During the Cold War, the United States and Russia were presented as opposites, like Yin and Yang.
However, most people in the United States and Russia have this in common: they believe they are victims of the rest of the world, which justifies the use of force and therefore aggression.
This aggression allows for colonial policy without saying so. They consider that they have been mistreated and that this justifies the aggression.
For example, the massacre in Chechnya was justified by a so-called Islamist attack in a theater. For example, Crimea was reconquered on the pretext that it had been stolen from Russia. The wars in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia are justified on the pretext that Russian minorities were being persecuted.
For example, when the Iranian government nationalized oil, the Americans violently overthrew the government and installed the Shah, a violent monarch. For example, when casinos were nationalized in Cuba, the Americans assassinated Che Guevara.
The majority of people in Russia and the United States are not particularly concerned as long as it happens outside their country. But very quickly, they find themselves victims of these same methods in their own country.
When Trump captured the president of Venezuela or bombed Iran during the twelve-day war, he was publicly condemned, but there was majority consent. Previously, when the United States had a colonial policy in South America, it was condemned but accepted. These techniques used elsewhere are now being used in the United States: the use of violence without respect for the law. Emails are seized, people can be deported, people are victims of police violence or even killed.
Putin assassinates journalists, activists, and political opponents on a global scale. He hacks into other countries’ emails and sensitive information and sends armies of mercenaries to Africa to overthrow governments. There was little resistance when he operated abroad. Today, people who resist Putin disappear.
“No one colonizes innocently.” Aimé Césaire, in his 1950 Discourse on Colonialism, defined the concept of backlash, of the boomerang effect. According to him, repression, racism, dehumanization, concentration camps, and the police state were experimented with in the colonies or in the spheres of influence of the various empires, then they migrated back to the metropolises, in turn de-civilizing the colonizer.
“People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.”
Discours sur le colonialisme – Aimé Césaire: https://www.larevuedesressources.org/IMG/pdf/CESAIRE.pdf
For instance, a German who had experienced the African colonies was perfectly familiar with the methods used by the Nazis in the 1930s.
The French police’s law enforcement techniques were tested in the colonies and are now the norm in mainland France: roadblocks between the suburbs and the city center, use of lethal weapons, etc.
In the United States, the use of violence without respect for local and international laws dates back at least to the end of World War II: disregard for elections in countries within their sphere of influence, torture, assassinations, wars. Now they are doing it in their own countries. Barack Obama and Donald Trump have created camps, declared illegal by judges. They have used immigration agents as a violent militia despite court orders to stop. Bill Clinton’s bombing of Belgrade was carried out outside the framework of the United Nations, as was G.W. Bush’s second war in Iraq and the assassinations of Che Guevara and Salvador Allende. The judges of the International Criminal Court have been subjected to sanctions: email accounts have been shut down and bank accounts seized. Now these techniques are being used on American soil against journalists, activists, judges, and political opponents.
A historian of the Athenian era, Thucydides agreed with Socrates in saying that Athens, which behaved violently and authoritatively toward the colonized Greek cities while its citizens were enjoying a golden age during the era of Pericles, behaved in the same way toward its own citizens later on in 400 BC.
Why Do Russians See Themselves as Victims? Historian Dr. Botakoz Kassymbekova Explains “Imperial Innocence” – United 24 media: https://united24media.com/perspectives/why-do-russians-see-themselves-as-victims-a-historian-explains-imperial-innocence-1935
‘Why Me?’ The Role of Perceived Victimhood in American Politics – PMC Pubmed Central: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7778419/
Politics as Victimhood, Victimhood as Politics – Cambridge University Press: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history/article/abs/politics-as-victimhood-victimhood-as-politics/20A1357C056E3A59CCE6981129FBA65C
Chris Hedges on Trump, Epstein and the decline of American democracy | UpFront – Al Jazeera English : https://youtu.be/rjz0VKAGARo?si=bJtyFpOJaxWcGiXg
Political Science – Randy Newman | The Midnight Special: https://youtu.be/olOk5cK4lqQ?si=4pTSjv68foT_I_Gc
No one likes us ― I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money ― but are they grateful?
No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful
They don’t respect us ― so let’s surprise them
We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them
Asia’s crowded and Europe’s too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada’s too cold
And South America stole our name
Let’s drop the big one
There’ll be no one left to blame us
We’ll save Australia
Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo
We’ll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin’, too
Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We’ll set everybody free
You’ll wear a Japanese kimono
And there’ll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let’s drop the big one now
Let’s drop the big one now
Translated with DeepL
