It’s a Disaster for Everyone when, as in Putin’s Russia, Abusers Rise to Power, Nikulin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 14 – Among men, there is a certain share of men who unconsciously feel their own weakness seek to compensate by dominating women in their lives, a terrible crime in its own right but one that becomes even worse when as a result of crises in their societies, such men find themselves in positions of political power, Andrey Nikulin says.
    Then, unable to take on the stronger in society, they search out those who are weaker and do whatever they can to oppress them so as to feel themselves strong, even though what they are doing is of course a manifestation of their own weakness, the liberal Russian blogger says (t.me/HUhmuroeutro/36527 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6735AB34CB8FE).
    In healthy societies, abusers are disdained and punished, Nikulin continues, “but when crises arise in social institutions, it is precisely these people who “because of their cohesion as a group and enormous reserve of destructive energy and aggression periodically begin to dominate.”
    When that happens, he says, “then the time of a search for enemies, totalitarianism, repression, and demonstrative persecution and the limitation of rights of those whom they seek to put on their knees begins,” something such people are able to do either by “taking advantage the stunned apathy of society or by infecting a significant part of it with their destructive ideas.”
    Those given to abuse in small things feel weakness in others and take advantage of it, but there is a real problem: “a significant part of the energy that feeds such aggressors is involved in the banal sublimation of their own failures as men … and when choosing whether to develop and grow or to put pressure on and weaken others,” their choice is preordained.
    That is what is taking place in Russia and of course in some other countries as well; and it is proving a disaster wherever it happens.