A dangerous mixture

Democracy, freedom, security, prosperity – some ideologues are indifferent to these achievements of the West. We have to accept that. But now, as Putin’s useful idiots, they could influence the course of the war in Ukraine.

Russia has been at war for two years now – against Ukraine, against the West. Two years in which we, the unscathed, have almost become accustomed to it. After initially following the beginnings of the Ukrainian spring offensive with hope, we are now resigned to the fact that, as many commentators believe, it has failed.

Moreover, since the brutal Hamas attack on Israel, our attention has shifted to the Middle East anyway. And with a view to the US elections and the mere thought that Donald Trump could become president again, we have already mentally embarked on the path to fatalism: it’s all over – for us in Europe, for the West as such. The good times are over, we’ve enjoyed them, save yourself if you can.

This is roughly how the current state of mind in a society spoilt by prosperity that has forgotten how to fight could be described at the beginning of this year. However, those who do not want to give in to this defeatism but want to continue living in a liberal democracy in the future fear the creeping victory of the Putin supporters, who play a role in the course of the war that should not be underestimated: this dangerous mixture of old leftists, staunch rightists, cranky conspiracy theorists and agile opportunists.
Of these, the opportunists are the least surprising. Turncoats were and are always ready and waiting in times of upheaval and offer themselves early on as reliable proxies for the potential winners. This was the case at the end of the ancien régime, at the time of the National Socialists and can also be seen now: parties, party exponents and other candidates for the new elite who allow themselves to be fed by Putin and take on the role of willing helpers in his strategy of destabilising Europe.

In the clutches of misinformation

We now also take supporters of conspiracy theories for granted. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, they still caused us considerable headaches, but we now know roughly what emotional states lead people to believe the crudest stories. However, the sheer number of people who still want to explain Putin’s war with NATO’s eastward expansion and other Russian myths is almost impossible to deal with in an open society.

What worries me most are the ideologues on both the right and the left who question our liberal achievements.

How can a systematic disinformation campaign, such as that proposed for Russia by the Russian chief ideologue Alexander Dugin back in 1997, be combated when reason is increasingly falling on deaf ears? The strategy has produced a frightening number of ‘useful idiots’ who, it seems, can hardly be freed from the clutches of misinformation.
What worries me most, however, are the ideologues on both the right and the left who question our liberal achievements and abandon them in the face of authoritarian temptations. This irritating motley crew includes anti-American and anti-capitalist pacifists as well as Russophile eternal Marxists, but also authoritarian anti-democrats, elitist conservatives and identitarian conservatives – in short: utopians and revisionists who all somehow believe that there can be another, better world, one that we do not yet know, or one as it once was and that had its good order.

Again and again I ask myself how it could have come to this – how it is possible that people are prepared to jeopardise the freedom we enjoy; that the co-determination we have in democracies is considered worthless; that the prosperity we have achieved is taken for granted.

As a consequence, we would have to renounce all of this if we really want to follow the path of socialist ‘equality’, that great old promise that has never been realised, or restore any kind of ‘natural order’ along racial, cultural or value lines. After all, the Kremlin is not pretending to have a regime of equality. On the other hand, it enforces its order with the utmost rigour – and makes little effort to disguise it as a constitutional democracy.

The prophet who was right after all

None other than Francis Fukuyama, who still – and even more so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – has to listen to the accusation that he was completely wrong with his prediction of the ‘end of history’, predicted precisely this development. Even if liberal democracies were able to offer everything that makes people’s lives easier and more beautiful – the freedom to vote, the right to participate as a democratic citizen, the opportunity to fulfil all their wishes in the face of prosperity and an abundance of choice – there would still be people who dislike precisely that. People who miss one thing above all in this rampant complacency: the fight.

The struggle for values, the struggle for recognition, the struggle for their own existence. Like Alexis de Tocqueville, Francis Fukuyama also saw the time coming when the promise of equality between people and their values would be overtaken by people’s desire for demarcation, for definition, for difference. The greatest danger of democracy, according to Fukuyama, would be its own confusion about what is really at stake.

The greatest danger of democracy

It seems to me that we are at this point today. Because how long the Russian war lasts – and, above all, how it ends – also depends on us: the West.

Anyone who believes, as a British military expert writes (in Foreign Affairs magazine), that the war of position has already been lost is not only giving up on Ukraine, but also on ourselves: the West, which credibly represents its values. On the other hand, those who use this year to equip and train the Ukrainian armed forces – as Russia is doing for itself – are giving the country, which has chosen the path of democracy and freedom for itself, a real chance. Because the Ukrainians are ready to fight. – Why are we hesitating? More on this in my next border tour.

BORDER CROSSINGS Op-ed by Katja Gentinetta, published at PRAGMATICUS