Russia vs Ukraine
Or Civil War in the West - an important commentary by Jordan Peterson
Regardless of what you think about Jordan Peterson, he certainly gets you to think.
This video, now at almost 1.5M views after a week, I think is worth reposting - for those who want to think.
Would love to hear your ideas in the comments.
It seems to me that the roles have reversed to some extent from those we had 70-80 years ago. At this moment, the USA and Europe claim the same - distincly leftist and socialist - moral high ground that Nazi Germany was expressing pre WWII. And yes, after some study I find National Socialism and even Fascism to be historically leftist political movements, but that's a discussion for another day.
You can see it everywhere, cancellation of dissenting voices and persons, intervening in the use of certain words in language, (virtual) book burnings, meddling and corruption in elections (all be it covert this time), the rise to power of the (perceived) weak in society. Even the eugenicist proponents are on the Wests side now. One difference being, we didn't roll out our war machine over other countries for all to see like the Germans back then, but through regime changes and proxy wars. Ukraine is only one more example, in 2014 and now.
On the other side we have Russia and it's allies, who are now assuming patriotism, nationalism and religion their bases of reasoning and rhetoric , something the West was steeped in all these years ago. And it can very well be said that Russia invaded the Ukrain to liberate their people from oppression.
I don't know what will become of this, but I fear the worst. I was going to write "I don't know what's right or wrong", but I do. The right thing is to keep thinking about, and question, your own thought processes and sharing them with other people. Even though you can, and most probably will, be met with substantial resistance. To be August Landmesser, and to take Mitchell and Webb's question in their comedy scetch seriously: "Hans, are we the baddies?"
If you knew nothing about Putin and Aleksandr Dugin, Peterson's approach might seem sensible, but in light of the events since 2014 in Crimea and the Donbass region, and considering Dugin's 1997 work, Foundations of Geopolitics, Putin's great regret at the loss of the Soviet Union, which he served as one of the highest-ranking officers in the KGB, and Putin's desire to leave a lasting legacy, you might think differently. At least that's what happened with me. If I hadn't read the Dugin work - in light of the events of this last year and by extension going back to 2014 - and the writings of Faridova, Lozovsky, and numerous anarchist writers from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, I'd be arguing in exactly the same vein as Peterson (and in fact did so, if you look at my Substack, where you can trace the change in my thinking over the last six months or so).
See https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/anarchist-viewpoints-on-the-war-in and https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/resistance-to-war-from-russia-part and https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/putins-and-dugins-vision-of-a-greater - the Russian translation in the last part isn't the best, but the original Russian version is appended so you can read that - and Putin's actions follow that, in great detail...