The one by the Georgian Prime Minister.
Did they howl him down for his eye-watering corruption and his total lack of legitimacy?
Did they scorn the egging on his warmongering by John McCain as the mouthpiece for the treason of Randy Scheunemann?
Did they echo yesterday’s exuberant celebration of the Abkhazian national day?
Not a bit of it.
So the hall, no less than the platform (about which we knew anyway), is replete with people who are simply not conservatives at all.
Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh have never been governed in practice by post-Soviet Georgia, Moldovo or Azerbaijan. Nor were they ever part of pre-Soviet Georgia, Moldavia or Azerbaijan. Do they want, as Kosovo did and as Chechnya does, to join globalisation, European federalism, American military-industrial hegemony, and the militant Islam to which those forces pretend to be opposed but are in fact closely allied?
After all, look at 1980s Afghanistan, at 1990s Bosnia, and at today’s Kosovo, Chechnya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Look at how a bulwark against Islamic militancy has been taken out in Iraq, with all the predictable consequences. Look at how the global capitalist economic system depends on mass migration, not least to the West from the Islamic world. And look out for Xinjiang.
Do the people of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh want into this? Or do they want out of states moving in that very direction? The latter. They therefore deserve full recognition and every possible support.
Russia is leading that recognition and support. In common with all the Slavs, Russia is the gatekeeper of the Biblical-Classical synthesis that is the real West, not the secularised, consumerised, de-historicised, borderless, culturally debased, morally bankrupt pseudo-West, a wasteland without an Eliot, aimlessly waiting to be incorporated into the Dar al-Islam.
Furthermore, the South Ossetians, at least, are Russian-speaking Russian citizens. Whereas what have we ever done for the world’s peoples of English speech, British descent, or both? We did nothing to protect them, first from the Boers’ revenge republic, and then from the hopeless Mbeki, never mind the repulsive Zuma. Thatcher refused to recognise the Muzorewa Government, instead holding out for the Soviet-backed Nkomo as if he would have been any better than the Chinese-backed Mugabe. And so forth.
Russia’s pride is Britain’s shame.
And today, it is very much the Tories’ shame.
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"Russia is the gatekeeper of the Biblical-Classical synthesis that is the real West, not the secularised, consumerised, de-historicised, borderless, culturally debased, morally bankrupt pseudo-West, a wasteland without an Eliot, aimlessly waiting to be incorporated into the Dar al-Islam."
ReplyDeleteWould you please stop copying and pasting from your previous immortal writings. In any case, any religious revivals in the west have eventually subsided during the last couple of centuries. Moreover, some recent reports have suggested support for Al Queda is in decline in places where it was previously strong.
"Secularised" - people are sufficiently free not to buy in to ancient myths anymore, unless they choose to. Presumably you have no time for 'critical theology'.
"Consumerised" - as opposed to living in ascetical poverty presumably.
"De-historicised" - thankfully Karl Popper long ago exposed 'historicism' as the authoritarian projection it is in general - in Plato as much as Marx. Actually, the section on Hegel in "The Open Society" would embarrass any remaining proponents of the 'war on terror'.
"Borderless" - very many of us rather like the mix of cultures immigration has provided; it is sad (and disturbing) you do not.
"Culturally debased, morally bankrupt" - we might have guessed you think this.
"Pseudo-West" - thankfully the admiration you and Neil Clark seem to have for the most dubious kind of capitalism as espoused by Putin seems to have become rather exclusive these days. "Gatekeeper of the Biblical-Classical synthesis" - so that's why opponents of Putin keep being murdered?
"In any case, any religious revivals in the west have eventually subsided during the last couple of centuries."
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary, we are due one right about now.
"Presumably you have no time for 'critical theology'."
If you mean liberal theology, no. It's a busted flush, and that is pretty much the academic consensus these days.
" "Consumerised" - as opposed to living in ascetical poverty presumably."
As opposed to an absence of literally bank-breaking greed, among other things.
"Karl Popper long ago"
Quite.
As in theology, so in philosophy and the history of ideas...
"so that's why opponents of Putin keep being murdered?"
Not compared to the enemies of his enemies, they don't.