Op-Ed: Why does Putin pretend Ukraine actions are democratic?

Vladimir Putin is a murderer as well as a tyrant. He’s also a hypocrite.

“It is no coincidence that the West claims that it is its culture and worldview that should be universal,” Putin explainedLast week, at a pro-Putin Moscow think-tank, the Valdai Discussion Club. His remarks echoed previous statements of his worldview, which many of his apologists — at home and abroad — take to be a very serious thing.

He was inaugurated in July. declared that “a new stage in world history” is coming, spelling the end of “the model of total domination” by the West. He told the Financial Times that the “the liberal idea” had “outlived its purpose.”

Putin has been defending his rule for years by claiming that Russia was at war with the West. So that’s not new. However, his most recent rhetoric aims to explain the disastrous failure of his invasion of Ukraine.

Putin told the Russian people that the Ukrainians are really ethnic Russians, either duped into believing in the myth of the Ukrainian nation or held hostage by a weak and criminal government run by a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”What could Russia possibly do? loseto these misfits in an even fight? His claim, of course, is that Russia’s failure to defeat Ukraine must be the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the West pushing back Russian “liberators.”

Putin is aware that these talking points are likely to be picked up by West-based apologists and resources, which Russia feeds back into its own population.

On this point, Putin isn’t merely the world’s leading producer of propaganda; he’s also its chief consumer. He still trots out the golden oldies of Soviet talking points about the West’s “racist and neocolonial” imperialism. He asserts that Russia and China are an alternative to this model of the world order.

And that’s where the hypocrisy comes in.

It’s certainly true that Western history has a lot of racism and colonialism, and we can debate how much of that is left. Putin’s strange criticism is odd, as both the Soviet Union that he loved and the Russian Empire that he idolizes were nothing but imperialist. racist.

Great swathes in Eastern Europe and Eurasia were colonized under the Soviet Union. “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the fabricated antisemitic tract, was a tool of czarist state propaganda. Cultural genocide was committed in the Soviet Union. ethnic cleansingIt is a massive undertaking. What, if any, is the attempted annexe of Ukraine other than an imperial endeavor?

What’s interesting about Putin’s attacks on the West is that he’s implicitly claiming them as his own values. Racism is a universal problem and dominant in many societies, but rejection of racism is central to the contemporary West’s liberal ideals.

Or consider democracy. There’s a reason nearly every authoritarian regime tries to legitimize itself by using false claims of democratic accountability and fraudulent elections. North Korea calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It’s neither democratic nor a republic. The People’s Republic of China is no republic. Russia calls itself a “federation” of “republics,” but just ask the Chechens how voluntary that federation is (or how republican). Russia annexed four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. in September, it held rigged “referendums” to give the seizures legitimacy.

Why? If democracy is a corrupt “Western” concept, why pretend what you’re doing is democratic?

The rule of law and human right are the same. There’s a lot of diversity in legal systems, but due process and the right to self-defense are Western liberal ideals. Even in Russia where courts are corrupt, the regime still wants lip service to fairness and impartiality.

Putin’s political philosophy, like his understanding of history, is entirely self-serving and nothing more. To fulfill his need for power and glory, he grabs random facts and half-truths from the shelf. Indeed, he now says Russia is at war with Western “satanism” because the cupboard is bare of more plausible lies. What he doesn’t do is offer an actual alternative to Western values. To justify his brutal will to rule, he uses liberal labels. Maybe that’s because those values really are universal now.

@JonahDispatch