There’s a lengthy piece in today’s “Independent” that claims to take inspiration from a two hundred year old travelogue “A Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow“. It’s the usual Russian propaganda. Photographs of grey skies, poor people, empty shelves and cold weather. And of course, people are a bit dim, ill-informed and struggling.
But if it’s really the case that Russians are “doing it hard”, then why are we (the western public) being asked to “get in behind” further sanctions being imposed on the country?
I’ve no doubt that things in Russia are pretty dire for many, many people. The country was ripped apart and its assets ripped off following the collapse of one party rule in the 90’s. And the people who ripped off their fellow citizens are living it up in exile in New York, London and elsewhere. So why won’t “our” governments accede to extradition requests for those people? Why are those people being allowed to live the life of Riley as part of the ‘wealthy set’ in fashionable cities through-out the west?
If we come across a poor person in the street, do we break their legs in order that they stop walking into hardship and poverty? If the answer is “no”, then why seek to impose sanctions on a country when the effects are akin to the breaking of legs?
If we come across a person who’s just been beaten up and ripped off, do we sit down and have a drink and a laugh with the person who assaulted and robbed them? Again, if the answer is “no”, then what the hell are we thinking when we say that Russia (a country most definitely assaulted and robbed) ought to have sanctions imposed on it, while the people who did the assaulting and robbing enjoy “our” protection and not a few privileges courtesy of their ill gotten gains?
It troubles me that people identifying as being somehow “left” seem keen to identify with a class of elites (“our” elites) who would impose hardship and misery on millions of people for the purpose of turning those people away from supporting people our elites don’t like. For one thing, it doesn’t work. It didn’t work in Iraq (though it killed millions) and it isn’t working in Syria (though it’s killing people there too) and it won’t work in the case of Russia.
As a working class, white skinned male, I have no shared sense of identity with elites of whatever country. As a working class, white skinned male, I do have a shared sense of identity with the working classes and peasants of whatever country. And if you’re calling for harm to be inflicted on them (and I don’t give a shit for any supposed “humanitarian” justification that seeks to excuse inhumanity), then where-ever it is that you think you’re standing, class war only has two sides, and you’re certainly not standing on the same side as me.
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