Podcast | Pensées 123

Archetyping is a very important aspect of Disinfolklore as an analytical method. And archetypal Disinfolklore literacy is the first tool in the Disinfolklore Analytical Methods handbook. So you won’t be surprised to find that I’m starting today with MAGA archetyping Ukraine and Europe as weak.

The US is trying to archetype Europe as weak, yet it’s led by a guy who can’t stop sleeping. We had this fantastic photo of Rubio looking over at Donald and seeing that he was basically asleep at this press conference. Weak. MAGA followers like Donald archetype Ukraine as weak and russia as strong. Meanwhile, Ukraine deals with 7,000 tactical russian drones and 600 strategic russian drones daily while attacking russia with similar quantities in ways which America, NATO collectively, nor any NATO country individually, between 1945 and today, could ever do. Now America is trying to archetype Europe as weak — in the same way that russia archetypes Ukraine and Europe as weak, in their view, as a woman.

We remember Putler referring to this hard rock song from the Soviet era, by a band called Red Mould, on February 20th, 2022: “Sleeping Beauty in a coffin — I went up and effed her.” As the New Lines Institute noted in its first genocide report, this was evidence of genocidal intent because it was archetyping — they didn’t use the word archetype — Ukraine as a woman, as a corpse, and as the victim of necrophiliac rape. What America is now doing to Europe is what russia has been doing to Europe and to Ukraine. They’re attempting this through the National Security Strategy, but also through figures like Jamie Dimon, a well-named chap, who referred to Europe as a weak continent. It’s this strongman-versus-weak dialectic, which Ruth Ben-Ghiat has been brilliant at helping us see through.

The implication of this archetyping is that 27 individual EU states acting unilaterally would somehow be strong. Of course they don’t think that, because we’ve heard today the long version of the National Security Strategy in which several countries — Hungary, Italy, and a couple of others, and I don’t think Italy will be happy to be part of this — will be privileged by American attention, while all the other European countries will be consigned to the gulag, basically.

The shame of allying with child-stealing russia, which can’t even protect itself, and China run by another weakling. The stance of a jealous spouse who won’t let their wife speak to other males. Weak. How they’re archetyping Europe is that they don’t want individual European countries to talk to anyone else.

Today we see reported in the *Washington Post* by David Ignatius, who I’ve never paid any attention to. I instantly archetyped him in my mind from seeing him. I have a subscription to the *Washington Post*, so I see him there all the time: “I’ll answer all your questions on Ukraine.” I’ve never been tempted for a second to dive in. And boy, was my intuition confirmed today when I see his breathless reporting, clearly from inside Donald’s gangster russian-mafia circles, about their breathless chutzpah of a deal where they think for a second that Ukraine will surrender Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to the russians and let the Americans oversee it, as if that’s some sort of sweetener.

After the thousands of people who have been murdered, raped, kidnapped by russia using ZNPP and Enerhodar — and I was the environmental security focal point for the OSCE for Zaporizhzhia, I covered Enerhodar, I met Mayor Orlov — some of us might remember him pleading with the international community in early March as Enerhodar’s native russian-language-speaking Ukrainian residents tried to stop the might of the russian army by erecting roadblocks. I’ve felt the Enerhodar occupation quite personally — obviously not even a millionth as much as the people there, the Ukrainians. But just the idea that these criminals, these gangsters would come in and offer russia ZNPP — it’s absolutely preposterous. It would only happen in another universe. And obviously, given my framing of Disinfolklore, where I talk about in my Munich speech last February — which is the second part of today’s episode — how my fear was that the United States and Donald and russia would collude to project all of us into the kind of Disinfolklore universe that I saw russia projecting Ukrainians into in russia-occupied Luhansk, when I worked and lived and travelled there daily between 2015 and 2018. This is my overarching interpretation of what we see now going on with this ridiculous peace process.

The Ignatius article today — apart from the chutzpah of thinking Ukraine is going to give up the largest nuclear power plant in Europe — they think the European Union is going to admit Ukraine next year because America says it, or that the European Union is going to give up this money so that russia can reconstitute itself. A Marshall Plan for russia.

I first tweeted about this troll in November 2022, when so-called russian liberals — the so-called russian opposition — let it be known that they wanted a Marshall Plan for russia. That was on the 23rd of November 2022. I often talk in Disinfolklore, and in the analytical method, about characters. So we have this character of a Marshall Plan for russia. They obviously believe in this, and now Donald and his criminal gangster mafia cronies have taken this troll and are now trying to use it to troll Europe and Ukraine into paying russia for its destruction.

As I mentioned last week, the European Parliament’s recent very stiff resolution against Donald’s and russia’s 28-point plan rightly calls upon russia to repay all the material and immaterial harm and damage. These are legal terms: the material damage — the 500 billion in infrastructure damage and counting — but then the trillions, I calculate back of the envelope, in trauma and inconvenience and death. It’s called quantum in law. You look at when someone has suffered a tort, when an individual has suffered a wrong, and 42 million Ukrainians have suffered a tort, and each of them has an individual claim for compensation.

Quite apart from anything else, what they are trying to do with this breathless reporting by this clown Ignatius — who clearly has no genuine expertise, who holds himself up as an expert on Ukraine but is now so seduced by his access to Donald’s entourage that he can breathlessly report this stuff as if it’s normal — when we have these laws and very fixed ideas of wrong, when we have the European Court of Human Rights judgment establishing russia’s culpability, the Council of Europe chamber established to try russia for the crime of aggression. We have the legal basis for russia’s culpability and financial liability. And then we have Donald and his cronies trying to create this Disinfolklore universe where up is archetyped as down, where it’s a bit like the First World War — “right and wrong on both sides” — whereas of course this war is like the Second World War.

I always remember going to my old Cambridge college, going into the chapel. We were shown the book commemorating all of the college members who died during the First War, as they refer to it. And there are German names there — the German aristocracy would send their children to be educated at Cambridge, even back in those days. Then the person showing me around showed me the condolences book for the Second War and pointed out that there are no German names in it. Not that there weren’t German college members who died, but they fought on the other side. As they said, the Second War was a different kind of war. As indeed is this one.

What Donald and this entire saga we’ve been going through, quite apart from everything else, is an attempt to re-archetype this war as something akin to the First World War — right on both sides. And the chutzpah of them taking this call by the so-called russian opposition — we can trace this meme from the 23rd of November 2022 when I first picked it up. We can trace it from there throug…

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