Douglas Todd: Five things Americans need to know about the war in Ukraine

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CÓRDOBA, Spain — By now, it’s a distinct possibility that many Americans are treating the war against Ukraine like a Netflix series, which initially caught their attention and then largely faded away. Invasion is now one of many options in this overstimulated culture.

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But we must be vigilant. Russian leaders’ heinous attack on Ukraine offers insight into the power of national identity, religion’s often hidden role in history, the real meaning of “neo-Nazi,” the dangers of collective blame, and the elusive quest for the “perfect victim”. .”

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Such themes were unearthed at a conference recently held in Spain by the International Association of Religious Journalists, of which I am director, which explored the difficulties of writing about cultural, religious, and military conflicts, including Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Ukrainians are in an ‘identity war’

While some European journalists talked about how strange it was to cover the conflict without adopting his usual stance of neutrality, the Dutch writer Hendro Munsterman he described how the bloodshed of the conflict in Ukraine is distilled into an “identity war”.

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Despite long ties to Russia, Ukrainians fight against the oppressor to protect their independence and identity, which is significantly rooted in their religion, Eastern Orthodoxy, said Munsterman, who works for Nederlands Dagblad.

As Munsterman spoke, it made me wonder if Canadians would ever mount such a strong defense if their identity, as a nation and a people, were threatened by a fierce external enemy. Is not safe.

Ukrainians are more religious than Russians

Munsterman suggested that Ukrainians are challenging in part because they are more religious than most, particularly Russians.

While President Vladimir Putin has pressured the Russian Orthodox Church (which has a large presence in Ukraine) to support his “military operation” to eliminate so-called “decadence” and “neo-Nazism”, the strongman is up against the followers Orthodox who are much more devout than the typical urban Russian, which some suggest They tend to be cynical.

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But it has not stopped Putin from using the Russian Orthodox Church as a weapon in his efforts to colonize other countries, including many in Africa, Munsterman said. The good news is that his tactic is failing spectacularly in Ukraine, where Orthodox members have found various ways to marginalize the 220 million-member Russian arm of the Orthodox tradition.

A similar miscalculation occurred in the Amsterdam town of Munsterman, where a Russian Orthodox bishop dramatically showed up one Sunday (with security officials) to take control of a Russian-Ukrainian congregation, where the priest had criticized the invasion. Embarrassing news of hostile takeover attempt shot around the world.

Part of the reason Putin denounced Ukraine as decadent, Munsterman said, is that he can’t stand that the country has been developing a secure identity as an “ecumenical laboratory” in which different types of Orthodox and other Christians get along. even with Jews. and Muslims.

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‘We must not do collective blame’

For all the despicable behavior of Putin and the leaders supporting his invasion, Serbian journalist Jelana Jorgacevic discouraged people from painting all Russians with the same evil brush.

“We shouldn’t do collective blame,” said Jorgacevic, who is with Vreme magazine.

That is what happened to Serbs during and after the 1990s war in the former Yugoslavia, in which former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević was convicted of atrocities. Most Serbs, who are mostly Orthodox, he said, felt: ‘The world hates us’”.

Just as most Serbs believed they were being demonized, making it difficult for different types of Serbs to get along with each other, let alone other Europeans, he said the same stereotype could affect all Russians.

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Although Jorgacevic did not mention it, he was supporting the theories of the German Jewish scholar Hannah Arendt, who argued against assuming that all Germans should be guilty of the Nazi death camps.

The concept of Collective guilt, as opposed to individual guilt, is “meaningless,”, said Arendt in the 1960s, and it only serves as an effective “cover-up” for guilty people to hide behind.

Problems with collective guilt persist in many contexts, including Canada. More recently, the Australian-American scholar Dirk Moses said: “The accusation of collective guilt is unacceptable…and is, I believe, one of the key ingredients in genocidal thinking.”

As Jorgacevic put it, “When the war is over, the Ukrainians will still have to get along with the Russians. Many are married to each other.”

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Does Ukraine really have ‘neo-Nazis’?

The mood of the conference turned electric when a couple of journalists caustically referred to how some Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” suddenly became heroes after the February 24 invasion of Russia.

It was true? A revealing discussion followed, with panel members warning against careless use of the epithet “neo-Nazi”, which Putin is not alone in abusing for profit.

Moscow has described Ukraine’s entire government as neo-Nazi, which is strange given that its citizens overwhelmingly elected a Jewish president whose family endured the Nazis’ anti-Semitic holocaust.

The Kremlin especially targets the Azov Regiment, which defended Mariupol’s Azovstal steel factory in May, as one of the main perpetrators of so-called radical anti-Russian nationalism, or Nazism, from which it says it needs to protect Russian-speakers in Ukraine.

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The Azov Regiment was formed in 2014 as a right-wing volunteer militia to fight Russian-backed separatists who had taken control of parts of the Donbass region. But the regiment denies being fascist, racist or neo-Nazi, and Ukraine says it has been reformed.

While Jorgacevic said some members of the Azov Regiment were known to employ Nazi symbols, he said much of their early efforts were aimed at limiting mass, unregulated immigration.

We have to watch our words, Munsterman said. Is it reasonable to compare a small faction of aggressive nationalists with the diabolical German system that murdered more than six million Jews, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped, political resisters and others?

Ukraine is not a ‘perfect victim’

While there seems little doubt that the Azov Regiment contained some thuggish members, Jorgacevic offered words of wisdom when he said there is no need to portray all beleaguered Ukrainians as paragons of virtue.

“Society,” he said, “is always looking for the perfect victim.” But pure innocence rarely exists.

And regardless of the relative virtue of the Ukrainians, nothing justifies this imperialist invasion.

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