Category Archives: Europe

Surrealpolitik: Orban & Putin & ‘Illiberal Democracy’

07 Saturday Jan 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Hungary, Psychology, Russia

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BUDAPEST, Hungary—When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban unleashed a racist tirade during an annual address to ethnic Hungarians in Romania on July 23, in which he argued that his supporters do “not want to become peoples of mixed race,” the international community recoiled in horror at the vitriol being espoused by the leader of a NATO and European Union member state. One of Orban’s longtime advisors, Zsuzsa Hegedus, resigned after the speech, calling it a “pure Nazi text … worthy of [former Nazi leader Joseph] Goebbels.”

Coakley, Amanda. “Putin’s Trojan Horse Inside the European Union: No matter what Moscow does, Hungary’s prime minister consistently carries water for the Kremlin.” Foreign Policy, August 3, 2022.

Amanda Coakley’s article also covers Orban’s deliberate development of dependence on Russia for Hungary’s energy supply. His disingenuous position within the European Union suggests he has had but one outcome in mind, i.e., to become premier in Europe’s “New Nobility” as encouraged by Vladimir Putin. At the base of the autocratic feudal-medieval bond–the same “Malignant Narcissism” that has so characterized former American President Donald Trump’s careers and politics that have turned out disasters for banks, contractors, and citizens.

In late November 2022, Ukrainian special forces arrested a suspected Russian agent at the Ukraine–Hungary border. The man had been attempting to smuggle secret information into EU member state Hungary on a flash drive that he had allegedly concealed in his anus.

The flash drive contained stolen personal information about senior figures and staff at the Ukrainian domestic secret service SBU and the Ukrainian military intelligence service GUR, as well as sensitive data on Ukrainian army bases, weapons and logistics.

Bogar, Zsolt. “Is Hungary becoming Russia’s spy hub within the EU?” DW, September 12, 2022.

Orban, contrary to the European Union’s posture, appears not to mind either the presence nor success of Russia’s spies in Budapest and elsewhere in Hungary. The penetration surpasses presence in numbers as allies believe Hungary’s “IT networks and internal communications” compromised. For a four-year period, 2013-2017, Orbán’s Hungary had even eased the access of Russian spies into the rest of the EU via a “Golden Visa” program (related and recent: Szabolcs, Panyi. “Russian spy chief’s son has a Budapest address–in a property owned by an old friend of Orbán’s chief of staff.” Telex, November 14, 2022).

In the now “surrealpolitik” constructed between Hungary and Russia, business includes the following:

  • Building two nuclear plant blocks in Paks financed by borrowing $10 billion from Russia;
  • Building railroad cars;
  • Hosting Russia’s dark International Investment Bank;
  • Supporting a 15-year gas delivery contract with Gazprom that bypasses Ukraine.

For further details, see the source–Rácz, András. “Authoritarian Ties: The Case of Russia and Hungary.” The Russia File, Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, October 22, 2021. Rácz also notes where Orbán’s spine has stiffened in relation to Russian performance not up to EU standards (and some “intelligence operatives” have indeed been ejected from Hungary).

Global Security‘s remarks fit the brotherly love model of modern despotism in Hungary: “Orban played tough, which might not turn out well for him in the long run. His games were turning into a high wire act, threatening to keep Brussels off balance. At times Orban made half-hearted promises to uphold the EU’s policy toward Russia; at other times, he allowed himself to be flattered by Putin, his self-declared political role model. Or, when it came to economic interests, he allowed himself to be put under pressure (Global Security, “Hungary-Russia Relations” as quoted January 7, 2022).

Putin’s realpolitik, plain old mafia leverage, came through for Russia this past year. From The Guardian—

Hungarians voted in general elections just weeks after the invasion, in April, and it seems reasonable to assume that the war next door had an influence on the result. Given the climate of fear that the devastating “special military operation” created, Hungarians voted to keep Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in power rather than risk an untested six-party coalition. This assumption also underlies Orbán’s response, which is to stay out of the conflict to the point of being “exempted”, a position that has been condemned as a betrayal by Hungary’s western allies. Hungary refuses to allow arms shipments destined for Kyiv to transit Hungarian territory and blocks the extension of EU sanctions against Russia to the energy sector. This latter stance is intended to enable an already controversial Russian-Hungarian project to build a nuclear power plant on the Danube (Paks II) to go ahead unaltered.

Dalos, György.  “Orban says Hungary is ‘exempt’ from the conflict: tell that to his friend in Moscow.”  The Guardian, October 29, 2022.

György also notes the “similarities between the two leaders: authoritarian posturing and illiberalism underlying their respective concepts of the state.”

Since then, Orbán has been accused of fostering resentment. Tensions flared in 2018 over a video that apparently showed diplomats illegally issuing Hungarian passports to people in Transcarpathia. Later, in 2019, Hungary was accused of trying to influence the outcome of elections in the region, and blocked Ukraine’s NATO membership negotiations over the row. |

Today, from the Donbas to Kosovo, events are again proving the potency of nationalist narratives over lost territory and peoples separated by the claimed injustices of history. Yet, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the simple fact that many Hungarians have negative views of both Russians and Ukrainians is pertinent.

Nattrass, William. “Hungary’s ‘pro-Russia’ stance was inevitable.” Politico, September 15, 2022.

The wholly reactionary New Nobility (a member of which Orban might wish to be counted) rather like the old, appears fascinated by its own super-duper bloodline and culture, enough so to demonize hosts beyond their own boundaries, engage in passportization, and when possibility arises, redraw maps by way of wars driven by the conviction of racially-based cultural supremacy.

Comparing Orban to Putin might once have been hyperbole. But when Fidesz seems determined to expel a high-quality educational institution from the country on the grounds of political views of its funder, it is hyperbole no longer.

The attack on CEU, furthermore, is not happening in isolation. It is part of a broader effort to squeeze out “Soros and the powers that symbolize him,” to use Orban’s own words.

Rohac, Dalibor. “Hungary Is Turning Into Russia: On the CEU, Orban Mimics Putin.” Foreign Affairs, April 12, 2017.

America’s Anti-Defamation League has classified the demonizing of George Soros as expressive of anti-Semitism, a return to the rhetoric of Jew as Globalist. In fact and far back in the day, George and his father, Tivador, used social camouflage to survive the Holocaust while providing other Jews with forged papers for escape. Their resistance would continue against Stalin and Communist Russia, and so through George Soros it has been sustained through the Cold War and throughout Russia journey into kleptocracy and, on this day, politically absolute tyranny.

ADL. “The Antisemitism Lurking Behind George Soros Conspiracy Theories.” October 11, 2018.

Bogar, Zsolt. “Is Hungary becoming Russia’s spy hub within the EU?” DW, September 12, 2022.

Coakley, Amanda. “Putin’s Trojan Horse Inside the European Union: No matter what Moscow does, Hungary’s prime minister consistently carries water for the Kremlin.” Foreign Policy, August 3, 2022.

Dalos, György.  “Orban says Hungary is ‘exempt’ from the conflict: tell that to his friend in Moscow.”  The Guardian, October 29, 2022.

Global Security. “Hungary-Russia Relations”.

Nattrass, William. “Hungary’s ‘pro-Russia’ stance was inevitable.” Politico, September 15, 2022.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: A Short Note on the Demonizing of George Soros.” BackChannels, August 8, 2020.

Rácz, András. “Authoritarian Ties: The Case of Russia and Hungary.” The Russia File, Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, October 22, 2021.

Rohac, Dalibor. “Hungary Is Turning Into Russia: On the CEU, Orban Mimics Putin.” Foreign Affairs, April 12, 2017.

Szabolcs, Panyi. “Russian spy chief’s son has a Budapest address–in a property owned by an old friend of Orbán’s chief of staff.” Telex, November 14, 2022.

While #PutinFullTonto strives to return Russia to some version of the KGB revisits the Russian Imperial mode, few believe the Phantom of the Soviet will restore a monstrous near past; however, he has well succeeded in leveraging cooperation from malign and piratical personalities similar to his own–in power Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan most notably–and thereby weakening the political cohesion and coherence of the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union.

–33–

Russian Power (Back) to the Russian People for Russian Democracy, Development, Humanism, Progress, and Rule of Law

24 Saturday Sep 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Europe, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Great Britain and United Kingdom, North America, Northern Europe, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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This story posted today on YouTube turns out as much about OSINT detective work from within Russia as about the internal brutality of the politically criminal and thoroughly kleptocratic regime of Tsar Vladimir the Small.

Posted by the BBC to YouTube September 24, 2022.

Tweeted earlier this morning —

While the United States has its own Russian infection with Trump’s own anti-democratic and demagogic and delusional fascist nationalist base, he has yet to turn American national and state military defense and police security services into his own personal goons, Americans on the way to mid-term elections are not waiting for him or his cult to amass that kind of power. Trump represents a diminishing base of corrupt or diminished or greedy Americans who crave his “power” — his appearance of it, in any case — in relation to their own damaged psyches and penchants for absolute and sadistic personal and political control — under cover of Christian zealotry, no less — of all that surrounds themselves.

Also on BackChannels

Page: “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”.

By date published–

A Note on the Demise of the Medieval Rus, May 9, 2022.

FTAC: Russia’s One Big Step Backward-Why Ukraine Must Prevail to the Four Compass Points of Its Pre-Crimean Annexation, June 5, 2022.

Detecting Post-Soviet Russia’s Black Narrative of Revenge for ’89 and ’91,June 19, 2022.

Addendum

UATV #UATV_English #UkraineNews
Destroyed homes and tortured residents: Consequences of Russian occupation of Kupiansk, September 24, 2022.

###

21 Years to September 11, 2022

11 Sunday Sep 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Islamic Small Wars, North America

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Start at the beginning: Felix Dzerzhinsky’s Birthday, September 11, 1877.

Move on to the “End of the Cold War”: December 25, 1991.

Pause for Ayman al-Zawahiri’s “detention” in Russia, winter 1996/7.

And take a moment for that indelible Monday morning 8:45 a.m. horror–>

CBS News. Posted to YouTube August 30, 2011.

What American and the world witnessed 21 years ago was an Islamic terrorist attack on two breathtaking office buildings symbolic of western business and political order. At the time, as one country-western singer-songwriter noted–Alan Jackson – “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)”–an ordinary American couldn’t tell the difference between Iraq and Iran.

Perhaps that absence of American and more generalized global political sophistication has changed.

As flesh swells where stung, BackChannels views the September 11 attack on America’s homeland as the installation of the “New Nationalism” to come to the United States and infect several other EU/NATO states–Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey–with reversions to dalliance and inroads by authoritarian power.

While the world’s more modern and western institutions for security focused on the “War on Terror”, another decade would deliver another message in Moscow’s inimical back alley manner in absolute thuggish power as an alley declared war on the humanity of his own constituency: on BackChannels, “Syria: The Horror: 2011”. The Syrian Civil War would in disperse millions of refugees into other states in the Middle East (Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt) and into NATO member Turkey (3.6 million) and into Europe (more than 1 million) according to World Vision.

Add yet one more decade to spring 2021 and the winter of 2021/2, for Russia’s positioning for its invasion of Ukraine, which was then initiated on February 24, 2022 (this leaving out Russia’s annexation of Crimea from February to March 2014 in the wake of the Ukraine’s Euromaidan and concomitant Revolution of Dignity

While the public generally views “9/11” as a singular act of Islamic ne “Islamist” terror against the pillars of the western (and majority-Christian) order, it appears in retrospect as a challenge on the part of the still politically absolute medieval world against the more compassionate, humanist, and ordered modern open democracies and their profoundly liberal ends. In fact, the attack appears to fit with a greater and more pernicious narrative arc as Russia was to support the Taliban with arms and materiel through to their taking Kabul in an American retreat first agreed to by former President Trump, a most (allegedly) criminal, devious, disgraceful, and traitorous American President (well, to judge by the latest breaking news).

This September 11 anniversary differs quite from Moscow’s authoritarian and criminal vision for the world.

CNN, September 11, 2022.
Posted by IphyAstrid–and the video’s in Indonesian, I think, as well as some English–September 11, 2022.
Posted by RobFuz, September 10, 2022.

–33–

A Few Keys Related to ‘East-West Rivalry’

02 Saturday Jul 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Epistemology, Europe, North America, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Russia

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As a blogger drifting along the contours of institutions and media concerned with defense and national security, I’ve encountered two primary challenges: how to condense, distill, and package strong material for public overview and impact; and, sigh, how to give the “pebble” sufficient weight to get a firm small wave bouncing back and force across the Internet pond.

Without further ado . . . .

.Felix Dzerzhinsky, born September 11, 1877
.Dawisha (RIP) Soviet Nomenklatura Mid-1980s Transition Plan for the Distribution of State Assets
.Nekrasov’s documentary
.Zawahiri in Russia, ’96-7
.Satter On The Moscow Apartment Bombings
.9/11 Reflexive Control->New Nationalism EU/NATO
.Sustained Active Measures | Russian Mafia State | Syrian Barbarism | Trump Ascendancy
.Ukraine, 2014 Crimean Annexation, Invasion 2022

*Section mentioned in “Russia Full Tonto Kleptocracy, Mafia, and Terrorist State” (BackChannels, June 28, 2022) and lightly edited for presentation in this post.

Do you see what I see?

Of course not.

You haven’t been on my specific poli-sci/poli-psy/poli-spy tour, but the clues in events and personalities don’t reside only my mind: they are all here on the web. My guess: the knowledgeable, say at GCHQ or NSA, have already put them together (well, those cats have got to have better resources and more interesting conversations), but the ordinary public appears to me to be struggling with what has happened–and with what may be happening if it doesn’t come to grips with a strong true representation of cultural and political reality.

Premise-Thirty Years Revenge for ’89 and ’91

I believe Bolshevik criminal elements within the Soviet KGB wasted little time prying their way back into power and prestige sufficient to bend the Russian Federation’s democracy and justice to their own will and for their own ends (ref.: Nekrasov documentary on Litvinenko, Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case AKA Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File).

In addition to focusing on self-enrichment and power, the cohort appears to have been bent on vengeance for the Soviet Army’s defeat in Afghanistan in 1989 and the dissolving of the Soviet Union itself at noon on December 25, 1991, an implication drawn by the manner of Vladimir Putin’s ascent to Russia’s presidency, his legendary affection for Felix Dzerzhinsky, Joseph Stalin, and Soviet Era Russia, and the inadequacy expressed through his “malignant narcissism” (see “Liar, Thief, and Tyrant”, February 20, 2022, on this blog) and related devotion to supporting his own Russian messianic heroic image through artifice (because that’s all he really has). The emperor may have no clothes but neither Russians nor the west are dwelling on that as he has Russia focused on his greatness (or else!) and everyone else his destructive threat.

Moscow’s Development of the East-West Rivalry Narrative

I believe conventional western financial and political leadership took the familiar tack of wanting to help the defeated get back on its feet through the extension of capital, the hand of cooperation, and patient tolerance or understanding for the Russian travail that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Only at the turning point of the Syrian Civil War (2011) did western detente return to play–and then containment. Today, for having accepted the position of responding to Russia’s initiatives and rollout of its own and quite evil narrative arc, EU/NATO have found themselves in various ways somewhat compromised; a little incoherent about corruption, legacy, power, and realpolitik in each state’s own way (for related review, have a look at authoritarianism or nationalism in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States) ; and finally brought to face once again a most dangerous confrontation with Moscow and its criminal Soviet-post-Soviet character now on full display in the ethnic cleansing and “rubbling” of Ukraine.

Perhaps Washington thought it progress to have worked on the “War on Terror” with Moscow, but in the end, the Pentagon and State Department found the Taliban kept in business by Russian arms and materiel–and both would leave Afghanistan with the Taliban guarding Russia’s embassy in Kabul.

Avarice, Inferiority, and Greed–Russia and Trump

Russia and Russia’s leadership may have a “special” narcissism and enormous compensating vanity, but I am certain that among nations and their full collection of political experiments that it has no “special truth”, for at every opportunity, Moscow has supported criminals, dictators, fanatics, and terrorists–and it has through its Active Measures and destabilization operations put to work similar elements in its targets.

The poster displayed in this tweet appears to have been a gesture of support from within Russia following Trump’s 2016 election win. One may take it as a comment on the medieval mentality and related methods popular with both leaders and their respective followers.

Donald John Trump as Malignant Narcissist

The steps and terms-of-art I’ve picked up in relation to “Malignant Narcissism” have been these, and while practically self-explanatory, academics and analysts have spent serious verbiage on each. I’ll step in most informally to convey the gist.

Narcissistic Mortification: experiences of humiliation or shame to the extent that the identity and self feel damaged, impotent, and small. The discomfort–for what it is to do to the person–may be considered remarkable.

Covering/Splitting: “Covering” refers to the hiding of the damaged self and the packing away of an awful experience; “splitting” refers to the creation of an heroic undamaged self to be both asserted and defended at all costs. With “MaligNarcs”–expressed through authoritarian, dictating, and sociopathic manipulation–the appreciation or recognition and respect for normal boundaries and limits fade before the objectives of the self in hiding damage and asserting extraordinary power.

Control of the Experiences and Perceptions of Others: most well known: “gaslighting”. However, add deceptions and lies without ends or limits. Whatever works . . . works.

Messianic Delusions of Grandeur: Although the MaligNarc creates the chaos–no different from the fireman who sets the fire, so he may show up and put it out as a hero–the vision is to stand astride the same heroically saving his class, creed, gender, race, and religion from all who would diminish any part.

Unlimited Narcissistic Supply: adoration and love unlimited.

The best example I’ve read and repeatedly distributed in relation to Vladimir Putin has been David Satter’s investigation in the National Review — “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power” (August 17, 2016). For Donald John Trump, one may explore the web for “Trump, Malignant Narcissist” and find the long list of both learned and light psychobabble. Here’s a passage just plucked off the web:

According to psychologist John Gartner, Trump clearly exhibits four key symptoms of malignant narcissism — the “most destructive” personality type — including paranoia, narcissism, antisocial personality disorder and sadism. “

This type of leader pops up all throughout history, and they’re always extraordinarily disruptive,” Gartner told AFP, noting that the same label has been applied to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.

“What is so strange is that we’re not used to seeing this type of leader in America.”

Raynaldy, Romain. “Psychologist-backed documentary labels Trump ‘malignant narcissist’.” The Jakarta Post, September 1, 2020.

You can tell the condition’s gotten really bad when it expresses as the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“, which has been myself just calling it as I’ve seen it.

PBS, June 28, 2022.

And for political theater . . .

That’s a mob–or it was a mob, a heavily armed one too.

Medieval leaders love mobs, also secret gangs, behind-the-curtain deals with other “nobility”, dumb but loyal armies, and the idea above all of being as if gods, blessed by religious power, and free to define the law of the lawless land–and in Russia’s absolute “patrimonial authoritarianism”, apparently free to treat persons and property as alike and to destroy either at will and with impunity.

Modern leaders do all they can to minimize and eliminate that mentality from their districts, regions, and states, for the modern world in every facet relies on complex cooperation and the integration of large systems. It may help if they’re devoted to the health and well being of their respective constituencies and not solely the representatives of one patrician class or another.

Thematic on this blog has been “Medieval v Modern”, and, of course, it or I, or the same 🙂 , has posed the question, “In which world do you wish to live? Medieval? Or Modern?”

As the European Union and NATO see more clearly what Moscow has “accomplished” with its barbarous medieval ambitions (or delusions) over the past 30 years of support for the post-Soviet but still Soviet spheres of control and influence–and, finally, in the so-far “ethnic cleansing” of Ukraine–both will have to determine to take apart the Putin’s Olde Regime and nurture in its place a modern Russia that Russians too (as it dawns on them what has been and is being done to them and their children) might appreciate and embrace. In this passage where every day is agony for Ukrainians and an eternity for diplomats and politicians, that day’s on a seemingly far horizon, but it’s there and will become more visible with time. So-called “leaders” like Putin and Trump have made themselves impossibly archaic and in cultural, ethical, and moral terms, if not financial (yet), bankrupt.

Truth be known: neither Putin nor Trump has anything–apart from a little money or laundering service–to offer anyone.

–33–

Russia Full Tonto Kleptocracy, Mafia, and Terrorist State

28 Tuesday Jun 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, North America, Political Psychology, Russia

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“Full Tonto”?

Criminally insane, mad, off the rails, and in the manner of the Malignant Narcissist and Thug in Charge, Russia has lost all sense of boundaries and limits. Putin’s Russian Circle of Thieves has taken from the Russian People their dignity, economy, freedom, and security; it has marched into battle enslaved conscripts and either criminal or leveraged (both) officers.

I’ve made the case on this blog that the “end of the Cold War” became in its underlying reality a struggle for revenge on the west for the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan (shorthand: “’89”) and the dissolving of the Soviet Union in bankruptcy (“’91”). We are now about 30 years out (1992-2022) from Vladimir Putin’s most traumatic political memory (the fall of the SU) and very near direct war against what has become a politically absolute, criminal, and rogue state held in the grip of real mafia and political thugs.

How Close the Prospect of War with Russia?

How Free are the Russian People Under Putin?

Might There Be Some Practical Motivation for Russia’s Conquest by the Destruction of Ukraine?

Amelin, Anatoliy, Andrian Prokip, and Andreas Umland. “The Forgotten Potential of Ukraine’s Energy Reserves.” Harvard International Review, October 10, 2020.

Excluding Russia’s gas reserves in Asia, Ukraine today holds the second biggest known gas reserves in Europe. As of late 2019, known Ukrainian reserves amounted to 1.09 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, second only to Norway’s known resources of 1.53 trillion cubic meters. Yet, these enormous reserves of energy remain largely untapped. Today, Ukraine has a low annual reserve usage rate of about 2 percent. Moreover, more active exploration may yield previously undiscovered gas fields, which would further increase the overall volume of Ukraine’s deposits.

A Note on the End of the Cold War and Russia’s Persistent Imperial Vanity

I’ve no idea what CIA, GHCQ, NSA, et al. have been doing, but I’ve cause to believe I’ve both found and uncovered The Dots, fuzzy and large though they may be. Here they are:

.Felix Dzerzhinsky, born September 11, 1877
.Dawisha (RIP) Soviet Nomenklatura Transition Plan
.Nekrasov’s documentary
.Zawahiri in Russia, ’96-7
.Satter on Moscow Apartment Bombings
.9/11 Reflexive Control->New Nationalism EU/NATO
.Sustained Active Measures | Russian Mafia State | Syrian Barbarism | Trump Ascendancy
.Ukraine, 2014 Crimean Annexation, Invasion 2022

Circumstantial? Coincidental? Disconnected?

I don’t think so.

I suspect one or more Soviet Era KGB found themselves driving cabs early in 1992 and determined to get themselves back into business inside the state (watch Nekrasov’s documentary).

Motivating Zawahiri to team up with Osama Bin Laden to work on fireworks for 9/11?

Addressing Islamic Extremism (and Osama Bin Laden) may have been something Moscow and Washington thought they might work on together.

Wishing not to repeat myself nor dull the reading with definitions (“Active Measures”, “Destabilization Operations”, “Hybrid Warfare”, etc.), it may do to stop here but with the observation that Russia’s barbaric behavior in Syria starting in 2011 may have also set the stage not only for the invasion of Ukraine but added emphasis to its various nuclear-related civilizational, existential, and political threats: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has no conscience.

Regarding the term “Mafia State” as applied to Russia

Galeotti, Mark. “Gangster’s paradise: how organised crime took over Russia.” The Guardian, March 23, 2018.

McIlvenna-Davis, Dylan. “Gangs and Gulags: How Vladimir Putin Utilizes Organized Crime to Power his Mafia State.” Berkeley Political Review, December 16, 2019.

These newly established enforcers formed the seedy underbelly of Russian society that expanded upon the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the move towards free-market practices. Since his rise, Vladimir Putin has incentivized gangsters to do his bidding in a new way. Rather than overt collusion, the Russian government, as ABC puts it, “make[s] its views known” and allows gangs to operate within the guidelines set forward by Putin.

As the European Council on Foreign Relations notes, more and more crime networks tangentially linked to Russian actors have appeared all over Europe. Multiple politically convenient assassinations or assassination attempts have been made on anti-Russia figures by gang members who have been accused of being Russian assets. The Russian government, via the Russian mafia, has dabbled in ventures ranging from hacking to money laundering.

Nevzlin, Leonid. “The Result of 20 Years of Putin: Russia as a Mafia State.” Institute of Modern Russia, January 24, 2020.

The west handled the “end of the Cold War” as if the key elements in “east-west rivalry” had been resolved and returns to the previous state of affairs could be dulled through cooperation, peace, and prosperity.

As much has proven over time an horrendous goof however noble the intents.

*

Regarding Russia’s “help” with the “War on Terror”: Rowlett, Justin. “Russia ‘arming the Afghan Taliban’, says US.” BBC, March 23, 2018; Maynes, Charles. “The Russian Embassy in Kabul Is Now Under Protection of the Taliban.” NPR, August 16, 2021.

*

The West–EU/NATO–has been “played” by Moscow.

Putin & Co.’s Russia presents as nothing less than a most barbaric, criminal, and self-centered enterprise bent, enthralled, and maddened by its own destructive capability, narcissistic paranoia (see “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”) and grandiose messianic delusions.

Posted by Fantasy & World Music by the Fiechters, January 23, 2016; on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BBELZFC .

This with Russia’s criminal political enterprise persistent through Putin more from the Bolshevik camp than the Romanov will end in Russia internally–or from without but with consideration for The Russians en masse and for the world’s Modern International Standards in cultural comportment, development, integration, law, technology, and trade, all of which Putin & Co. have chosen to degrade and destroy without putting up anything at all that could be called Good.

–33–

A Note on the Demise of the Medieval Rus

09 Monday May 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, International Development, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Qualities of Living (QOL), Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, transnational crime, Ukraine

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The Rus warlords Oleg of Novgorod and Sviatoslav I of Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around 941 (in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh; this calls into question the timeline of the Primary Chronicle and other related works on the history of the Eastern Slavs.

Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s. The Khazar fortresses of Sarkel and Tamatarkha fell to the Rus in 965, with the capital city of Atil following circa 967 or 969. A visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking of the city: “The Rus attacked, and no grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch.”

McGill Wikispedia. “Khazars: Rise of the Rus”. n.d.
5/8/2022
5/9/2022

Putin’s delusional accusations regarding Nazism in Ukraine better fit description as the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” than any dominant or significant political stance held in modern Ukraine, and the same may better inform Russians and the residents of EU/NATO of the character of his insanity than any truth about international affairs.

While The Great Paranoid Leader confuses and inverts reality–Putin’s the fascist blood-and-soil nationalist even while wearing his anti-fascist St. George’s ribbon today–and bluffs with the same convincing act that stalled the mob foaming around KGB headquarters in East Germany (ref. para. 4) at the fall of the German Democratic Republic (December 1989), he can do nothing either to alter past or present realities (as more accurately and truthfully conveyed and apprehended in the Open Information Space of the democratic open societies of the west) or now his own declining and ignominious image before the world. The development of a partially criminal and fraudulent KGB in the mid-early 1990s has in Ukraine finally reached NATO’s western-leaning Ukrainian buffer, a state once controlled in its corruption by Moscow. As Ukraine engaged Putin’s bombarding and invading forces to push them back and safely beyond its own sovereign writ, one may only wish Russia’s dictator would develop conscience, insight, integrity, and guilt.

As the murderous fraud Putin has been, he has no possession of good character and cannot purchase any authentic nobility. Deep down, I suspect he knows as much himself, and it is that (along with the narcissist’s early “Narcissistic Mortification“) that makes him so touchy as well as dangerous and errant.

One may hope that modern Russians when more fully and accurately informed en masse will finally part ways with their distant medieval and barbaric forbears.

Related Online

Amelin, Anatoliy, Andrian Prokip, Andreas Umland. “The Forgotten Potential of Ukraine’s Energy Reserves.” Harvard International Review, October 10, 2020.

Bubola, Emma. “‘A Frightening Repeat’: Ukrainian World War II Survivors Face Conflict Again.” The New York Times, March 24-25, 2022.

Dixon, Robyn and Mary Ilyushina. “On Victory Day, Putin defends war on Ukraine as fight against ‘Nazis’.” The Washington Post, May 9, 2022.

Furlong, Ray. “Showdown In Dresden: The Stasi Occupation And The Putin Myth.” RFE/RL, December 2, 2019.

Jankowicz, Mia. “Captured Russians said their leaders lied about the plan to invade Ukraine, leaving them unprepared for fierce resistance.” Business Insider, March 7, 2022.

Kellogg, Michael. The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945. (New Studies in European History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005.

Kuzio, Taras. “How Putin’s Russia embraced fascism while preaching anti-fascism.” Ukraine Alert, Atlantic Council, April 17, 2022.

Motyl, Alexander. “Yes, Putin and Russia are fascist–A political scientist shows how they meet the textbook definition.” The Conversation, March 30, 2022.

Nekrasov, Andrei and Olga Konskaya. “Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case” also titled, “Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File”. 2007.

Oppenheim, James S. “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation.” BackChannels.

Prentice, Alessandra. “Ukrainians fear fiercer assault as Russia marks Soviet WW2 victory.” Reuters, May 9, 2022.

Ruane, Michael E. “Kyiv was surrounded in 1941 as the Nazis closed in. The Russian army defended the city.” The Washington Post, March 4, 2022.

Satter, David. “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power.” National Review, August 17, 2016.

Snyder, Timothy. “Germans must remember the truth about Ukraine–for their own sake.” Eurozine, July 7, 2017.

Stanley, Jason and Eliyahu Stern. “Putin’s Fascism.” Tablet, March 20, 2022.

The White House. “G7 Leaders’ Statement.” May 8, 2022.

Walker, Shaun. “How the Soviet Union’s Fall Pushed Putin to Try and Recapture Russia’s Global Importance.” History.com, February 28, 2022.

Walker, Shaun. “Putin uses Victory Day speech to rehash list of grievances against west.” The Guardian, May 9, 2022.

Wikipedia. “Narcissistic Mortification”.

Wikipedia. “Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany”.

Wikipedia. “War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine”.

9/24/2008
3/10/2022
4/3/2022

5/9/2022

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Victims of the German Democratic Republic: Brief Reflection on Germany’s Forgotten Internal Immigrants

28 Thursday Apr 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Germany, International Development, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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Deutsch: Deckblatt der MfS-Richtlinie Nr. 1/76 zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge
Date, 1 January 1976, Source: BStU, GVS MfS 008-100/76; Author: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der DDR | “Cover sheet of the MfS Guideline No. 1/76 for the development and processing of operational processes”; Ministry for State Security DDR. Online Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung .

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Decomposition (Zersetzung): ” . . . hidden psychological destruction of dissidents . . . .”

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Persons of Interest in Relation to this Post: Evelyn Zupke; Hans D. Ripperger; Kristina Olney; Michelle Bachelet; Mike Mutterlose (URL’s language is German).

Cause: Aid and Compensation for the harms and indignities imposed on those trapped within the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic and subject to enslavement and punishment at the hands of the state’s secret police, the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatsicherheit).

Related: The 1619 Project

We mere humans just don’t own time. For atheists, time is just a fact of life.

We do, again, and each as representative of Homo Sapiens sapiens, and for better or worse, own our memories.

It has been our species’ great misfortune to find always some portion of our numbers made to suffer at the hands of others.

Forget “God, Nature, and the Universe”. The earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, and volcano would seem possessed of physics and entirely dispossessed of conscience except that some of us believe that in the presence of one or the other, divine providence destroyed our lives or saved them.

Degradation, dehumanization, enslavement, subjugation, subjection, and other such evils–those are different, and in the history of our species, one sees the chains and whips changing hands by turns, and, sigh, we may feel ourselves lucky if wielding the whip . . . but then nothing lasts beyond bearing except a number of nefarious processes that we perhaps have not wrestled sufficiently into the past. So here we may acknowledge that we don’t get to erase our bad memories; we don’t get to retrieve the dead; we may or may not have some revenge on our tormentors–and if it was ourselves that held the keys and snapped the whips, our day–we know it secretly–has come–or will.

I believe it in the tendency of our species to develop awareness, compassion, conscience, consciousness, empathy, greater integrity and reason, and at the end of every dastardly era, great human sensibility and wisdom.

I was asked not long ago to help promote the cause of the internally displaced in place of the once Soviet-controlled and Communist German Democratic Republic.

Imagine, if you will, going to sleep in one dismal but predictable awful cultural, legal, political, and social circumstance and waking the next day without a country–and afterward a “democratic open society of the west” that prides itself on compassion but hasn’t much in place for you–and then years later when it does . . . you’re no more important in it than you were in the other place.

Perhaps one’s personal circumstance has become more bearable , the powers that be more polite, and amends for the insufferable past made with good will whether or not sufficient to quells bad memories and the residuals in nightmares.

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I have found in overview–remember my analytical discipline: collect, select, and opine–that East Germany’s internal migrants, all of whom went to sleep in one place in time and woke up in another entirely–have not been overlooked but perhaps underserved in the regions of cultural and economic development. In the Soviet way, they had been locked down in time, suffocated, surveilled, deprived of normal human political and social processes, and subject to deliberate state-driven control, diminishment, and, ultimately, erasure.

How would even the most benevolent of modern societies “compensate” for that experience?

Well . . . there is today the business of living well enough to create and enjoy better memories in freedom and with at least a modicum of privacy (although the “modern” appear to have some new horrors on the horizon, e.g., massive intrusion via data sifting) as well as dignity and security.

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Now and then, I haul out Qualities of Living (QOLs) a conceptual alternative to thinking about power as an expression of grandiose narcissistic ambition with accompanying control and influence ascribed to a potentate absolute or constitutional. What if power were more often the power to bring extraordinary improvement to geopolitical space in the many dimensions to be appreciated by the inhabitants of a given space?

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After 1990 “the whole software of life changed” for east Germans, says Markus Kerber, a bigwig at the interior ministry. Short-term pain was inevitable. Average labour productivity in the east was 30% of that in the west. Kohl’s decision to exchange Ostmarks at a 1:1 rate for Deutschmarks made swathes of firms uncompetitive overnight. Those that survived struggled with the western rules they had to import wholesale. By one estimate, 80% of east Germans at some point found themselves out of work.

Perhaps the Treuhand could have proceeded more gently, some argue today.

“Germans still don’t agree on what reunification meant: Discontent may even be growing.” The Economist, November 2, 2019.

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Cultural and economic adjustment, development, inclusion with some foresight and vision may turn out the key that will finally fix the past in the past where it needs to be. In this day, however, quite a number of cultures, groups, and just plain people have taken up the causes of yesterday, exhumed and tallied abuses, ranted high and low for justice, but the best all may do is not relive what’s gone and take pains–whatever it was–not to see it happen again.

Bailey, Charlotte. “The Lingering Trauma of Stasi Surveillance.” The Atlantic, November 9, 2019.

Binder, David. “Erich Mielke, Powerful Head of Stasi, East Germany’s Vast Spy Network, Dies at 92.” The New York Times, May 26, 2000.

Chapple, Amos. “The Secret Lives of the Stasi: Chilling photos uncovered by a German artist reveal the Stasi’s methods to monitor and terrorize their citizens.” RFE/RL, December 12, 2018.

Connolly, Kate. “German reunification 25 years on: how different are east and west really.” The Guardian, October 2, 2015.

Crypto Museum. “Minesterium fur Staatssicherheit – MfS”.

“Germans still don’t agree on what reunification meant: Discontent may even be growing.” The Economist, November 2, 2019.

Hertzberg, Max. “Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung.” Max Hertzberg: Spies, crime and hopepunk, November 28, 2021.

Holden, Stephen. “Behind Closed Doors in Both Berlins.” The New York Times, November 6, 2014.

Iannetta, Massimo and Nina Toussaint, Dirs. “The Decomposition of the Soul.” Documentary, 82 minutes, 2002.

Ivanova, Irina. “The Decomposition of the Soul.” Review. Indypendent, February 6, 2007.

Münz, Rainer and Ralf E. Ulrich. “Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945-1997.” Research & Seminars, University of California-Davis, Center for German and European Studies, 1998. Alternative Reference: https://www.worldcat.org/title/changing-patterns-of-migration-to-germany-1945-1997/oclc/40780392 .

Oltermann, Philip. “‘I’ve been shafted twice’: Stasi victims and their quest for compensation.” The Guardian, November 6, 2019.

Rennell, Tony. “Stasi’s ‘no touch’ torture: It was the East German secret police’s most terrifying weapon – gaslighting mind games that drove its own citizens mad . . . and the lessons for today’s social media generation couldn’t be more stark.” Daily Mail, June 8-9, 2021.

Schultheis, Emily. “As Germany’s secret-police archive shutters, reckoning for its victims continues.” National Geographic, August 5, 2021.

Spiekermann, Uwe. “The Stasi at Home and Abroad: Domestic Order and Foreign Intelligence.” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Supplement 9, 2014.

Stasi Documents Archive. “Introduction – Ministry for State Security”.

Stuchbery, Michael. “Why Germany will never forget the Stasi era of mass surveillance.” The Local, February 8, 2019.

Suarez, Hannah. “Stasi Museum–Germans spying on Germans, psychological warfare (Zersetzung)”. 21st Century Expat | Digital Nomad, December 7, 2019.

The Local. “Putin’s Stasi ID card found in Dresden archive.” December 11, 2018.

Wikipedia: “East German Round Table”; German reunification; German Unity Day; “Matthias Platzeck”; “Otto von Habsburg”; “Pan-European Picnic”; “Peaceful Revolution AKA Die Wende”; “Stasi”; “Stasi Records Agency”; “Zersetzung”.

Wilson, Katie. “Five films that shaped the GDR’s legacy–and what east Germans think of them today.” The Local: Germany’s News in English, September 25, 2019.

In the 1970s the MfS changed its secret police activities and began increasingly to use “softer” methods. The GDR leadership did not want to compromise its attempts to gain international recognition: persecution and repression were to be concealed. The MfS now focused more on preventive surveillance and so-called “psychic demolition”. It used manipulation and targeted rumours in its attempts to systematically intimidate individuals or groups, to ruin their reputations, isolate or criminalize them. Friendships were destroyed, and professional careers ruined without the victims even realizing why.

However, the change in methods did not lead to any let-up in the repressive pressure exerted by the MfS. And the aim also remained the same: to prevent the development of non-conformist or dissident ideas and behaviour.

Stasi Documents Archive. “Introduction – Ministry for State Security”.

The rest of the group agreed that the destruction of trust was one of the most painful legacies of their experiences in the GDR. The dense informer network meant that everyone spied on one another. Many did not find out who had informed on them until decades later, when they requested their Stasi file.

Bailey, Charlotte. “The Lingering Trauma of Stasi Surveillance.” The Atlantic, November 9, 2019.

So in the 1970s, the masterminds at Stasi School — formally known as the College of Legal Studies — decided on a new, more subtle tactic of repression, a way of stamping out rebellion without the overt use of force.

Instead of pounding their suspects into submission, they would send them mad. And so began the policy of Zersetzung.

The word meant disintegration or corrosion or decomposition. Today we would call it ‘gaslighting’ — playing with someone’s mind and self-worth until any resistance crumbles and he or she becomes either compliant or apathetic.

Rennell, Tony. “Stasi’s ‘no touch’ torture: It was the East German secret police’s most terrifying weapon – gaslighting mind games that drove its own citizens mad . . . and the lessons for today’s social media generation couldn’t be more stark.” Daily Mail, June 8-9, 2021.

Six phases of postwar immigration to Germany can be distinguished (see table 2; see also Martin 1991; Münz and Ulrich 1993; Rudolph 1994; Seifert 1995). The first phase was dominated by the immigration of Germans: expellees, citizens of the GDR, other ethnic Germans

Münz, Rainer and Ralf E. Ulrich. “Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945-1997.” Research & Seminars, University of California-Davis, Center for German and European Studies, 1998. Alternative Reference: https://www.worldcat.org/title/changing-patterns-of-migration-to-germany-1945-1997/oclc/40780392 .
Posted to YouTube August 18, 2009.

Born into poverty in pre-World War I Berlin, Mr. Mielke joined the Communist youth movement at age 15, and his career epitomized the grimness of Communist rule in East Germany, where assassination, kidnapping, execution, denunciation and intimidation were used to achieve and maintain power under the long, menacing shadow of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Mielke and the ministry for state security kept the 16.5 million people of East Germany obedient to Communism and repressed dissent for more than 30 years. Not only did the ministry pursue an effective campaign against those it regarded as enemies of the state, but its army of 90,000 agents and 260,000 informers finally turned East Germany into a country that spied on itself.

Binder, David. “Erich Mielke, Powerful Head of Stasi, East Germany’s Vast Spy Network, Dies at 92.” The New York Times, May 26, 2000.
Posted by Movie Coverage to YouTube September 17, 2012. URL play-dot-google-dot-com has a version with English subtitles. It’s a fine movie.

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Is “living well” the best revenge?

I don’t know, but both alone and in community we most naturally make ourselves comfortable and secure if, when, and where we can. “Living well” with agency, autonomy, dignity, efficacy, freedom, inclusion beats all of the alternatives, and living well with some thoughtful planning for ourselves, our own, and others . . . I would call that repair and profound improvement.

Addendum: Related Online and Worth the Visit

Verhulst, Dominic. “HOHENSCHÖNHAUSEN: State Security Prison – Former East Berlin – DDR”. Photography.

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