Friday, April 7, 2023

"The Culture War in Ukraine" by Oliver Williams

 

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Source: The Occidental Observer

The Culture War in Ukraine

The rationale for America’s participation in the proxy war in Ukraine rarely articulates itself with the language of national interests or security concerns. Instead it’s sold as a war over “our values” and the maintenance of a “rules-based liberal international order”. In the words of Joe Biden, “We are engaged anew in a great battle for freedom. A battle between democracy and autocracy. Between liberty and repression.” Rather than a regional territorial dispute, it’s a cosmic struggle for freedom and democracy. But in this grand battle, democracy might not mean what you think.

Ukraine is a deeply corrupt country that has banned rival political parties, shut down television news stations, and passed a law to drastically limit press freedom. The very meaning of democracy has been silently reconceptualised. If once it meant non-fraudulent voting and a free press, now it means something altogether different. Italians voting, democratically, for Giorgia Meloni, was viewed by President Biden as a threat to democracy:

Democracy is at stake… You just saw what’s happened in Italy in that election. You’re seeing what’s happening around the world. And the reason I bother to say that is we can’t be sanguine about what’s happening here either.

Biden expressed a similar view about Poland and Hungary while giving an assessment of then-President Trump’s foreign policy: “You see what’s happened in everything from Belarus to Poland to Hungary, and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the world, and as well, this president embraces all the thugs in the world.” This way of speaking of Poland and Hungary is far from unusual in the English-speaking media.

Democrat Congressman Jamie Raskin summed up what’s being fought for in Ukraine. Accusing Moscow of being “a world center of antifeminist, antigay, anti-trans hatred, as well as the homeland of replacement theory for export” he concluded “In supporting Ukraine, we are opposing these fascist views.” Framed in this way it is unsurprising that the proxy war finds its most rabid adherents among Democrats. Homosexuality is entirely legal in Russia and yet Western liberals will use gay rights, trans rights and feminism to foment a surreal new jingoism that bolsters support for spending billions to fund a proxy war against a nuclear-armed power.  “Nation building” means teaching Afghans about the artistic merit of latrines, “democracy” means trans rights, and “a rules based international order” means America doing whatever it wants.

For Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, gay and transgender rights are the dividing line between Russia and the UK. “With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine”, he tweeted at the start of the war, “we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights”.

In the 1960s political radicals opposed America’s military-industrial complex. Today they donate to it. Judith Butler, the primary originator of radical gender ideology, donated to Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign. Harris is now the primary saleswoman for arming Ukraine and escalating the conflict.

A professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews expressed some typical delusions of Western liberals:

Just as the ability to absorb information is better than lunkhead hypermasculinity in a modern army, diversity and societal integration also bring major advantages. As Ukraine has become more diverse and tolerant, its army has benefited. In contrast with Putin’s homophobic military, the Ukrainian armed forces include LGBTQ soldiers who have incorporated “unicorn” insignia into their uniforms. The valor of these soldiers, and the rallying of the Ukrainian people around a vision of a tolerant and diverse society, have led to an overall increase in Ukrainian support for gay rights.

American commentators have painted the conflict in Ukraine as a literal culture war and Putin is happy to reciprocate. In the midst of the conflict he expressed support for Harry Potter author JK Rowling, comparing her “cancellation” over trans issues to the sanctions meted out against Russia by Western nations. In an Address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow, Putin promised to “protect our children from degradation and degeneration” emanating from the West:

Look what they are doing to their own people. It is all about the destruction of the family, of cultural and national identity, perversion and abuse of children… They are forcing the priests to bless same-sex marriages… Reportedly, the Anglican Church is planning to explore the idea of a gender-neutral god. What is there to say? …Millions of people in the West realise that they are being led to a spiritual disaster. Frankly, the elite appear to have gone crazy.

In his sermon on Forgiveness Sunday, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia spelt out the nature of the ideological cleavage between NATO and Russia:

In the Donbass there is rejection, a fundamental rejection of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power. Today there is such a test for the loyalty of this government, a kind of pass to that “happy” world, the world of excess consumption, the world of visible “freedom”. Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple and at the same time terrible. … In order to enter the club of those countries, it is necessary to hold a gay pride parade. Not to make a political statement “we are with you”, not to sign any agreements, but to hold a gay parade. And we know how people resist these demands and how this resistance is suppressed by force.

This is, continues Kirill, “a test of loyalty to that very powerful world.” He isn’t wrong. Writing in The Atlantic, Dominic Tierney, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wants to fight Russia so that a pride parade can be held in Mariupol:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the antithesis of everything the left stands for. Not only did he launch an unprovoked attack on a sovereign democratic nation, but he has also disparaged LGBTQ rights, multiculturalism, and immigration, and claimed that “the liberal idea” has “outlived its purpose.” … LGBTQ protesters in Berlin also demanded that Germany step up arms shipments to Ukraine, so that a Pride parade can, one day, be held in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol.

The LGBT community has become a strange proxy of US power. Kyiv Pride is sponsored by the United States embassy in Ukraine and by the United States Agency for International Development, alongside the Canadian and German governments. In 2021 the Kyiv Pride account tweeted “KyivPride invades eastern Ukraine. The KyivPride: going East project aimed at mobilizing the LGBT+ community in Donbas started in May. In other words, let’s make Donbas queer”.

One typical apparatchik of the American empire in the current year is the “non-binary” lesbian Masha Gessen, who has said of marriage:

Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there, because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change, and again, I don’t think it should exist.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the United States of spreading “a cultural revolution” around the world that consisted of political correctness “taken to the extreme”. Opposition to the American war machine is the only sensible response.



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