Vera Graziadei on how the seeing the west provoke and encourage carnage in her native Ukraine has led to her eyes opening to the phonines of western pretentions to maintaining morally-superior, liberal-humanist\u00a0societies<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a year since my rose-hued (though already stained) worldview crashed,\u00a0a year of facing the bare harsh reality of the way things work in this beautiful cruel world, a year of peeling off my treasured illusions, one by\u00a0one.<\/p>\n
My\u00a0comforting\u00a0illusions about living in a morally-superior, humanist liberal society, which respects and cares for human lives around the world. My treasured illusions, which I would still cling to if I could, but which do not stick to me\u00a0anymore.<\/p>\n
I admit I\u2019ve already had one eye-opening moment in my life (didn\u2019t we all?) \u2013 when I protested on the streets, alongside hundreds of\u00a0thousands\u00a0of other citizens, against the war in Iraq, but this country, to which I swore my allegiance before God, went into the illegal war anyway, a war which cost millions of innocent lives, a war that no one ever repented for. War criminals lecturing and prospering, warmongers still writing and publishing \u2013 blossoming careers everywhere you\u00a0look.<\/p>\n
I felt physically sick and disorientated then and devoured Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, George Monbiot and whoever else was critical of the current world order and was selling in the\u00a0politics section of LSE bookshop. I was reading to make sense of events, to see the bigger picture, to orientate myself in the world and to know where to go\u00a0next.<\/p>\n
And the conclusion I came to then after all this reading, after all this education? To escape. Escape from this horrible real world into the\u00a0world of fiction, because I wasn\u2019t strong enough to live with this brutal reality, to continue making sense of it, to continue tolerating it and interacting with it, to continue being aware of the blood on the hands that feed me and comfort\u00a0me.<\/p>\n
Entertainment. In the world of entertainment it is very easy to be\u2026well, entertained. Even if somewhere far away drones are falling on people\u2019s homes, you are in this cosy cocoon, feeling relaxed\u00a0and cool. Things around you look good (carefully designed and built by set designers), people are beautiful (thank you, make-up and hair artists), words flowing are witty and\/or meaningful (writers, you are the best). It\u2019s all pleasant, enjoyable and fun, just as it is enjoyable and fun for the audience, and so it is easy to forget and\u00a0ignore.<\/p>\n
My achievement over the last few years is that I\u2019ve managed several\u00a0times to participate in the distraction of a few million people from the brutal reality of wars and poverty and injustice. Distracting myself by distracting others. Entertaining while being\u00a0entertained. And being recognised and admired and pampered for it (when you get to do\u00a0it).<\/p>\n
During those years of forgetting, I\u2019d probably spend far longer hours at my psychotherapist\u2019s room, if IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh and *shameless plug alert* Peep Show didn\u2019t exist. On the whole it\u2019s much cheaper and easier to just laugh things off, than to really look at them critically and begin thinking about how to change\u00a0them.<\/p>\n
In fact, distracting people from things that must be changed is the key to maintaining a status quo. Just look at the wages that Hollywood stars get paid to get an idea how much the market values\u00a0distraction.<\/p>\n
Distraction is the glue that holds this society together. If not for proper distraction, quality entertainment, we would all be on the streets rioting. That\u2019s it! Now I\u2019ve got it. I can\u2019t be distracted anymore. I was able to before, but now I\u00a0can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
You might not\u00a0be interested in politics, but politics is always interested in you.\u00a0For a few years\u00a0I could easily ignore news , not buy papers and scroll down past political posts of friends,\u00a0because they didn\u2019t directly concern me and because they were regarding events far away \u2013 Middle East, Africa,\u00a0Asia.<\/p>\n
Places where human rights are not respected, places that are less developed and more corrupt and, therefore, where wars are inevitable and where\u00a0democracy must be enforced by more developed peoples like ourselves. Right? Something like\u00a0that.<\/p>\n
All you need to live comfortably in a world, where\u00a0atrocities are initiated, supported or ignored by our governments is just a vague narrative in your head, supported by a few NYTimes\/Guardian\/Times\/Independent\/ articles and constant flow of BBC\/CNN propaganda\u00a0about corruption of some dictator somewhere, who (unlike our own benevolent leaders) is hungry for power and wealth, is envious of our good fortune, prosperity\u00a0and liberated morals and who is actively plotting to annihilate or invade\u00a0us.<\/p>\n
The moment this narrative is embedded in our\u00a0heads and is not questioned by us, the rest of the world can burn down in ashes and all we\u2019ll feel is either indifference or a sense that, even if it looks a bit gory and messy, ultimately it\u2019s for the best, that is for our own personal best, just like our papers tell us. Isn\u2019t this the mindset of the majority of people? Wasn\u2019t this my mindset\u00a0before?<\/p>\n
My maternal grandmother used to say: \u201cThere was no Truth, there is no Truth and there will be no Truth and so never endeavour to search for it\u201d. She also dreamt of being an actress. One could think that\u00a0I\u00a0unconsciously assimilated her beliefs and desires in the first years of my life, while she was still alive and looking after me, and that this ancestral drive was ultimately stronger than my own personal inner drive, which was to search for the Truth, the drive that led me to start a Philosophy Society in Brighton College\u00a0(sounds grander than it was \u2013 it was just a couple of geeky discussions) and then study it at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at\u00a0LSE.<\/p>\n
At some stage this ancestral drive kicked in, a valve switched in my head and I decided that I had enough of searching for the Truth (in the context of my masters it was the truth about sovereignty, rights, justice and morals), because it didn\u2019t exist, just like my grandmother always said, and instead I went into the world, where Truth is more fluid and one month you can dwell into one Truth and next month, with a new project, into another\u00a0Truth.<\/p>\n
I remember often re-reading these lines in Dostoevsky\u2019s \u201cNotes from the\u00a0Underground\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201call plain men and men of action are active only because they are dull-witted and mentally undeveloped. How is that to be explained? Why, like this: owing to their arrested mental development they mistake the nearest and secondary causes for primary causes and in this way persuade themselves much more easily and quickly than other people that they have found a firm basis for whatever business they have in hand and, as a result, they are no longer worried, and that is really the main thing.<\/p>\n
For starters being active you must first of all be completely composed in mind and never be in doubt. But how can I, for instance, compose myself? Where am I to find the primary causes to lean against? Where am I to get the basis from? I am constantly exercising my powers of thought and, consequently, every primary cause with me at once draws another one after itself, one still more primary, and so ad\u00a0infinitum.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I related to these words\u00a0in so far as I, like an Underground Man, was unable to pursue any activity in the real world, because I could not sufficiently believe in any activity, because as a thinking person, my mind always found reasons for doubting the rightness of any line of\u00a0action.<\/p>\n
This intellectual position of inactivity\u00a0worked very well with being in a profession, where ultimately I was\u00a0told what to act. I did not\u00a0have to commit to any line of action in the real world, yet, unlike the Underground Man, who was isolated from society, I was able to be part of society by acting in a pretend world and being \u2018actively inactive\u2019 (not all actors are, many combine their careers with other jobs and activism, but I wasn\u2019t one of those people\u00a0then).<\/p>\n
First they came for Iraqis, and I did not speak out\u2014 Because I was not an\u00a0Iraqi.<\/p>\n
Then they came for Libyans, and I did not speak out\u2014 Because I was not a\u00a0Lybian.<\/p>\n
Then they came for the Syrians, and I did not speak out\u2014 Because I was not a\u00a0Syrian.<\/p>\n
Then they came for \u2026.\u00a0East Ukrainians\u00a0and\u2026.<\/p>\n
Never in my wildest nightmares have I imagined that the land that I was born in will be bombed and shelled with the support of the West. (Britain begins training Ukrainian soldiers<\/a>,\u00a0US increasing non-lethal military aid in Ukraine<\/a>)\u00a0I\u2019m now deeply ashamed\u00a0to admit that I\u2019d probably continue being apolitical had this Ukrainian horror\u00a0not\u00a0started.<\/p>\n
One year ago, on 2nd of June 2014, the Ukrainian Air Force struck central Lugansk (an event which was ignored and misrepresented in western media<\/a>) killing completely innocent passerbys, mostly women, amongst them Inna Kukuruza,\u00a0who\u2019s death, captured on mobile phone camera<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0circulated on the internet on the same day, has struck me to the core and prompted me to\u00a0start writing this blog<\/a>, which was just my way to order my thoughts about the events that were unfolding. It was\u00a0me getting back to searching for the\u00a0Truth.<\/p>\n
I discovered for myself that\u00a0BBC, which I used to have high trust in, is as biased and propagandistic<\/a>, if not more so, as many other state medias around the world, that the\u00a0Ukrainian War, is related to US Energy War<\/a>, that the\u00a0Ukrainian government\u2019s tactics of justifying, promoting and starting the \u2018anti-terrorist operation\u2019\u00a0<\/a>are similar to the way other countries have\u00a0initiated and promoted genocide<\/a>\u00a0in the past, that international humanitarian organisations are biased and sponsored by warmongers (Human Rights Watch connection to Soros<\/a>).<\/p>\n
I also tried to make sense of\u00a0why East Ukrainian victims are ignored<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0officially complained to the BBC\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0for misrepresenting events and received a\u00a0polite reply<\/a>, which ultimately changed nothing. Finally, I (very roughly) outlined for\u00a0how the system works, what\u2019s the problem with the people running them and what is the alternative way of being and resisting<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This was all a personal intellectual endeavour, which helped me to order my own thoughts and calm down my pain and grief. At some stage this blog had over 10,000 views per article\u00a0and thanks to it, I dipped my toes into the world of journalism with my pieces\u00a0published in\u00a0BNE<\/a>,\u00a0Russia Insider<\/a>,\u00a0New Cold War<\/a>,\u00a0Signs of the Times<\/a>,Global Research Centre for Research on Globalization<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0OpedNews<\/a>.\u00a0I\u2019ve never accepted any payment for any of my work, even when it was offered, and I declined work for any media, which is state-funded. I am very grateful to everyone who\u2019s been reading this blog and supported me and who found it an inspiration to write their own blogs and to join in the international\u00a0debate.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll continue searching for the Truth (even though I\u2019ve paused writing for a while to deal with the illness and death of my father) as an independent thinker and will proudly continue doing what one media expert said of me as a criticism \u2013 \u201cto wear my heart on my\u00a0sleeve\u201d.<\/p>\n