Another unfortunate mistake is that Ukrainians have been tricked into using Timothy Snyder’s well-meaning yet deeply counterproductive narrative of the Russia-Ukraine war being about imperialism and colonialism.
In the West, these concepts are only interesting to the far left, and the far left will never see white people as victims of colonialism. Everybody else is so tired of being harangued about their imagined imperialist sins that they shut down immediately when they hear these words.
The only way out of this self-inflicted quagmire is to ditch the imperialism narrative, stop seeing the West as Barbieland, and start living in reality.
Before I conclude this discussion, I have something to say to the commenter who suggested that I want Ukraine to pass “anti-gay laws”, whatever that is. You are obsessed with sex. It’s abnormal and unhealthy. You managed to bring your sexual hangups to a discussion of a terrible, destructive war. You need to do some thinking about what’s going on with you.
Clarissa's Blog 
OK. That was a rhetorical question. I was referencing the fact that many MAGA Americans mistakenly see Russia as a defender of traditional values, as we’ve previously discussed. Don’t tell me Russia’s anti-gay laws have nothing to do with that. Putin is winning this PR war by using that and cosplaying Orthodox Christianity. Ukraine, on the other hand, is trying to move away from Holy Mother Russia towards degenerate Europe.
I understand the MAGA Americans’ knee-jerk reaction to the colonial narrative you’re talking about. It’s hard to not use it when it’s true, though. What other terminology would you suggest? Talking about Ukraine’s freedom?
Regarding the Ukrainians’ lack of appreciation of Americans’ very real problems – OK. What could Ukraine do differently in the media sphere? I’m thinking about a Republican primary voter or someone at a Trump rally and how they think about Ukraine and Russia. It seems to me that the factors most likely to influence their opinion are America’s Afghanistan and Iraq wars, seeing Russia as anti-woke and a defender of traditional values, and seeing the liberals and the elites support Ukraine (the colonial narrative is part of that).
I don’t think the fact that Ukrainians don’t see America as having real problems plays a role here. Ukraine is just like any other middle- or lower-income country asking America for money, who all see it as a piggy-bank.
I don’t know who on the Right you have in mind when you express the hurt you “felt when much of the Right abandoned us and became Putin’s little bitches”. The elected representatives? The media? The voters? The explanation is different depending on who you’re talking about.
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“Don’t tell me Russia’s anti-gay laws have nothing to do with that. ”
Of course, they don’t. Nobody on the right is remotely interested in your “gay” obsession. This is all projection. Besides, those Russian “laws” are fake.
“Putin is winning this PR war by using that and cosplaying Orthodox Christianity”
The only people who have complete freedom to practice and impose their religion on others in Russia are Muslims. According to official Russian information, 7% of Russians are practicing Orthodox Christians. Not that anybody in America knows and cares about the Orthodoxy. Putin himself, by the way, is divorced and is known by his orgies for which women are shipped from all over the country. Nobody who is actually Orthodox sees him as a paragon of Orthodoxy.
“It seems to me that the factors most likely to influence their opinion are America’s Afghanistan and Iraq wars”
To address this real concern, we need to explain how this is completely different because nobody in Ukraine wants a single US soldier to die for Ukraine. There’s been enough time to turn this into an oft-repeated refrain: “Not a single US soldier should die”.
“seeing Russia as anti-woke and a defender of traditional values”
To address this concern, we need to explain how Ukraine is a lot more anti-woke than Russia. Russians are stupidly repeating whatever they hear on TV. Ukrainians are genuinely and sincerely conservative and anti-woke. But has that been explained? Is anybody trying to explain that?
“and seeing the liberals and the elites support Ukraine (the colonial narrative is part of that).”
To address this concern, we need to explain that this support is just empty posturing. The liberals’ support for Ukraine is their “BLM” and “save the COVID grandma”. They don’t care about blacks or COVID grandmas, do they? To the contrary, they caused enormous excess mortality of both the blacks and the grandmas in 2020-21. They are doing the same in Ukraine. This needs to be explained and explained and explained.
“Ukraine is just like any other middle- or lower-income country asking America for money, who all see it as a piggy-bank.”
This is completely untrue, and I just wrote 3 longish posts explaining this. As they say, people who suspect others of being willing to sell themselves for money are eager to sell themselves, and pretty cheaply to boot. This is so not about money or piggy-banks.
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I was talking about perceptions. To MAGA Americans, Ukraine is just like any other middle- or lower-income country asking America for money and seeing it as a piggy-bank.
The truth about religion about Russia doesn’t matter. Perceptions matter. You know a lot more MAGA Americans than I do. What do they say about Russia and how they perceive it?
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That’s precisely what I’m saying. Unfortunate perceptions were formed, and nothing is being done to change them. Whenever I talk to people and tell them what’s actually happening, they are stunned. But I’m just one person. There should be concerted policy both in and out of Ukraine.
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“Snyder’s well-meaning yet deeply counterproductive narrative of the Russia-Ukraine war being about imperialism and colonialism”
Given the general insanity of russian motivations….. What’s a narrative that would be honest and be understandable for westerners ?
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Arestovych proposes tyranny against democracy. I love “nation-state against fluidity” but nobody would understand that.
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” tyranny against democracy”
I like that but you then have to explain russian tyranny… which is so ingrained now that most russians don’t even register it any more than a fish registers water….
” I love “nation-state against fluidity””
I like that too but it requires even more explanation. When I’ve talked about fluidity to people here… they get it (mostly things they’ve noticed and didn’t have a frame of reference for) but the prices is yet to be felt so that young people still think of a career ‘abroad’ as something great.
I sometimes like to use the ‘which would you rather live in?’ scenario but then you have to explain the options.
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“Another unfortunate mistake is that Ukrainians have been tricked into using Timothy Snyder’s well-meaning yet deeply counterproductive narrative of the Russia-Ukraine war being about imperialism and colonialism.
In the West, these concepts are only interesting to the far left, and the far left will never see white people as victims of colonialism. Everybody else is so tired of being harangued about their imagined imperialist sins that they shut down immediately when they hear these words.
The only way out of this self-inflicted quagmire is to ditch the imperialism narrative,”
I feel very sorry for Ukraine that MAGA snowflakes are so triggered by the words “colonialism” and “imperialism” that Ukraine cannot use an accurate description of reality. It’s truly amazing how Ukraine managed to self-inflict it onto them. How do these poor patriots process American history?
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“very sorry for Ukraine that MAGA snowflakes are ”
you’re misunderstanding on purpose now…. I hope you get blocked
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I’m saying that telling Ukraine not to use words like “colonialism” is the right-wing equivalent of calling math racist.
From the inside, MAGA Americans have been legitimately hurt by being harangued about imperialism by the leftists. From the outside, it’s the “fuck your feelings” crown being very sensitive about their own feelings.
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“Colonialism” is a term that’s repellent to about 90% of this country’s population. If you want to call them all “MAGA Americans”, that’s fine with me.
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This exact term (probably more so than merely “colony”) is repellent to the conservative chattering class and anti-woke activists who have been so emotionally traumatized by the left previously using the term “imperialism” to try to shame them in some way and also, maybe, have been exposed to Snyder’s commentary on Ukraine.
The rest of conservative voters don’t interact directly with the output of leftist academics on inherent imperialism of whiteness and the need to de-colonize oneself. They hear disparaging references to it through conservative media. You would need to forbid any leftist writers from putting the words “colonialism” or “imperialism” within any published pieces that also have “Ukraine” or “Russia” in them to deny a vocal part of conservative media ecosystem the ability to use that to demonize Ukraine.
I don’t think any foreign policy changes Ukraine could make at this point would change anything about how the American leftist academics and the chattering classes talk about Ukraine and colonialism.
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Actually, the only person on the Left who talks about Ukraine in these terms is Timothy Snyder. Everybody else on the Left knows that this market has been cornered by non-whites.
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I know you long enough to know what you mean by nation state – you essentially see it as a vehicle (and almost the only viable vehicle) for uniting people towards some higher goals (which include but are not limited to resisting “fluidity” in all of its forms, including economic). I am very sorry, but this reminds me of Communism – which also looks good on paper, but in reality contradicts current state of “human nature”. And enforcing it is only possible via violence or at least some sort of discrimination.
What you propose may at best work for some small subset of countries that are very ethnically, culturally, religiously and linguistically homogeneous. (And either very closed to foreigners or too poor to attract any immigrants.) If you have a sizable minority of any kind, it quickly turns into us versus them, and everybody forgets any higher goals. The minority has to be suppressed and assimilated in the name of “national unity”, saving money and in some cases – “historic justice”. Example of Quebec shows that this has nothing to do with minority being (or being perceived as) “less civilized” – the Anglos are not perceived as “less civilized”, but from the perspective of “national unity” it is even worse, because this represents a larger threat, a viable possibility of “parallel society”, not under sufficient control of the national majority.
I do not know how it is possible to explain this to the US people, but in the Canadian context you essentially would like to sell to the conservative aka freedom-loving Anglos the idea that Quebec model is good. Maybe I do not know enough conservatives, but from those I know I did not get a feeling that Quebec idea would actually be great if only Quebec did it on their own dime…
valter07
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The oldest, most successful nation-state in history is the USA. Quebec is not a nation-state at all. I honestly don’t understand why we should throw away the example of an actual, existing nation-state and use as a model a society that failed precisely at the task of creating a nation-state of its own.
Anybody who uses the example of Quebec would fail because Quebec failed.
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OK, let’s run with it…
US in what period of time and with what set of values unifying the population?
Conversely, why did Quebec fail? What set of values could possibly unite the people of Quebec?
Valter07
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Nation-building is a much more complicated process than values. People need to believe they are a nation and be ready to die for it. Quebec failed so badly at nation-building that people weren’t ready to vote for it in a referendum, let alone die. Its intellectual elites were and are lazy and unproductive.
I’m not a specialist on Quebec but I know in minute detail how nation-building took place in Spain. There was almost 100 years of incredibly detailed, patient work of Spanish intellectuals who created narrative, the history, the symbolism, the legitimizing figures, etc of the nation. When France invaded in 1806, people came out to fight the invader with a mature, completely interiorized feeling of nationhood.
More recently, we are seeing it in Ukraine. There is mature, serious nationhood because people worked very hard, even during Stalinism, to create those same components – the symbolism, the legitimizing figures, the narrative, etc. Who’s the legitimizing figure in Quebec? Name one. One person that you go into people’s homes and they have that person’s portrait. One text that everybody can quote by heart and everybody will be in tears. One melody that moves everybody deeply. All these things exist in the US, Spain, Ukraine. They don’t exist in Quebec because nobody bothered to create them.
There’s a blueprint for nation-building. You follow it, you get results. You don’t, you get Quebec and other failed nation-building projects.
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OK, so your answer is “Spain prior to 1806″… How homogeneous was it at that time?
Is it possible to pull something like that off in the modern time? With modern means of communication, travel, etc.? (let’s say immigration is not happening)
And you did not answer my question about the US.
Suppose some nation puts some serious effort into creating all that narrative… At some point they will just exclude and ostracize those who will think that the degree of unified thinking where people, without coercion, have portraits of some one political or cultural figure in their private homes is both ridiculous and ultimately dangerous.
The US conservatives used to be too freedom-loving for something like that…
valter07
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It’s true that nations don’t exist without an external and internal other. The mistake, though, lies in attributing this characteristic solely to nation-states. All groups are like that. For a group to exist, there needs to be an out-group. Pre-modern and post-national state forms ostracize just as much. Kids in middle school do it as part of their growing up process.
It often sounds as if those who object to nationalism speak from a sense of disappointment with the human race and its imperfections. Yes, nationalism causes war, exclusion, stigmatization. Absolutely. And so does any form of social coexistence. Humans are like that. My point is not to deny that nation-states do all that. I completely agree that they do. I suggest, however, that we look at the positives. Yes, nation-states impose their homogeneity in all kinds of icky ways. France eviscerated dozens of local languages to impose what today is known as the French language. To a much lesser degree, so did Spain. And paid a gigantic price for not being as decisive in this process as France (the Basque terrorism is one example). But the upside is the industrialization, the appearance and massification of the middle class, the dramatic upswing in the standard of living, the welfare state, the general security and peacefulness of life. My argument is that if we abandon the nation-state model, all the bad things will remain and the good ones will disappear. Everything that is happening right now supports my argument. But I’m open, as always, to alternative views. If anybody demonstrates that the post-nation state preserves the welfare state while somehow eradicating war and inter-societal exclusion, I’m very interested in seeing that evidence.
As for whether somebody can put in place the mechanisms of creating a successful nation-state today, I honestly don’t know. It seems unlikely, given that the age of nation-building is going away. But I wouldn’t say it’s completely impossible. Quebec has done a piss-poor job at it (sorry, Quebecois readers) but if somebody were to start seriously working towards it, who knows, maybe.
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The US was born as a nation with “we, the People”, “a more perfect union” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. It continued with “I have a dream” and everything it’s still doing every day to maintain the national identification. I was at a kid event place yesterday, and there was a puzzle on the wall where kids had to match “I have a dream”, “we, the People”, “the land of the free”, etc to the source of the phrase. Klara did 8 out of 10 by herself. She’s only 7 and I never taught her any of this. This is how well the US nationalism works even today. What is Quebecois’ “I have a dream”? I can think of nothing.
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Cliff, I hope nobody gets blocked.
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—How do these poor patriots process American history?
the same way Russian patriots (TM) process Russian/Soviet history – “we have never done anything wrong, we brought civilization to everybody”. I do not know if US/Canadian people are aware of that, but the Russians are taking their version of “white man’s burden” very-very seriously.
Ukraine obviously did not inflict that way of thinking onto anybody, but it has to live and work with the reality where this mindset exists and is pretty strong, and is preventing Ukraine from achieving its goals.
Frankly, I suspect the analogy goes further than this – that American and Canadian conservatives are not just misinformed, they are actually identifying with the Russians for reasons much deeper than Putin making some show of “traditional values”.
The problem is – it is completely useless to bring this particular argument into any conversation where the goal is to change anybody’s mind. This will just make your audience defensive and they will block you. 🙂
I hope on this particular blog the audience will actually consider the possibility of what I said being at least partially true, and we could discuss possible technical ways of dealing with it, instead of insulting each other.
valter07
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Since WordPress introduced a new interface model, commenting has been glitchy. Nobody is getting banned. It simply takes me time to notice that some comments have been spammed again.
This happens every couple of years with WP but it all gets worked out eventually.
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By “How do these poor patriots process American history?” I meant that somehow when these America First patriots learn sacred American history that involved being British colonies, their brains don’t self-circuit. When they they hear references to America’s Revolution throughout their lifetimes, they think of this fight for independence from the empire as a good thing. Could they maybe draw on that experience in thinking about Ukraine?
I think some, even a few MAGA Americans, must have achieved that feat.
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Applying to the events of the US Revolutionary War a concept that had no currency back then in order to rescue it for contemporary usage is a lot more complicated than simply abandoning it altogether. We have seen in the past week that “decolonization” is now heavily associated with vengeful atrocities of Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Going 200+ years back on history to rid the concept of these associations is naive and useless. It is bound to suffer the fate of “Democrats are the real racists”.
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“What is Quebecois’ “I have a dream”? I can think of nothing.”
I’ve just started watching the Quebecois series Nuit Blanche (murder mystery crossed with Succession/Monarca) and a big part of it is flashbacks to the murder victim’s engagement with some kind of Quebec liberation movement (though what and who and how are very… not clear).
In the present one of the sons is an actor based in New York…
Quebecois nationalism is like that of several 19th century European countries where just wanting to be separate from a cultural/linguistic bigger brother was enough (Norway and Slovakia come to mind). That’s not enough now.
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They did have their silent revolution back in the 1970s, I think, but my knowledge of it is very vague. This has not been explained to people, especially new immigrants in a place with enormous immigration, with any degree of success.
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thank you for the extensive responses.
I would not claim I know everything about Quebec history, but I do educate myself periodically. However, my improved understanding of Quebec history, while leading to somewhat increased compassion towards Quebecois, does not translate into higher willingness to assimilate into their society, including adopting their prejudices. (The analogy from personal relationships framework – one may develop more compassion towards abusive spouse whose personality was formed by all kinds of negative, traumatic or abusive experiences, and who truly feels insecure, but it does not mean one has to sacrifice oneself or tolerate the abuse.) So I doubt any amount of explanation would improve things. And I doubt I would be more willing to assimilate if only Quebec was doing its nation-building right, according to you (which likely means more forceful assimilation, if your examples from France and Spain are any indication… ).
As for nationalism being not the only system that results in discrimination and otherization – fair enough. I only would not use kids as an example – kids are likely to do what they do because they learn to do it from parents and society.
I am not fully convinced that all the positives you listed are actually caused by the nation-state. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Yes, nation-state makes some of those things easier… but in general we observe the same developmental steps in empires, colonies, communist dictatorships, etc. Is nation state required for industrialization – does not seem so, certain level of technical and scientific progress seem to be more important. Same for the growth of the middle class – comes together with the need to have people possessing specialized skills. Even capitalism is not required – in communist regimes it was achieved by totalitarian methods instead. Once you got industrialization – does one need the nation-state for the emergence of the labor movements? In other words, why is uniting around being “workers” not enough and what is added to the labor movement by uniting as “German workers”, or “French workers”? Can’t workers from multiple factories coordinate their strikes without calling it specifically a “national strike”? Need to think more…
valter07
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The failure of Quebec is precisely that it can’t get you and way too many other people to love it. Nation-state means people love the culture and choose it willingly. At the kids’ event yesterday, I witnessed several immigrant families with small kids who spoke with heavy accents but still in English to their children. Quebec has to hunt people down and force them to do it – and still it fails. And in America, people are eager, happy to do it completely freely.
I have a niece and a nephew in schools in Quebec right now. They are taught the language like it’s a punishment. And there’s nothing else. I pointed out the flags with the lilies around St Louis to them and got no reaction. I’ve never seen them draw a Quebec flag. They are not feeling it, and they are born and raised in QC. And then we wonder why Quebec never achieved nationhood. That’s got to be the laziest, most useless national elite in the civilized world.
I’ll stop ranting now.
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” Quebec is precisely that it can’t get you and way too many other people to love it”
It sounds like a lot of western Europe. My hypothesis is that most immigrants to Quebec aren’t going toward something (unless it’s ‘Canada’ in which case Quebec is just an inconvenient detour) they’re going away from something and their priority is to live as much like they would in their home countries without what they are trying to get away from and not assimilate.
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That’s true but if you can’t instill love and patriotism even in kids who were actually born there, good luck integrating immigrants. If you want a nation, you can’t just sit there and pout. You have to do something to make it happen.
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