Naomi Klein writes at The Intercept about the common thread that links Trumpism, the “Freedom Convoys,” and Putin: nostalgia for the past.
NOSTALGIA FOR EMPIRE is what seems to drive Vladimir Putin — that and a desire to overcome the shame of punishing economic shock therapy imposed on Russia at the end of the Cold War. Nostalgia for American “greatness” is part of what drives the movement Donald Trump still leads — that and a desire to overcome the shame of having to face the villainy of white supremacy that shaped the founding of the United States and mutilates it still. Nostalgia is also what animates the Canadian truckers who occupied Ottawa for the better part of a month, wielding their red-and-white flags like a conquering army, evoking a simpler time when their consciences were undisturbed by thoughts of the bodies of Indigenous children, whose remains are still being discovered on the grounds of those genocidal institutions that once dared to call themselves “schools.”
This is not the warm and cozy nostalgia of fuzzily remembered childhood pleasures; it’s an enraged and annihilating nostalgia that clings to false memories of past glories against all mitigating evidence.
All these nostalgia-based movements and figures share a longing for something else, something which may seem unrelated but is not. A nostalgia for a time when fossil fuels could be extracted from the earth without uneasy thoughts of mass extinction, or children demanding their right to a future, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, like the one just released yesterday, that reads, in the words of United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, like an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” Putin, of course, leads a petrostate, one that has defiantly refused to diversify its economic dependence on oil and gas, despite the devastating effect of the commodity roller coaster on its people and despite the reality of climate change. Trump is obsessed with the easy money that fossil fuels offer and as president made climate denial a signature policy.
The Canadian truckers, for their part, not only chose idling 18-wheelers and smuggled jerry cans as their protest symbols, but the leadership of the movement is also deeply rooted in the extra-dirty oil of the Alberta tar sands. Before it was the “freedom convoy,” many of these same players staged the dress rehearsal known as United We Roll, a 2019 convoy that combined a zealous defense of oil pipelines, opposition to carbon pricing, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and explicit nostalgia for a white, Christian Canada.
Oil is a stand-in for a broader worldview.
Though petrodollars underwrite these players and forces, it’s critical to understand that oil is a stand-in for a broader worldview, a cosmology deeply entwined with Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery, which ranked human as well as nonhuman life inside a rigid hierarchy, with white Christian men at the top. Oil, in this context, is the symbol of the extractivist mindset: not only a perceived God-given right to keep extracting fossil fuels, but also the right to keep taking whatever they want, leave poison behind, and never look back.
This is why the fast-moving climate crisis represents not just an economic threat to people invested in the extractive sectors but also a cosmological threat to the people invested in this worldview. Because climate change is the Earth telling us that nothing is free; that the age of (white, male) human “dominion” has ended; that there is no such thing as a one-way relationship comprised only of taking; that all actions have reactions. These centuries of digging and spewing are now unleashing forces that make even the sturdiest structures created by industrial societies — coastal cities, highways, oil rigs — look vulnerable and frail. And within the extractivist mindset, that is impossible to accept.
Given their common cosmologies, it should come as no surprise that Putin, Trump, and the “freedom convoys” are reaching toward one another across disparate geographies and wildly different circumstances. So Trump praises Canada’s “peaceful movement of patriotic truckers, workers, and families protesting for their most basic rights and liberties”; Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon cheer on Putin while the truckers sport their MAGA hats; Randy Hillier, a member of the Ontario Legislature who is one of the convoy’s loudest supporters, declares on Twitter that “Far more people have & will die from this shot [the Covid vaccines], than in the Russia/Ukraine war.” And how about the Ontario restaurant that last week put on its daily specials board the announcement that Putin “is not occupying Ukraine” but standing up to the Great Reset, the Satanists, and “fighting against the enslavement of humanity.”
These alliances seem deeply weird and unlikely at first. But look a little closer, and it’s clear that they are bound together by an attitude toward time, one that clings to an idealized version of the past and steadfastly refuses to face difficult truths about the future. They also share a delight in the exercise of raw power: the 18-wheeler vs. the pedestrian, the shouted manufactured reality vs. the cautious scientific report, the nuclear arsenal vs. the machine gun. This is the energy currently surging in many different spheres, starting wars, attacking seats of government, and defiantly destabilizing our planet’s life support systems. This is the ethos at the root of so many democratic crises, geopolitical crises, and the climate crisis: a violent clinging to a toxic past and a refusal to face a more entangled and interrelational future, one bounded by the limits of what people and planet can take. It is a pure expression of what the late bell hooks often described, with a playful wink, as “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” — because sometimes all the big guns are needed to describe our world accurately.
Boiled down it’s a choice between two world views. One is dystopian: Inequity and selfishness are unalterable facts of live, so grab what you can for yourself. The other rejects inequity as inevitable and immoral. So, it prioritizes responsibility for one another’s wellbeing. What to do? I wish I had a way to persuade the uncaring to care, but I don’t. The only way I know is to engage in a struggle to empower those who reject inequity as a way of life.
The reason I like coming here is that the selection of posts seems to allow a peek at the mind of the one in whose living room I am allowed. I think our wonderful host is feeling like an historian today. I love these references. Thank you.
As you know, Roy, in the early part of the twentieth century, there was a reaction against a common 19th-century manner of doing history embodied perhaps most clearly in the ideas of Thomas Carlyle. According to Carlyle, “Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great men who have worked here.” One of the strains of reaction against this history as hero worship was your beloved Annales School. Of course, Marx prefigured these folks by viewing history has having ineluctable large-scale economic determinants. But as current events are showing, individuals do make a difference. The world reaction to the invasion of Ukraine is unprecedented. Historic. And it’s pretty clear that there’s a villain here, isn’t it? So, to understand what is happening, one must look BOTH at the economic determinants and at the actions of individuals. Had it not been for this guy, . . .
Thank you, Roy. You are a treasure. I learn from you.
Diane
Projection, Your Honor!
“Putin, of course, leads a petrostate, one that has defiantly refused to diversify its economic dependence on oil and gas, despite the devastating effect of the commodity roller coaster on its people and despite the reality of climate change.”
I’m just gobsmacked that anyone can say these sorts of things with a straight face. First, do you realize that the U.S. and our dear ally Saudi Arabia produce more oil than Russia?
Second, and more importantly, the U.S. is by far the biggest consumer of oil and the most “defiantly refusing to diversify its economic dependence on oil and gas”. Both U.S. parties are firmly in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry and both refuse to make any meaningful changes to slow climate change. The U.S. is so dependent on oil that we are now reduced to begging Venezuela to replace the oil we are no longer getting from Russia, which has to be positively humiliating.
It’s sad how Naomi Klein has fallen. THE SHOCK DOCTRINE was brilliant and shows she truly understands the imperial forces of U.S. capitalism. I hope she at least gets well paid to write this neoliberal drivel.
Dienne, do you realize you have never said one word critical of Putin, nor one word critical of his invasion of Ukraine, nor one word critical of his wanton and criminal slaughter of Ukrainian civilians. Shame on you. Has it ever occurred to you that you are wrong? Only five countries in the UN General Assembly voted to oppose the condemning of the Russia invasion: Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Eritrea. Do you think the world knows something that you don’t know? Naomi Klein too.
Thank for noticing that about dienne77.
I have seen lots of people on the left who make SOME of the points dienne77 makes but they all are willing to be critical of Putin.
dienne77 is not — never. And the same thing with Trump. I remember thinking that eventually dienne77 would have to say something critical of Trump beyond noting his “orange hair” and criticizing his manners. But it never happened, no matter how bad it got. dienne77 had far harsher words for Al Franken than Trump or Putin.
Eventually I realized that dienne77 was a Russian troll. I don’t believe for a minute that dienne77 is this stupid or this ignorant. I don’t believe for a minute dienne77 is this deluded because she would have to be mentally ill not to be able to say something – anything! – critical of Putin given all her past condemnation of civilian deaths and Putin’s clear violations and killings.
Putin is a bad man. And he is doing bad things to Ukraine. Even if dienne77 hated the US, she would have no problem feeling some sympathy for the families dying in Ukraine. But she does not. She has no sympathy for anyone but Putin, who dienne77 claims is being victimized by a double standard in which the US is allowed to do murderous things and Putin is not, and dienne77 believes that isn’t fair. Putin should be allowed to do them too, without anyone criticizing them.
And if that doesn’t tell you this is a Russian troll and not a person with feelings, then I don’t know what does.
At least there should be strong condemnation of Putin along with the US. Instead, every post JUSTIFIES murder by Putin and dienne77’s argument is always that since the US murders people Putin should be allowed to do so, too.
Real people can criticize both. Real people can criticize Biden AND Trump. Trolls cannot.
The fact that other nations produce more oil is an absurd statement, totally irrelevant. A petrostate is one whose primary, majority source of income is oil. It does not matter how much they produce. The other commodity of concern is wheat. Unlike oil, that is less critical and more replaceable by other growers. Your cherry picked analysis is severely flawed.
In Sunday’s paper there was an article from Fareed Zakaria. He said the US should get rid of Russian oil and take the sanctions off Venezuela and Iran. Actually, just lifting sanctions from Venezuela would be more than enough oil to fill the void from refusing Russian oil.
Spot-on! There is never any mention here of the THOUSANDS of Russians in the Donbas who were slaughtered by Ukrainian NAZIS from 2014 through 2022. It’s just Putin bashing and TDS all the way on this platform. Delusional…
Bill Barr will vote for Trump in 2024 if he is the Republican candidate. (NBC interview) Barr who said, as US Attorney General, that he wanted religion introduced at every opportunity opined Trump was better than a progressive agenda.
Barr belongs to a church that overtly discriminates against women and that has a history of racist colonialism (Kamloops residential school).
“…opined Trump was better than a progressive agenda.” This after basically admitting that Trump was incompetent in an NPR interview aired this morning.
What sort of man would advocate voting for a person he sees as incompetent?
Actually, though he will vote for whatever the Rethuglican nominee is, Barr despises tRump and knows he would be a disastrous president just as he was before. That he would choose ideology over competence speaks volumes to his moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
It speaks to Barr’s lack of interest in the United States’ survival.
Yes, no doubt true, but Russians may also be motivated by fear…their well-known “fear of ‘encirclement.” Remember, that nation, unlike ours, has no natural western boundaries, and has been invaded numerous times in “modern” times–1812, 1850’s, 1918, 1940’s. Also, the West’s behavior has not encouraged cooperation. Consider all the nations we’ve (US & the West) invaded, subverted, or subjugated in our lifetimes: Vietnam; Guatemala. Nicaragua. Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Chile. There are others where we’ve failed, including Cuba, and recently, Venezuela. Others where we’ve supplied lethal aid, Yemen. What in that record encourages Russians or anyone to want us next door? “We” (various US folk’s and agents, such as McCain & Nuland) played a role in overthrowing the pro-Russian government of Ukraine in 2014. Doesn’t that matter? I’m not pro-Russian, per se (I do like their classical music & the fact that they have national health care), but we’re on the brink of annihilation, folks, and we need to try to find common ground, not continue to castigate. The invasion was wrong; so were ours in Iraq, etc. Ok, how can we solve this immediate and terrible problem before it gets much worse?
Why keep making excuses for bloody and brutal aggression by Putin? After Putinntakes control of Ukraine, he will still be “encircled,” now without the buffer provided by Ukraine. He will have NATO states at his border. Will he next invade Poland? Romania? Lithuania? Does he need lebensraum?
The Fact of the Horrible Versailles Treaty at the end of the First World War may explain Hitler from the standpoint of history, but this is vastly different from justifying the prosecution of a war. Ultimately, whether we have been guilty or duplicitous in the past, we must confront the reality of the present, lest we fall victim to the past. When all this is over, we will have ample time to discuss how policy allowed the situation to spiral into chaos. Now, perhaps we should just offer what we can to solve the immediate problem.
Jack Burgess,
Our invasion in Iraq was wrong, but it did get rid of a very evil man. Putin invaded to get rid of a good man.
If you can’t acknowledge that difference — and I have noticed that Russia trolls can’t say anything bad about Putin — then you are extremely pro-Russian.
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” Today this means that those who were the ongoing victims of white supremacy have a target on their backs much like the one they had tried so hard to eliminate. Their hidden from view oppressors are the same group today as before. Those at the grass roots level who serve as shock troops for this toxic agenda have been manipulated to fulfill the other side of Santayana’s coin, “Those who worship at the altar of history, whether true or false, will be enslaved by it.” They fight for freedoms they no longer understand, ones they have turned their backs on and averted their eyes from. In America, the Balkanization of the individual which began under Reagan has led to the Balkanization of the entire nation. Though ideological and cultural on the surface, as well serves the men behind the supremacist curtain, this cynical division is maintained by the schism between those who can still perceive and correctly interpret reality and those who cannot. Fake news indeed, which almost inevitably leads directly to an addiction to fear and anger maintained by false, baseless categorization of “the other” where the hate that grew from that fear has led to an anger whose ultimate expression is violence.
Much wisdom here, Jon. I would, however, reflect that I have often seen Reagan as a result of the “me decade” (1973-1983) that made society begin the walk to what you call the “Balkanization of the individual” Nice phrase, by the way.
“the Canadian truckers who occupied Ottawa for the better part of a month, wielding their red-and-white flags like a conquering army, evoking a simpler time when their consciences were undisturbed by thoughts of the bodies of Indigenous children”
Wait, what?
FLERP, I assume Naomi Klein meant that the truckers didn’t rise in outrage when they learned about the mass graves of indigenous children in Canada. What truly outraged them was their opposition to being vaccinated, which is totally dumb.
Well, mask and vaccine regulations might be the proximate cause, but there is the bigger picture. In that context, folks who want to protect their power and privilege are trying to shut down public awareness of who has been hurt on the way to securing that superior position in the current hierarchy
Arthur, from the footage I saw, the truckers in Ottawa didn’t look like they had a whole lot of “power and privilege.”
Maybe not, but seems like they think that whatever remnant they have do is threatened. A lot of folks operate from a perspective that the gain of others must come at their expense. It’s a view that because inequity is inevitable, you need to grab what you have and hold on to what you’ve got.
I think the truckers have about as much power and privilege as union teachers, which is to say, some, but in terms of money and power, not that much.
Flerp: The Southern Armies in the American Civil War had really not benefitted from White Supremacy. Rather they had been victimized by the same social system that had created a society that had deprived them of the best land and equitable social status. They grumbled about a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” But they fought nonetheless, convinced that to do otherwise would be to threaten their status as barely above the Africans, who they had been taught to despise.
Modern protest movements often look like that, it seems to me.
The point of Canada flags waving in Ottawa was not to demonstrate indifference to the suffering of Indigenous children, but to demonstrate the disconnect between federal mandates and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is not a nostalgic throw-back, but arguably the cornerstone of the Canadian Constitution. Kline might have done well to talk to Metis grandmother and freedom convoy “organizer” Tamara Lich before she made her out of touch analysis and overblown comparisons. She could have also spoken with any number of First Nations protesters in Ottawa for some insight into this point. Kline could also say waffles are like spaghetti because they both contain starch, and she would show about as much insight as she does in her comparisons between the convoy, Putin and Trump. But Diane Ravich says it’s “dumb” that someone would be outraged (try terrified, but ok) at having constitutional rights of travel & work revoked for not taking a fast-tracked inoculation whose makers even insist that it doesn’t stop the spread of illness (the most proliferate manufacturer of said drug having paid the highest criminal fine in US history in 2013, by the way). And Arthur Camins wants to paint a black and white picture of the world as composed of “nice” liberals (who call COIVD unvaccinated folks names like “dumb”) and “mean” everyone else. Canadians however don’t have to choose between compassion for First Nations people and for those who make different health choices than the Prime Minister and are then publicly labelled as racist misogynists who should perhaps not be tolerated for their choice. It was the label, applied unilaterally with no distinction between settlers and Indigenous people in late 2021, and its accompanying mandates that precipitated the freedom convoy, not nostalgia.
Roy- thanks for the response that expanded on Arthur’s premise.
Robert Regan (R), Michigan House Representative, is in the news. He’s a graduate of the DeVos School of Management. Regan’s the poster boy for what Roy describes. He wrote at his site that he is a Bible believing Christian who wants his actions to do the talking. He invoked anti-woman bigotry, saying, if his daughters were raped, they should lie back and enjoy it. (He’s anti-abortion.) He’s been bankrupt (“serial entrepreneur”). The lone picture at his political site (other than of himself) is his daughter in a photo with her husband showing her cleavage. He won’t condemn Putin’s attack on Ukraine, I speculate because, similar to Pat Buchanan, he thinks ,”Putin is one of us.” The “us” suggests preference for performative masculinity. Regan is also in favor of school choice. Btw- one of his daughters advised voters not to vote for her father (similar to Gosar’s family).
It was already obvious that women who vote Republican are stupid so Regan is a redundant reason to vote for the other party.
Those “Freedom Cowboys” should be wearing dark-blue with white=print armbands that say Putin and Trump Forever alone with Putin and Trump Forever flags attached to all of their trucks.
Freedom to these alleged “cowboys” means the freedom to bully and bash everyone that doesn’t agree with them and dares to confront them.
Guess who their favorite shirtless fake cowboy on a horse is. Just Google Putin bareback on a horse and you will see the answer.
Trump bad, Putin bad, OK, but Canadian Truckers? Really, this article has jumped the shark and this thinking will see the democrats run out in a landslide in November, just like the San Fran school board recall. Plus, what about the problem of for profit healthcare, which has got to be more corrupt than for profit education, but gets zero pushback on a blog that I would think the parallels to the lies and grift in for profit education would be obvious.
Agree with Roy. Diane’s parlor is second to none. Never forget it was Barr who worked for Russian banks prior to his fawning audition memo to Trump. His support represents advocacy of a useful idiot for Putin not of Trump the person.
Meanwhile, correct me if I’m wrong, but Russia–not my favorite country, especially right now, has health care for all, doesn’t it? I think some folks on this blog need to read more widely. It’s hard, I admit, to get the “other” side: In our area (Ohio) we used to get Al Jazeera and RTV. Now, neither. Al Gore gave up his channel. Isn’t it true that all of our major sources of news are owned and run by wealthy white men? The Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, still does a surprisingly good job on balance. But how did we get Trump? Nearly 24/7 news coverage. NBC head said, “May not be good for the country, but it’s good for our bottom line.” Wow! Bernie struggled to make the news. There’s no union-owned channel; no agnostic channel, though many Christian; no socialist channel, or major non-profit channel. Reagan’s administration killed the Fairness Doctrine, and we’ve seen “balance” gradually disappear. No MSNBC is not “Democratic.” Tell that to Morning Joe, the former Republican Congressperson. I’ll stop folks–but open your minds, please! We may be on the eve of destruction…Meanwhile, Thanks Dianne, for making this space for conversation!
Jack,
Did you know that Putin just closed down the few remaining independent news media? He also passed a law making it a crime to spread “false information” about the “special operation” in Ukraine. The penalty: 15 years in prison for saying that Russia invaded Ukraine, that Russia is making war on Ukraine, that Russia is acting “aggressively.” Tell the truth and you will be locked up for 15 years! The only media that the Russian people have access to is the state media.