The Russian ambassador was killed in Ankara on the evening of Dec. 19 . The killer, a 22-year-old Turkish graduate of the police academy who had been fired in July after being deemed untrustworthy, fired 11 bullets into the ambassador’s back as he finished addressing the attendees at the opening of the Russia Through Turkish Eyes photo exhibit.
Since the murderer was killed by a detachment of police who arrived a few minutes after the tragedy, the upcoming investigation is unlikely to lead back to those who ordered this crime. Obviously this was not the work of the Turkish government – this murder was specifically intended to disrupt the process of rebuilding the dialog between Russia and Turkey spanning a wide range of issues – from resolving the situation in Syria to shipping natural gas to Europe. Many point to Daesh’s underground network in Turkey – but it should be understood that that is under the full control of the Turkish authorities and the cover operation now being conducted by the authors of this campaign of intimidation is intent on convincing the world that the Islamists are beyond anyone’s control and too reckless to be kept in check. The gunman was likely an agent from Mossad or a Western intelligence service who was passing himself off as a covert terrorist, which would be an entirely plausible story for a young man who had found himself in difficulties. The shots that rang out in an Ankara gallery of contemporary art a few minutes after a plane carrying Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu turned toward Moscow were also intended to overshadow his visit (which turned out not to have been worthwhile, based on the negotiations).
By and large this act of terrorism was a desperate, angry move by figures at the backstage in the global theater who have lost this round in Syria.
Back in October we wrote about how the events in Syria are in no way a local conflict, but rather reflect a clash between powerful forces, one demanding “freedom of capital” and the other – protecting freedom of the soul. These high stakes explain the unprecedented campaign of lies that major transnational news outlets have launched in recent weeks concerning the state of affairs in Aleppo with their baseless accusations that the Syrian army and its allies have committed war crimes. The propaganda has become so ferocious that Syrian, Russian, and alternative sources of information that report on the real situation in Syria have been accused of fabricating a “parallel universe.” It’s hard to believe, but people who are well aware that the “documented evidence” that they are presenting as “proof of the regime’s atrocities” was actually filmed say, somewhere in Egypt still have the audacity to claim that their reporting reflects “reality” and that anything inconsistent with that is something “parallel.”
The fanatical faith of the devotees of “freedom of capital” in the “sanctity” of their “civilizing” mission, which they see as the only path, can be attributed to nothing but this entirely Trotskyist psychic phenomenon (that the end justifies the means).
The result of the astonishing intellectual selectivity of these blind guides (or Intellectual Yet Idiots, as the Lebanese-American scholar Nassim Taleb has called them) was recently clearly exhibited by a US correspondent for the Norwegian mainstream newspaper Aftenposten. He was covering the press conference held by Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist and activist with the International Syria Solidarity Movement, in the United Nations building in New York on December 9. That Norwegian correspondent challenged her on one point and her reply resonated throughout social networks for the next few days.
Among other things, she declared that the volunteer group known as the White Helmets, although so renowned in the West, is entirely unknown in Aleppo (another activist with the Syria Solidarity Movement, Vanessa Beeley, recently published a detailed investigation of these terrorist accomplices). Aftenposten interweaves its usual propaganda with photos and videos from highly dubious sources supporting the insurgents and condescendingly notes, referring to UN humanitarian official Jan Egeland, that “no one in Aleppo has ever heard of the UN either.”
To Russians, who continually find themselves up against a similar lack of coherence in the way Europeans think of their country (whether in the imaginary “Russian threat” to the Baltics, “aggression in the Donbass,” or the “occupation of Crimea”), such metamorphoses are interpreted as “Russophobia.” But it seems that the problem goes much deeper.
A favorite catchphrase for most US and European politicians is “Western values.” This slogan is invariably trotted out whenever they need to force someone else to agree to some decision that is essential to the West, while anyone who opposes them is declared an enemy of these values and is subjected to ostracism, sanctions, condemnation, or even destruction. Few realize that that concept is now widely used within a context that has nothing to do with axiology (the study of values), but which is at its heart merely a political mythology. An impartial analysis of Western values, especially in comparison with those held by Russians, gives a very clear answer to the question as to why Russia, although it seems to no longer have any fundamentally new ideological project to offer the world, is emerging as the new “shining city upon a hill” for a growing number of people across the globe.
First of all, when Western ideologues attempt to define the concept of Western values, they usually cite a dozen or so stock phrases such as “democracy,” “tolerance,” “a strong civil society,” “the rule of law,” and “political pluralism,” all of which were divorced from their original meanings long ago. In fact, only provincial Europhiles and American students in liberal arts colleges believe in these mottos anymore. On the contrary, the difference between the word (“democracy”) and the deed (utterly suppressing dissent and ordering the overthrow of legitimate regimes in objectionable countries) has become one of the most important tools used by the West to promulgate its quasi-values, which are actually fronts for its true expansionist interests.
Let us turn to a comparative table of the actual value systems of the contemporary West vs. Russia:
The West
Russian (Eurasian) civilization
- globalism
- a multi-polar world
- universality
- the diversity of identities
- the superiority of the Western world (Western civilization as a model)
- all civilizations are equal and sovereign
- limitless progress
- movement forward without destroying the old
- material prosperity
- spiritual and social development
- multiculturalism
- internationalism (the brotherhood of nations)
- a society that is open to migrants
- (at the expense of the native-born population)
- a strict migration policy
- (the protection of the interests of the native-born population)
- political pluralism
- the spiritual communion of an entire society (“sobornost”)
- a strong civil society
- a society in solidarity
- the bourgeoisie (the primacy of the propertied classes)
- communitarism (the primacy of the majority)
- agnosticism, atheism, and secularization
- faith (traditional religions)
- a preference for newly formed religions and sects
- a preference for traditional religions and a rejection of sects
- gender equality (the feminization of men and masculinization of women)
- the preservation of natural gender differences and traditions
- same-sex marriages and surrogate motherhood
- the traditional family
- sex “education” in schools
- moral education in schools
- support of the LGBT community at the expense of the traditional majority
- the identification of non-traditional sexual orientation as an abnormality
- juvenile justice that includes the legal protection of children from their parents
- the exclusive right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, up to a certain age
- the right to euthanasia
- a ban on euthanasia and a focus on improving pain relief
- the right to clone
- a ban on cloning
- individualism
- various forms of collectiveness
- freedom defined as the utmost rejection of social taboos
- freedom defined as alignment with the (Divine) ideal
- the law means justice
- justice above the law
- formal tolerance
- genuine forbearance and compassion
- political correctness
- truth
- transparency
- openness (in the sense of “honesty”)
- a “free” press
- an accurate press
- shame
- conscience
- a preference for private ownership
- all types of ownership are equal
- an open economy
- a balance between openness and sovereignty
- the “free market” as the primary regulator of economic relationship
- the state determines the national priorities for the economy
- the right to the unilateral use of force in the name of democracy
- non-violence
- social safety nets for those who are loyal to the system
- social safety nets for all
- an army of paid professionals
- the universal conscription of citizens
- wars are justified and essential in order to bring democracy to the “barbaric” part of the world
- only defensive wars are acceptable
It is important to note that the values listed in the right-hand column of the table of values are merely ideals that are professed and are not officially approved Russian imperatives – they are understood identities that Russians have adopted (and these are being retained even amidst the atmosphere of the aggressive recoding emanating from the West, which, however, has not been very successful over the last 25 years). Since the onset of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014, the process of re-traditionalizing Russian society has greatly accelerated, and this now seems irreversible and is even having a clearly beneficial effect on the West. The hysteria unleashed by the owners of a number of international media outlets communicating only a single, primal thought – “Russia is the world’s greatest evil” – is tied to this Russian renaissance and the subsequent frustration of the hopes of Western elites to build a totalitarian super-society in the foreseeable future based on pseudo-liberal slogans. But what kind of “evil” can Western civilization speak of when it has placed its bets on Hominid immoral in its classical, Biblical delineation?
Amb. Andrey Karlov became the real victim of aggressive imposing of false values and world-views on entrapped individuals, vainly wishing to find the Truth in distorting mirrors of the lavishly financed Western propaganda machine. They never realize that consuming Daily News or Al-Jazeera, they are turning into a Mevlut Mert Altintas themselves…