<nettime> Ukraine and the Orientalist version of interesting

Some interesting views have been expressed here about the Ukraine disaster in recent threads, somewhat in the sense of the Orientalism of that ersatz ancient Chinese saying "May you live in interesting times" — a curse lurking within an ostensible blessing. Turns out this supposedly venerable version of 'interesting' made its first known appearance in a speech by NY lawyer Frederic Coudert in 1936. In it, Coudert said he'd heard it was an old Chinese saying from his friend Austen Chamberlain, Neville's brother. And it started circulating then. In Coudert's speech it was applied to Europe in the mid-1930s, a period we've seemingly now entered a disturbing echo of. It next appeared decades later in a speech by Robert Kennedy, and has circulated ever since. According to Phrases.org, it's neither Chinese nor ancient. On the contrary it's recent and western, and was first applied to the period that saw the rise of Hitler, appeasement, etc.

(Incidentally I was amazed to learn a few years ago while working on a book that the phrase "to orient oneself" came from medieval maps of the Earth. In these so-called "T/O maps," Asia was always at the top. People 'oriented' themselves according to this principle, with Europe always on the lower left.)

Anyway, it's interesting to read that Ukraine, which powerful forces are trying to stamp into submission as we speak, is "this failed country" that (we're given to understand) is hemorrhaging more ill-gotten money from oligarchs protecting their plunder than the EU is "pumping into" it. An image that has the effect of reducing a country of 44 million people that's fighting for its life into a sick patient on a table preyed upon by greedy parasites, as an IV feeds euros into its veins. Truly grotesque, a caricature out of John Heartfield, only revealing somewhat different politics.

It's impossible to miss the contempt here. Forget about the Revolution of Dignity, if you've even heard about it. Ukraine has failed already — so yank out the IV tubes and put it out of its misery. Let the Russians have their way with "their" "beauty." Any concern about the country's fate must be the result of a "US propaganda machine" having "fully succeeded in painting everything and everybody into blue and yellow." Anybody troubled by the attempt to defenestrate this country by a predatory neighbor ruled by an autocrat whose actions are governed in part by precepts from Russian fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin (a kind of Eastern Carl Schmitt) are "useful idiots for the military-industrial complex."

These views can't possibly be positioned on the left side of the map. They're disoriented. They remind me of these lines by Czeslaw Milosz:

Do not mention force, or you will be accused

Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret.

He who has power, has it by historical logic.

Respectfully bow to that logic...

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision.

Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.

[From "Child of Europe" 1946]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2022 at 06:28, <nettime-l-request@mail.kein.org> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Legit Brutality & Myth of Wealthy Russia (carlo von lynX)
2. Re: The War to come ... (w)
3. Re: What is Eurasianism? (Pit Schultz)
4. Fwd: What is Eurasianism? (Pit Schultz)
5. Re: What is Eurasianism? (Pit Schultz)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2022 09:19:38 +0100
From: carlo von lynX <lynX@time.to.get.psyced.org>
To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
Subject: <nettime> Legit Brutality & Myth of Wealthy Russia
Message-ID: <20220319081937.GA5488@lo.psyced.org" target="_blank">20220319081937.GA5488@lo.psyced.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I came across two aspects that I hadn't read about
before elsewhere:

* Myth of Wealthy Russia

To uphold his authoritarian leadership safely, Putin
needs all neighbouring countries to be poorer than
Russia. So far Ukraine has been fulfilling this
requisite, but its recent democratisation, start-up-
ification has been changing that.

As Romenia and Bulgaria have shown that mere member-
ship in the EU is enough to raise poor countries to
a level of wealth comparable to Russia's, and given
that Russia's own is on the decline, as it totally
depends on the demand of fossil fuels, the idea of
a culturally Russian nation rising to higher levels
of wealth than its own is a threat to Putin's grip
on power.

China has already experienced that: A little off-
shore China called Taiwan which reached much higher
levels of wealth than mainland. Putin wants no
Russian Taiwan to arise. And so he bombs *all*
Ukrainian infrastructure back into the middle ages.

* Legit Brutality

Possibly driven by his own experience as a young
Sovietic major in the revolting Dresden of 1989,
when he called for support by the Sovietic forces
and they showed up far too late to dismantle the
protests, Putin may be thinking in similar terms
as the Chinese leadership: Deng Xiaoping apparently
said "Two-hundred dead may bring 20 years of peace
to China" regarding the events on Tiananmen Square.

Putin was convinced, brutality would have helped
to save the Soviet Union, so the prospect of erec-
ting a Putin Union, a neo-Russian Empire that lasts
beyond his own lifespan, may in his eyes depend on
applying maximum brutality against the disobedient
democrats in Ukraine. Therefore, massive war crimes
may be intentional - and the ridiculous denials of
such crimes happening merely a legal strategy to
reduce annoying future pressure from Den Haag.

Rough summary of two German blog posts:

* https://germanpages.de/editor-s-blog/putins-furcht-vor-der-ukraine.html
* https://germanpages.de/politics/wie-die-ukraine-den-weg-zur-neuen-putin-union-versperrt.html

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 18:18:33 +0100
From: w <w@thing.net>
To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> The War to come ...
Message-ID: <2eae368cabfefe296dfea610eacf6ccac51345c1.camel@thing.net" target="_blank">2eae368cabfefe296dfea610eacf6ccac51345c1.camel@thing.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Could not agree more with Stefan's comment. One more thing to
consider, all the tax money the EU countries are pumping into this
failed country are only a fraction of what the oligarchs are pumping
out into their tax haven accounts.

But it doesn't matter, the US propaganda machine has fully succeeded in
painting everything and everybody into blue and yellow.

The way the different realities are constructed reminds me a bit of The
Matrix. I suggest to refrain from taking any pills, be they red or
blue (or yellow for that matter).

Wolfgang Streek wrote an excellent essay on the "Fog of War."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fog-of-war
Greetings from the Lower East Side,

Wolfgang

On Fri, 2022-03-11 at 10:42 +0100, Stefan Heidenreich wrote:
> why not cutting stuff short:
> the war is going brilliantly. 3 goals have alread been achieved
>
> 1) keep the Russians out
> 2) the Americans in
> 3) the Germans down.
> (Lord Ismay)
>
> Now, please: harshest sanctions ever, in order to also reach the last
> goal:
> 4) Fuck the EU! (Nuland)
>
> Mission almost accomplished!
> s
>
> Am 10.03.2022 um 17:52 schrieb Ted Byfield:
> > Felix gets it, imo.
> >
> > Not sure about elsewhere, but the 'special relationship left' ? the
> > US certainly and the UK as well, I think ? has been stuck in a rut.
> > OT1H hard-ish doctrinaire 'anti-imperialist' formations robotically
> > denounce NATO in the monolithic, one-sided terms Felix points out;
> > OT0H milquetoast centrists revert to form and support all kinds of
> > aggressive action, if not outfight belligerence (yet), with little
> > or no introspection about how that relates to their other earlier
> > stances. Both are backward-glancing in a way that Corey Robin put
> > well a week ago on Facebook:
> >
> > > God, I hate left debates about international politics. More than
> > > any other kind of debate, they never have anything to do with the
> > > matter at hand but, instead, always seem to involve some attempt,
> > > on all sides, to remediate and redress some perceived failure or
> > > flaw of politics past.
> >
> > I don't think the left will make much progress until it gets over
> > its post-'70s anxiety over the use of force ? always coercive,
> > sometimes violent ? to achieve its political ends. Until then,
> > it'll necessarily marginalize itself with anti-statist denialism
> > masquerading as warm-fuzzy idealism. The way out? Ditch the
> > genealogical-moral hand-wringing and accept the fact that human
> > institutions, all of them, are deeply flawed, but each in their own
> > unique way. A bit like what Tolstoy said of families: All happy
> > families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
> >
> > The question is how can we work with the institutions we have
> > toward *better* (NOT 'the best') political ends ? in this case,
> > fostering conditions that help Russian populations (very plural) to
> > try once again to remake their society in more sustainable, fairer
> > ways. If we had more than one major multilateral alliance and were
> > asking which would be better suited to realizing that end, fine,
> > let's debate whether NATO is the better choice; but we don't,
> > really, so scholastic debates about whether NATO is Good or Evil
> > lead nowhere.
> >
> > Are McDonald's and Coke "Good"? No. Is their withdrawal from Russia
> > the right thing in moral and practical terms? Yes. That wasn't so
> > hard, now, was it? Why would we discuss NATO in any different way?
> > Because, being a multilateral entity that's ultimately grounded in
> > democratic national governments it "represents" us more than
> > McDonald's and Coke? Good luck arguing that.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ted
> >
> > On 10 Mar 2022, at 7:21, Felix Stalder wrote:
> >
> > > On 10.03.22 06:02, Brian Holmes wrote:
> > > > Here's the thing though. Should Nato really have denied entry
> > > > to all those Eastern European states that requested it?
> > > > Remember that most of those states, they had been taken over
> > > > but not absorbed by the Soviet Union. They lived for decades
> > > > under significant degrees of political repression. Did they
> > > > have a valid reason to want to join Nato after 1989? Looking at
> > > > the brutality of the current war, it seems suddenly obvious to
> > > > me that they did -- and by the same token, I have suddenly
> > > > become less certain of what I always used to say, that Nato is
> > > > an imperialist war machine that should be disbanded. Russia is
> > > > also an imperialist war machine, for sure (and the two owe each
> > > > other a lot). But maybe China is also an imperial war machine?
> > > > And India, maybe not yet?
> > >
> > > I don't think that NATO ever was an imperialist war machine. The
> > > US doesn't really need NATO for it's imperialist projects in
> > > Latin America or Asia.
> > >
> > > NATO, it seems to me, was always a "cold war" war machine, aimed
> > > at confronting the SU/Russia, primarily in Europe. To the degree
> > > that this confrontation was not seen as vital after 1990 (either
> > > because the US read geopolitics as uni-polar, or the Europeans
> > > believed in trade leading to peace) NATO languished. Irrelevant
> > > for Trump, brain-dead for Macron, not worth investing for the
> > > Germans.
> > >
> > > For the Eastern European countries, for very understandable, deep
> > > historical reasons, "confronting Russia" remained a vital concern
> > > also after the end of the cold war, hence NATO was always seen
> > > crucially important and they entered NATO voluntarily.
> > >
> > > History has born them out, but was that really inevitable? Of
> > > course not, because nothing ever is, but the miss-conception of
> > > geopolitics as unipolar is certainly a big factor in this.
> > >
> > > But the paradox is, to develop a real peace architecture in
> > > Europe, NATO would have had to deny Eastern European countries
> > > membership and work on some kind of large block-free zone between
> > > itself and Russia. I'm not sure such a project would have been
> > > popular in Poland, though.
> > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
> > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
> >
> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
> # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 18:45:13 +0100
From: Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>
To: nettime-l@kein.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> What is Eurasianism?
Message-ID:
<CABaP6=OCcJ0p4qS7M1qov0cZ3KZXD_NyDuosvvp4WG1nwTqcHg@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

re: eurasianism

?Poor Schmitt: The Nazis said blood and soil ? he understood soil. The
Nazis meant blood?? 1)

As important to stay up to date with "contrarian" world views, such as
Thiel, Dugin, Land, instead of canceling and banning them from the
reading lists, whatever is left of the left would be well advised to
stay ahead of the curve and identify the underlaying principles and
main sources of revanchism and reactionary thought around the world:
conservative revolution, tellurian and identitarian
reterritorialisation, a Stirnerian swan song of anti-democratic
decline of the west, defending the "values" of fortress europe.

While involuntarily repeating the geostrategical blueprints of fascist
accellerationism in the Lebensraum ideology of Generalplan Ost by
unfolding the imperialist green table of colonialist thinking and
their implementation in proxy wars in Europe. The sleepwalking German
ideology of border colonialisation is now a shared one, both sides
claim ukraine as "part of their own".

We have not only to conceptualize the impotence of autocracy, but the
very dialectical equilibrium of liberalism and illberalism, and the
need for demonic scarecrows to push through a global green deal
transformation under a new agenda of western realignment. This war has
a ramp up phase of more than a decade already. Plenty of time to put a
robust communication infrastructure in place, prepare hybrid
divisionis of crowdsourced OSINT intelligence, teach psyop activists,
as well as training bataillions along the NATO experiences with urban
partisan warfare from Ireland to Kabul.

Schmittian thought has been very popular in the failed medieval
moralism in the conceptualisations of Agamben as well as in design
theory such as Brattons "Grossraum Stack", even the antagonistic
populism of Chantal Mouffe has been falsified by the yellow vests and
the rise of anti-rational pandemic idiocy in terms of the body
politics of the recent vaccination craze, bordering a wholy war of
science, instead of a digital technopolitical challenge not taken -
with exceptions indeed, such as in Taiwan.

Finding a third view of non-alighnment, to conceptualize the broken
hegemonies and possiblities into the open, be it Bratton Woods III, or
other types of nonlinear, game changing situations requires a world
crisis to push through various competing geocentric agendas, defending
the expansive interests of the wealthy. Are these changes revanchist,
backward oriented, or progressive, and solidaric in terms of advancing
planetary humanity? how do they combine technology, economics,
psychology to not become a new form of fascism? Will the war in
Ukraine export Holodomor to the world, especially the global south?

When ethnical cleansing of the billionaires happen again, and western
oligarchs such as Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg profit, something is
going down the wrong path dependency. the war is happening already and
it happens in your head, your mind is changing and you do not even
recognize it. this is how capitalist reconquista functions as a
mutation of corporatism, the combination of state and corporate power,
and it wouldn't function without passionate subsumption under
reinstated hemispherical emnities.

It will be likely China introducing solutions we in the west are
unable to perceive, the confirmation bias of the armchair infanterists
of bellingcat, the self announced nationalistic anarchists without any
credible publishing history, the humanitarian supporters of
no-fly-zones and "simple" democratic solutions of the trolly problem
and its "unintended consequences" of unleashing a collective death
drive, all the war mongers and profiteurs of masspychological
alignment, prepare to put on your blue helmets made in China.

1) Hannah Arendt reads Carl Schmitt?s The Nomos of the
Earth: A dialogue on law and geopolitics from the margins
Anna Jurkevics
https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/1474885115572837

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 21:59:32 +0100
From: Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>
To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
Subject: <nettime> Fwd: What is Eurasianism?
Message-ID:
<CABaP6=NO32V3UadomcGxdf2KL6M2we_JtSnvP10h_PSYDXXgvQ@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

re: eurasianism

?Poor Schmitt: The Nazis said blood and soil ? he understood soil. The
Nazis meant blood?? 1)

As important to stay up to date with "contrarian" world views, such as
Thiel, Dugin, Land, instead of canceling and banning them from the
reading lists, whatever is left of the left would be well advised to
stay ahead of the curve and identify the underlaying principles and
main sources of revanchism and reactionary thought around the world:
conservative revolution, tellurian and identitarian
reterritorialisation, a Stirnerian swan song of anti-democratic
decline of the west, defending the "values" of fortress europe.

While involuntarily repeating the geostrategical blueprints of fascist
accellerationism in the Lebensraum ideology of Generalplan Ost by
unfolding the imperialist green table of colonialist thinking and
their implementation in proxy wars in Europe. The sleepwalking German
ideology of border colonialisation is now a shared one, both sides
claim ukraine as "part of their own".

We have not only to conceptualize the impotence of autocracy, but the
very dialectical equilibrium of liberalism and illberalism, and the
need for demonic scarecrows to push through a global green deal
transformation under a new agenda of western realignment. This war has
a ramp up phase of more than a decade already. Plenty of time to put a
robust communication infrastructure in place, prepare hybrid
divisionis of crowdsourced OSINT intelligence, teach psyop activists,
as well as training bataillions along the NATO experiences with urban
partisan warfare from Ireland to Kabul.

Schmittian thought has been very popular in the failed medieval
moralism in the conceptualisations of Agamben as well as in design
theory such as Brattons "Grossraum Stack", even the antagonistic
populism of Chantal Mouffe has been falsified by the yellow vests and
the rise of anti-rational pandemic idiocy in terms of the body
politics of the recent vaccination craze, bordering a wholy war of
science, instead of a digital technopolitical challenge not taken -
with exceptions indeed, such as in Taiwan.

Finding a third view of non-alighnment, to conceptualize the broken
hegemonies and possiblities into the open, be it Bratton Woods III, or
other types of nonlinear, game changing situations requires a world
crisis to push through various competing geocentric agendas, defending
the expansive interests of the wealthy. Are these changes revanchist,
backward oriented, or progressive, and solidaric in terms of advancing
planetary humanity? how do they combine technology, economics,
psychology to not become a new form of fascism? Will the war in
Ukraine export Holodomor to the world, especially the global south?

When ethnical cleansing of the billionaires happen again, and western
oligarchs such as Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg profit, something is
going down the wrong path dependency. the war is happening already and
it happens in your head, your mind is changing and you do not even
recognize it. this is how capitalist reconquista functions as a
mutation of corporatism, the combination of state and corporate power,
and it wouldn't function without passionate subsumption under
reinstated hemispherical emnities.

It will be likely China introducing solutions we in the west are
unable to perceive, the confirmation bias of the armchair infanterists
of bellingcat, the self announced nationalistic anarchists without any
credible publishing history, the humanitarian supporters of
no-fly-zones and "simple" democratic solutions of the trolly problem
and its "unintended consequences" of unleashing a collective death
drive, all the war mongers and profiteurs of masspychological
alignment, prepare to put on your blue helmets made in China.

1) Hannah Arendt reads Carl Schmitt?s The Nomos of the
Earth: A dialogue on law and geopolitics from the margins
Anna Jurkevics
https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/1474885115572837

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 00:04:54 +0100
From: Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>
To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org, nettime@kein.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> What is Eurasianism?
Message-ID:
<CABaP6=OVOfky0DkpWvawvfD5hVXstw1EGdNizXyasuXu1mfPow@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

re: eurasianism

?Poor Schmitt: The Nazis said blood and soil ? he understood soil. The
Nazis meant blood?? 1)

As important it is to stay up to date with "contrarian" world views,
such as Thiel, Dugin, Land, Galkovsky - instead of cancelling and
banning them from the reading lists, whatever is left of the left
would be well advised to stay ahead of the curve and to identify the
underlaying principles and main sources of revanchism and reactionary
thought around the world: conservative revolution, tellurian and
identitarian reterritorialisation, a Stirnerian swan song of
anti-democratic decline of the west, defending the "values" of
fortress europe.

While involuntarily repeating the geostrategical blueprints of fascist
accellerationism in the Lebensraum ideology of Generalplan Ost by
unfolding the imperialist green table of colonialist thinking and
their implementation in proxy wars in Europe, the sleepwalking German
ideology of border colonialisation is now a shared one, both sides
claim ukraine as "part of their own".

We have not only to conceptualize the impotence of autocracy, but the
very dialectical equilibrium of liberalism and illiberalism, and the
need for demonic scarecrows to push through a global green deal
transformation under a new agenda of western realignment.

This war has a ramp-up phase of more than a decade already. Plenty of
time to put a robust communication infrastructure in place, to prepare
hybrid divisions of crowdsourced OSINT intelligence, teach PsyOp
activists, as well as to train bataillons along the NATO experiences
with urban partisan warefare from Ireland to Kabul.

Schmittian thought has been very popular, in the failed medieval
moralism, in the conceptualisations of Agamben as well as in design
theory such as Brattons "Grossraum Stack". Even the antagonistic
populism of Chantal Mouffe has been falsified by the yellow vests and
by the rise of anti-rational pandemic idiocy in terms of the body
politics of the recent vaccination craze, bordering a holy war of
science instead of a digital technopolitical challenge not taken -
with exceptions indeed, such as in Taiwan 2).

Finding a third view of non-alignment to conceptualize the broken
hegemonies and possiblities into the open, be it Bretton-Woods III or
other types of nonlinear, game changing situations, requires a world
crisis to push through various competing geostrategic agendas,
defending the expansive interests of the wealthy. Are these changes
revanchist, backward oriented, or progressive, and solidaric in terms
of an advancing planetary humanity? How do they combine technology,
economics and psychology to not become a new form of fascism? Will the
war in Ukraine export Holodomor to the world, especially to the global
south?

When ethnical cleansing of the billionaires happens again, and western
oligarchs such as Musk, Besoz and Zuckerberg profit, something is
going down the wrong path dependency. The war is happening already and
it happens in your head, your mind is changing and you do not even
recognize it. This is how capitalist reconquista functions as a
mutation of corporatism, the combination of state and corporate power,
and it wouldn't function without passionate subsumption under
reinstated hemispherical emnities.

It will be likely China introducing solutions we in the west are
unable to perceive. The confirmation bias of the armchair infanterists
of bellingcat, the self announced nationalistic anarchists without any
credible publishing history, the humanitarian supporters of
no-fly-zones and "simple" democratic solutions of the trolly problem
and its "unintended consequences" of unleashing a collective death
drive, all the war mongers and profiteurs of masspychological
alignment- prepare to put on your blue helmets made in China!

1) Hannah Arendt reads Carl Schmitt?s The Nomos of the Earth: A
dialogue on law and geopolitics from the margins, by Anna Jurkevics
https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/1474885115572837
2) #TaiwanModel

------------------------------

# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l

End of nettime-l Digest, Vol 174, Issue 51
******************************************

Michael Benson

Kinetikon Pictures

michael-benson.net

kinpix2001@gmail.com