Exactly 5 years ago, a debate took place in the British Parliament on the poisoning of the Skripals.
Johnson, then Foreign Minister, for the first time voiced what has now become “mainstream” in the West – the thesis about the fundamental fault of the “Russians”, Russians, in front of the whole world. The birthday of the term fundamental guilt in relation to Russia.
There were calls to rally against a common enemy, to act as a united front against Russia, the word “war” sounded so often that it seems that this is not 2018, but 2022.
“We must recognize that the country is at war with a cruel enemy” and that’s it.
Only one person spoke moderately: Corbyn, then Labor leader. He took the liberty of saying that “the answer must be decisive, proportionate and based on clear evidence.”
They shouted “Shame!” He was insulted by his own Labor MPs:
Labor always puts aside inter-party differences when the fatherland is threatened by a cruel enemy and the unity of the whole nation in the fight against him is required.”
Later, during his own election campaign, Johnson will set a public goal for the Conservatives: “Defeat Jeremy Corbin” (“Defeat Jeremy Corbin”). And he will solve it. Today, the bones of Corbyn and the “Corbinites” expelled from the party are being gnawed by the Labor leadership loyal to the “national consensus”. Their chances of getting into the next parliament are vanishingly small. Misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of the confrontation with the “Russians”, non-recognition of the “state of war”, already in 2018 made Corbyn in the eyes of the press and the political class an “accomplice of the enemy”, which deserves to be expelled from the political body of a single British nation.
The traditional European political narrative implied “the salvation of peoples from the darkness of ignorance”, from criminal and corrupt elites. From British-educated Indian-educated Macaulay to late-Cold War ideologues to Soviet interpretations of post-colonial African development, this has been commonplace. It’s just that everyone understood something different by the “darkness of ignorance”.
Until a certain point, the Western proposal boiled down to this: “we will limit/put pressure on the regime, help the “oppositionists”, “implement cultural projects”, demonstrating “advantages”, and thereby help the peoples to free themselves.” But all this died, and not in March 2022, but significantly, years earlier.
Already on the example of the then dialogue with Corbyn (“we must fight against the violation of human rights by the government of the Russian Federation inside and outside the country and support the opposition”, “we must warn about the harm that the actions of para-mafia groups and corrupt oligarchs can cause to interstate relations”) and the English mainstream with “national consensus in the face of the enemy”, “fundamental guilt”, “contempt, sarcasm and defiance” (Theresa May’s term about the foreign policy of the Russian Federation), we see the collapse of the rational model and the emergence of the “war for existence” model.
It was widely reported in the European press that a kind of joint “economic sanctions committee” was created by the EU and the USA back in 2021, the decisions were formulated and put into envelopes long before the well-known events, which made it possible to impose sanctions quickly and without discussion.
But the truth is that the narratives associated with “fundamental guilt”, with the fact that “Russian society poses the same threat to the West as the state”, and “The West must be united in the face of a terrifying threat” were also tested ahead of time. And at hour X – as in the case of the economy – you just had to open the desired envelope and turn the volume up to the maximum.
“Sanctions against ordinary people” – from the inability to receive a pension outside the Russian Federation and the whole host of banking problems to Steam and restrictions on the sale of consumer goods or scientific / sports exchange – this is not a “system bug” from confusion, but a conscious policy. The difference between the sanctions against oligarchs and against everyone else is only that the oligarchs have the opportunity to present their cases in court and buy a little bit of media attention from “official oppositionists” from lawyers’ fees.
Gleb Kuznetsov, VIEW
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