I
The principle of the contemporary West: the loss of its previous spiritual depth and maturity, manifested in the endless desire to transcend of all boundaries and limits of human life (Spengler). Specifically expressed in the crusade, i.e., in the search of an outwardly manifestation or form in which it can recognise and subjectively affirm the truth of its impoverished and immature spirituality (Hegel).
II
Within the borders of the West the crusade begins as an act of self-cleansing, as an attack on its inner enemies which are carefully sorted out. Without the inner purge the crusade attains no reach outside itself as an act of conquest. In the contemporary West of today this inner purge is visible in the ostracization of any opponents to the prevailing corona-narrative and the covid-restrictions, and in the condemnation of them as enemies of the state and ultimately the entire humankind. In short time open sadism and hatred towards ordinary citizens with a different opinion about what should happen to their bodies have suddenly become fully acceptable attitudes in public discourse and debate.
III
The peculiarities of both the inward purge and the outward crusade will inevitably bear the marks of the political class that holds the seats of state power in the contemporary West. This is not a class of statesmen and generals. Rather they are a class sprung from the managerial class. Thus, they are typically university/college educated people with no professional experience other than as officials or spokespersons in the global corporate sector, the NGO sector, or the trade-union sector. The Dutch politicians in the Tweede Kamer are a perfect example of this stock of people. They are not policy makers, but policy enablers. They are trend-sensitive, virtue-signalling people good at adapting themselves to the desires and whims of the ruling classes, but indifferent to their consequences for ordinary people. The coming storm will sweep them away, unless they adopt to the new realities.
IV
The covid-crisis was the inward purge of this class. In purely economic terms the covid-crisis was really nothing but a good old capitalist accumulation crisis, covered in the illusory appearance of a biological-pandemic crisis. Politically it was about reassuring the authority of the liberal states, the authority and right to “cancel” their enemies. The covid-crisis involved a large interruption in the accumulation of capital, massively inflicting on the service and leisure sector: hotels, restaurants, cafés, etc. On the one hand, it reduced the expenditures of non-productive labour and its reallocation to the state sector in the form of debt (=Biden-economics); on the other hand, it contributed to the redistribution of incomes and wealth. This time they direct their energies not against non-productive labour, but against the pillar of the production chain, against raw-materials, intermediary goods, etc. Yesterday: because infectious. Today: because Russian.
The Principle of the East: the principle of inward spiritual contemplation and groanings. The principle of Russia. It is the spirit that defines itself in opposition to the West; the spirit which admires the West, but in the end affirms its historical roots in Orthodox Christianity and absolute despotism. Outwardly it manifests itself in the loyalty to the Russian Empire and geographic boundaries. Ruthlessness towards its historical enemies; contempt for the inferior peoples it supresses.
VI
Putinism is the contemporary expression of the Principle of the East – the final replacement of marxism-leninism as the ruling ideology of the new, post-soviet Russia. Putinism immediately transforms itself and establishes itself as “War-Putinism”. Making a state of emergency normal to Russians, even in the absence of a pandemic threat.
VII
Russia is already in war with the West – it has now developed from a cold war to a hot war. Not directly, but indirectly as a proxy war. Ukraine is the Spain of Western pandocratic, authoritarian liberalism. Though Westerners might think of it as a war between two states it is originally a гражданская война, a civil war. The result of a generation of stupid and spoilt Western politicians completely lacking any sense of the seriousness of war. War for them is a game in the virtual reality of the spectacle – it is tweets by military means. They are virtual revolutionaries without a sense of realpolitik and the need of power balances and political equilibria. Temporarily the Ukrainian war curbs the reshoring of industrial capital from Asia to the Western world. Making fossil fuels more expensive, it accelerates the transition to the fossil-free, renewable energy capitalism of the Biden-administration. This accords with the interests of the ruling Anglo-American capitalist circles (“Yankees”); they fought Trump and his Neo-Mercantilist reindustrialisation programme for a very good reason from their perspective.
VIII
Ukraine is a country within the historical Russia that consciously rejects the Eastern principle in order to become westernised. It is the conscious effort to severe Slavic identity from the Eastern principle. To remain a Slavic people in outwardly form, but with a completely westernised principle. Ukraine is a Latin text written in Cyrillic syllables. It defines its autonomy in opposition to Russia, while completely succumbing to and accepting its status as a tool of the West.
IX
To the Germans of the Second and Third Reich Ukraine was a potential colony, a vast agricultural land for the settlements of their farmers. To transatlantic Anglo-American imperialism it is mainly a mechanical machine, a wedge between Europe and Russia, a way of severing Berlin from Moscow, a way of preventing the possibility of an upcoming, autonomous Euro-Asian power block.
X
Germany is now rapidly transforming itself into a kind of semi-independent Fourth Reich on war-footing, most likely for an unforeseeable future. This new Germany can think whatever it wants about Russia, but the historical truth is that it will be affected by Russia. Each sanction, each weapon delivered to Ukraine will sooner or later turn back on Germany itself. Germany is now forging the weapons of the coming civil unrest that will ravage it and the rest of the European continent. Another name for “civil unrest” is class-struggle transmuting itself into class-war.
XI
In Russia the covid-narrative is quickly dismantled, devolving itself to that which it was meant to be: a preparation and rehearsal for a state of emergency. Finally, Russia has found its way back to tsarist, imperial despotism with which the Russian state always has reassured its existence. Despotism is for the Russians, autocracy is for the Germans and Austrians. Behind the corona mask is the mask of post-liberalism: despotic in Russia, authoritarian in Germany-Austria.
XII
Russia just cannot retreat or back down. This is an existential fight for recognition. They won the war against Germany, but they lost the peace. They offered a neutral, unified Germany, but were turned down. (Yes, the Stalin-note of 1952 is questionable but it fits into Beria’s 1953 plans for Germany.) Gorbachev gave up the entire Germany without getting anything back except money and food shipments. That’s how you treat a fool, a nobody, a shabby servant. Clearly the invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that Russia does not want this to happen one more time; it will not accept the experience of German reunification repeated all over again, but now in the heart-land of the historical Russian empire, on the steps of its virgin daughter Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea, in the light from its jewel, the Crimea.
XIII
On the surface Ukraine displays all the phenomena we recognised from the post-modern spectacle: everything in its official narrative is inverted, ahistorical, topsy-turvy and utterly fake. History exists only as a myth. But on the other hand, it has not learnt how to play the game of liberal parliamentarism. The capitalist oligarchs rule themselves, which allows them to immediately plunder the state without the time-consuming mediation of costly spin-doctors and lobbyists. Their lack of appreciation of the finesses of the art of western parliamentarism is immediately visible in the open brutality and thugishness with which they let their parliamentarians be treated.
XIV
Zelensky: the personification and singularity of the global spectacle, the space of all inverted and illusory phenomena of commodity exchange and capital. His dialectical mind, his vivified dialectical effort to isolate every contradiction between the spectacle and the actual world is absolutely fascinating. He is not avoiding conflicts like a medium sized dog, no he consciously sniffs them up like the little dog he is. Within his persona, with his face, his personal voice and appearance he combines the hysteria, the bitching and moaning of the entire Western world of all progressive liberal cat ladies, political pundits, greasy neo-cons, journalists, managers, and parasitic politicians. Successfully they cancelled and locked down the Brexit-movement, the Trump-movement, all white men, all small shop keepers and business owners, all anti-vaxxers, and finally also all truck-drivers and blue-collar workers. Now, they have finally entered the end and truth of their fascinating journey towards complete cancellation of everything that contradicts their self-contradictory and self-righteous narrative: Russia. Lock down Russia! Install a no-fly-zone over it! Yes please, do that!
XV
The Tragedy of Ukraine: the mixture of Ukrainian independency movement with German imperial ambitions, which transformed itself into Ukrainian chauvinism and finally the collaborationism of Ukrainian fascists. Finland instrumentalised the Germans, militarily and technically, but without becoming moulded by their imperialism and chauvinism.
XVI
Foreign mercenaries in Ukraine: they are the civil-war counterpart to the lumpenproletariat on the streets in the protests on the streets of the Western cities. Russia does not need these foreign mercenaries: it has its Chechens. Russia is, after all, an empire.
XVII
The seriousness of the situation cannot be underestimated: it is highly likely that Ukraine is transformed into a new Syria or Afghanistan, but this time a European Afghanistan. Not only a hot-spot of terrorism, but a recruitment base of terrorism. The possibility of engaging Muslims from the West in a religious war against the Christian Russia are, so it seems, boundless.
XVIII
Western Europe is already largely Islamised in the suburbia of its big cities. France is northernmost part of Mediterranean North-Africa. Energising this population against Russia might look tempting, as tempting as luring the Turks into the fire, but it also serves as an operational base for an upcoming civil-war in the West. The civil war in the East will not rest but move to the West.
XIX
Isolating Russia and engaging in economic warfare will inevitably lead to increasing prices on energy and food in the West. It will amplify the redistribution of incomes and capital, but also the capitalist crises that already was visible during the corona pandemic. We are already living in a time of civil protests, approaching civil unrest as a permanent state and perhaps also a civil war in Western Europe. No serious popular movement wants a civil war. It wants to avoid it. But if a civil war comes, we already know how the ruling classes will respond: by declaring the Western European countries in a state of emergency.
XX
The riot in Rotterdam (“de rellen in Rotterdam”) on Friday evening 19 November 2021 gives a show case of how such a state of emergency might be put in place. In fact, the Dutch government had already prepared the ground for a state of emergency by declaring a partial lockdown and the coming introduction of covid passports in the Netherlands.