Putin has no ideology; he is, in fact, an intellectually unsophisticated person. His entire political worldview rests on two very simple narratives. 1/9
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One is that the West is waging an eternal war against Russia.
The other is that Ukraine is merely an instrument of the West in the current episode of the perennial anti-Russian war. 2/9
In my recent essay, I traced the origins of these ideas to Putin’s teenage years and his fascination with Soviet spy thrillers, showing how his KGB service and specific events later solidified that basic worldview: https://shekhovtsov.substack.com/p/putins-genocidal-quest-for-symbolic 3/9
There have been various attempts to “intellectualise” Putin’s thinking by linking him to Ivan Ilyin, Alexander Dugin, and the like – but it is all utterly excessive: all of Putin’s statements about the West and the war ultimately boil down to those two simple ideas. 4/9
Yet despite their simplicity, these notions are deadly. If Ukraine is seen as an instrument of the West in its perennial war against Russia, then the Russian leadership views it as an imperative to destroy that instrument – thereby striking an indirect blow against the West itself. 5/9
Ukraine is therefore not the primary target of Russia’s geopolitical revisionism – the West is. The destruction of Ukraine is merely a means of striking at the West without confronting it directly. 7/9
If this is the case, it makes sense for Europe to step up and be an enemy to Russia it cannot handle. It can start by making the cost of winning in Ukraine prohibitive, even if Russia is willing to pay it.
Is all (or any?) of the attached version of Putin's early life proven as fact?
Experience of Putin since his KGB days leads me to the impression that every single aspect of his political career & life is likely to be invented, inverted, manipulated, or 100% lies.
Putin has no ideology; he is, in fact, an intellectually unsophisticated person. His entire political worldview rests on two very simple narratives.
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All he has in extreme GREED for money & power.
Nothing else.
Just an extreme criminal !
They both have complex personality disorders with some common traits: - lack of empathy; - paranoid tendencies; - delusions of grandeur and omnipotence; - affinity for lying; - manipulative behavior; - superficial charm (ask Witkoff); and, - sadistic tendencies. They both think, “l’etat, c’est moi!”
Putin was also trained. They may have tried to train Trump but his indelligence deficits, ego and attention issues prevented much from taking root so he has to be guided constantly by handlers. Left to himself he would have completely imploded in his first term.
I disagree. Putler is a liar. He was trained to be a professional liar. So what putler does - he makes up a legend, which is preferable for him personally, and then he tries to convince his targets that his legend is the only real truth and that he himself truly believes in that legend ==>
to be the only truth. This is how people get wrong impressions about putler's beliefs. But putler is simpler: he is a criminal, plunderer and murderer. He knows that, he knows that everybody knows that. Him losing the power means he will be either killed or jailed. ==>
So, he tries to avoid that by all means. The only putler's policy is his personal survival. And that implies continuing to plunder Russia and to kill people.
Then I'm deeply interested in your perspective on Putin's involvement in our current regime and whether it's not been a more robust, salient, and effective play than even Ukraine would have been. He's still fighting the battle but has already won the war.
Another and even simpler way to explain Putin and the Russia of today is this: he is the mafia boss of a nation of 140 million people, and needs perpetual war, external threats, enemies, to justify his klepto-fascistic regime’s existence
Anyone who wages war is absolutely intellectually unsophisticated. Seriously, think about just how fucking stupid it is, given all the other available alternatives. Fucking stupid.
I suspect they have been instructed to do this and to wear masks, etc. to ramp up the fear. Maybe their superiors think it will promote self-deporting or maybe they think after telling all of America that they are nothing but murderers & rapists they must act as if they really are.
I’ve done a lot of research on NPD over many years but only recently did I hear the concept of whole entities or movements behaving similarly to a single person with it. Always seeing yourself as an innocent victim while your behavior is the cause of your treatment is stereotypical NPD. Aka Russia.
Of course.
Putin was trained and groomed by the very best coaches as he grew into his role as a faithful KGB operative.
Everything Putin is today was hard wired by the best spook collective ever created.
Just because his worldview can be boiled down to simple ideas (as is the case with all worldviews), doesn't mean he is necessarily intellectually unsophisticated. That is a jump to a convenient, because adversary-vilifying conclusion.
Depends what you understand by ideology. To say someone lacks ideology can mean they are just pragmatists. Hardly true of Putin! He may lack intellectual sophistication but his anti-Western revanchism makes him a formidable foe.
Stay away from windows and brew your own tea is my advice regardless of where you’re currently residing. Also keep your back to the wall to see approaching gopniks.
I can't for a second, take seriously a supposed expert, taking all of the nuance and intentionally throwing it out the window. All to fit a vacuous, anti-intellectual claim like "Putin has no ideology".
This is so aggravating and embarrassing. Nobody should feel imposter syndrome after this post
Any realistic analysis of not only Putin's invasion of Ukraine but his regime of the last decade or more is that it consists entirely of desperate politically performative acts to shore up his failing regime and justify its continued existence in popular opinion
Reality: While US youths were busy on social media & hooking up, basically trying to live their best lives….Russian youth were taught the West is evil & must be destroyed. US kids were busy playing fortnight while russian youths were taught to hack us & hate us. Now we see the results, years later.
Yrs ago a friend went to a gun show & got to talking about zombies & a military recruiter told him that the US military uses the term zombie to refer to plague-ridden ppl. A bit of mental grooming in pop culture desensitizes us to the thought of killing “zombies”. They’re zombies, so it’s ok to 🔫
I’m glad our kids have had childhoods, so they know what goodness, freedom and love are. Russians are limited in creative thinking. This is our strategic advantage, if we encourage it.
Creative thinking, because our higher educational system allowed different views and concepts to be heard and discussed. As children we are indoctrinated in school to be obedient without question to authority figures, nationalism and patriotism is hammered into us once a day in class and once a week
during "assembly" reciting the pledge of alleigance and singing patriotic songs. But then, in public High School and College, that is dropped. Students are allowed to question and discuss things and question authority. This is where we succeed. But the insidious reach of authoritarianism is invading
the classroom as nationalism and patriotism is being elevated thru a policy of propaganda and disinformation in early education that is now being forced on us at higher levels thru the threat of arrest of educators and defunding of Colleges and Universities. Corrupted and politically appointed
Government officials towing a party line are continuing and elevating the indoctrination by restricting the free exchange of ideas, eliminating free and creative thinking, politicising and religifying (yeah its a word) what was a fairly open public educational system.
But - not that it matters for the grotesquely brutish behaviour typical of VV - do you think that worldview is "sincerely" held, or is a different order of ideology at work: namely, manipulating/swindling the Russian people (& any outsider dimwitted enough to fall for it) that the Cause is just?
Excellent points.
Putin is a former mediocre KGB thug, turned taxi driver in the postsovietic mess. Just a crude psychopath, a thug, lucky to be around at the wrong time for all except himself; probably he’s never read a whole book. What ideology can be expected from such a man?
Anton, thank you for this thoughtful explanation of vladdy, a man who has caused so much damage in the world. He, frumpy and other maniacal sociopaths eventually pay a reciprocally painful price. There’s no such thing as too soon…
I would diagnose him as psychopathic with grandiose narcissism. A non-teleological condition, winning is the only motivation. People often underestimate aberrant mental disorders with respect to free will and choice, etc.
To add to this a personal appraisal of Putin, he is a psychopathic thug who rose to and maintains power by the two main weapons in his personal armoury - deception and intimidation. Lies and threats are all that have come out of Russia for many years.
And his style eerily resembles Trump -gold & gaudy stuff all through the home - a mistress that he cares for with her 2 or 3 children that lives a car drive from he and his wife. And it’s well known. So he has the same values as Trump.
Broke and shattered like most dictatorships. The leaders bleed the country dry of any wealth, businesses collapse, poverty, disease and starvation descend. The government becomes more violent, seizes property and wealth to stay afloat. The people revolt backed by foreign governments or profiteers.
Putin is just another old fart who is happily trying to punish the world for the audacity of changing from what it was back when he was at his peak.
What sets him apart from almost every other one like him is that he's a head of state with a lifetime of spycraft experience.
That was always a king/autocrat/unitary executive backed by a body of sycophants and suckups, supported by military muscle of dubious character, all on top of everyone else. A short fat, violent, pyramid scheme that Trump is instituting in America.
Vertical of power, competing security and military, corruption, idiotic economic planning, occupation resource extraction, serfs, boyars, purges, gulags. Does seem to have more than a few echoes in Trump world.
Same with all the property business and products. Definitely seems he's taken inspiration from his Moscow "relationships" since the 1980s regarding the power structure, and incredibly envious of Putin's grip and stolen fortune.
Is there an not argument to be made that he simply has despotic goals and Ukraine could satiate his desires whilst also giving Europe a bloody nose for old times sake?
He told tucker Carlson while yapping about revisionist history, that poland doesn't have a historical right to its land, and ethnic Russians in ukraine need to be liberated or some shit.
He's literally fkd in the head and wants territory. Old man ego things.
Not old times sake. He's trapped in the old Soviet Empire's ideology and rhetoric. He's putting the last of his armor? on the border of Finland while still attacking Ukraine. Finland is half the size of Ukraine. This could be bait to divert supplies from going to Ukraine to make his war successful,
or, maybe in desperation, he thinks he will easily take Finland and regain public and political support against Ukraine, or, he hopes the threat of NATO's Article 5 and an all out War with Europe will make NATO blink and back down so he can take Finland. His financial supporters hold the cards now.
Comments
The other is that Ukraine is merely an instrument of the West in the current episode of the perennial anti-Russian war. 2/9
Is all (or any?) of the attached version of Putin's early life proven as fact?
Experience of Putin since his KGB days leads me to the impression that every single aspect of his political career & life is likely to be invented, inverted, manipulated, or 100% lies.
:(
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All he has in extreme GREED for money & power.
Nothing else.
Just an extreme criminal !
Putin: 'Others' are responsible for bad things happening to 'us'.
Trump (slightly different): 'Others' are responsible for bad things happening to 'US'.
The purpose is to separate power from accountability.
Deny,
Attack,
REverse.
Putin is way smarter than Trump with this game.
For example for Trump:
- You are silly.
- No, you're silly. By the way, you are the most silly person in the world.
Russians simply can't get their heads around the fact that they are completely irrelevant.
Like all narcissists, Russia demands constant attention.
He went to KGB school as a child and lived his entire life as a short little fuckwad
Putin was trained and groomed by the very best coaches as he grew into his role as a faithful KGB operative.
Everything Putin is today was hard wired by the best spook collective ever created.
This is so aggravating and embarrassing. Nobody should feel imposter syndrome after this post
This underestimation the western powers had for him in this regard, is a major factor of his successes in the west.
Plus he's robbed Russia blind and has a huge fortune that he wants to spend without getting arrested if he goes abroad
https://clause61.wordpress.com/2023/06/27/russia-government-is-a-racket/
#MoralTurpitude
Putin is a former mediocre KGB thug, turned taxi driver in the postsovietic mess. Just a crude psychopath, a thug, lucky to be around at the wrong time for all except himself; probably he’s never read a whole book. What ideology can be expected from such a man?
What sets him apart from almost every other one like him is that he's a head of state with a lifetime of spycraft experience.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook?9=r
He's literally fkd in the head and wants territory. Old man ego things.
#russia #Ukraine