Here is why a liberal may be so anxious about the current right-wing turn in the global North, possibly inspired and to a great extent fuelled and nurtured by Russia’s demise:
- The right turn is a no-brainer, spreading like an STD on bad hygiene. It is another rock-solid proof of the incompetence of morally and intellectually dead conservatism. Feeding on low-life hatred and anxiety, reactionary mindset, and resentment, it preys on the uncurious and the uninformed. Conservatives weaponise fear to eat their congregation’s soft brains with a spoon. Political conservatism is brain-dead.
- Intellectually, liberalism will always prevail. An intellectual would never seek the truth in anger or misanthropy, nor fall for the temptation of simple answers to complex questions. Genuinely conservative, angry, and sociophobic individuals are not curious enough and are too closed-minded to find the answers they seek. No chance they’re intellectuals.
- What else makes intellectually competent individuals—people not without brains—embrace conservatism, if not greed and a blurred moral compass, lack of remorse for betraying the values of common sense, freedom, equality, and individual responsibility, genuinely characteristic of intellectually advanced individuals? Some of them are corrupt and morally blind enough to stoop to becoming conservative politicians. I am looking at conservative opportunists in Germany and the deadweight majority in Latvian politics—nothing but easy, no-brainer conservatism with no intellectual vigour.
- The weaker the intellectual backbone of a society, the more conservative the society becomes, as its intellectuals are either too few, or too timid, or too frail in their moral conviction, leaving them susceptible to corruption.
- Weak societies, like Russia, are too porous to sieve out and eradicate the pest of dehumanising those who fall outside the dogmatic confines of tradition and culture. Lacking immunity, they are unable to prevent the plague of brain-damaged fear of otherness—xenophobia, paranoid isolationism, existential anxiety about change—from spreading and gaining momentum globally.
- Russia is an exhausted, immunodeficient cell that didn’t kill the Putinian tumour and is letting it feed on what’s left of Russia. It has been turning Russia itself into a tumour for decades. Expecting Russia to miraculously rid itself of the tumour and heal is idiotic. It needs help and guidance.
- The epoch of collective responsibility is back with its wars, authoritarianism, police state, inequality, and disdain for human dignity.
- State regulations imply collective responsibility. Everyone is restricted in order to stop a few from abusing the system. State regulation should only be allowed in areas where mass abuse of limited resources is expected. I am watching German conservatives pushing to reinstate border controls to catch a few, effectively undermining the freedom of movement across the EU for everyone.
- The inherent autonomy of each individual and the sanctity of individual life, with all its rights and freedoms, should be the highest value, as it stands above the state, institutions, and societal rules, let alone the arbitrary concepts of tradition and culture, which are often invented to protect the lazy comfort of those horrified by change.
- Collective punishments in the form of blanket limitations to curtail everyone’s freedoms must be outlawed once and for all. The remedy is in educating the uneducated, informing the uninformed, and introducing critical thinking to the uncurious. If any stratification is necessary, the population needs to be distinguished by the level of education and susceptibility to critical thinking. Wars are mere attempts to simplify the answers to complex questions. Education and critical thinking are the only guarantees against wars, right-wing turns in global politics, or any similar forms of cannibalistic backlash.