Photo by Dasha Yukhymyuk
“But why are they attacking us? What have we done to them to make them hate us and bomb us like this?”. These are surprising and thought-provoking questions from ordinary Russians living in the Kursk region, asked by reporters sent to cover the advance of Ukrainian troops into this Russian territory. And they are all the more surprising given that these Russians do not live in Vladivostok or Siberia, but practically straddle the Russian border with Ukraine, just a few dozen kilometers from the battlefields of the war triggered by the Russian army’s invasion of this country on February 24, 2022…
Was this simple naiveté or brainwashing, the conditioning of the people by asphyxiating and omnipresent Russian state propaganda? Yes, without a doubt, but surely more than that. What makes these questions asked by the citizens of the Kursk region emblematic of a more general state of mind in our time, is that they are also asked by…Israeli citizens, who systematically ask themselves questions like “What did we do to them to make the Palestinians or the Arabs hate us so much and want to hurt us? Israeli citizens who, moreover, are often eyewitnesses, if not actors, in the acts of racism, oppression, bombings and massacres perpetrated against their Palestinian neighbors by an Israeli army made up of ordinary citizens, i.e…. themselves!
Of course, we can’t compare the fatalistic passivity of the majority of Russia’s atomized, inward-looking citizens with the racist, war-mongering fanaticism of the overwhelming majority of Israel’s citizens. However, beyond their differences and the reasons why Russian and Israeli societies today seem blinded by chauvinism and welded behind their arch-authoritarian rulers (for the Israeli case, see our article Trying to understand the genocidal drift of Israeli society!), what currently characterizes both is their tilt towards irrationality. As a result, they are being swept away by a wave of what is the very definition of mass paranoia: “Psychosis characterized by inordinate pride and a tendency to delusions of persecution”. In short, delusions of grandeur (the Great Israel of some or the Russian Empire promised by God of others…) mixed with the pathological suspicion that they are surrounded by enemies who only want their destruction…
In fact, while mass paranoia remains the prerogative of Russian and Israeli societies for the time being, the shift towards mass irrationality concerns practically the whole world today, and is a phenomenon of our times! Indeed, what society in the world can claim not to have experienced and not to be affected by this modern-day mass irrationality, which is nothing other than a mixture of obscurantism and mysticism, conspiracy theory and a police-style conception of history, constantly on the lookout for scapegoats to “explain” everything that preoccupies mankind, such as climate catastrophe or pandemics?
But who is responsible for this worrying and dangerous drift? The answer is obvious: it’s the rulers and political elites of our countries. All those who, through their actions and even their personal example, are methodically distilling the poison of this pathological mistrust of “others” (who may be migrants, ethnic, sexual or religious minorities, etc.) mixed with the delusions of grandeur based on the belief that they are God’s chosen people, of which “others” can only be jealous…
It has to be said that rulers and their acolytes have been distilling this poison into their subjects practically since the dawn of time, and especially during the barbaric 20th century. But it has to be said that never before have they done so systematically, methodically and on a global scale, even going so far as to coordinate with each other! The result is that the policies and attitudes tending to impose and generalize this irrationality, once considered exceptions to the rule, are now tending to become…the rule. And it’s no coincidence, of course, that their best representatives are currently all those politicians in power or on the brink of power who are categorized as extreme right-wing and neo-fascist: from Russia’s Putin to America’s Trump, from India’s Modi to Hungary’s Orban, from Brazil’s Bolsonaro to Argentina’s Milei. not forgetting the hundreds of their emulators around the world, and of course Israel’s Netanyahu and his mystical, fascist ministers, as well as the ultra-rich like Elon Musc, who make no secret of their ambition to rule the nightmarish world of their dreams.
However, the fact that they are united in their willingness to help each other and coordinate in an ultra-reactionary, anti-worker, racist, misogynist, homophobic and liberticidal international network increasingly resembling a Brown International, doesn’t mean they’re the same. For example, Trump is no Putin, and his grotesque behavior, consisting of egocentric ravings, messianic promises, blatant lies and calls to murder, is already being emulated, most famously by Argentinian Milei, “the chainsaw president”. The unprecedented social disasters already caused by this Argentinian Trump clone should give pause to all those who tend to think that, in the night of their reasoning, all neoliberals, libertarians and reactionaries are gray, and therefore the same. In reality, this whole neo-fascist rabble cultivates and nurtures the mass irrationality and paranoia from which our societies suffer, for one simple reason: becausethis irrationality and paranoia are integral to and serve their neo-fascist project...
So it’s perfectly “normal” for all these people to band together and close ranks behind those whom they rightly consider to be their idols, their leaders and their undisputed role models: Putin and Netanyahu! Why them and not others? Because these two demonstrate the utmost brutality and barbarity, and a total lack of scruples, not hesitating to commit the full range of crimes punishable under international law (war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide…) in order to demonstrate their determination to see their racist, obscurantist, anti-democratic and liberticidal project through to the end.
This is why the fate of humanity is being played out to a large extent in Palestine and the Ukraine, wherever men and women are fighting, often with weapons in hand, against Netanyahu and Putin, the two masterminds of this Brown International in the making. More than ever, their fight is our fight, the fight of those who defend tooth and nail the little that remains of our democratic rights and freedoms, against the friends and clones of Putin and Netanyahu in our own countries. Moreover, isn’t it Putin’s right-hand man, his eternal Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who declares “Israel pursues objectives similar to those of Russia”! before adding that… the “complete destruction of the Hamas movement” and “the elimination of all extremism in Gaza” are similar to the “demilitarization” and “denazification” that Moscow is pursuing in Ukraine?
