Paul Goble
Staunton, October 31 – Russians are intently focused on the US presidential election, with some convinced that a Trump victory will be better for them and others that a Biden one will be. But both sides in this debate are focused almost exclusively on the question of sanctions and whether they will be lifted or strengthened.
But there is a far more interesting aspect to the Trump-Biden contest, one that few Russians are talking about but that may have profound consequences for their country and h ow the Putin regime will deal with its international competitors and domestic enemies, Rosbalt commentator Sergey Shelin says (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2020/10/30/1870828.html).
If Biden wins, he argues, this will become “a powerful step forward for a new American ideology which his party has subordinated itself to. One may call it progressivism, political correctness, new socialism or whatever. But it is important to understand that this is not a political doctrine of an ordinary kind.”
It is, in Shelin’s telling, “an aggressive civil religion or, what is the same time, neo-totalitarianism.”
“In America, almost all mass media, social networks, universities, and advanced firms willingly or unwillingly profess this new faith,” he continues. They purge those who don’t accept it and demand that the majority make sacrifices to help minorities which have suffered in the past.
It is often suggested that “Biden and other corrupt hypocrites of his kind are only short-term beneficiaries of the progressivist way who will soon be pushed out by young and really enflamed activists.” But it is a powerful “new religion” and its followers will use a Biden victory to expand their power in the United States.
If Trump wins, he and his supporters will continue to oppose this “progressive attack,” but they will only slow its arrival, not prevent the coming of “a bright future” as the progressives imagine. Demography and the establishment are on their side, and Trump’s base is on the losing end of the first and largely excluded from the second.
What this means is that sooner, in the event of a Biden win, or later, if Trump comes out on top, “the United States will come close to adopting an official ideology, very similar to that which the Putin regime has created and imposed.” Similar but in some ways exactly the opposite to be sure.
American society from below is promoting “the new totalitarianism” there, while in Russia, it is being imposed “from above.” There it is all about a progressive agenda; here it is about a reactionary one. The American variant is “anti-imperialist,” while the Russian one is imperial to the core.
The American variant is committed to preventing the feelings of minorities from being offended, Shelin continues. The Russian one is worried about defending the feelings of bureaucrats, policemen, priests, “and all who believe in the Soviet past.” In short, they are structurally similar but diametrically opposed.
That has consequences. It will certainly promote the growth of mutual hostility, especially in Russia as “our civic quasi-religion, thought up by not very bright and not especially self-confident people very much needs constant references to the existence of a horrific ideological opponent beyond the seas.”
Even now, Shelin says, “unmasking Western political correctness is a most important aspect of [Russian] state propaganda. If this political correctness wins the election and rises to a new level, then this new level will intensify the struggle against it” that the Putin regime will launch against the US and its Russian supporters, the domestic opposition.
That group will be “hit as pro-Western, and the more totalitarian the West becomes, the broader it will open itself [and its acolytes inside Russia] for such hits.” It could even prove to be the case that regardless of what happens with sanctions, this could become “a real gift for our regime.”
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