"He had won the victory over himself. He loved Volodymyr Zelensky."
In the words of Kyle from South Park, “I learnt something today.” I learnt that, for some people who watch my videos, God is not that chap in the Old Testament, the one who was made flesh in His miracle-working son. God, He who is not to be criticised, is the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. I suppose Jesus did say that we will not recognise Him when He returns, and, I must confess, that I had not recognised that squat chap in his combat fatigues as the Divinity, but I can only infer that some of my viewers are better at noticing the Second Coming than I am.
You see, if you criticise Zelensky in any way – I criticised Zelensky for press-ganging what are essentially boys, cornering Trump and Vance in public, overriding private negotiations and attempting to extract from them military assurances that had obviously not been given in private, attempting to humiliate Vance and calling him a “bitch” in Ukrainian (consistent with the propaganda that he’s a coke-head) – then this means you are aligned with the man who, for these people, is Beelzebub, one Vladimir Putin. In fact, not only are you aligned with this pint-sized Satan in platform shoes, you are being paid by him, you are a propagandist for him, and you want him to invade Finland, where you live. The very idea that you can be critical of both Zelensky/Ukraine and Putin/Russia is impossible for this mindset, and, by the way, in 2017 I pulled out of being Visiting Lecturer in Evolutionary Psychology at the Federal University of the Far East in Vladivostok because (how shall I put it?) the dishonesty, unreliability, incompetence, and corruption became so obvious to me.
But, apparently, no, the world is divided between “Good” and “Evil.” Putin invaded Ukraine, which means he is evil, and Zelensky is fighting to save his country, which means, for certain people even of a generally nationalist bent, he is “Good” as is his nation. This is the case in spite of abundant evidence – that is not “Russian Propaganda” – to the contrary, and I cannot emphasise enough that much of this is also true of Russia or of Putin.
As of 2024, according to the Corruption Index, Ukraine is the 105th least corrupt country out of 180 countries assessed, where Russia ranks 154th. So, it is not as corrupt as Russia, but it is extremely corrupt. According to the most recent data, from 2017, 38% of the Ukrainian population had paid a bribe in the preceding year. Even in notorious Albania, this was only 34%, while in Russia it was 27%. Both Ukraine and Russia are rife with nefarious financial activity.
Clearly, Putin is a dictator who has his political opponents, such as Alexei Navalny, imprisoned and killed. Perhaps I am being naïve, but something tells me that the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash in August 2023, after the mercenary-group leader had, two months earlier, led a rebellion against Putin that almost toppled him, might not necessarily have been an accident. His plane was delayed for four hours at a Moscow airport, apparently for repairs, and it is pretty clear that a bomb was placed on board. Why these opponents of Putin return to Russia – Navalny was safe in Germany, while Prigozhin was in Belarus – I will never understand. Do they actively want to be martyrs, like Protestants in Marian England embracing the flames?
There’s that dichotomy again. If I criticise the regime of the Duke of Northumberland, an extreme Protestant and boy-king Edward VI’s Lord Protector, does that mean I’m a reactionary Catholic who supports the burning of about 300 Protestants, including a pregnant woman on Guernsey who miscarried while being burnt alive, whose baby survived and whose baby was, a few hours later, thrown - still living - into the flames? The behaviour of Zelensky might not be as extreme as that of Putin, but it’s hardly above reproach if you believe in things like freedom of expression. Even in wartime, Finland, for example, during its fight with Stalin’s Russia, did not go as far as Ukraine has.
There was supposed to be a presidential election in March 2024 as well as parliamentary elections. Due to Zelensky’s imposition of Martial Law, neither of these have happened; one wonders how Zelensky would have fared if they had taken place. You may retort that this is standard in wartime - though Finland held two presidential elections (albeit via an electoral college) during its war with Russia - but banning opposition political parties is not. In March 2022, Zelensky banned 11 opposition parties, including the largest opposition party in parliament, because, so he asserted, they were “Pro-Russian.” So, Zelensky, in essence, criminalised meaningful opposition. He consolidated all television media into one channel, which is loyal to him. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was banned because, theologically, it is part of the Russian Orthodox Communion. He’s also banned men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country, press-ganging them into the army. This is an authoritarian leader of an authoritarian regime.
By the way, as I explore in my book Churchill’s Headmaster, when Hitler (of an authoritarian regime) invaded Poland, it was run by an authoritarian regime – the Colonels - which treated its German minority very poorly: it expropriated their land, nationalised their businesses, forced them to speak Polish in public life in German areas, and replaced German government workers with Poles. I’m a big fan of Poland, but this mustn’t stop me from stating what happened. Likewise, pre-Invasion Ukraine enforced the Ukrainian language in Russian areas and shelled the pro-Russian breakaway areas (that did not want to be part of Ukraine), killing Russian civilians. For saying that, does that mean I support Putin and his invasion? I hope it is clear that the answer is “No.”
Those who think the answer is “Yes” are unable to rise above their evolutionary instincts, probably due to a lack of intelligence, which allows you to overcome them, combined with a certain personality type. For example, if you are anxious and insecure, you tell yourself you are at least morally superior, and this assuages your low self-esteem. You are morally and intellectually superior because you support Zelensky, so those who criticise him are taking away the thing which makes you morally superior and implying you’ve made a poor decision. This painfully confronts you with what you feel you are, and it also makes a frightening world, for you, even more frightening and unclear. Criticising Zelensky becomes a personal attack on you.
As for our instincts, which intelligent people are better at overcoming, we are evolved to an “us and them” tribal system in which the chieftain leads the fight for the tribe’s survival. In a war, you are sowing disunity by criticising him, so it’s helpful to lose all nuance and regard you as a traitor; to overreact. Our brains tend to simplify complex issues into black-and-white terms, a generally useful shortcut in high-stakes situations. If you’re mentally unstable, everything seems to be high stakes. Your reaction helps you to signal loyalty to the in-group and gain status and, of course, it is adaptive to identify and despatch any possible threat quickly, even if this means suppressing any nuance.
Tribalism, binary thinking, social signalling . . . I learnt viscerally this week that many people, even on the right, cannot overcome their primitive instincts. They want me, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, to win the victory over myself and love Zelensky. This is the mindset of the Woke, it is anti-academic, it is anti-Truth, and, in my view, we must never stop fighting it.
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Ed is spot on. Criticism of coke head Zelensky is now the new heresy in the UK. Even the right wing media is pro WW3. I Suppose they've always been pro war. The Times is basically written by MI6 as far as the war is concerned. The others are various offshoots from the pro war propaganda campaign. And they use celebrity tittle tattle and football to distract the masses from the truth.
This largely reflects what YouTuber Academic Agent has called the Boomer-Truth Regime, where every major conflict is framed as a repeat of Churchill vs. Hitler, as if it's still 1939. The failure or complete ignoring of the fatuous Starmer-Macron peace plan and the inevitable defeat and capitulation of Ukraine, will likely discredit what is left of this outdated and oppressive regime and then hopefully we can move forward on a more realistic basis.
A bigger danger is if Europe continues to block a peace deal between Trump and Putin, so that, as Jeffrey Sachs warns, America washes its hands of Ukraine, of NATO and of Europe altogether. European nations would then be tempted to massively rearm and with some countries sticking with centrist or leftist governments while others switch to Hungarian-style populism, disputes would be rife and the temptation to use those militaries would arise. Which indeed might lead us back to 1939.