War and the Hyperreal

Questioning the dominant narrative does not mean you are a Putin stooge.

First of all, I want to direct your attention to something really worth your time. It will also help provide a bit of metaphysical context for what I have to say after it.

The always-brilliant Angie of Angie Speaks has created a new video that will undoubtedly interest you. It’s on the Metaverse and Baudrillard’s Hyperreal, and it points to something I’ve been working on understanding for quite some time.

When a culture neglects to give nature its due through the embrace of communal festival place-and-time, it becomes more vulnerable to the darker influences of the hyperreal, and this trend can cause devastation not only to social and political life but also to the mass psychology of a population.

Angie, in case you are not familiar with her, is a black Marxist, part of that most hated class of people for the Woke. Of course you’d think that such a person (especially a black woman) would be the ideal political heroic-subject for the social justice sorts, but when such a person mentions ‘class’ despite their skin color, they become quite the pariah.

For years, I’ve watched her get attacked, smeared, and belittled, and each time I’ve marveled in her persistence. I’m nowhere near as resilient.

Here’s her latest video:

A few notes on Ukraine

So far I’ve only been able to find Ukrainian reporting of this, but the Ukraine government just passed an “anti-collaborationist” act. Here’s a quote from an auto-translated article about the act:

“…After the law comes into force, any "cooperation" of Ukrainian media or politicians with Russia, whether teleconferences, live broadcasts or publications of Russian officials, joint conferences, or even comments from officials of the aggressor state can be equated to "carrying out information activities in support of the aggressor state. " And for this shines a real and very long prison term - at least 10 years, with possible confiscation of property.”

I doubt most are aware of this, as I wasn’t until very recently, but Zelensky banned four opposition media organisations last year. All four were labeled Russian collaborators; however, media rights and journalist groups had challenged this labeling.

Here’s an article on the first three which were banned, and a press release from the European Federation of Journalists issued after the fourth one was banned.

Again, all four were banned last year, and each was accused of being a Russian puppet. The problem is that several of these—especially Strana—had also been critical of Putin as well. From what I could tell reading through auto-translated articles, their primary crime was criticizing Zelensky’s policy on the separatist regions and—get this—the violent actions of the Azov and other hyper-nationalist Ukrainian army divisions.

Here’s what’s interesting. Even the Kiev Post (which is now very pro-Zelesnky) had posted about the far-right movements (albeit long before his election), though they weren’t very critical. This article from 2015 on the Kiev Post about “Azovets,” the far right youth training camps is an interesting read. They admit there are kids singing about killing Russia and that yes, Azov was founded by a fascist and full of people who are still fascist, but it’s not really extreme nationalism, it’s “patriotism.”

Here’s a little bit of what teaching the youth “patriotism” has so far looked like:

In that first photo, the photo of the person they are marching for is Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian fascist who helped implement the Holocaust of Jews in Ukraine. The second photo, though it looks a lot like the Unite The Right rally in the US, is actually from a national unity march in Ukraine.

And also, here’s a neat promotional graphic for the “Azovets,” by the way.

You know, I’ve argued for years that the mere use of the wolfsangle and the Black Sun are not final evidence that a group might be fascist. That position is what got me named as a fascist by several Antifa groups in the US.

My point has always been that you cannot look at the symbols alone, but rather the ideology behind the people who use them. And we know that Azov’s fascist ideology was so extreme that in 2016 the US had to overturn a previous ban on selling weapons to fascists in order to keep sending military aid to Ukraine, and that Facebook just removed their ban on posting support for Azov, which was put in place as part of their crackdown on far-right groups. And then there’s this AP article from 2019 discussing the strength of the far-right opposition to the former president. Their opposition to him is what led to Zelensky’s election, though they never directly supported him.

You’d think this would have Antifa up in arms, but there’s been complete silence on this. I checked. Instead, the major Antifa social media accounts are pushing a line that anyone who in anyway questions the dominant narrative about Ukraine is in fact themself the fascist. The Intercept has even joined in on the game, asserting anyone who isn’t unconditionally supporting Ukraine is not a real leftist.

Questioning the dominant narrative does not mean you are a Putin stooge. I think what Russia is doing is terrible. I also think that what was happening in Ukraine before this invasion was terrible. And I think NATO’s game with Ukraine was terrible.

What’s most terrible of all, I think, is the way that Americans especially have come to embrace a vision of Zelensky as a kind of innocent and “sexy” hero standing up for all oppressed peoples.

Not only is it terrible, it’s terrifying. I especially think that these narrative mechanisms are merely preparing us for a much larger war that the social-mediated TikTok and Twitter addicts—those already stuck in the hyper-real and thus alienated from the material reality of what such a war will mean—will slobberingly support.

That’s why I recommended Angie’s video. We are absolutely living in a time where people are so disconnected from the body and the material world that there’s nothing to anchor them against every social and political manipulation that comes their way. Yes, that manipulation is coming from everywhere, just as storms whip up shifting winds. Ultimately where we all land will be a matter of which of these coercive gales were the strongest, the most aesthetically forceful, and the least tolerant of any opposition.

We’re fucked. But again, as always, there’s still the body, and there’s still the forest, still the Real beyond the Hyperreal.