Too much ink has been wasted trying to identify the intellectual influences on Putin and his camarilla, the Russian sociologist Igor Eidman says. In fact, these influences are not books and articles. Russian leader and his team were influenced by their experiences in Leningrad’s back alleys in their youth and the KGB’s torture chambers shortly after that.
- First, “a Hottentot morality,” which holds that the weak are always defeated, and the strong are always right. According to its adherents, “there is no other morality, nor can there be. All arguments about democracy, international law, and human rights are a bluff intended to weaken the adversary.”
- Second, “delusions of persecution.” Putinists believe that the West is their eternal enemy because it seeks to “deprive us of power so that it, rather than us, can rule our tribe and plunder it … and they also want to make our children homosexuals so they can f*ck the tribe not only morally but physically.”
- And finally, the third, “delusions of grandeur.” “The West destroyed the USSR by exploiting the Soviet leadership’s weakness. However, we are strong and will restore great power and dominate wherever Russian tsars and general secretaries are ruled. This is our jungle, and we alone have the authority to rule here.”
Due to this latter assumption, Putinists believe that “the West cannot stop us. They are weaklings and perverts. Their world is in decline, and our time has come. We will be the world’s greatest power,” according to Eidman.
It should be evident, he concludes, that there is no possibility of an agreement with adherents of “such ‘an ideology.’ Only people in white coats can calm them down, and they will have to be armed with more than just syringes and pills.”
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