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Feral Finster's avatar

Sorry for chirruping on, but the irony is that, as a society, Ukraine is not much more gay-friendly than Saudi Arabia.

While homosexual activity is officially a death penalty offense in The Tragic Kingdom, men having sex with men on the DL is nigh ubiquitous there. Being openly gay in Ukraine can well get you killed, regardless of any law.

Of course, the congressman knows all that, just as he knows that the "gay-inclusive Ukrainian military units" is nothing more than a publicity stunt to keep western governments and goodthink types on-side. The question remains why he chooses to speak such arrant nonsense. Is he trying to fool himself? Or us?

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Stephen's avatar

This is excellent and very in line with many of my own thoughts. The UK Head of MI5 made a tweet right back in the Spring to the effect that “our” embrace of Pride is what makes us different from Putin and that is the justification for fighting. Not quite the words used but it was the implication.

Michael Hudson’s recent essay on the NC site is similar but it suggests that the US power politics came first and then the ideology followed. Not quite what he says directly but it was my interpretation when I read it.

Reality does seem to be that ideology and the power politics go together. Interdependent rather than one necessarily driving the other. People have a habit of grabbing ideologies that are helpful to them. Just think of all the PMC careers that now depend on all this! The US empire employs a lot of people and dispenses a lot of private sector contracts. This is not a purely cynical process: the people involved really do believe that Putin is evil. But it also suits them to believe that too. None of that is to deny either that Russophobia in much of Europe is very real and has a historical basis too.

Additionally, I do think that when it comes to the broader PMC then there are elements of mass formation involved here too. You allude to it at the start when you talk about a scapegoat. All of these periods of hysteria seem to have that context too. The ideology and the scapegoating breed on free floating anxiety and do seem to affect elites most. After all, contrary to myth, Nazism and Bolshevism were both elite movements.

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