People often say that nothing will ever be the same after something terrible has happened. Often though people try their hardest to get everything back to ‘normal’ as best they can. However, after the experience of the past week, I believe that there is now no going back, not after the unbridled outpouring of hatred suddenly permitted in MSM and social media.

The rapidity with which our society has descended into an emotional, irrational whirlpool of hate is truly unprecedented. I don’t mean just the antisocial media which have always been a place where anybody can bleat out their emotions about anything – provided their hate is within well-patrolled boundaries. I also don’t mean the malodorous swamp which the ‘below the line’ comments have now turned into, even by the allegedly better educated readers of the broadsheets like The Times and the DT.

I do mean the blatant and not-so-blatant ways with which the chief editors and their well-established columnists are shamelessly creating a climate where no rational questions are permitted, where no rational debate is possible. I simply cannot fathom the depth of hatred which must have been simmering below the surface of those well-mannered editors who are content to push this hatred onto their readers, a hatred which they would be the first to condemn where it directed against any other person or country than Putin and Russia.

It’s instructive to look at the language used by those wonderfully clever Westminster ‘writers’, for example this paragraph from the Speccie’s evening email newsletter yesterday:

“More than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed so far in the conflict, the country’s emergency services said. The Russian government claimed 498 of its troops have died.”

It’s subtle. On the one hand, the Ukrainian emergency services ‘say’ how many have been killed, implying that this is a ‘true fact’. On the other hand the Russian government only ‘claims’., implying that this must be ‘fake’ and not be believed. This is how attitudes are subliminally manipulated to evoke hatred.

That’s not all by a long chalk. I’ve often mentioned that our dear MSM journalists simply do not do ‘due diligence’. Today’s ‘reports’ underline this long-established fact. It’s worse because this sloppiness seems to be encouraged by the chief editors who do not permit even one more factual report to see the light of day.

Anything goes provided it fuels the emotions and the hatred of readers who are, I suspect, assumed to go and tell their MPs to ‘hit harder’ at Russia. See for example the astonishing acknowledgement that the antisocial media have become another propaganda instrument:

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the first “TikTok war”, with the social media network hosting a glut of user-generated videos from the front line. Darren Davidson, the editor-in-chief of Storyful, a social media intelligence agency owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Times, said TikTok had been plagued by misinformation — but had also provided valuable insight. “This is the first conflict to play out on TikTok,” he said.” (link, paywalled)

Even only one week ago such ‘user-generated videos’ were deemed to be unsubstantiated anecdotes which mustn’t be believed – as long as they were about covid and vaccine side effects. Now they are pure gold for our propaganda MSM. All professional fact-checkers seem to have gone away. Also odd: nobody seems to be offended by such videos. there are no demands to take them down ‘because: hate speech’.

Here’s another strange thing: remember the satellites which produced all those images of Russian troops being concentrated near the Ukrainian borders? Have they all become inoperable? Do we really believe that the US military satellites especially have no up-to-date information about what is really going on? Are such images now unpublishable because they might contradict the general line of ‘hate Russia’? Has TikTok now replaced proper research by the various western MSM reporters because their reports might conceivably contradict the propaganda effort?

Next, here’s an example of blatant hypocrisy. “We” have of course happily accepted the sanctions on Russia, from the closing of airspaces to Russian airplanes to the decision of car manufacturers like Volvo or VW to close down their factories in Russia, from the decision of the shipping magnate Maersk to stop their container ships to dock in Russian ports to the disruption of the banking system. Now however “we” must be indignant because Russia dares to ‘retaliate’:

“The Kremlin is holding 36 satellites owned by the British taxpayer-backed company OneWeb hostage in a stand-off over the war in Ukraine. Roscosmos, the Russian state space agency, is refusing to go ahead with a scheduled launch of the satellites unless the Government sells its stake in OneWeb and it receives assurances that the business is not used for military purposes.” (paywalled link)

Oh dear. How dare they! After all, ‘it’s different when we do it’. Sanctions cutting both ways? The idea! That’s not all. “We”, in the form of the business secretary Mr Kwarteng, are insisting on our rights. Putin is losing, isn’t he, so he must cave in.

A clear sign of his weakness are the proposed talks between Russia and Ukraine which may allegedly be mediated by China. and India. Meanwhile Redwood interprets these talks as ‘cynical manipulation’ by Putin (link) while he indulges in and perpetuates the one-sided view that Ukraine is innocent. Better not remember the right years of Ukrainian warfare against the Donbass republics. Better disregard that Ukraine never adhered to  the MinskII protocol. Better forget that France and Germany, guarantees of that protocol, did eff all during that time to keep Ukraine on the straight and narrow. Then and even now, “Teh West” did not listen, never mind talk with Russia. They, their politicians, were irrelevant as Mr Lavrov describes here.

“We” forget, in this delirium of manufactured hatred, that there are other countries in the world which did and do listen, for example China. “We” seem to be content to watch  a new Iron Curtain coming down, with Russia being cut off from all activities in the West, from artists being refused engagements to cats belonging to Russians not being allowed to be shown (yes, really, RT has the story), to Swift being ‘cancelled’ but ‘permitted’ when it’s about payment for Russian gas and oil – the madness is beyond explanation. 

One thing though is certain: this frenzy of hatred means things will never be the same again. It was bad enough when the covid fanatics in government and MSM had damaged our society, dividing people and families against each other. Now this irrational, manic hatred has intensified to a degree I never thought possible in this country. The worst offender today is The Times’ cartoonist. While feminist writers bemoan the sad fate of all those Ukrainian women and children having had to flee, he produced the most disgusting cartoon imaginable, solely aimed at stirring up even more hate – here, if you must. 

This unbridled outpouring of hatred, unstopped and even encouraged, is certainly unprecedented. It has finally destroyed even the last vestiges of my trust in the rationality of at least some of the players on the Westminster stage. They could and ought to have reined in this emotion-driven, irrational outpouring but they didn’t and still don’t.

The future of our country is bleak – and not only because of ‘sacrifices’ and coming hardships. It’s the total loss of trust in the fabric of our society where one daren’t speak because of being tarred as unpatriotic Putin-lover which will have consequences for people’s professional and private lives in an exacerbation of ‘cancel culture’. Must we now preface every discourse with the claim that ‘we hate Putin’?

As for me, I’ll stick with the motto “etiamsi omnes, ego non”.

 

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