‘Dark Forces’ on the March in Russia and the World, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, January 16 – Those who would like to return the world to a medieval one in which anyone who questions the articles of faith of a religion or a nation are once again on the march, and nowhere more ominously than in the Russian Federation where they are trying to impose a “clerical-fascist” regime, according to Igor Eidman.

 

            Such people, often referred to as “the dark forces” from an early16th century attack on them by German humanists against obscurantism and fanaticism have always been present, but they have seldom been as prominent as they are now or more dangerous to others than they are now, the Moscow commentator says (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=54B7A1B73A388).

 

            And it is time to organize in opposition to them using the best weapons available: laughter at the absurdity of their positions, something they cannot withstand, and force when necessary to oppose their murderous actions against others, actions intended to make people believe their symbols, myths and rituals of “the dark forces” are “more important than reality.”

 

            The world has watched and reacted with horror to the Charlie Hebdo affair in Paris, he writes, but it has devoted less attention to the march of the same kind of dark forces in Russia, to those in Moscow who talk about “sacrilege” against state ideology as the Kremlin propagandists now do or seek to ban films as “anti-church” as some have asked the culture ministry to do.

 

            The “dark people” want to impose their rules on everyone and everything. “They want, as in medieval times, to limit our creative search by their dogmas. To agree to that is to condemn oneself to spiritual slavery to the clericals.” They must be exposed and fought; otherwise, Eidman suggests, they will expand their actions.

 

            In the world today, 500 years after the “dark forces” pamphlet was written, there are three kinds of countries. There are those, including a significant part of the Muslim world, where people still live in medieval conditions with regard to freedom. And there are those, in Europe, where people live in 21^st century freedom.

 

            But there is a third group, and Russia is part of it, where there is “a struggle between the forces of medievalism, that is, those of these ‘dark peoples,’ and those who want to live in the 21^st century.”  Putin and Patriarch Kirill, “the Islamist Kadyrov,” and their backers are all working to restore a medieval “clerical-fascist regime.”

 

            They must be opposed by all those who value freedom, Eidman concludes, and with all possible means -- especially with laughter and irony, often the most powerful weapons against those “dark forces” be they Islamist or Putinist.