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means to me is you are not even curious as to the scale of international agreement ("truth") presented to you; that apparently, you were unaware of EC actions devolving EU27 "sovereignty"; that you have limited understanding of "the narrative" and the scope of information broadcast beyond EU27 to the rest of the world, notwithstanding collapse of the Four Pillars under your feet; and, ironically, ESCOBAR's perception  of indifference within France to political disagreement beyond France is not stereotype. Being otherwise pre-occupied transliterating K(yi)(ie)v to the roman alphabet, you might have dismissed this 'clearly defensive' offensive observation.
ESCOBAR: The problem is, and I see it as a much more perverse problem compared to the US, where most people  are de-politicized and they live, of course, all of us who lived in the US know about the steady 24/7 diet of trash that they are, you know, regurgitating every day. But even in Europe and among so-called progressive, deep thinking, and politicized populations in places like Germany, France, Italy, most of the masses are also falling for it. This is the real. I've been discussing this with friends in Germany, in Italy. In France it's impossible. I don't even try to have a conversation in France, because the French are blocked, completely blocked. But in Italy, in Germany, for instance, analysts there are of course outside of the mainstream. Academics, they are marginalized. They are absolutely apalled. Apalled especially in Germany, because ah--the other day we were trying to laugh about it--we came to the conclusion that Putin, the Germans owe something to Putin. In historical terms it's quite impressive. Putin managed to get the Germans to get off their World War II culpability complex. Now, they can openly embrace Nazis again. So the de-natzification company launched by Putin in Ukraine, the first, serious, practical consequence there, sitting right in front of us is the re-nazification of Germany
[...]
And then we get to the very serious aspect of the whole circus, kabuki or performance, which is the criminalization of descent mixed with russophobia and mixed with racism. They are all, of course. So the racism against arabs and chinese which was very profound, now merge into russophobia, and they're making direct comparisons to both that are detrimental to slavs and to arabs. They say, for instance, like, now it's a mantra in the US. Oh, I don't know, Ukraine is a civilizaed country. They are blond, blue eyes, like us. They are not those piece of nah nah nah places that we invaded before, you know, Iraq, Libya, these things. And this is being said openly all across the US, west media, and some in Europe. I have seen already instances in France and Germany are reproducing the same thing.

MEDHURST: It's mask off.
ESCOBAR: Exactly. There's a sort of inate russophobia in many places in Europe. In the case of France it's something extremely subtle. But I was discussing with some french analysts the other day--okay, people we can still have a conversation with--an one of them told me something extraordinary: So of course we never got rid of Napoleon. So they are still jealous and angry with Russia, because Napoleon was obviously two-hundred years ago vanquished not by General Winter but by Russians. So this is the french aspect to it. Obviously, Germans and Russians, we all know the precedents especially the latest one sevety-five. But in the case of Italy, for instance, you see the owner [ECB], literally, of Draghi-stan going to the senate in Rome and basically issuing a declaration of war against Italy. Consider that relations between Italy and Russia have always been friendly at least for the past seventy-five years and during all of the gestation of the European Union.

by Cat on Mon Mar 7th, 2022 at 07:44:50 PM EST
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