This week, the journalist Lauren Wolfe published an article in Foreign Policy about how Russian leadership is afraid of “psychic attacks” from the West.
Lauren spoke to me for the article and it was a genuinely fascinating conversation because it can be so hard to explain how certain Russian officials think and act to a Western audience. You end up sounding crazy because of how crazy the subject matter is.
We have our own dangerous kooks in the halls of power — consider the bizarre behavior of various conspiracy theorists here, such as the politicians who have lent their support to Q-Anon — so this isn’t a uniquely Russian affliction by a long shot.
Yet the power of the irrational has always been stronger in Russia, if only because disinformation was always much more historically rampant. It’s part of the reason why Russia has been so violently and horribly persistent in Ukraine, even though it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that the Kremlin is losing this war and has been losing it for months, with Russian bodies stacking up for absolutely zero reason (Ukrainians, by contrast, are dying to defend their homeland). When reality disagrees with Russian officials and their attack dogs, they turn to what writer and Russia observer Peter Pomerantsev refers to as “unreality.”
When you engage in too much propaganda, you are bound to believe it. And when this propaganda begins to dramatically fail you — like the idea that “Ukrainians will welcome us with flowers and we will win in mere days” failed the Kremlin — you might as well turn to the supernatural and the esoteric for help.
This is where the idea that Russia must “de-Satanize Ukraine” comes from. Creating the illusion that you are battling the literal forces of evil is much more comforting when you are losing thousands of soldiers and do not have much strategy or cohesion on the battlefield, beyond throwing more under-equipped soldiers at a better equipped and more motivated enemy.
All of this would be funny, if innocent Ukrainians weren’t dying every day due to Kremlin derangement syndrome.
This is why I am and always will be aghast at the idea that lies and conspiracy theories are a legitimate tool of power. Take those lies and conspiracies theories to their logical conclusion — and people will die.
Of course, as I’ve argued elsewhere, modern Russian society is a death cult. Individually, Russian families care when a loved one is killed in a stupid and barbaric war. Collectively, though, Russian society adopts the posture of apathy and learned helplessness. Not all Russians are like this, of course, but a critical mass is not spurred to action, or even introspection. There are not enough strong, horizontal links in Russian society for the people to come together and declare that what’s happening is immoral and must be stopped. Not yet, anyway.
For my part, I believe in physics, so the existence of an unseen world is perfectly natural and normal to me. There is more to life, and to death, than meets the eye. I know this as surely as I know that Russia will pay. And that more innocents will suffer when that terrible payment comes due. Innocents always do.
All of this probably sounds depressing, but the gifts of joy and resilience are all around us. You see them in Ukrainian resolve. You see them in people coming together to help. And you see them in people who have been quietly and purposefully resisting within Russia, outnumbered though they may be.
I am able to have more faith in the good precisely because I am realistic about the bad. That’s because real faith helps you cast aside foolishness, you let go of stupid ideas more easily when you have a strong foundation of beliefs, and my belief in resistance and bravery is stronger than ever. It’s not a belief I managed to snatch out of thin air. Other people have inspired me, and supported me through their mere existence.
The forces of darkness are very much real, and you don’t need to believe in ghouls and demons to know this is true, but other forces are also at work in the world. The more the Russian regime succumbs to hysterical paranoia, the closer it will get to the ultimate realization: Vengeance is coming.
Image: Dawn in Ukraine by Anton Vakulenko
