Putin’s Appeal to the Masses

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Clarissa

October 31, 2014

Putin has something that Obama, Merkel, and Co either don’t have or don’t feel like sharing.

He has a vision. It is a consistent and appealing vision that he has shared very openly in this speech (as well as in many others.) The appeal of the vision is that it offers relief from the scary, fluid, rapidly changing modernity. He is telling people, “You feel scared, confused and lost? I have a recipe for what is ailing you. The problem isn’t that you are backwards, barbaric, uncivilized and incapable of keeping up. The problem is that this fluid world is the product of American efforts and ideology. I can offer you an alternative. I will not force you – like the evil Americans do – to accept this new reality. I know what to do to take you back to the times when you didn’t feel as lost and confused.”

Of course, it’s a lie. Nobody can turn back the clock. The world has changed and will keep changing. But the fantasy of being able to check out from the demands of the rapid transformation is very powerful.

Putin will keep selling this Brooklyn Bridge for as long as he needs to grab world dominance. He will not deliver on his promises because that is not within human power. But the world will pay a very high price for allowing the nostalgia and the fear of change to lure us under Putin’s wing.

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6 responses to “Putin’s Appeal to the Masses”

musteryou

October 31, 2014

There are always going to be scattering forces and conserving forces. I’ve noticed that many in Zimbabwe prefer the conserving forces, too, even though it means festering under the middle-brow tryanny of a cumbersome identity politics.

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aglaonika

October 31, 2014

“The peasants had their masters, the masters their peasants, and now everything’s all over the place, there’s no sense any more.”

Has anything changed in Russia at all?

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musteryou

October 31, 2014

In fact it may be desirable for ultra-advanced people that there is some tradition and some modernity in the world. One should be able to travel between a wide range of experiences, not having everything one and the same. Russia’s situation has implications for the broader political sphere, which is bad, but in the case of Zimbabwe, one would not like to see it rush headlong into modernity too quickly. The American model of extreme fluidity leads to extremely damaged people, as I keep finding out whenever I visit YouTube. One needs to be able to read one’s environment, which is not possible if it is changing all the time. People need to slow themselves down and read the signs.

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1. Clarissa
  
  October 31, 2014
  
  Russia’s situation is actually pretty great in this respect. After everything that Russians experienced in the 1990s, the instability and fluidity that freaks out Americans so much is child’s play to them. They will barely even notice.
  
  Putin’s speech is not addressed to Russians. He is speaking to everybody else but them.
  
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  1. musteryou
    
    October 31, 2014
    
    Interesting reversal.
    
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Hattie

November 1, 2014

A lot of people want to live in some fantasy of the past but with all the gadgets and devices.

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