A friend of mine has forwarded an e-mail he received from a Ukip supporter of Putin.
This saddened me, since enthusiasm for perverse Russian regimes reflects the kind of moral and intellectual failure that traditionally has been the preserve of the left.
Now Ukip, the flag-bearer of conservatism in Britain, is trying to encroach on the territory signposted by several generations of ‘useful idiots’.
My friend’s correspondent claims that RT is a “plausible and reliable” source of news because the BBC isn’t. Yes, and I love tomatoes because I hate pop music. Any sane person would smell a non sequitur there a mile away.
Getting one’s news from RT today is the same as using Der Stürmer for that purpose 80 years ago (which some British nationalists did, come to think of it – but sorry, I forgot, nationalism seems to be a term of praise these days).
Both organs fall into the category of a propaganda mouthpiece, not a news medium. Someone who doesn’t realise this suffers from moral deafness, intellectual deficit or, possibly in this case, ideology-induced blindness, with an underpinning of lamentable ignorance.
Reliance on Der Stürmer couldn’t have been logically justified by the left-wing bias of The Manchester Guardian. Similarly, it’s a logical solecism to justify reliance on RT by the left-wing slant of the BBC.
How can I explain this so that my friend’s correspondent will understand? The Da Vinci Code is a bad book, but that doesn’t make Fifty Shades of Grey good.
Or Guildford’s being an awful place doesn’t make Crawley lovely. Or theft isn’t a virtue because murder is a vice. Does this work as a lesson in rudimentary logic?
“In Syria alone an estimated 10 million people have lost their homes and personal property as a direct result of UK/USA/Saudi meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign country…” continues the missive.
The poor chap seems to think, with the same lapse of logic, that because of that lamentable situation Putin is justified in his rape of the Ukraine.
Another likeminded Ukipper spells it out: the pro-Western coup in the Ukraine was illegal and therefore the KGB colonel is striking a blow for international law.
Not having the same sterling legal credentials, I’m not prepared to argue the legality of the Ukrainian independence movement. However, aware of this educational lacuna, I am prepared to accept that it was as illegal as, say, every national liberation movement in Africa and Asia over the last 70 years.
So how about France using her superior military might to reclaim Algeria, Britain to recolonise Nigeria or Spain to recapture her part of Morocco? Would my friend’s correspondent support any such action? And there I was, thinking that nationalism was a good thing.
My dear Ukip friends: good, bad or indifferent, the Ukraine is a sovereign country. Hence how she manages her affairs is her business, unless she threatens others.
I can’t for the life of me see how Poroshenko’s regime threatens Britain or any of our allies. Nor, for all of RT’s lying claims, does it threaten Russia. Yes, for 70-odd years the Ukraine belonged to the Soviet Union. But she doesn’t any longer.
Similarly, India used to belong to the British Empire, but she doesn’t now. In fact, the British Empire no longer exists, and neither does the Soviet Union.
Hence for Putin to annex a part of the Ukraine on the pretext that many people speak Russian there would be exactly equivalent to Britain annexing a part of India because so many local denizens are Anglophone.
It gets worse. Putin is our friend, continues the Ukipper, because America is our enemy: “Enoch Powell correctly identified the USA as No. 1 threat to British interests and he has largely been vindicated.”
That’s the same dull logical sabre unsheathed and swung without hitting anybody. St Enoch was right on most things, although his affection for Wagner makes his mental health suspect in my eyes.
Yet he sometimes laid it on a bit too thick (like Wagner, actually). I don’t think the US has our best interests at heart, and I make this point at length in my book Democracy As a Neocon Trick. But No. 1 threat? I don’t think so.
Obama isn’t threatening us with nuclear weapons – Putin is. America did drag us into an unfortunate foray into the Middle East, but she isn’t likely to drag us into a world war. Putin is. Let’s keep things in perspective, shall we?
Anything else? Oh yes, Vlad is a Christian, which is why he treats his co-religionists better than they are treated by “the UK media and the UK prime minister himself.” Oh dear.
It’s true that Vlad is mouthing Christian slogans, of the Third Rome variety. However, it takes ignorance of both Christianity and Russia to take such pronouncements at face value.
Vlad is a proud alumnus of an organisation that murdered tens of thousands of priests along with millions of parishioners, and destroyed tens of thousands of churches.
One of such churches was the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, blown up in 1931 by orders of Vlad’s idol Stalin. The cathedral was rebuilt (albeit with cheaper materials) and, in the year 2,000, re-consecrated.
Its basement now houses several conference rooms and a huge banquet hall, where Putin’s cronies hold their liberally lubricated orgies, thereby blowing up the cathedral again, this time metaphorically.
Another Christian argument one hears in Vlad’s favour is that he doesn’t favour homomarriage. This, I agree, is a necessary condition for good government. But to regard it as a sufficient one is cloud cuckoo land. One may end up admiring Hitler, Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeini for the same reason.
Chaps, I’m second to none in my affection for Christianity and contempt of the European Union. I doubt America’s virtue as much as you do. My disdain for Dave, Nick, Ed et al trumps, or at least equals, yours any day.
But for God’s sake stop blabbering about “demonising Putin”. His cleptofascist clique can’t possibly be demonised for one simple reason: they already are the demons.
Carry on so, and no one who combines decency with brains will ever support you. That, I believe, would be a shame.