The End of History?

I like history, I like to understand how we have got to where we have today and in doing so what path we are on heading into the future, so imagine my surprise when a very famous professor talks about how some now believe history has ended, that we have evolved to the place we were always meant to be, it is now as good as it is ever going to be!

The professor is a bloke called Timothy Snyder (Yale University) and he's talking about Russia's mindset (but if you think about - and I have - you could apply it to anywhere else in the world too - Trump's America, Xi's China, even Boris's UK!).

In simple terms we are led to believe that our country is 'special' that we are the chosen few so to speak, that in the beginning we had some form of paradise on earth but that was taken away from us by 'others' arriving from outside of our country, invading us, or corrupting us with their beliefs and ideas, enslaving us, making things bad for us and that history if you like 'starts' from that point and is a record of us striving to get back to the 'myth' of what we believe we once had, and one day we will have again.

Back in the beginning we had powerful kings who owned everything.  He rewarded those loyal to him by giving them land (to make themselves rich) and in return they fought wars for him when needed.  The rest of us were just serfs, who were happy to be safe and fed but basically slaves to our benevolent masters the barons, who had their power from the king (who could take that power and their lands back from them, any time he wanted to).

Things went wrong though when the balance was changed.  The Jews became money lenders and powerful, the church split apart when the protestants (the west's) views became powerful, people wanted social reforms and better lives for themselves.

All this made the country much less than what it was, and to make it strong again, to get back to how it should be - how it was meant to be! - then history had to end - new kings had to emerge, they had to have powerful supporters (the rich) and the people would once again be happy to be ruled by the 'benevolent' king and his oligarchs who would control everything to 'end' history repeating itself again.

So you zombify the people by having them believe 'fake news' (look at how Russia and China control the media and thus the people), look at how media and 'social media' in the west is having the same effect on us - Trump, Boris, the bloke in Brazil, the Israel leader, the bloke in Hungary, etc are all right wing 'demonising' the social reformers, the do good-ers (Black Lives Matter, save the planet environmentalists, those supporting the illegal immigrants, etc, etc, etc) which basically can be classed under having 'Human Rights' - or in other words having the right to not want an idealised right wing autocracy.

That's why there is so much hatred towards blacks, gays (forgive me for not knowing the current letters that the lesbians, transsexuals, etc, identify themselves under), Jews, ethnic minorities and religions, etc, etc, etc.

They are the ones who will only corrupt the future again - and so must be stopped.

The reason the right wing has taken off in the USA is (it is argued) that the country was at its mythical best when blacks were slaves - and they rather have a right wing world along the lines of Russia and China than one with BLM and mass immigration from Latin America.

I think it is an interesting concept - clearly many are seduced for wanting to see a mythicised past return - you can see it in many, many small ways - how many of us see how things are today and hanker after the past - I know I do at times.

I guess at the end of the day it is what we want to believe in.

I only hope you don't put your faith in what you read on social media without checking the facts out first for yourselves!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_D._Snyder

He's been popping up a lot on TV recently. 

I found his series of lectures very interesting - then again I would, I'm that type!

I couldn't understand the mindset of Russia starting a 'traditional' war in this day and age, so wanted to find out why they had.

Obviously I'm incapable of summarising something like a dozen hours or more of Snyder's lectures but basically he sets out to what makes a culture/community/common belief develop in a certain place over a period of history and how that develops boundaries which in turn defines a country in geographical terms.

It's clearly identifiable that Kyiv (Kiev is the Russian version spelling we have know previously) predates Moscow by centuries and that Rus (the land of the Vikings) from which the word Russia evolved, started from when they settled and formed a trading base on the river at Kyiv.

The waters are mudded somewhat as different parts of what we now know as Ukraine has been in the control of various others over the years (Mongols, Holy Roman Empire, Latvia/Poland, Hapsburgs, Ottoman Empire) as well as Russia.  Also note that at times that east and west Ukraine have been 'ruled' by different 'occupiers' at the same time (and why Ukraine has taken on western influences in some parts, whilst Russian Orthodoxy is more common in the east particularly from the early 20th Century when Russia started to colonise it to exploit its natural resources.

Since then in extremely simplified terms Stalin viewed Ukraine as a place to put collectivism into practice, take the land away from the 'barons' have collective ownership (communism) and have Ukraine feed the rest of Russia.

It didn't work - people didn't want collectivism, yields fell but export targets remained and basically this led to a mass famine where something like 4 million Ukrainians died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Germany then in WWII viewed Ukraine in the same sort of way, as a country to feed the German war effort and a place they could colonise (because Germany didn't become a state until something like 1860 iirc and missed out to country's like us, France, Spain, the Dutch, etc who had already colonised much of the world already!).

(Iirc Snyder states Ukraine lost more people in WWII than Russia suffered).

The point being that both Germany and Russia viewed Ukraine as being a place' to colonise - to 'own' on other words!

In short that is the Russian mindset. That they HAD already colonised Ukraine before WWII, that Germany 'accepts' that position as some form of atonement to Russia for starting WWII (and also to gloss over from the world's eye, the vast numbers of Ukrainians that they killed) and why Germany did not rush to help Ukraine in February when Russia invaded it.

Russia views it was the west who undermined their USSR empire and have now taken it upon itself to get Ukraine back because it lost control of it due to the overthrow of Putin's puppet government in 2014 political uprising.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity

Since 2014 to February 2022 there has been the 'proxy' war between Russia and Ukraine which the west had chosen to ignore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War#:~:text=Between%202014%20and%202022%20the,combat%20than%20in%202014%E2%80%9315.

And which led Russia to believe the west would do nothing if they attacked and installed their own puppets once again.

The shock to all (including the west) was that Ukrainian identity and desire to be free was so strong, that they didn't capitulate and fought back so well.



The point I was trying to make in my initial post was more about extreme right wing politics taking over in many country's, including our own, and giving people a narrative about better to return to 'being great again' than living in a land of immigrants, blacks and gays!

Sadly a great many people rather have the lies and corruption than the gays and the blacks it seems - hence Trump, the bloke in Brazil and Boris with Brexit...

Power corrupts and all that.

Beau of the fifth alluded to this in his chat today.

To be honest it is all out there in open site for us all to see but people can't because they see it as something differently - in this country they see it as the class war - Tory v Labour, capitalism v unionism, closed boarders v illegal immigration.

In America and Europe they see it more about unchecked immigration - hence so much racism.

We don't seem to be concerned about how regimes like Russia and China deal with ANY descent - not only on the larger scale like the Uyghurs or Hong Kong/Taiwan but on their very own people, how they control the media and basically brainwash people.

In a sense there is nothing new - history is full of powerful people who have controlled the narrative to remain in power.

Seems however there are more mugs around these days to believe what they read on social media and spread the hate.

God know's where all this is going to end because the lunatics are already well on the way to taking over the asylums - just look at the election for Speaker that we've all just sat through!!!

Sometimes 'facts' don't suit some people.

The Right wing loonies in Brazil would rather believe lies and fake news than have a left wing president who had already lifted many poor 'black' countrymen and women out of poverty the last time he was in power...