History and Repeating Forms

Notes on Ukraine, Portland, and Canada

I’ve been really deeply buried into this manuscript and find I cannot really think about much else. At the same time, it seems there are quite a lot of really big things to think about in the world, things I’d normally write long essays to explore.

Three things in particular beg attention, and I’ll regardless write a little bit about them now.

First of all, there’s the matter of Ukraine, NATO, and Russia. Yesterday Putin officially recognised the two separatist regions as independent nations. This was actually a bit of the de facto position already—Russia has had soldiers in and out of those areas for several years now, and I think no one really thinks they won’t eventually be annexed by Russia. And that could easily happen without any real military conflict, except of course that there’s a lot of pressure on President Biden to make something bigger of all this.

For the last 6 years, remember, the Democrats and their associated media outlets have been pushing a narrative that Putin interfered with the US election and that Trump was Putin’s stooge. Six years of repeating this narrative has done quite a bit to convince liberals that Putin is basically the political version of Satan, manipulating events from behind the curtain and tempting people towards sin. Briefly perusing the social media posts of some the more influential believers in this narrative reveals exactly what you might think the effect of all this was: they’re screaming for war now, and also for treason charges against Republicans who do not support a military move by NATO into Ukraine.

There is a parallel narrative that arose during this time regarding Russian manipulation of American politics, specifically leftist politics. It’s a really exhausting topic, so forgive me for being very brief about it. In this narrative, Putin has been working to create a kind of international fascist movement by supporting various local right-wing groups while also funding leftists who criticize American imperialism and reject social justice identity politics to create a ‘red-brown alliance.’ According to that narrative, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, and other journalists—as well as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden—are the propaganda wing for this, and leftists who listen to them are being duped by Russian manipulation.

You’ll find that many Antifa sorts are true believers of this narrative. That’s why my writing has been labeled recently by several of them as ‘radical traditionalist’ and ‘National Bolshevist,’ two very fringe political movements which Putin has supposedly helped grow through funding networks.

I’ve found it quite fascinating how this all is just the McCarthy playbook used by a different team. Russian propaganda is everywhere, and there are influential people who believe it and disseminate it. What is needed is a blacklisting and a purge to cleanse the American people of evil communist Russian influence.

As I’ve often said, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it’s full of repeating forms, and this is absolutely one of those forms that never seems to go away.