Ukraine Should Not Be Used To Feed The Appetite Of Culture Warriors
Check out my new book
In the minds of many Western commentators, Ukraine has become intertwined with their culture wars. It should not!
The headline of a New York Times op-ed reads ‘Ukraine Deflates MAGA Macho Myths’. It is evident that the writer of this op-ed, Paul Krugman, has opportunistically recast Ukraine’s heroic resistance of the Russian invaders of their country as a chapter in America’s domestic cultural conflict. Although he recognises that the war is actually a ‘fight for Ukrainian freedom’ he adds that it has also ‘weirdly become a front in America’s cultural and political wars’.
There is something truly sordid in the way that so many Western politicians and commentators have parasitically appropriated the cause of Ukraine in order to make themselves look authoritative. As I explain my book, The Road To Ukraine: How The West Lost Its Way, the attempt by sections of the Western political establishment to use the cause of Ukraine to legitimate itself is a morally unworthy exercise in propaganda management.
There is a danger that if the conflict in Ukraine becomes used to settle domestic scores in the West, the real issue at stake in this war will become obscured. The war in Ukraine needs to be understood in its own terms rather than as a side issue in the West’s culture war.
Later this week I will be publishing a long essay on:
‘Ukraine and The Moral Disarmament of the West’
Important news
My new book The Road To Ukraine is now published!!!! Check it out!
Come to the launch of the book at the Battle of Ideas Festival in London on 15 October, 2022.. The Festival is the ideas event of the year. If you want a real intellectual buzz come along and participate in the discussions.