☝️ Lots of hard-hitting insights here, by Peter Pomorantsev.

「This is the basement of many Russians' subconscious and the Soviet past, with which Russia does not want and will not reckon. And they want to drag everyone there, into their sadomasochistic memories. In classical psychoanalysis, if you are unable to speak out about, understand, and accept the horror that happened to you or that you did to someone else, you are doomed to constantly repeat it and act it out.

You put on those masks of Stalin’s purges, of the Gulag. They are playing that role, again and again. Russians never took responsibility for the crimes they committed, and they pleaded not guilty. And they didn’t analyze their various injuries. They certainly didn't think about their victims.」

「When psychoanalysts of the 20th century tried to analyze Nazi propaganda, they talked about this. Propaganda works through self-identification, in the sense that a despotic, authoritarian leader frees you to express those feelings that were tabooed, like sadistic proclivities, anger, hatred. Progressive people in the United States wonder all the time: [Donald] Trump is such a narcissist, why do people like him? Because he allows them to enjoy their own similar manifestations, to manifest all their lowest and most aggressive feelings, which are taboo in normal societies. A system that produces these feelings never analyzes them. It discharges them outside.」

https://english.nv.ua/nation/peter-pomerantsev-on-trying-to-comprehend-russian-war-crimes-interview-50336575.html

#SlavaUkraini #Ukraine #russia #imperialism #genocide #sadism #sociopathy
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