On the new neo-nazi editorial policies in the West
How I stopped worrying and learned to love the Ukraine cryo-sperm movement
I’ve never really been much for the Ukraine-nazi angle.
It’s not just an extremely loaded topic, but also tends to obscure the material geopolitical issues in favour of a simplistic notion of a binary “war guilt”.
But when you open the newspaper, and the op-eds therein are equivalent to the anti-Soviet black propaganda of Nazi Germany (except actually more explicit), well, you’ve just gotta take the bait, right? Such a dangling, juicy morsel can’t expect to slip away unnoticed.
So this brilliant headline actually managed to get my attention a couple of days back:
“OUR WAY TO PROCREATE AND SECURE THE IDENTITY OF UKRAINE”, the SvD reports (one of the two major dailies in Sweden), presenting, to our scandal-hungry eyes aching for their daily dose of war porn, a heroic mother musing about the certain genocide that Russia’s unfettered aggression must result in, unless, well, unless Russia is defeated, dismembered and privatized by Western multinationals (if you ask the paper’s other columnists).
The article continues lauding a cryo-sperm movement whose express purpose is to safeguard the “genetic heritage of Ukraine”:
“I will absolutely use your sperm if something happens to you. I want to see your face on our children, and want you to live on in that way,” she says.
But there is also something greater behind the couples’ decision to freeze semen.
“In the long run, it is about helping Ukraine live on, and to exist as a nation,” Viktoriya says. She wants to preserve the “genetic heritage” of the country.
“In that way, we are sowing a seed to resurrect our Ukraine after the war. This is just as much about safeguarding the DNA of the Ukrainian people as it is about forming our own little family.”
Right. And not a single word in this beautiful propaganda piece manages to question or contextualize these intentions. The reader is simply supposed to sympathize with ethno-nationalist objectives expressed through a discourse of scientific racism.
BECAUSE THAT’S HOW WE ROLL THESE DAYS
“Millions of Ukrainians have fled, and thousands have been killed,” she says.
More are feared to die, and millions may never return.
The Ukrainian identity and folksjälen (lit. “people’s soul”, frequently used in 19th century nationalist rhetoric; Volksseele is a frequent concept in Nazi ideology, not least in Hitler’s works and speeches) are under threat.
“This is nothing new,” Viktoriya emphasizes.
“People must understand that this war did not just start recently. Moscow has been trying to destroy Ukraine and our people for many years. Today’s war is like a genocide. We are now fighting for our existence and for future generations, which is why more Ukrainian children must be born.”
So the “people’s soul” is under threat. And this is not framed as a quote, it’s reported as a fact, a problem which must urgently be addressed through the reproduction of pure Ukrainian DNA.
YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE?
Let me give you a comparison. A sob story about white South African Boer farmers jacking off into huge vats of liquid nitrogen to PRESERVE THEIR GENETIC HERITAGE in the face of a purported imminent genocide at the hands of the black population.
You think the mainstream media would happily run with that equally reasonable (yeah, read: unreasonable) presumption of a calculated genocide? No?
So this is probably the most chilling example of Orwellian doublethink I’m yet to encounter in the media culture of the new normal. Perfectly explicit discourses of scientific racism are A-OKAY if they’re put in the mouth of the nice young nazis we happen to like at the moment, here affirming a genetic difference between Russians and Ukrainians so significant that it’s imperative to preserve semen on an industrial scale lest their singular biological heritage go extinct.
Of course there’s no such difference. You know, in actual reality.
At the very same time, the dominant narratives violently condemn the slightest hint that there’s a meaningful biological difference between the racial categories of colonial discourses. This is ANATHEMA, and tantamount to full formal apostasy in the church of woke neoliberalism.
(no, I don’t subscribe to any form of scientific racism. I’m Catholic. I believe the universal, immaterial aspects of human beings overshadow any and all potential differences of mere biology)
So there’s an almost psychotic doublethink in play here. There’s an explicit revival of the discourses, narratives and symbols of classical fascism, clearly integrated into the system’s integration propaganda.
Simultaneously, there’s an opposite tendency of increasingly ferocious condemnation of these very same patterns of thought and communication when they manifest in the lower rungs of the status hierarchy.
The predominant question, then: how do you make people affirm both of these positions at the same time, seemingly oblivious of the crippling cognitive dissonance?
And how, pray tell, how do you knock people out of the groove once they’re firmly in place?
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.
…
Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as DOUBLETHINK.
(Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Oh yeah, on a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AND UNRELATED NOTE, I guess you heard about the Roald Dahl & Ian Fleming revisions?
This is not censorship. It’s not the mere blotting out of words, or the taping over of forbidden images in manuscripts while publishing the obviously manipulated material.
No, this is far worse. It’s the deliberate falsification of the written work. The presentation of a counterfit as if it were the original.
And it’s not so much the act itself that’s horrifying. It’s that the bare thought itself does not cause immediate revulsion in the perpetrators, that it’s not recognized for what it is, for spelling the end of history, of the humanities, of every scientific discipline of civilization.
Really, of every human tradition of knowledge down to hunter-gatherer societies’ deliberate memorization of plant properties.
The deliberate enthroning of the lie as authoritative truth.
+++
edit: some comments from John and responses from me
john steppling, [2023-03-01 09:09]
johan, you were not really much on the ukraine nazi angle? how is that? I mean its interesting to me because its foundational to the entire discussion of Ukraine I think. It has deep resonant historical ties. I mean i even felt that in Poland before any of this happened. In the early 2000s.... we had ukrainians coming to krakow...and much discussion from them on how hitler wasnt such a bad guy....misunderstood.
Johan Eddebo (Laughlyn), [2023-03-01 09:10]
I think it's correct, my point is just that I think it's... Rhetorically difficult to utilize
You get into this Godwin's law situation immediately, which is also part of the entire strategy
john steppling, [2023-03-01 09:12]
i disagree
john steppling, [2023-03-01 09:13]
i have no problem using it rhetorically, I have to say. In fact I think its a mistake not to use it. Those ties to WW2 pogroms are pretty important.
john steppling, [2023-03-01 09:13]
in what way do you get into godwins law?
john steppling, [2023-03-01 09:15]
the ian fleming estate is embracing the censoring, or re writing. Which is, i guess, not surprising
Johan Eddebo (Laughlyn), [2023-03-01 09:16]
maybe the rest of the text makes it a bit clearer - I think the nazi aspects are crucial, but as soon as you raise them, you get painted out as an insane Putin propagandist and [people] immediately stop listening
but this is such a good example that it should force everyone to face up to the issue
Johan Eddebo (Laughlyn), [2023-03-01 09:16]
I mean, this stuff is WORSE than what the neo-nazis at the Daily Stormer put out there
Johan Eddebo (Laughlyn), [2023-03-01 09:17]
but maybe you're right, maybe one shouldn't stop talking about the nazi connections. maybe it's just that I'm uncomfortable raising them
john steppling, [2023-03-01 09:17]
ok....here's the thing. I disagree with godwins law. I think thats a weird white smug sort of concept to discourage history. BUT....i think you put yourself in a difficult if not impossible situation if you avoid topics because you will be called a putin apologist That train left the station long ago
On the new neo-nazi editorial policies in the West
“And it’s not so much the act itself that’s horrifying. It’s that the bare thought itself does not cause immediate revulsion in the perpetrators, that it’s not recognized for what it is, for spelling the end of history, of the humanities, of every scientific discipline of civilization.”
Yep. I’m beyond horrified at this. It’s as bad as book-burning. Probably worse. And the fact that it’s being perpetrated by “my” side (although I’m coming to identify less and less with the Left, now considering myself as part of the ever-growing cadre of “politically homeless”) is beyond horrifying. What is happening to us?
Do ethnicity and heritage reside in the genes?