<nettime> Kamil Galeev on Dmitry Galkovsky

[Ted Byfield <tedbyfield@gmail.com>]

This Twitter thread by Kamil Galeev on Dmitry Galkovsky is really worth reading:

	https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1533154409722658824

Notable:

"People think with words. If you want to change the way people think about things, you *must* be giving those things new names. If you want to be a law giver, you must also be a a name giver. And Galkovsky is probably the most productive and successful name-giver in modern Russia"

Also:

"When I say that Galkovsky reshaped the Russian nationalist discourse, I don't mean the people in power. I don't picture him in a role of 'Putin's secret adviser' that so many morons ascribe to Dugin. I imply that he influenced the youngsters teaching them what and *how* to think"

And then there are the bits about how the very idea of the medieval period is nonsense and all evidence of it is forged, how Protestantism is older than Catholicism, etc. I actually studied that stuff, and my hunch is that Galkovsky ideas are based at least in part on Walter Bauer's (brilliant) Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, just extrapolated to an absurd degree. But Galeev's summary is secondhand, so it's hard to know. Either way, it's important to note that 'Galkovskian' ideas and their local equivalents are everywhere, not just Russia.

That's helpful on several levels, imo. For example, it lends more nuance to a 'society vs the state' approach to Russia, which is important for minimizing demonization and creating space for constructive resolution; and it also begins to address the concerns underlying self-styled anti-imperialist left critiques of Western support for Ukraine. But we shouldn't be lulled into both-sidesism. This kind of revisionist rubbish is one downside of the sprawling reevaluation of so many histories, institutions, and mores. From that, it's easy to see how left/prog revisions of national myths could seem equally "extreme," and how centrism could seem like a sensible approach. But, as always, we should take special care when political rhetoric takes refuge in metaphors of geometry and balance.

This war has made it increasingly clear that Putin's relationship to Trump should be understood less as instrumental than as co-dependent — two drowning men trying to save each other. On its face that might seem a bit meta, but *if it's true* I think the implications are huge.

Cheers,
Ted
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