You’ve all seen it now. The small, mean, vicious yet weirdly blank eyes. The stubby stabbing fingers that jab as he humiliates his underlings, making them shake with fear. The joy he takes in sadism. It’s almost comedy villain stuff. But cliches exist for a reason. And we need to stop kidding ourselves about Putin – and start taking steps to deal with him.
For decades we’ve wanted to avoid the challenge. Not so much appease as just hope he goes away. It’s a headache having to face up to the blunt fact that Putin is trying to utterly change the world. His aims are impossible to ignore now. The Kremlin’s foreign policy thinktanks are already churning out articles about how his invasion of Ukraine means the start of a “multipolar world”. Ignore the geopolitical PR. All multipolar means here is emboldened fascism. Before the political scientists among you get all carried away debating endlessly what “fascism” means let me explain my terms.
I mean Orwell’s boot stamping endlessly on people’s faces. I mean the underlying psychology that shines through in the violence that suffuses all of Putin’s language. Just last week, to give one small example, as Putin spoke with Macron, the Russian president casually invoked a Russian rape joke about Sleeping Beauty to explain what he would soon do to Ukraine. Conflating Ukraine and Sleeping Beauty, he gleefully put himself in the role of the rapist: “Whether you like it or not my beauty, you will need to put up with all I do to you.” (It rhymes in Russian.)
I mean the way he uses grievance narratives, always complaining how the world has put him down. There are many people – minorities, the economically disadvantaged – who bear righteous grievance. But when the world’s richest man, a blatant bully, does it, it means something else. » | Peter Pomerantsev * | Saturday, February 26, 2022
Peter Pomerantsev is the author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia
However rich Putin is, he is a disgusting SOB! A ruthless tyrant who will go down in the history books as one of the worst leaders the world has ever known. He is good company for Adolf Hitler! That comparison, in itself, would be enough to give any normal, rational person sleepless nights. You can be sure that Putin will lose no sleep because of such a comparison, though.
People will be talking about Putin for decades, nay centuries, to come; and what they will say, obviously, won’t be good. He will be spoken of in the most negative terms. Putin will go down as one of the most hated men ever to have walked the face of the earth.
Money can buy a person a lot; it cannot, however, buy a person peace of mind. Nor a good night’s sleep.
It is clear to us all by now that the man is mentally imbalanced. Isn’t it also fair to ask ourselves the following question: Is dementia setting in?
Perhaps I am being too kind even to ask the question! It’s probably something far more sinister. – © Mark
