Writing a blog about MH17 instanteneously brings one into a position in which one seems to have to choose between two sides, being on one hand Ukraine, EU and the US-led west or – on the other side – Russia.
In this blog I am taking the position to criticize the western political-media nexus and its thorough ways of applying mind controlling techniques according to the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model.
Many people with a positive view towards the standard narrative, brought by the Joint Investigation Team including their member Ukraine, accuse me of being a “putinist”, “Putin Versteher”, “useful idiot” or just “idiot”.
This kind of binary thinking interferes with discussion about the topic highly and causes people to take biased approaches assessing the alleged evidence and confronting people who give counter-arguments, like myself.
My political stance is one of a libertarian socialist – or anarchist – maintaining an anti-authoritarian, progressive worldview. Therefore, in the first place, I have no special love for states, certainly not for big states.
Furthermore, I also very much dislike states that adopt a political style one can best describe as Pinochet-liberalism, an ugly blend of neoliberalism and neofascism. Ukraine has stumbled into an era in which it will be exploited by another US-led version of this policy. (For Dutch readers, see this book review I wrote).
As Russia is concerned, my opinion is the country has been raped by US-led free market capitalism under Boris Jeltsin, an epoch that led to a downfall of life-expectancy for most of the inhabitants and caused, according to demographic projections, about 6-8 million lives.
Though strong leadership founding itself on ultraconservative values is absolutely contrary to my own aspirations, I can understand in a way – without approving it – why Russia under Putin has evolved the way it has. (Adding to this I must say I also understand the rise of Hitler in the aftermath of the economic strangulations emanating from the Versaille Treaty. That doesn’t make me a Hitler supporter though).
As a nation, regarding the current culture, I have no clear opinion about Russia for as I don’t really know the country very well. I do think it is, historically speaking, an interesting country with an interesting past and a culture which deserves some unbiased study.
More importantly, being an adversary of statecapitalism or statesocialism, that is USSR styled marxism-leninism, I don’t have any sympathy for Russia in that historic perspective.
What I do have, however, is some loyalty to my parents, who were communists during the Cold War and, though they were very critical to the Soviet Union, had some interest in the political system behind the “Iron Curtain”. I know where they were coming from, how they were prosecuted in the west and how the differences in political systems were actually not that large for many, many people around the world.
So if one is resisting hypocrisy, abuse of power and aggression, one will first have to take this on in his own political realm. Furthermore, I think the western behavior against Russia is dangerous, counterproductive, hypocritical, deceitful and highly motivated by certain geo-strategical and economic interests.
There are enough people in our society criticizing the Russians – on occasions with merit – so why should I add more to that? There are not so many dissidents though, so that’s why I persist in limiting myself to criticizing only one side (mostly). So this explains my position.
Not impaired by anticommunism or anti-Russian hatred I also try to examine evidence issued by the Russian state or other Russian sources on its merits. If I think its has value, I use it. This does not make me pro-Russian. And neither does the limited criticism of the Russian side you will find in this blog.
Beating up Russia need not be a disclaimer to be allowed to have criticism to our “own” side. Hopefully people can understand this.
Hector Reban 