Putin, instead of a petty swindler, turned out to be a real villain
When I wrote[1] that Putin, instead of a petty swindler, turned out to be a real villain, they began to object to me. Like, the Russian corrupt under-empire does not in any way compare with real evil like the Third Reich or the Stalinist USSR. In terms of scale, it certainly is. But essentially I think the problem is simply over-romanticizing villainy. The same "Banality of Evil" by Hannah Arendt shows that the Third Reich was not at all the kingdom of blond beasts. On the contrary, the reality of the Third Reich consisted of petty bureaucrats, cowardly conformists, obedient fools, and the like, an audience far removed from images from propaganda posters. After the war, they all looked with their fish eyes with the question: "What are we for?" Similarly, you read about the Stalinist USSR: what kind of security officers are there without fear and reproach, on the contrary, at every step the same corruption, theft and stupidity. At the same time, it may well be sincerely permeated with cannibalistic ideology (like the same Eichmann), but in terms of people, these will be ordinary people with the most common vices.
But when we look behind it through the thickness of time, only one ceremonial SS uniform remains. It is easy to succumb to the temptation of romanticization - if only on the basis of the idea that the most ordinary people could not have committed such an extraordinary evil. In fact, the nature of collective action (especially multiplied by the era of mass propaganda and mobilization) is such that even a poorly organized society is capable of big dirty tricks. Of course, it cannot ensure the well-being of all its members. But to arrange a war and genocide is quite. For the functioning of such systems, it is not necessary to cultivate some outstanding qualities in people: conformism, cowardice, narrow-mindedness - this is exactly what is needed. And the fact that they will steal and simply scatter resources out of stupidity is nothing, because the resources that the state concentrates are so huge that the remaining ones will still be enough for its tasks.
Therefore, all these serfs with fish-eyed state employees, driven to a wretched Sabbath in Luzhniki, are the real face of authoritarianism. The English letter Z, the color of the Colorado potato beetle against the backdrop of the Russian tricolor, forming an eye-catching palette, is exactly the aesthetics that this authoritarianism deserves. And I believe that most of the historical authoritarian regimes in the eyes of contemporaries looked little better than this squalor. This is what real evil looks like, devoid of romanticization.
Mihail Pojarsky 2022-03-27
