Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 22 – Most
commentators have suggested that Vladimir Putin is supporting the Russian extreme
right to force the governments of Germany and other European countries to lift
sanctions against his country, Igor Eidman says; but in fact, Putin’s goals are
“much more ambitious.” He wants to change the nature of European countries and
of Europe.
“The goal of Russia’s information
and lobbying attack is to change Germany society,” Eidman says, “to destroy its
liberal foundations and to set it against European integration. Only after
having changed Germany could Putin find a common language with it and make it
his ally” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=56C9C281DE474).
Moscow’s chief instruments in this
effort include “propaganda of xenophobia, dirty information technologies, the
export of corruption, and the buying off of elites.”
Until recently, “many leaders of
European countries were friends of Putin,” but Chancellor Angela Merkel “showed
from the very beginning that she would not make friends with the former
Chekist,” at least in part because she is the only West European leader who
grew up under communism and thus understands what her “Russian partner”
represents.
Because of her resistance to him, Merkel is
Putin’s chief target; and his “immediate goal is to achieve her retirement from
office.” Unfortunately, “there are several categories of Germans who are
helping Putin” in this effort: “deceived or false leftists, ultra-right
ideological supporters of Putin, ‘pragmatic’ businessmen who for short-term
profit are prepared to condemn their country to long-term problems,” and those
who simply take bribes and payoffs.
“The strangest and most unnatural of
these are the leftists,” Eidman says, given that they must know that “in Putin’s
Russia rule all that the German leftists are struggling against in Germany and
on a bestial scale: social inequality and the violation of labor rights,
corruption and arbitrariness of the police, pollution by corporations and the
seizure of free urban spaces, racism and homophobia, sexism and clericalism, an
imperial foreign policy and militarism.”
A second category of “’Putin’s
helpers’” are pragmatic businessmen, he continues. Their attitudes are not that
surprising given that Lenin reminded the world that capitalists will always be
ready to sell the rope that will hang them. Now, tragically, some business
types are “prepared to sell Putin the rope he hopes to use to hang European
democracy.”
When they oppose sanctions, these
business people think that “they are simply defending the interests of German
business. In reality, however, they are helping the Putin regime to stabilize
the economic situation and to find the resources for expansionist activities in
the international arena, for an ideological and information attack on democracy
in Europe.”
The most active “friends of Putin”
in Germany are “those who participate in projects paid for by Moscow” and thus
do so for selfish interests. “The
Russian authorities are buying up wholesale and retail German politicians,
journalists and ‘experts.’ By corrupting the German elite, the Kremlin not only
achieves loyalty to its policies but also changes Germany and destroys its
democratic and law-based state.”
But in Germany there are many who
support Putin because they share his views, Eidman says. These include in the
first instance the far right. They would like their country to become like Russia
today, and they often chant that “Merkel should be sent to Siberia, and Putin
summoned to Berlin.” They and Moscow have been especially energized by the
migrant crisis.
“In Russia,” Eidman concludes, “government
propaganda long ago made liberalism and tolerance practically curse words. The
Russian authorities are trying to promote the same attitudes in German public
opinion. Merkel’s retirement is only an
intermediate step for the Kremlin. It really wants Germany to become like
Russia, “reactionary, clerical and xenophobic.”
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