askchapo

Call me an optimist, but I do think that Europeans can and will be better — because before one can develop a thorough and principled opposition to imperialism, one will necessarily have a superficial and unprincipled opposition first, just from seeing things that don't make sense. Right now I think we are in that phase, increasingly, because the rhetoric about and widespread solidarity with Palestine that we see in the public today is unprecedented, right?

I think belief is also often a very social thing: though people often pride themselves on "being rational", in reality people often will not accept an idea until it reaches a certain threshold of popularity that "proves" it should be taken seriously, or otherwise people will not accept an idea unless it comes from someone specific that they see as trustworthy. So the more people with a low threshold are convinced, the easier it becomes to convince those with a medium threshold, then finally the high threshold — so like basically all things, a society's Overton window is like a chemical reaction, right? People buy bourgeois narratives because everyone around them does and says that bourgeois media is trustworthy, and bourgeois media itself says that it is trustworthy, and so this has become a self-reinforcing cycle that regulates which ideas are open to discussion. But ultimately it is inevitable and in Europe's interests that Europe will align itself with Russia rather than with the USA, and it is equally inevitable and in Europeans' interests to realize this; so the question is more when people in Europe will start to realize this rather than if — what will it take to break this self-reinforcing cycle, and will the satisfaction of "Told you so!" outweigh the frustration of "You only got that now?!"

Craig Murray has an essay where he apologizes for being wrong on Ukraine for just this reason.

The genocide in Gaza – or more precisely the major NATO powers’ active and practical support for the genocide in Gaza – has forced me to re-evaluate my views on Ukraine in a manner more sympathetic to the Russian narrative.

In particular, I was complacent in my dismissive attitude to the argument that the Western powers would back ethnic cleansing and massacre in the Donbass, by forces including some motivated by Nazi ideology. The same powers who are funding and arming Ukraine are funding and arming a genocide by racial supremacist Israeli forces in Gaza. It is beyond argument that my belief in some kind of inherent decency in the Western political Establishment was naive.

I apologise.

. . .

The suppression of the Russian language, of Russian Orthodox religion and of the main pro-Russian opposition political party in Ukraine are simple facts. These I have always acknowledged: until I saw the positive enthusiasm of leaders of the Western states for massacre in Gaza, I was not convinced they could not have been addressed by diplomacy and negotiation. I now have to reassess that view in the light of new information, and I now think Putin was justified in the invasion.