Building a Wall of Hate

 

Hate building has a long history, far longer than I can even remember personally. Hitler eventually murdered millions of Jews and others but not before he roused most of the populace of his highly developed country to hate the Jews and blame them for the country’s woes. Mao did much the same in his campaign to eliminate the Chinese professional and intellectual classes. The German campaign was reciprocated in the US by demonizing the Axis leaders. It’s difficult to fight a war successfully if you can’t get your people to hate the enemy. Sometimes it’s easier than other times. Hitler made it easy. Not to win the war but to summon the will, the determination, and the sense of sacrifice to fight to the end. 

WWI was an insane war which had no reason to be fought other than the desire for a fight that all the participants displayed. It could easily be seen as similar to gang wars of opposing teenage thugs who show up on a designated playground to wreak whatever damage their available weapons can inflict. A good deal of hatred was generated before, during, and after that war. A minor example, of which I have a smattering of knowledge, was the vandalism of German-American shops, the renaming of sauerkraut into liberty cabbage and the transformation of frankfurters into hot dogs. 

Hate prevailed at the end of WWI and victory was not enough to assuage the blood lust of the victors. The enemy had to be humiliated and dragged down into misery. They were. Unfortunately, hatred tends to be reciprocated. Germany had an educated and energetic population and despite the crippling reparations, it managed to rebuild its industries, along with a newly ambitious military sector under the direction of a populist hate-building political leader. We all know how that played out. 

We are also familiar with a bunch of aphorisms such as: “if we don’t learn from history, we’re destined to repeat it.” Miraculously, there appeared a number of influential people in the USA who did learn from it. Was this just a freakish miracle, a gift of God, this streak of intelligence in high places, rarely seen before in the US after the passing of the founding fathers, and never seen again in the past half century? However it happened, and we have to mention that the fear of our WWII ally, the Soviet Union, and the more generalized fear of Marxism did play a role, the unexpected wisdom of people such as General George Marshall did steer the US into helping its defeated former enemies, Germany, Japan and Italy, to rebuild themselves into democratic societies, ironically even more democratic and more prosperous than the US itself. 

As enlightened as the foreign policy of the US may have been, at home Senator McCarthy and the newly emerging Military Industrial Complex were fostering a climate of fear and hate. It was officially designated a fear of communism but in concrete terms it translated into fear of the USSR, understood as Russia. It extended to countries which bore little of no resemblance to Russia, either culturally, economically, or militarily. There certainly were some reasons for western concerns. We fought and lost wars that we associated with the Soviet Union but somehow, the hatred that might have persisted toward the people of Viet Nam, Cambodia and Korea never really took hold, whereas the anti-Russian rhetoric was so persistent as to cloud the minds of even people born after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall went down and the Soviet Union collapsed. The Cold War was over and we won it. The Warsaw Pact was dead and NATO had served its function. It could have been disbanded, but alas, the military industrial complex discovered its utility as a money-making operation. Mikhail Gorbachev had graciously decided to step aside from further confrontation with the west by not opposing the unification of Germany and the concurrent withdrawal of Soviet troops. He thereby received assurances from the highest US and German authorities that NATO would not move one foot further to the east. Unfortunately, although the accord was witnessed and attested to by various participants on both sides, he did not have this formalized in a treaty, although, given the history of written agreements that the US has entered into, it might have made little difference. 

The US had the opportunity to help Russia grow into a democratic society but could not bring itself to do so as it had done with Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers. The lone important voice in the west who decried the lack of effort by the US to promote a democratic Russia was that of George Soros, who put some of his own money where his mouth was. For that he has been subjected to anti-Semitic vilification throughout the world but especially in Hungary, his  birthplace. To the old Cold Warriors, who are by now mostly dead, and to the new ones, who were not even born then, Russia was, and always will be, the enemy. Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian post-collapse president, even flattered the US by building a new society on the recent US model: oligarchy. He privatized much, if not all, of the Soviet economy and handed ownership over to friendly oligarchs. Russia collapsed even faster than the USSR had and turned into a latter stage version of what the USA has recently become, a country with a precipitating birthrate, a diminishing life expectancy, and alarmingly high rates of alcoholism and suicide. All this while the American big shots of industry and in the military chuckled and licked their chopped at the prospects of increased East European arms sales and markets for its other monopolies until the enfeebled Russian bear breathed its last. 

The cultivation of hate has not only persisted but has been given new impetus in recent decades. Ronald Reagan did his part by saying that “government is not the solution, it’s the problem”, a statement which has been true in much of the world, but which in a democracy could rightfully be described as seditious. Either it was an attempt at undermining democracy or an admission that the USA was not a democracy. The hatred of government, especially democratic government, has continued its growth for thirty years until its apparent culmination in the Trump Administration, which not only denigrated democracy but did its best to eliminate it. From the blustering, racist, hate campaigns of Rush Limbaugh and his clones to the constant anti-democratic propaganda of Fox News and the unending vulgar stream of Trumpian tweets, the campaign to make hate not only acceptable but even a source of pride, has been remarkably successful. 

One might have expected to see a huge backlash to all this from the self-identifying liberal or democratic side, but no, it was easier to match it than to oppose it. While Fox News has set the tone, the New York Times has noticed that hate sells, and it has upped the ante. Its readers have managed to emulate the Fox crowd in hating anyone they disagree with rather than engaging in debate.

The hate-Russia campaign has been growing rapidly since the 2016 US elections, this time led by the Democrats. Trump appeared to go soft on Russia, not a complete surprise, given his ambition to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and the importance of the support for his real estate projects by the newly minted Russian oligarchs. Democrats insisted that the insidious Putin had influenced the 2016 election which brought us Trump, while studiously ignoring the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking, at the invitation of the Republican leadership, to a joint assembly of the US Congress on 3 March 2015, in the midst of the Presidential primary campaign, days before US-Iran nuclear treaty negotiations began and just weeks before Israeli elections, the most egregious foreign meddling in American elections and foreign policy that I can recall. I can barely remember instances of US meddling in the elections of other countries. They have become as common as the summer appearances of house flies in the kitchen. You don’t remember them and you can’t tell them apart. 

Last week, La 4, an Italian TV channel, broadcast a very long interview with Vladimir Putin conducted by Oliver Stone in 2016. While Madeleine Albright referred to his almost reptilian coldness, in the Stone interview he comes across as serious, cool, polite, diplomatic and intelligent. His presidency has run as long as the combined reign of four US presidents. He stated his national security concerns in 2016 and he has repeated them again and again. Although he inherited control of a failed state, he has brought back Russia from its predicted demise to a state of renewal, despite dealing with sanctions handed out by Uncle Sam as freely as candies and gift certificates are handed out by department store Santa Clauses. All this while the four American presidents have presided over a continued decline in virtually all statistical measures of public well-being, i.e. those unrelated to the wealth of the top 1%, and the US has not been under sanctions by another country. 

Any intelligence agency, staffed by rational people, which saw the growth of weapons emplacements surrounding its borders, would sound an alarm and seek to take precautionary measures. Putin has stated his concerns, consistently and rationally. He has requested negotiations and guarantees. Most recently those requests were rejected by President Biden with the tone of an assistant principal of a junior high school responding to a kid complaining that a larger kid had stolen her lunch and threatened to beat her up. “Don’t worry. He’s not really a bad boy and anyway, you’d be better off eating a little less.” Putin is not a little girl. He’s the head of a very large country which besides having a rich cultural legacy, happens to have the second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Unlike most of the recent US presidents, he appears to be fully cognizant of the dangers and responsibilities this entails. 

The time of stalemate finally ran out. There are limits to anyone’s patience. Despite being subjected to heavy sanctions already, Russia will be hurt by even more sanctions, but it has energy resources and earlier sanctions have already pushed them to be more self-sufficient. Putin can turn to China for closer economic relations. Much of the pain inflicted by the sanctions will really be felt by Europe. Ukraine will be crushed and there will be yet another refugee crisis. One can hope that the country will not be devastated and destroyed as Iraq was when the US and its co-conspirators invaded. Biden has ruled that the US will not fight to defend Ukraine but along with the UK, he has sent plenty of weapons to that country to assure that the invasion will be as bloody and destructive as possible. Was Biden as clueless as it seems?  Was he unaware or uninterested in the consequences of his flippant humiliation of Russia? Maybe Smilin’ Joe is really a sly SOB after all, who saw an opportunity to weaken both Russia and Europe in one seemingly casual move and thereby increase American hegemony and arms sales. 

In the US, the mainstream media have raised the volume level on the hate channel. The NYT has resisted the temptation to rehire Judith Miller, its chief cheerleader and propagandist for the invasion of Iraq, but that’s as far as their discretion has extended. It even published a piece by Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State, in which she writes about an earlier interview with Putin: Whereas Mr. Yeltsin had cajoled, blustered and flattered, Mr. Putin spoke unemotionally and without notes about his determination to resurrect Russia’s economy and quash Chechen rebels. Flying home, I recorded my impressions. “Putin is small and pale,” I wrote, “so cold as to be almost reptilian.” Ms. Albright is mostly famous for her reply to this question from Leslie Stahl of CBS: “We heard that half a million children have died (as a result of US sanctions on Iraq)....that’s more children than died in Hiroshima...is the price worth it?” “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price- we think the price is worth it.”  

Putin has had to make hard choices too but at least he has to know the sort of people he’s contending with. Albright wrote to say that Putin’s actions were unacceptable. The comments in response to her article were mostly in line with the sentiments of the day.  A sampling:

 “we are still reaping the harvest of failing to contain the USSR after WWII.” “Few countries are as dependent on one industry as Russia. It's almost all petro. Cripple that industry, and we cripple them.” “In 2022 expansionism in the middle of Europe is not just a throw back from Hitler, it's a sign of insanity.” “Appeasement didn't work with Hitler. Why would anyone think it would work with Putin or any other autocrat?” “Secretary Albright has a personal history that gives her sensitivity to the perils of nationalism and armed aggression, especially where notions of ethnic identity are involved.” “Putin wants Trump back in the Oval Office so Putin can move ever more aggressively in expanding his reach across Europe with Donnie's slavering approval.” “Russia is nothing more than the largest and best run criminal organization in the world.” “If Ukraine really wanted to put waste to the invasion it would burn the crops, blow up the crop storage and shipping lines, blow up the manufacturing centers and the gas line.” 

The comments went on and on by the hundreds. There were some rational observations and they did reflect a split between typical Republican (Biden isn’t aggressive enough) and Democratic (pure anti-Putin hate bound to wishful thinking) positions but the common thread is hate. The propaganda machine has succeeded all too well. 

What’s next? Traditionally, entering a war has been a tactic used by politicians in trouble to gain public support. Will that work for anybody in the next few years? I would guess that all governments will be at risk from the aftermath of this conflict. In Europe, all the political leaders have gathered in an orgy of virtue signalling, wishful thinking and impotence, denouncing Russian aggression after hardly sounding a peep when the US invaded and destroyed Iraq, Syria and Libya, bringing heavy consequences not just to the Middle East but to all of Europe. That may have been due to the fact that many of them participated in those invasions. Not one of them ever stood up to the US and said “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Most of you are probably aware of the leadership problems in the UK and France, i.e. even apart from their leading the charge in the catastrophic destruction of Libya.  Those "leaders" are gone.  Has there been any improvement? 

Here in Italy, there is a similar problem, compounded by the fact that the Italian Parliament is engaged in a semi-permanent work stoppage. All the parties, from those on the far right to those on the not-so-far left have tacitly agreed to agree on everything so as not to have the government fall. Thus, the Prime Minister, Draghi, could conceivably do anything, sell off Sicily if he could find a buyer, attack and seize Lichtenstein for its assets (the EU would intervene), or sell off all Italian assets to German banks, which is not so far-fetched, and he would face no opposition in Parliament. All this because when new elections are called, the size of the Parliament will be reduced by 40% and salaries and benefits (the world’s highest) will also be cut. Most of the newer members will be without a job. Those elections will not be called until the last moment required, which is late next year. 

Italy has already been grievously damaged by illegally imposed US sanctions on countless trade partners.  By next year the effects will be many times worse.  As in all NATO member states, all the Italian political parties have joined in the obsequious licking of Uncle Sam’s boots. What will the voters do by next year when the economic damage follows upon the damage done by Covid? In the US, I doubt that either Biden or Trump will be running for president in 2024. What sort of new monster will emerge?  An authoritarian weapons merchant from the right or an authoritarian thought police captain from the left?  Perhaps they can join together in a new Have Arms To Export Party to form an emergency unity government.