The Naked King or Potemkin's Village as an Immediate Political Reality

Today's political pageantry in Moscow has awakened a new wave of cheers and triumphalist jubilation among the two indispensable supporters of any government, no matter how venal and hideous. I have in mind the eternal profiteers and careerists ready to glorify any nullity in office, as well as the indefatigable naive and enthusiastic who practice in good faith exercises in dreamlike perception of reality as a form of escape from undesirable authentic reality.

The first remark addressed in particular to the followers of the democratic religion would be the following. In Russia, there was no election in the classical, liberal sense of the term, but a simulacrum of bad taste designed to cover up a political and legal fraud by a regime that decided to usurp power in the state for the benefit of private and dubious interest groups. Of course, advocates and apologists of this long-standing trick in the history of usurping power will find endless excuses and justifications.

The first of these is the providential, exceptional, indispensable and irremovable character of the giant personality embodied by Putin. Excellent, that's the one I've been holding onto for a quarter of a century now. The second of the justifications is that Russia would have reached unprecedented heights of development in its history under this person. And the third explains the perennial tenure of this Kremlin brand by the "state of emergency", the war in Ukraine, the external danger.

So, I have retained all three circumstances offered to the gullible public with a skill worthy of all appreciation. It could not have been otherwise. In a world of appearances and marketing no one distinguishes between authentic and fiction any more. And in the "society of the spectacle" (Guy Debord) it doesn't matter how you are, but only how you look, how you are "sold" to the consumer of advertising.

It would be good to remind consumers of political myths ”made in the Kremlin” that in Russia of the last quarter of a century proper politics does not exist. Only characters who have special permission from the Kremlin are allowed to do politics. Including at the level of political attitude expressed in public. And the right to run for elections is reserved only to those who accept the ungrateful role of formal opposition that aims to serve as a decoration in this political show.

And those who violated this unwritten rule of the ”Russian democracy” often paid with their lives, with the freedom or with the exile of this serious deviation from the pecuniary interests of the oligarchic groups behind Putin. I am not a supporter of Anglo-Saxon democracy. But even more, I repugn the hypocrisy with which this political-legal model is simulated in today's Russia. We are dealing with a mélange of „religion of Soviet civilization” and Western-style electoral farces, which also has as its ingredient the claim to appeal to the monarchical model of historical Russia. This caricatural, parodic and deeply eclectic concept is perfectly part of the historical era in which we live. The deception, the trick, the manipulation represents the very nature of the political simulacrum as a magical formula of today's society.

People who ties their hopes to Putin’s new presidential term, whether from Russia or abroad, they have serious difficulties in using their own memory as tools for political analysis and anticipation of the future. The author of these lines had several situations when he hoped that Putin had broken away from the globalist system and Russia under his leadership could become an alternative pole to the collective West.

Initially in 2014, when a bloody coup inspired by Americans was ordered in Kiev, and Putin fought back by taking over Crimea. Namely at that time the famous American paleoconservative Patrick J. Buchanan wrote the famous editorial ”Vladimir Putin, Christian Crusader?”^[1][2]. So, I was not the only one who let myself be seduced by Kremlin ten y ago. But shortly in the same year 2014 Donbass is abandoned, the regime in Kiev that committed the coup is recognized as legal and dialogue partner, following the Russian negotiating rounds at Minsk and The Normandy Format. At the same time the population of the two rebel republics Donetsk and Lugansk found themselves abandoned for eight years, being subjected to artillery attacks, which caused thousands of deaths among civilians.

And the second hope that the Kremlin got rid of the control of the globalist mafia, which I openly expressed two years ago, was when Russia started so-called SMO in Ukraine. And this despite the Russian campaign is promoting the agenda of the false pandemic in previous years under the WHO dictate, with the imposition of all absurd restrictions and forced injections. And even despite the fact that Putin himself assumed the role of advertising agent for Big Pharma, strongly promoting the campaign of ”murder by injection”^[3].

But the dynamics of the events of the last two years showed me exactly where I was wrong. And the main mistake was ignoring the main feature of capitalism. I meant that unlike traditional society, states are ruled by those who have control over money, and not those whom the plutocracy installs in decorative political functions. After the fall of USRR the ”civilization of money” triumphed in Russia as well. And this despite the fact that some of us prefer to apply the formula "Follow the money" only when critically analyzing the realities of the West, preferring to exempt Russia from this universally valid rule.

I will not return here to the false dichotomies I have written about several times. Nor will I argue again that Russia/China/BRICS is not an alternative to the globalist unipolarity, but a model perfectly complementary to it. And the fact that the US is losing its hegemonic role still does not foreshadow a better future for either humanity or Russia in part.

And those who are jubilant today on the occasion of fifth inauguration of Putin as President from the positions of Russian patriotism or sovereignism deserve all compassion and sympathy. I would have compassion for those who consciously worship him, and sympathy would be worth those who prefer to remain under the spell of propaganda and their own illusions.