Vladimir Putin as Ivan the Terrible
This morning.
Via Lara Marlowe in the Irish Times:
Prof Lucjan Fac traces the cause of the war, and a pattern of Russian aggression, back to the 16th century.
“Vladimir Putin is the reincarnation of Ivan the Terrible,” Fac said as he showed me through the local branch of the Polish National Museum yesterday.
Ivan the Terrible (1547-1584), also known as Ivan Grozny, was the first tsar of all Russias, who tried to unite fragmented territories held by Slavic tribes.
“Ivan believed the religious and political doctrine which saw Moscow as the Third Rome, after the ancient Roman empire and Constantinople,” Fac explains. “This doctrine caused wars for centuries, and Putin is steeped in it. He thinks like the tsars. He sees democracies as unstable, because presidents and prime ministers come and go while he remains in power.”
Fac’s friend and fellow historian, Jan Jarosz, the director of the National Museum, believes Putin wants not to reconstitute the Soviet Union but to create “Great Russia”.
“In the tsarist mentality,” Jarosz says, ‘Big Russia’ [present-day Russia] plus ‘Little Russia’ [Ukraine] and Belarus equals Great Russia. Putin wants all eastern Slavs to unite in one Great Russia.”
Jarosz cites a press conference given by Putin five years ago. When asked what he would do about Ukraine, Putin responded: “Have you read the memoirs of General [Anton] Deniken?”
Territorial claimsThe early 20th century Russian general wrote that whoever rules in Moscow must consider Ukraine to be a part of Russia.
Meanwhile…
Ironically, this absurd tweet suggests you’ve fallen for Putin’s propaganda. The guy’s the new Hitler – stop providing cover for him. https://t.co/64I4hzR7yr
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 3, 2022
You are such a toddler, Piers. Just way too old to be seriously entering in a “literally Hitler” analysis.
Keep yourself contained to mean tweets about Meg and Harry while the adults discuss foreign affairs, NATO, and western hegemony. https://t.co/XSTtMblCpa
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 3, 2022
Fight!
Illustration by Tahni Österman
Candace Owens?
The ‘black friend’ every racist* republican refers to: ”Aaahm nawt a raysist, ah foller CannedAys on ur twitter accown…”
LOL
*OK, OK not every republican is racist, just an overwhelming majority.
Ah would you stop with your idiotic reiterations of Woke talking points & midwit jibber jabber, Ian. You’re like a talking doll, everything you’ve ever written on here is repitition of nonsense you’ve been told that all the cool people think.
Your secondhand opinions just expose the fact that, when it comes to critical or original thinking, you’re a virgin.
“secondhand opinions” nail on the head.
Support for Putin trending? For the bot-king himself? Or maybe it’s the Indians who’ve decided they fancy his model of fake democracy? If you think trending hashtags are a means of accurately assessing foreign affiars you deserve to be locked in an argument with Piers Morgan for all eternity.
Logical fallacy there Nigel, Pee-ears doesn’t do argument or debate, he scweems his point again and again and if its a woman he will do so even louder (because he’s generally afraid of men) and if that doesn’t work or if someone makes him upset he runs away and then gets on twitter to further cry about it.
Sorry, just felt I needed to clarify that.
So long as they’re BOTH suffering the torments of twitter hell, it’s all good.
Suffering or not, I’d be happy if I could just avoid their dribbling faecal reflux.
Like I was here, no trigger warning, nothing to let me know I was about to scroll into images of Pee-ears and Canned Ace.
Put me right off my horlicks. Had to have some camomile* to sooth my nerves…. :(
*raw
Of all the cultural commenters to pick to grace the BS front page, they are certainly… a choice.
Were you not on here a few days ago saying “what war”?
Hilarious, the Ming the Merciless of Groupthink, an empty conduit for government & elite thinktank gibberish, the holder of more focus-grouped sloganeering masquerading as actual opinions than you could shake a stick at, yet he actually has the temerity to criticise hashtag thinking. In others!
Where are all the biscuits?
Nigel has taken them.
In fairness if you tried any sort of thinking it would be an improvement.
Following the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslovakia W.H. Auden published his poem, “August 1968”. It reminds us of how little has changed in Russia’s attitude to its neighbours
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master Speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among the desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
Particularly when you watch these self delusional dribblings –
https://twitter.com/polinaivanovva/status/1499716111188860928
+1
So, you’d have no problem, stephen, if your neighbour mounted a huge gun, aimed through your side window, at your bedroom? They’d still be good neighbours, yeah? Imagine then if they tell you the gun is owned & operated by someone who hates your guts? Still ok by you? Imagine it took them 15 years to install the gun & during that entire time you complained loudly about it?
No, it wouldn’t be ok, nobody could possibly put up with that & you wouldn’t be a madman or a Hitler to do what you can to get that rid of that existential threat.
Peace can sometimes be ensured by having a small war, so that the Big One, the ICBM one, which will wipe out billions of people, over decades, even centuries, never happens.
Can ya wrap your little head around that reality?
Try harder.
This is like the ‘is it OK to rob a truck to feed your family’ gangster speech in The Simpsons. Now if the gun was a metaphor for a country’s increasing independence, then isn’t it OK to invade?
Rubbish.
There’s no way Putin would be able to afford a Dryrobe like that.
Heh heh :-)