Latest book trend talks about Russia’s ‘threat to the world’ ... by John Wight is a writer and commentator specializing in geopolitics, UK domestic politics, culture and sport ... People living in the West do not need their governments to remind them who their enemy is. Not when they have an obliging intelligentsia to do it for them. For anyone who visits the annual and internationally renowned Edinburgh International Book Festival, a trip to the festival’s bookshop reveals, more than any number of speeches ever could from government ministers and leading politicians, who this year’s global pariah of choice is. Last year it was books on Syria and its “evil dictator” Assad that were doing the rounds, the year before that it was China, while the year before that Iran clogged the shelves. This year it was no surprise to see the prevalence of books on Russia at the festival. I counted at least ten different titles, each making the case for regarding Russia as a threat to stability, security, and peace in the world. Covers included lurid pictures of Vladimir Putin, designed to depict the Russian leader as a dangerous maniac bent on global domination. The titles alone are revelatory. For example: -The New Cold War: Putin’s Threat to Russia and the West -The Last Man in Russia: And the Struggle To Save A Dying Nation -Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love With Vladimir Putin -Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History -The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia ... By now you should be getting the idea: Russia is the current focus of Western liberal commentators and an intelligentsia that extends itself in parroting the views of their own governments, abandoning their critical faculties in the process. While conformity may be the enemy of critical and independent thought, for such people it is a religion. Acceptance and respectability, after all, requires nothing less. How else are they to secure those newspaper columns, book deals, and invites to dinner parties and literary functions without which their lives would not be worth living? The history of Western colonialism and wars of conquest is replete with its cheerleaders in the form of newspaper columnists, novelists, and writers. During the high water mark of the British Empire, Rudyard Kipling was its most famous chronicler. His most famous poem is White Man’s Burden, which he wrote as a celebration of the takeover of the Philippines by the United States in 1898. “Take up the White Mans burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go bind your sons to exile, To serve your captives need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.” In modern times the now departed British writer and journalist Christopher Hitchens was most prominent when it came to carrying on the tradition of providing literary and journalistic muscle for the projection of imperial power. From a withering critic of the West and Western foreign policy in the 70s and 80s, Hitchens underwent a slow but sure metamorphosis throughout the nineties. It reached its apogee after 9/11, when he enthusiastically embraced the wars unleashed by George W. Bush. (Contd) rt/op-edge/181880-edingurgh-festival-book-trend-russia/
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 00:44:42 +0000
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