Toward A New Humanism: How To Defeat Putin And The Ideology Of Demonization

–Analysis–

Immediately following the terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, conspiracy theories about what happened began to spread.

Both for those who have believed the Russian propaganda over the past two years, and for those who have not believed it, what lies at the center of their understanding of the world’s political reality is the struggle of Putin’s regime against Ukraine, against Western countries, against anyone and everyone who could oppose him. The emergence of another “pole of evil” – Islamic extremists – breaks this perception of the world.

Surely, under torture, the accused will confess to ties with Ukraine and to anything else that is demanded of them. But still, the shocking footage of the “interrogations” of the terrorists who attacked Crocus City Hall, and the severing of an ear – is this the evolution of long-established trends, or something new?

The tragedy has provoked changes in the social atmosphere and has allowed us to see processes that began earlier. To describe this trend more accurately, we need to take somewhat of a step back.

All is permitted against the enemy

In 2002, the film critic and screenwriter Natalya Sirivlya wrote a review of Alexei Balabanov’s film “War”, which depicted events in Russia’s Chechen war, in the monthly literary magazine “Novy Mir.” It partly predicted what happened next in Russia.

Sirivlya wrote: “My instinctive reaction to ‘War’ was strange. After watching it, I wished this movie had never existed. At all. I wanted to wipe it from my memory, like a bad dream. And not because they are showing some kind of nightmares on the screen; yes, they cut off fingers and heads, but it’s aloof, in a general way, and without the intention of scaring people to death. Just for the record: this is a war, and in this war such excesses are a fact of life. The desire to banish the depiction, to forget about it, was not driven by the fact that it was a bad one.”

And then – I’ll paraphrase it briefly, because it’s as though Sirivlya is groping for the idea throughout the article: the most terrible thing in Balabanov’s film is that the alleged cruelty and “lawlessness” on the part of the Chechen separatists is used as the rationale for the moral de-modernization of Russian society. Balabanov’s film implies that in order to resist “such beasts,” you yourself need to become demonstratively cruel and discard all the humanistic intentions of the modern world.

The world was divided into friends and enemies, and absolutely everything is permissible when it comes to the enemy

The terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall has already been used and, apparently, will continue to be used to stimulate public brutality. Sirivlya noticed this trend back in 2002. “Public brutality” is the transition of society into a state reminiscent of the “Two Minutes Hate” from George Orwell’s novel “1984”. (Editor’s note: the novel’s citizens were required to watch a film daily which depicted enemies of the party and express hatred towards them). The world was divided into friends and enemies, and absolutely everything is permissible when it comes to the enemy.

The origins of Russia’s ‘brutality mindset’ 

The Russian authorities began using the “brutality mindset” a long time ago. Exactly when the concept appeared in the public sphere is debatable. Even during the first Chechen war, there was sufficient aggressive rhetoric, but at that time journalists, politicians and social actors publicly argued with the military and ideologists of aggression, so the shaping of the attitude that “there is no other way [to deal] with them” did not become the dominant trend in social life despite all the atrocities the [Russian] army and intelligence services committed first-hand in Chechnya.

I think that the first signal indicating the transition of politics to a new state was Vladimir Putin’s promise in September 1999 to “drown” North Caucasian militants “in the toilet.” Putin’s words were a recollection — perhaps involuntary, but not accidental – of Quentin Tarantino’s film “Pulp Fiction”, in which Butch (Bruce Willis) kills Vincent Vega (John Travolta) who had just come out of the toilet. Tarantino’s film shows the relationships between bandits who are capable of limitless cruelty and are not at all prone to remorse. In Tarantino’s case, however, the irony was directed at the style of speech and behavior of his characters; while with Putin, it was aimed at the very nature of the situation in which it seemed that such words were not supposed to be uttered, but the speaker now believes is possible. Because of this default lifting of moral restrictions, the phrase quickly became popular.

It’s a course that legitimizes verbal and behavioral aggression towards everyone who is designated as an enemy.

From that moment on, that is, since 1999, the authorities have consistently pursued a course that legitimizes verbal and behavioral aggression towards everyone who is designated as an enemy. It was consistently spread in television talk shows, “cop” series, and in the speeches of deputies at the federal and local levels.

Separate work was carried out to direct public aggression towards “undisputed” evildoers or entire social groups to which they supposedly belong. These could be “individuals of Caucasian nationality” or members of the LGBTQ+ community. Today, even stray dogs have come under fire – several regions of Russia have already made the decision to shoot them on the spot or euthanize them in shelters, and the same will apparently happen in other regions too.

Fomenting hatred against state enemies

Today, even Russia’s “military correspondent” Z-propagandists understand that Russian troops are bogged down in Ukraine. All Russia’s state resources have been devoted to the capture of Ukraine – or at least, to its eastern regions. But on the front, there are no such successes that the generals can really brag of (and I would like to believe that there will not be). The solution was to foment hatred.

Following the dissemination of video footage where an ear was severed from and a field telephone connected to the genitals of an alleged terrorist, human rights activists wrote that they had encountered such torture before. Yes, but before this the police and intelligence services denied everything. Now they have ceased to be embarrassed, because public sadism is a way to mobilize society and switch off ideas about what is possible and what is not. Everything is allowed. What is necessary is to humiliate the enemy until he loses his humanity.

Defeats on the battlefield and the prospect of a war on two fronts —against Ukraine and against radical Islamists — intimate that it is not enough to cut off ears; now we need to do it publicly and demand public support for ear-cutting. On April 1, Russia’s Investigative Committee promised to inspect the statements of pop singer Manizha Sangin — who represented Russia in Eurovision 2021 with her song “Russian Woman” — for the crime of “justifying terrorism.” The reason: Manizha recorded a video protesting torture, its public demonstration and the demonization of Tajiks as an ethnic group.

This is, in fact, the most terrible thing to happen after the death of tens of people in Crocus City Hall. Now the culprits of any terrorist attack, and any high-profile event associated with violence, can be designated as those whom the authorities consider to be the vehicles of evil: Ukraine (and Ukrainians), the West, sexual minorities, opponents of torture. “And everyone who will be needed in the future,” as the Soviet political humorists Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov wrote.

To counter violence

Across the world there is an erosion of ethical and legal norms that were developed throughout the twentieth century, especially after the Second World War. This destruction began in the mid-1990s with the wars in former Yugoslavia and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It continued and has spilled over into countries formerly called the “first world” following the terrorist attack in the United States on September 11, 2001, and subsequent attacks by Islamist terrorists in major European cities. Journalist Vasily Legeydo summarizes the results of a sociological survey conducted in 2007: at that time only 29% of U.S. citizens considered the torture of suspects unacceptable under any circumstances. 31% of respondents said that it is sometimes acceptable to torture suspected terrorists to obtain information, and 12% said that it is often acceptable.

So the drift toward the “cancellation of humanism” is, unfortunately, a fairly common phenomenon. Nevertheless, in a significant number of countries, opposite trends exist, and are sometimes even supported by the state: the protection of the rights of minorities, including LGBTQ+ and various religious groups; the protection and expansion of children’s rights; the protection of animals from cruelty. In democratic countries, one can protest torture, even of suspected terrorists, in the media or in universities without being considered a criminal who “justifies terrorism.” In Russia, the justification of and even public propaganda permitting torture does not contradict general trends, but, on the contrary, forms a common vein alongside official homophobia and the decriminalization of domestic violence. Violence has become acceptable both in the public sphere and in private life.

it is necessary to protect not only Ukraine and other countries from it, but modern civilization as a whole

The question is, in fact, how to resist this “brutality mindset.” According to the concept of the French-American philosopher Rene Girard, such an attitude has the ability to spread like a fire in the steppe. It can also consume those who hate the current Russian regime. Today it is very important to pronounce again that it is necessary to protect not only Ukraine and other countries from it, but modern civilization as a whole — and not only from armed aggression per se, but also from this form of social existence that the modern Russian authorities consider permissible and even correct.

The ideal of this civilization is based on respect for the unique human personality. This ideal is unattainable here and now, but it is meaningful to many people and social movements – and therefore it exists as a social force.

The principles of such respect have developed over many centuries and form the basis of a humanistic relationship with the world. Today they are increasingly being called into question – just as they were, for example, in the 1930s, when undemocratic, nationalist, authoritarian regimes triumphed in Europe. In the post-war world, these principles will need to be built anew – similarly to how they were rebuilt after World War II, but under different conditions and, probably, by different means: history does not repeat itself.

Defending humanism in the modern world is difficult enough. Politicians, journalists, and moral whistleblowers have abused humanistic rhetoric for so long and so gleefully (and continue to do so) that today a person who speaks seriously about humanism comes across as a mindless babbler, advocating for all that is good against all that is bad. But one must speak; otherwise, society will be destroyed.

Heart over reason

I will try to describe what today’s humanistic program could be. The dignity of each person could be considered a value for the entire human community, across state and cultural borders. To clarify: I am saying it “could be considered,” not it “is.” Before, human rights were considered natural, that is, inherent in everyone from birth. Today it has become clear that no “natural” human rights exist. Human rights, including the right to dignity and dignified treatment, can only be created through the joint efforts of members of society.

Moreover, as civilization develops, new rights may be discovered and approved, such as the right to same-sex unions. When societies, governments, and (less obviously) individual people recognize these rights, they take upon themselves the responsibility to enforce their compliance, including keeping track of and legally prosecuting any violent excesses where such rights are violated.

The creation and observance of the right to dignity is necessary not only for those whose rights may be violated, but also for those who may find themselves violating these rights. The destruction of another person’s dignity, like the destruction of someone else’s life, like the gagging of others’ voices, has a detrimental effect on the soul of the one who commits the crime. Such an action undermines the very possibility of equal relations between people.

A person’s ability to sympathize and understand any other person can counter the instrumentalization of reason

The subordination of people to the “brutality mindset” can be combined with quite intense intellectual activity: for example, aiming missiles at Ukrainian cities, or hacking the servers of Western organizations, or looking for “extremism” in Russian bookstores and libraries. This is a special type of intellectual work: the mind here is subordinated to the total division of the world into “us” and “them”, which the authorities have already done in advance, and the abolition of everyday rules under conditions of a state of emergency (which in Russia, although not officially declared, is in effect).

The German philosopher Max Horkheimer introduced the concept of “instrumental reason”: this is the use of reason to solve purely practical problems in isolation from ideas about truth, compassion and justice. These regimes, such as the one currently in place in Russia, contribute to the monstrous instrumentalization of reason.

A person’s ability to sympathize and understand any other person can counter the instrumentalization of reason. In the theological tradition, this ability is usually called the “heart.” It is often generally opposed to reason, but in reality, it is opposed only to manipulated reason. And this very ability, presumed by today’s society to be present in man, and the institutions that can enable its development – education, jurisprudence, public communications – are probably the main positive achievements of human civilization.

In the modern world, it is important to think not only about the victory of Ukraine, and not only about the defeat of Putin’s regime, but also about the victory of the private, unremarkable human heart.