSC 68:
The fundamental design of those who control the Soviet Union and the international communist movement is to retain and solidify their absolute power, first in the Soviet Union and second in the areas now under their control. In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority and the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition to their authority.
The design, therefore, calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin. To that end Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass. The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.
Regarding NSC 68, I took some notes on Chomsky’s 1991 book Deterring Democracy:
“According to the conventional understanding, the Cold War has been a confrontation between two superpowers. We then find several variants. The orthodox version, which is overwhelmingly dominant, holds that the driving factor in the Cold War has been virulent Soviet aggressiveness, which the United States sought to contain.”
“The orthodox version is sketched in stark and vivid terms in what is widely recognized to be the basic U.S. Cold War document, NSC 68 in April 1950, shortly before the Korean war, announcing that ‘the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake.’”
“It merits attention, both as an early expression of the conventional understanding in its orthodox variant, and for insights into historical realities that lie beyond these ideological constructs.”
“The basic structure of the argument has the childlike simplicity of a fairy tale.”
“There are two forces in the world, at ‘opposite poles.’”
“In one corner we have absolute evil; in the other, sublimity.”
“There can be no compromise between them.”
“The diabolical force, by its very nature, must seek total domination of the world.”
“Therefore it must be overcome, uprooted, and eliminated so that the virtuous champion of all that is good may survive to perform his exalted works.”
“The ‘fundamental design of the Kremlin,’ NSC 68 author Paul Nitze explains, is ‘the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society’ in every corner of the world that is not yet ‘subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin.’”
“‘The implacable purpose of the slave state [is] to eliminate the challenge of freedom’ everywhere.”
“The ‘compulsion’ of the Kremlin ‘demands total power over all men’ in the slave state itself and ‘absolute authority over the rest of the world.’”
“The force of evil is ‘inescapably militant,’ so that no accommodation or peaceful settlement is even thinkable.”
“Despite the disparity between the two opposite poles in economic level and military force, the slave state has enormous advantages.”
“Being so backward, it ‘can do more with less’; its weakness is its strength, the ultimate weapon.”
“It is both midget and superman, far behind us by every measure but with ‘a formidable capacity to act with the widest tactical latitude, with stealth and speed,’ with ‘extraordinary flexibility,’ a highly effective military machine and ‘great coercive power.’”
“Our military forces are ‘dangerously inadequate,’ because our responsibility is world control; in contrast, the far weaker Soviet military forces greatly exceed their limited defensive needs.”
“Nothing that had happened in the past years suggested that the USSR might face some security problems, in contrast to us, with our vulnerability to powerful enemies everywhere.”
“‘Given the Kremlin design for world domination,’ a necessary feature of the slave state, we cannot accept the existence of the enemy but must ‘foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system’ and ‘hasten [its] decay’ by all means short of war (which is too dangerous for us).”
“Notice that the noble purpose of the free society and the evil design of the slave state are innate properties, which derive from their very nature. Hence the actual historical and documentary record are not relevant to assessing the validity of these doctrines.”
“As a matter of logic, no empirical evidence is required; pure thought suffices to establish the required truths.”
We have to escape our propaganda bubble—our propaganda bubble is deadly because it prevents us from understanding ourselves and understanding Russia and understanding the world.
There is a straightforward path to peace regarding the war in Ukraine, but it’s unlikely that we’ll pursue it if we can’t generate a resistance to the current intellectual and moral climate—let’s hope that we can break through our propaganda bubble before it’s too late and this “glorious enterprise” kills us all.