Let's remember the joke about the encounter of the explorer with the native tribe. “Are there any cannibals among you?” he asks. "No," they reply, "we ate the last one yesterday." In order to constitute a civilized community by eating the last cannibal, the final act must be called something else. It is a kind of original sin that must be erased from memory.
Thus, the transition to a modern legal order in the American "wild west" was achieved through brutal crimes and their subsequent concealment with myths. As the hero of John Ford's western says The man who killed Liberty Valance, "when legend becomes fact, make it official".
But facts derived from legends are not verifiable truths. They are social artifacts: shared ideas that form the basis of the actually existing socio-political order. If enough people rejected them, the entire order would fall apart.
These social artifacts allow the original sins of society to remain in the depths, from where they operate in silence, because modern civilization still relies on barbarism. Let's remember how in America the legal apparatus was used to justify the illegal practice of torture, which was called "extended interrogation".
Now, however, a new kind of political redemption is emerging. As the philosopher Alenka Zupančič notes in her new book Let them rot (which I heavily rely on here) more and more often we have leaders who are proud of their crimes "as if it were some kind of fundamental moral difference or difference in character, in a word courage, a strong stomach to commit crimes openly". But Zupančič immediately adds:
"What may seem like a bold violation of the law, which sometimes really requires hypocritical behavior from us, is in fact a direct identification with the dark side of state power. It is not something else or different. These people are breaking their own laws. That is why, even when they are in power, these leaders still behave as if they are in the opposition, they rebel against the government, the deep state and the like."
This description apparently refers to Donald Trump, who recently called for the repeal of the US Constitution. A good example is Russia. President Vladimir Putin insisted for 10 months that there was no war in Ukraine, while Russian citizens risked prosecution if they claimed otherwise. Now he broke his own rule and admitted that Russia was at war.
Similarly, Putin's friend Yevgeny Prigozhin has long denied having any ties to the Wagner group of Russian mercenaries. Now he admits that he founded the group, that he interfered in the US elections and that he will continue to do so.
Political figures like Trump and Putin redefine courage as a willingness to break laws if it is in the interest of the state or themselves. The implication is that civilization survives only if there are brave patriots to do the dirty work. It is a very right-wing form of heroism: it is easy to be noble in the name of one's country, but only the hard-hearted are able to commit crimes for it.
Thus, in 1943, Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust, spoke of "a glorious chapter of our history that has never been and will never be written." The question was what to do with the Jewish women and children. "I have decided on a clean solution," Himmler told the assembled SS officers. "It would not be fair to exterminate the men... and let their children grow up to be the avengers of our sons and grandsons. A difficult decision was made to make this people disappear from the face of the earth."
In modern Russia, the same idea about the justification of atrocities is in force. On December 14, the Duma adopted a proposal according to which all crimes committed in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson before the annexation of those Ukrainian regions "will not be considered crimes punishable by law" if it is concluded that they were committed "in the interests of the Russian Federation."
It is unclear how that assessment will be made, but it is likely that the crimes, torture, rape, murder, looting and vandalism committed by Russian forces will be justified and perhaps celebrated. It reminds one of the paradox from Sophocles Antigone, where it is more risky to be moral than to be an accomplice to a crime.
"Russian culture," notes historian Timothy Garton Ash, has become a "collateral victim of Putin's auto-cannibalism." That is why "it is time to ask whether Putin is objectively an agent of American imperialism. Because no American has ever done half as much damage to what Putin calls the Russian world as the Russian leader himself." In the same tone, Kazakh journalist Arman Shurayev recently scolded a thug from the Russian ambassador in that country: "You are causing Russophobia with your stupid actions... You are idiots, cannibals who eat yourselves."
Paradoxically, Russia's exercise in false transparency makes the mystification of state power even more dangerous, by collapsing our moral sensibilities. It shows why we need people like WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange more than ever. Assange is our Antigone. He was kept in limbo and isolation for years, awaiting a decision on his extradition to the United States for espionage, that is, for publishing documents that expose the dark side of American politics. Although he did so in perhaps problematic ways, my New Year's wish is for President Joe Biden to show true courage and drop the charges against Assange.
(Project Syndicate; Peščanik.net; translation: M. Jovanović)
Bonus video:
