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You’re Fired! No, I quit!

Barkley Rosser | April 30, 2022 6:25 am

US/Global Economics

You’re Fired! No, I quit!

So, Russia has stopped selling natural gas to Bulgaria and Poland because they refuse to pay for it in rubles, but they both say that they do not want Russian natural gas anyway!

Barkley Rosser

23 Comments

Fred C. Dobbs says:

May 1, 2022 at 9:47 am

Vaguely related?

Interesting comparison of Nazi Germany in 1933 to Putin’s Russia.

Putin’s Russia now looks like 1933 Germany

Boston Globe – Francine Hirsch – April 28

Vladimir Putin’s regime has always been authoritarian. But since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, something has shifted. Putin has completely shut down Russian civil society and criminalized free expression while launching a massive campaign of propaganda and disinformation. Russia is rapidly becoming a totalitarian state. The pieces are all there.

As a historian of the Soviet Union, I do not use the term “totalitarian” lightly. But Western policymakers need to understand what they are looking at in Russia in order to come up with effective policies.

What is totalitarianism? The German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt saw it as a novel form of authoritarianism based on the total mobilization of society and the isolation of individuals. The British author George Orwell described it as a system of government that thrives on the inversion of truth: “WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

One of the most perceptive observers of a totalitarian state in the making was the German Jewish scholar Victor Klemperer, who chronicled the rise of Nazi Germany. Klemperer’s diary entries from 1933, as he watched Adolf Hitler’s rise toward becoming the Führer, can help us make sense of what we are now seeing in Russia — the coordination of institutions from above, a sustained propaganda campaign that imparts a sense of inevitability, and the atomization or breakdown of society. …

Francine Hirsch, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  May 1, 2022 at 9:50 am
  
  Coordination
  
  The Socialist papers are permanently banned. The “Liberals” tremble. The Berliner Tagesblatt was recently banned for two days. . . . Every new government decree, announcement, etc., is more shameful than the previous one. — Victor Klemperer, March 1933
  
  In Russia we are currently witnessing the regime coordinate all social, political, and cultural institutions to serve its goals. Putin has shut down independent media, banned Western social media, and criminalized all criticism of his policies. Every nongovernmental organization that does not explicitly support Putin’s policies has been shuttered. The Russian State Duma has supported these actions with endless decrees.
  
  Putin’s adviser on culture, Vladimir Tolstoy, has told Russia’s writers and artists that there is a “litmus test” and the only acceptable position is “open support” for the regime. The Russian Education Ministry is introducing a compulsory patriotic curriculum for elementary school students. There also have been moves to close sociology departments at universities and eliminate other disciplines that are seen as having been too heavily influenced by the West.
  
  As Russian institutions are being brought into line with Putin’s regime, virtually all ideas expressed in the Russian media are now projections of an official position. Western observers have asked whether Russian pundits who call for the elimination of Ukraine as a nation and Russian academics who put forth an imperialist agenda are really expressing the intentions of the state. The answer is yes.
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    May 1, 2022 at 10:41 am
    
    (About one-third of this op-ed has been posted. So far, the next portion has not been accepted. No point in continuing. Hopefully, the link posted above will permit access.)
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  May 1, 2022 at 10:24 am
  
  Propaganda and inevitability
  
  I too am beginning to believe in the power and permanency of Hitler. It’s dreadful. . . . And if I can hardly guard against believing it — how shall millions of naive people guard against it? And if they believe, then they are indeed won by Hitler and power and the glory are really his. — Klemperer, November 1933
  
  Since the start of the war, a national-patriotic ideology, grounded in anti-Westernism and deriving emotional resonance from the memory of World War II, has reached new heights. Russian propaganda falsely depicts Ukraine as an “artificial” state run by Nazis and as a pawn being used by the West to pursue an aggressive agenda. It proclaims a life-or-death struggle with the West and portrays Russia’s victory and Putin’s continued rule as inevitable.
  
  Putin held a huge rally in Moscow in March, and state officials have organized demonstrations across Russia. On Russian social media, propaganda videos depicting the “special military operation” as a fight against Nazism use religious imagery and spliced-in footage from World War II. Talk show hosts on Russian state television warn of “fifth columnists” and call for society’s purification. At the same time, “Z,” a symbol of support for the war, has become ubiquitous.
  
  Western policymakers should work with Russian dissidents and NGOs that have fled the country to develop a counterpropaganda campaign that can penetrate the information barrier and reach the Russian people. The BBC has revived its shortwave radio service to Russia, but this is not enough. Effective counterpropaganda will need the same emotional resonance as Russian propaganda. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s video appeal to the Russian people, shared on YouTube and via the Russian messaging app Telegram, has been the most successful effort yet. It was seen widely enough in Russia that it prompted a response from the Kremlin. It should serve as a model. …
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    May 1, 2022 at 10:43 am
    
    The atomization or breakdown of society
    
    I simply cannot believe that the mood of the masses is really still behind Hitler. Too many signs of the opposite. But everyone, literally everyone, cringes with fear. No letter, no telephone conversation, no word on the street is safe anymore. Everyone fears the next person may be an informer. — Klemperer, August 1933
    
    Russians who oppose the war have become isolated. The imposition of fines and prison sentences for speaking up, along with the threat of being sacked from one’s job or expelled from school, has led people to recalculate the cost of opposition. Cases of students denouncing teachers who express doubts about the “special military operation” are featured on TV and have a chilling effect.
    
    Tens of thousands of Russians who oppose Putin’s policies have left the country. Others have come to hide their dissent, or even publicly express support for the regime, for the sake of self-preservation. Some Russians continue to engage in small acts of resistance such as posting “No to War” signs in their neighborhoods and leaving antiwar messages on supermarket labels and rubles. A few brave souls take greater risks, like passing out the phone numbers of human rights lawyers to young men called up for conscription.
    
    With the spread of surveillance and the mobilization of society to turn in “traitors,” resistance of any kind has become much more dangerous. At the same time, the Russian government has blocked Western social media apps, making it more difficult for Russians without VPNs (which get around online firewalls) to find accurate news online. Some antiwar Russians are continuing to find one another on Russian social media apps like VKontakte and Telegram. Russian activists and journalists abroad, including those writing for Meduza and Mediazona, are doing what they can to send information about the war into Russia, but getting it through has gotten much harder. …
    - Fred C. Dobbs says:
      
      May 1, 2022 at 11:17 am
      
      There is a reason Klemperer’s diary entries from 1933 sound so foreboding. Just like Klemperer, we have been watching a totalitarian regime settle into place. The good news is that Russian opinion polls showing popular support for Putin’s policies are meaningless. We are not seeing a “rally around the flag” effect. The bad news is that Putin does not need popular support at home to wage his war against Ukraine and to carry out a genocide. He just needs complacency.
      
      In response, Western policymakers should look for better ways to reach the Russian people. Counterpropaganda efforts should tell the truth about the war in Ukraine, and they should also amplify Russian voices of dissent to let Russians who oppose Putin know that they are not alone. Finally, Western observers who have questioned whether the goals of Putin’s war include genocide should understand that calls in the Russian media to wipe Ukraine off the map and eliminate the Ukrainian identity are a direct expression of Putin’s agenda.
      
      Putin’s Russia differs from 1933 Germany in one critical way: Germany had not yet launched a brutal war of aggression against a neighboring nation, and Putin has. It was a mistake for European leaders to meet with Hitler in the 1930s. Thankfully, President Biden understands that with Putin, appeasement is not an option.
      
      [Done.]
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  May 1, 2022 at 11:00 pm
  
  Professor Francine Hirsch Writes About Putin and Ukraine in Lawfare
  
  Professor Francine Hirsch has published an article with Lawfare titled “Putin’s Memory Laws Set the Stage for His War in Ukraine.” The piece discusses Russian President Vladimir Putin’s use of specific language as propaganda to rally Russians behind his war against Ukraine. According to Hirsch, “Putin in 2022, like Stalin in 1939, is attempting to reconfigure the geopolitical balance of power. Putin, like Stalin, is attempting to enlarge his state and expand its influence with revanchist claims to territories that had once been part of a larger empire. Putin, like Stalin, has launched a war of aggression while calling it a special operation aimed at aiding civilians and ‘restoring the peace.’”
  
  Putin’s Memory Laws Set the Stage for His War in Ukraine
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    May 1, 2022 at 11:19 pm
    
    Revanchism (French: Revanchisme, from revanche, “revenge“) is the political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses incurred by a country, often following a war or social movement. …
    
    Revanchism draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought and is often motivated by economic or geopolitical factors. Extreme revanchist ideologues often represent a hawkish stance, suggesting that their desired objectives can be achieved through the positive outcome of another war. … (Wikipedia)
    - coberly says:
      
      May 1, 2022 at 11:23 pm
      
      The South shall rise again boys!
coberly says:

May 1, 2022 at 10:30 pm

It is worth noting that appeasement of Hitler by the British government, and nazi sympathies from the British upper class in the 1930’s (long before Munich) looks a lot like what is going on in some segments of the American political landscape.

And, more worrying, we should recognize that the ability of the Russian people to be fooled by propaganda of the hate your enemies stripe is not so different from that of about half of the Amreican electorate (note to Dobbs… even if Trump “only” got 74million votes, don’t be sure he won’t find another six million from people who until recently thought of themselves as “progressives.”

I think ultimately we are going to have to risk calling Putin’s bluff. Might be safer sooner than later. [I hear he is siek, but it doesn’t sound like he lacks probable successors who may not be even as sane as he is.]
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  May 1, 2022 at 11:09 pm
  
  “even if Trump “only” got 74 million votes, don’t be sure he won’t find another six million from people who until recently thought of themselves as “progressives.”
  
  I foresee Jill Stein making another run in 2024, getting 6 million votes maybe.
  
  Though that’d be about 4 times what she and the Green Party got in 2016.
coberly says:

May 1, 2022 at 11:18 pm

I was thinking more of former liberals who suddenly discovered Truth on the Right. There is something about the lure of power that sleeps fitfully in the human heart and lurches toward Bethlehem to be born.

[note this is not a reference to Christ, but possibly a reference to fake christians who know power when they see it.]
- coberly says:
  
  May 1, 2022 at 11:21 pm
  
  BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
  
  Turning and turning in the widening gyre
  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
  The best lack all conviction, while the worst
  Are full of passionate intensity.
  
  Surely some revelation is at hand;
  Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
  The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
  When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
  Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
  A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
  A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
  Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
  Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
  The darkness drops again; but now I know
  That twenty centuries of stony sleep
  Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
  And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    May 1, 2022 at 11:33 pm
    
    Do not go gentle into that good night – Dylan Thomas
    - coberly says:
      
      May 1, 2022 at 11:41 pm
      
      Dylan Thomas…
      
      in a poem about the death of his father, I don’t see the relevance here.
      - Fred C. Dobbs says:
        
        May 2, 2022 at 7:48 am
        
        Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
        The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
        When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
        Troubles my sight …
        
        And your Yeats poem is not about Donald Trump.
      - coberly says:
        
        May 2, 2022 at 10:44 am
        
        Dobbs
        
        you could have tried to explain the relevance of your Dylan Thomas quote. But I will try to explain the relevance of
        
        Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
        The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
        The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
        The best lack all conviction, while the worst
        Are full of passionate intensity.
        
        and the rest of it.. to Trump, Putin, al Qaida
        
        see, it’s about the mindless growth of violence and mere anarchy. insane lies, passionate haters and the feebleness of “the best.”
        
        or something like that.
        
        Yeats wrote it right after WW1 and it describes that era, but it describes better the coming of Hitler and Stalin…from which we recovered more or less,, and which we are seeing again with Trump and the new Republicans, and Putin, and fanatical “islamists”, and quite possibly America’s reliance on bombing everyone it thinks looks like a potential threat…where it can’t simply torture them by locking them up for as long as it takes.
      - Fred C. Dobbs says:
        
        May 2, 2022 at 4:07 pm
        
        And here I thought it was all about the Second Coming of tyrant Donald Trump, as foretold by Wm Butler Yeats. However did he know?
      - coberly says:
        
        May 3, 2022 at 1:07 am
        
        Fred
        
        it wouldn’t surprise me if you did. but you denied it. Trump is certainly part of it. but not a big enough part for his re-election or not to weigh that heavily in the scales.
        
        i suspect most people suspect the second coming will be something like Jesus drifting down from the clouds, being given a ticker tape parade down fifth avenue and a reception at the white house. then we will all go to church and be good ever after.
        
        But that’s not what it says in the Book…and I missed this the first time I read the Yeats poem: the second coming will be ushered in by war, famine, pestilence, and death. [though Jesus said these are not the end],,,in any case bad times. and maybe this is why Yeats had to do a double take before he made the connection. I’ve never been a believer in the apocalypse myself. It’s just a poem.
        
        Or maybe we are already in it. There is a lot of evil going around, a great deal of which is perpetrated by people who think they are fighting evil.
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  May 1, 2022 at 11:25 pm
  
  And I am thinking that Trump is out to snatch up all those Great Lakes votes that he got in 2016 but not in 2020. Those (and a few million more, like in Texas and Arizona) could do the trick.
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  May 1, 2022 at 11:38 pm
  
  Though I am sometime reminded by my offspring
  
  that AOC will be eligible to run for the presidency in 2024.
  
  AOC
coberly says:

May 1, 2022 at 11:34 pm

Dobbs

it’s good that you see that six million votes is not a safe margin.

that’s what I was trying to say.
- coberly says:
  
  May 1, 2022 at 11:38 pm
  
  especially since the Enemy regards votes as fungible.
  
  as, apparently is truth. i don’t know if people thought Hitler’s, and Stalin’s, lies were ridiculous. but the Trumpists have discovered that it doesn’t matter, as has Putin.