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Western countries want to simply ignore Russia’s existence.
Written by Lucas Leiroz, research fellow in international law at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
The so-called “cancel culture” has become commonplace in the West. It is a very totalitarian way of reacting to political stimuli, simply trying to “ignore” the existence of people, movements and organizations with ideas that do not share the hegemonic liberal discourse. In the international arena, this culture is beginning to emerge on the part of the West against non-aligned states. This is the current case of the crisis in Ukraine. Western states have adhered to a “state cancel culture”, through which it is planned to simply ignore the existence of the Russian Federation.
Exclusion from the financial system, flights ban, eliminations from cultural and sporting events and even boycotting trademarks. Apparently, Russia has been “cancelled” from the globalized world because of its special operation in Ukraine. While sanctions against Moscow were expected, trying to “imagine” that Russia does not exist seems a truly exaggerated and surprising move. And this reveals an extremely authoritarian facet of the liberal West.
Not only the governments are implementing abusive sanctions on Russia, but also private companies continue to announce the progressive cancellation of the country. The shipping corporations Maersk and MSC Cargo, for example, have indefinitely suspended the transport of goods to or from Russia. YouTube has blocked channels linked to the Russia Today TV network and the Sputnik portal. Apple also removed Russian apps from the App Store and stopped selling its products in the country. Oil companies BP, Shell and Norway’s Equinor have cut ties with their Russian partners. Multinational car manufacturing companies have stopped production in Russia. Boeing and Airbus also stopped operations. And even in the cultural arena there are sanctions, like Warner canceling the release of the new Batman movie there.
In the sports scenario, the punishments also have been severe. Russian clubs are banned from European competitions and the Russian national team excluded from the next World Cup. The International Olympic Committee is also banning Russian athletes from its upcoming events. In addition, the international judo and taekwondo federations revoked Vladimir Putin’s black belt in both martial arts.
Indeed, there seem to be “bans” everywhere. American stores are banning Russian products. An Italian university canceled an academic event about Dostoevsky simply because he was a Russian author. At an international pet beauty event, cats with Russian owners were excluded. And several other maneuvers have been reported in different parts of the world. The objective seems very clear: to ignore the existence of Russia.
This has even happened within the UN itself, where speeches by Russian officials have been ignored in recent days, with listeners withdrawing from auditoriums during the pronouncements. More serious than that, recently, spokespersons from Washington and London have started talking about the possibility of eliminating Russia’s permanent seat at the Security Council, which sounds like an absurd coup attempt at the heart of the organization.
These maneuvers reveal a very serious problem in contemporary Western society, which is the impossibility of rational dialogue between opposing ideas. Western governments are not willing to listen to the reasons why Russia decided to carry out the operation in Ukraine. Russian arguments and data about Kiev’s genocidal practices in the Donbass are ignored and Russia is treated as a “global enemy”. As a war between nuclear powers is virtually impossible to occur without generating the end of humanity, the West’s bet is to launch a kind of “non-military total war”, acting in the economic and cultural arena, and excluding Moscow from the Washington-led globalization.
Fortunately, however, globalization is no longer an American “property”, being operated by several non-aligned agents in a process of gradual economic and geopolitical multipolarization. Russia and China are strengthening their ties more and more, guaranteeing from Beijing to Moscow a material support capable of filling much of the void left by the Western “cancellation”. The same tends to happen with Belarus and all Moscow-allied countries that suffer from Western sanctions.
From a realistic perspective, it is more likely that the Western attempt to cancel Russia will generate as a side effect a major motivation in the construction of a multipolar world, as it will further force Moscow to strengthen ties with Beijing and seek to consolidate alternative plans of international cooperation. The West is putting an end to its own “Western globalization” and driving new globalizing processes in which Washington’s influence will be null.
The Western media claims that Russia is “alone”, but ties to China show that this is not true. No country that has the world’s second-largest economy as an ally is truly “alone” – even more so considering the BRI’s global route. China’s partners tend to become Russian partners as well, and this prevents any form of “isolation” as planned by the West.
In fact, cancel culture is wrong in itself and must be fought. This culture is reprehensible when applied to individuals and organizations, and even more so when converted into state policy. It is not ethically acceptable for Western powers to try to create a kind of simulated reality in which the biggest country in the world does not exist. This type of measure, in addition to being totalitarian and extremist, is ineffective in its aims and tends only to failure – and the West will understand this soon.
HXDNH
As it has become obvious, there is no reason for Russia not to either install a pro-russian government, or, simply annex the whole country. since there is nothing else, nor words or acts, in the west’s “feasable” arsenal, that haven’t already been used, Russia shouldn’t back down or be content with just a “neutral” country or denazification/demilitarization, it has to make this pain worthwhile, Ukraine has huge food production potential, and with the proper investment (china, India etc…) can turn into an industrial region again.
No. Russia doesn’t want or need Ukraine.
Occupation is the wet dream of NATO.
Of course they will occupy at least eastern part. No way all of this just to sign some worthless guarantees of neutrality.
It could just be a mandatory act in its new constitution. Like the US had on its colonies : “we reserve the right to coup, intervene if some rebellious shit happens”. No need to occupy. The only thing Russia needs to do with Ukraine is to keep Russian capitalists’ greed at bay and resist the temptation to exploit Ukraine’s labour/resources etc. If Russia can on the contrary develop Ukraine there will be no Ukrainian left to keep crying for Europeanisation.
ukraine is a liability—when Ukraine is denazified, demilitarized they will be ignored—although they have already permanently lost expanded Donbass, and Crimea….maybe they are stupid enough to lose Odessa also
The wests actions only boomerang back to harm itself.
Western Govts don’t represent western views…only the views of those that are easily led by opinion makers and those multiple media outlets that all seem to push the same agenda.
The US media is trash, it’s pretty obvious they’ve found a new orange man bad. They literally said these exact things about Trump. Many of us know better, some think boys should play girls sports.
Russia needs to turn to the east in terms of political, economic and military partnerships. The US and its NATO/EU led by the nose vassals cannot be trusted. Russia’s relationship will now become even more important. Not only did the PRC have the second largest GDP in 2021 (equivalent of $18 TRILLION) but is now larger than that of the EU ($15.73 TRILLION). (Source: China Ministry of Commerce and EuroStat). Russia also needs to increase economic ties to India, Vietnam and the Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN). This will offset the loss of business with Uncle Shmuel and his minions.
It goes to show just how ultimately powerful the mass media is in controlling the perception of the world. Everything Russia is now bad and demonized. Even all the Russian oligarch yachts are being seized. Talk about minority rights.
Agree. Democracy in the US is a hoax. All media outlets conforming to The Narrative, just as with COVID. Repugs and Democats all agree? Well, that must be the Truth. Same thing happened when Iraq was invaded. 95% of voters were brainwashed into believing it was totally justified, would be over in two weeks and we would be greeted as Liberators. Hard to find the truth and most just do not have time for that.
If we even question this put loud, we get accused of being Russian agents. A lot more are with Russia than you think. Every time some idiot like Soros stands up for Ukraine, more say, hey wait a minute. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Another disinformation piece aiming to obfuscate jewish control of the West. The foundational philosophy of the so-called “cancel culture” movement is Critical Theory, which was invented by the jews at the Frankfurt school (Institute for Social Research) in Germany. Critical Theory is a weapon of mass psychological warfare that combines Marxist-analysis ( Marx was jewish) together with Freudian psychoanalysis (Freud was jewish)…they also weaponized the concept of political correctness. These psychological weapons were designed to be used on christian populations…which is why the West succumbed to them so rapidly. All christian countries are now under the control of the jewish NWO, including Russia. The reason Russia hasn’t gone the way of the West is because the jews need them to be the antagonist to the “woke” Western powers, in order to facilitate a massive war…which will allow the jewish banksters to rake in Trillions of dollars AND reduce the white-male population in all the affected countries (see the Kalergi plan) as much as they can. Simultaneously, all Western countries are now being flooded with low-IQ Africans (90% are young males) and non-white Middle-Eastern refugees (from the wars started by the US). 15-20 years from now they’ll be doing the exact same thing in Russia, and the remaining christian countries.
I completely agree with you here. The West if not the world has a huge jewish problem.
The jews totally control the media in the US, and most of Europe; they totally control the banking and finance in the US and Europe; the control the arts and entertainment industry including almost all professional sports franchises AND virtually all the pornography in the world today; and the totally control the public education systems in the US, and most of Europe, especially at the University level. The article talks about “Washington-led globalization” without mentioning the World Economic Forum (or the Young Global Leaders program which literally trains globalist leaders! Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Viktor Orban, and hundreds of other globalist leaders, are graduates of the WEF’s Young Global Leaders program)…Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the WEF, is jewish.
Other races are not lower. Illegal immigrants are just terrorists not of lower race.
are you. this stupid?
Cried the jew!
Cancel culture is perfectly fine. Apply all those measures to genocidal Israel and the world would cheer. Btw it was called boycott before. I don’t know why have to modernize our lexicon if it’s too add nothing new.
It’s true that the embargo warfare of the US is only accelerating the US’ demise. We should stop complaining about them so much and start building the alternatives. We need a new YouTube, a new Olympics, a new UN. Let’s see… What else?
Extremely ugly.
They (west) aren’t listening to Russia because the 99+% of western civilians are lazy fing morons who allow the “leaders they don’t trust within its own borders” demonization of a country they couldn’t point to on a map.
Syria proves the immorality and impotence of the anglosphere/NATO….ukraine is the last nail in the NATO coffin