Thread by @shaunjlawson

This is a thread about empathy. Specifically: *selective* empathy.

Which we're all guilty of to some extent - the lives of some seemingly mattering to us a lot more than others - the right even more so. Note Tory flag waving over Ukraine while curtailing the right to protest.

Note perennial Republican pleas for 'the right to life' while opposing any gun controls at all, openly encouraging people not to be vaccinated, decrying masks, and deliberately making life itself as hard as humanly possible for anyone not born into wealth.

"If you're preborn, you're fine. If you're preschool, you're f****d".

But the left has its own huge blind spots on this. They bewilder me often, though I get where they mostly come from. They come from TOO MUCH of a focus on our own wanton hypocrisy in the West.

The West: which supports Saudi Arabia while demonising Iran.

The West: which condemns illegal invasions by Russia yet conducts its own in Iraq.

The West: which declares its support of international law while failing to condemn Israel for anything at all.

The West: which champions freedom of speech yet locks up a celebrated journalist.

The West: which parades its 'values' while screwing over most of its citizens for 40 years and more.

The West: which lives in prosperity relative to the rest of the world only because it pillaged the rest of the world's money and resources for centuries.

And in a different but still appalling way, still does.

At some point - maybe early on through their experiences, maybe at some point at school or university - I think most people on the left have some kind of awakening.

"My God. We are just AWFUL".

But the problem is the mindset this then leads to.

A lot of people on the left are also optimists. Who wear their hearts on their sleeves and care about others: especially the most vulnerable.

But for any optimist, it's essentially too much to realise "we are awful - but the alternatives are all much worse".

Because that realisation is depressing as hell.

Some people have even acted in recent years as though Tory Britain is Ground Zero in unmitigated awfulness - and not appreciated just how (relatively) good they still have it compared with most people in this unfair, unjust world.

Optimism, in fact, is arguably part of the reason why some on the further left still believe in at least the theories behind communism.

Goodness knows, Marx was magnificent in his critiques of capitalism. But communism fails because it completely fails to understand human nature

Namely: that as well as the desire to work with each other, socialise and play with each other, live in communities with each other and love each other, we also have our own individual aspirations. Professional, educational, economic, romantic.

And one in particular that cuts across both sides. The desire that our children enjoy better lives than us.

A very large part of the reason why the West has failed in recent decades is because our children mostly DON'T enjoy better lives than us now.

Their lives are much more difficult economically and much more insecure: in their jobs, pay and housing.

And as it's so astronomically more difficult for them to afford to buy a home, that has huge knock-on effects on their ability even to afford a family before it's too late.

All of which is because of neoliberalism: in which wealth trickles (actually, funnels) up, not down - and rewards those with assets while penalising, forever, anyone without them.

Capitalism cannot work without access to capital.

And yet despite all of this - despite what a ghastly system neoliberalism (essentially, crony capitalism; capitalism of tax-dodging monopolies, widespread corruption, one rule for the powerful and another for everyone else) is - it's STILL a million times better under democracy.

Which is probably a hard thing to get your head around. So many people's lives are so hard in the rich world, how can it possibly be so much worse in most of the rest of the world? That's almost unimaginable, no?

But it is. Much much MUCH worse.

But again, go back to that point about optimism again. We're all so aware of the West's many ills and double standards, there's this kind of kneejerk desire to side with those who ostensibly, on the surface, 'stand up to the West'.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend".

So Castro's Cuba was (still is) constantly romanticised. Understandable in many ways: the US made all sorts of attempts at bumping him off but never succeeded.

Che Guevara is treated likewise. So is any leader claiming to be of the left who decries 'American imperialism'.

But that Che actually killed many people is completely ignored. That Castro jailed, tortured and executed political opponents is also ignored.

Likewise, that during the Spanish Civil War, the left conducted its own murderous purges of those *on the same side* is ignored too.

Then we have Venezuela. Whose "democratically elected government" (my backside) has presided over the worst refugee crisis in Latin American history, and an economic collapse unprecedented anywhere in peacetime.

6 million Venezuelans have fled. Yet are also ignored.

Instead, all too often, whenever someone points out the reality there, they find themselves attacked as a 'warmonger', or an 'imperialist', or a 'CIA shill'. It's unhinged. Where is your empathy for Venezuelans?

Or for Iranians living under a theocratic dictatorship which does not permit dissent, hangs homosexuals and treats women like chattel?

"1953" does not answer that. It was 69 years ago. Will it still be your answer in 2053? 2153? 3053?

Or, for that matter, for Iraqis. Who weren't exactly having a ball under Saddam Hussein.

He sent them into a ruinous war with Iran which cost a million lives. He gassed his own people. He completely terrorised his own people.

And if he hadn't been brought down, he'd have been replaced by his son. An absolute psychopath.

Who raped any woman he felt like. Who executed any woman who rejected him: including by FEEDING THEM ALIVE TO RAVENOUS DOGS.

Uday was Chairman of the Iraqi Football Association. His motivational speeches included threats to cut players' legs off, feed them to dogs... and if a player missed a training session even to attend a funeral, they were imprisoned.

A loss or a draw meant being flogged by an electric cable or a bath in raw sewage. A red card or missed penalty meant weeks and weeks of all this, and more.

Where is your empathy for them? Or Saddam's political opponents, who he killed by dissolving them alive in baths of acid?

Highlighting all this doesn't make the West's catastrophic invasion right in any way.

But we are so extraordinarily dismissive - frankly, deaf - to what happens to so many in brutal dictatorships.

Now, at length, let's turn to Russia.

The Red Army's role in the Second World War is often a cause celebre on the left. Understandably so given its extraordinary forebearance through a war of annihilation against the most evil tyranny the world has ever known.

Yet that same Red Army also carried out all sorts of unimaginable atrocities. Most notoriously, the Katyn Forest massacre. If you don't know about it, read up on it.

That same Red Army raped two million German women. And there's nothing understandable about that I'm afraid.

Not only that - but all those soldiers, all those conscripts, weren't human as far as Stalin was concerned. They themselves were chattel. Slaves.

Even their magnificent general, Georgy Zhukov, a national hero, was humiliated by Stalin after the war. His crime? Being too popular.

Yet that desire to blame the West for everything (because the West is awful) then sometimes leads to this weird effort to somehow overlook the sheer, unadulterated evil of Stalin.

Along with Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot, he was one of the four most evil men of the twentieth century.

An evil man who took forcible control of the whole of Eastern Europe, and simply subjugated it to his will.

We went to war to liberate Poland and Czechoslovakia from Nazi tyranny. They, along with all their neighbours, ended up under Stalinist and Soviet tyranny instead.

Where they had no right to express themselves. No right to any form of political dissent or opposition.

No right to do so many of the things which all of those reading this take completely for granted and would be completely lost without.

And if some of them summoned up the immense courage to rise up, they were killed. As in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1981 or in East Germany constantly.

Where barbed wire and a massive wall divided them from the free world. From their families and friends.

And in Romania? Has there ever been a country in all of history with so many orphans as Nicolae Ceaucescu's Romania?

Orphans abandoned to appalling places and subjected to massive, institutionalised neglect, physical and sexual abuse, even drugs to 'control' their behaviour.

All this was a product of Soviet expansionism and absolute tyranny.

All this - and much, much more: what I'm discussing here is just the tip of the iceberg of their still relatively recent experiences - is why the peoples of Eastern Europe are terrified of Russia.

They have no reason to trust Russia at all. They know their tragic, brutal histories in a way we in the West do not.

They need protection against being invaded by the same foe, the same aggressor: which will always be infinitely more powerful than they are.

So again: where is your empathy for them? Plenty on the left know all about the history of Western imperialism.

Then fall strangely quiet when it comes to Soviet/Russian imperialism, Chinese imperialism, or many other examples.

But it's worse than that. Much worse.

Russia is the largest country on Earth. Double the size of both the US and China, and home to the most extraordinary array of natural resources.

It has a population of 144m. Yet its GDP is lower than South Korea - which numbers just 52m. What does that tell you?

Indeed: we know how rich Russia is by looking at the gargantuan wealth of its oligarchs, Putin himself is the richest man in the world and his home cost way over a billion dollars to build.

Yet its people? Ordinary Russians? They live in a de facto slave state.

If you think the gulf between the richest and poorest is appalling in the West, try Russia. Where oligarchs and rich businessmen pay their workers crumbs.

Where the richest have done all their trade in euros or dollars. With everyone else stuck being paid in pathetic roubles.

Where a tiny coterie of criminals bought up ALL the nation's wealth and stole it from the people altogether.

Where pensions are a scandalous joke and enormous numbers of anyone over 50 have no job at all. And just sit at home watching TV blaring out state propaganda every day.

For 99% of Russians, there's no escape from this life. Ever.

Many of them are so desperate, they end up *grateful* for the tiny crumbs they live off. All their lives have been about subjugation, exploitation, and no right to ask for or aspire to anything more at all.

And if they try asking for more? They're imprisoned. If they try opposing the President, they may even be poisoned.

What happened to Navalny was just one of many, many such cases: which sent out a message to all Russians. "THIS will be your fate if you oppose me".

Try putting yourselves in their shoes. What kind of life is that?

What kind of life was it for Ukrainians whose wealth was stolen by Putin's puppet, Viktor Yanukovych: who embezzled it among his family and spread the rest among a group of criminals in the Donbass?

If you want to know why Ukraine elected such a 100% outsider, and why they've been so desperate for protection against Russia and for a European, outward-looking future, there's your answer.

It's because living at the mercy of Putin is beyond horrendous. As it was for all those who lived at the mercy of the USSR.

Where is your empathy for all these desperately poor, suffering, continually repressed people?

Where has your respect been for a people who, in Ukraine's case, DEMANDED better, and voted for it in a landslide?

And here's the thing. When states are run as Russia has been for so long or the Soviet Union was before that, what do their leaders do? They lie 100% of the time.

They create, quite literally, an alternative reality. Which is so disorienting, it demoralises the people even further.

No state in history has made anything like the same art form of lying as Russia has. It's almost admirable in the most perverse sort of way.

A huge amount of brilliantly sharp Russian humour is based on that art form, and on their people's history of endless repression and suffering.

Even the national anthem sounds like a proud homage to a history of never-ending misery.

But in 2014, something happened. Putin was so furious at his puppet being removed (no, not by the US - but by the Ukrainian Parliament, with elections held later that year) that he wanted revenge.

So he took that art form of lying about everything and a completely alternative reality and through his bots and troll farms, spread it across the West.

The impact? To disorientate us so completely that the UK and US, both supposed pillars of the free world, voted for massive self-harm.

Which long-established, historically successful democracies and civil societies not faced by catastrophic economic meltdown JUST DO NOT DO.

Suddenly, WE lived in a different reality too. In which facts were treated as equivalent to lies. In which unicorns were treated as though they were real.

In which Donald Trump and Boris Johnson lied about literally everything - including the blindingly obvious - yet won.

In which white nationalism and nativism rose, unthinkably, all over the liberal democratic West: most notoriously in the US, but the UK, France, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Spain, even Germany for a time.

And why? Because their media and especially their governments were captured.

Captured by energy dependence on Russia and the filthy lucre of Russian oligarchical money. A bottomless pit of cash on tap, totally unchecked by anyone.

So instead of challenging that alternative reality, the media and these governments actually SPREAD it instead.

The Republican Party, the most vehement opponents of Communism ever known, was captured altogether.
So when a Russian asset - whose businesses have been utterly dependent on laundered Russian billions for decades - attempted a coup against their country, many of them backed him.

And still back him even now. They back someone who tried to extort the Ukrainian government and force it to lie about Joe Biden's son.

In keeping with what a good government it is, the Ukrainian administration, despite its desperate need for help, refused.

Putin's actions, online and offline, ever since 2014 have ALWAYS been about Ukraine. He calculated that he could corrupt and split the West so completely that it would be weakened irrecovably.

And for a long, long, long time, he was right. Astoundingly right.

He calculated that our systems had fallen into such decadence and disrepair that we'd be only too happy to embrace that stolen wealth in return for allowing our societies to become based on post-truth.

On never-ending misinformation about literally everything.

He calculated that amid the chaos, most people in the West would become either utterly unable to or not even interested in separat(ing) fact from fiction, truth from lies - and that our billionaire-owned corporate media would help him hugely in that.

He was right.

Even now, there have been no consequences for Trump. No consequences for Johnson.

Despite two impeachments of and an attempted coup by the former and both the Russia Report and real, hard evidence that Russia interfered in Brexit with regard to the latter.

Both countries laid waste to. And Germany too: catastrophically energy dependent even now, with its former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder doing Gazprom's bidding.

Yet even now, despite all of this, everything we've all lived through, STILL many on the left swallow Putin's lies.

Lies about the 'threat' posed by NATO, which shares just 6% of the borders of the largest country in the world.

Lies about 'Nazis' and 'drug dealers' in the government in Kyiv: despite that government being open, outward looking, astonishing in its dignity and resilience.

Lies about the war itself - which it won't even call a war, to the extent of banning media websites which do. And anyone who does will be jailed for 15 years.

Lies even about the talks: which it conducts while BOMBING AND SLAUGHTERING CHILDREN.

Vladimir Putin is a product of the KGB. Arguably the most successful, notorious lying machine in human history.

He's gone on to become far and away the most successful, brilliant liar the modern world has ever known. With consequences for every single one of us.

And yes, the West has also told lies: most notoriously about Iraq, and before that, Vietnam too.

But it's never lied about EVERYTHING until very recent years. It's never not been rooted in evidence and reason until very recent years.

It's never treated ignorance as equivalent to knowledge until very recent years either.

In the West over the last 8 years, we've been given the merest glimpse of what it's like to live in Russia. Albeit with our (relative) wealth and privilege - unlike their abject poverty.

And guess what? Surprise surprise, huge numbers of accounts pumping out Russian lies about the war also happen to be...

- Trump supporters
- Hard Brexiteers
- Covid deniers
- Anti-vaxxers
- Mask refuseniks
- 'Plandemic / 'Great Reset' believers

That's how deep this has gone. It has completely riven us.

Given this, OF COURSE Putin thought annexing Ukraine would be easy. Until literally the last week, we've never given him any reason to think anything else. He'll have been laughing his head off at how easy it's been.

Until, at last, all those democratic societies who've spent the last 8 years turning on each other and surrendering to post-truth, populism and politics as a game were suddenly confronted by the harshest possible reality.

That even peace itself had gone.

And that THEY suddenly faced an existential threat too. To life on Earth at worst; but certainly to liberal democracy.

Cue, at last, awareness. Of how good all of us in the West actually have it. Of how precious democracy and liberal values truly are.

And how unthinkable it is to lose it and worse, actually be blown to pieces for trying to defend it.

All of which must have been profoundly confusing for all those who've spent the last 19 years attacking the West. Castigating every last thing about it.

For a lost generation failed totally by the West in economic terms; many of them in social terms too.

For many generations with the immense privilege never to have known the hideous poverty and cruelty of war.

NOW do you see what all those Eastern and Central Europeans who DO have experience of living under militarised, violent dictatorship have been so scared of?

NOW can you empathise with all those around the world desperate for a tiny sliver of the freedom we all enjoy?

NOW do you realise how powerful and compelling our values actually are?

Ukrainians were inspired by those values. It turned out, we needed to be inspired beyond imagination by them to remember what they even are.

But they are timeless.

Liberalism ISN'T a dirty word. *Neo*liberalism is.

And tyranny, invasion, dictatorship, subjugation and slaughter are all astronomically filthier than that.

If the last week hasn't taught you that, nothing ever will. /ENDS