As Charles Péguy noted in Our youthit is very difficult to see what we see. Because what is available to the eye is essential. The real has this disappointing that it dissipates the illusions and shies away from interpretations. Hence the aversion of the follower of great concepts to the simplicity of the facts. However, seeing things in their obvious simplicity is an elementary mental hygiene, otherwise, we inevitably lend the flank to a return of the repressed.
The recent interview with L’Express by Vladislav Sourkov is an example. Unlike the Magician of Oz, that of the Kremlin does not hide anything. Everything is there. No need to go get between the lines, just read what you can read.
The project is clear, “Russia will extend in all directions”. War and extension as horizon. As for the means, we cannot be clearer. Lying first: “against the will of the Ukrainian people […] The West is trying to submit Ukraine “, in order to legitimize the inclinations of the invader against” the puppet regime of kyiv “. What does it matter that the string is big, since it is not so much to convince as of stunning. No need to remind him that no Ukrainian has been quick to join the columns of Russian tanks; From the South and the East, the soldiers have not been welcomed as liberators; that two thirds of the Ukrainians consider Russia as an existential threat or that a large majority still supports President Zelensky (Skiis survey of March 4).
Then victimize: “even though we discuss European weapons […] are used against my country. “Rhetoric well known to the aggressor who makes the other managers of his own turpitudes and takes a witness who wants to listen to him. If I am so bad, it cannot be my fact, another must be guilty.
Finally only obey the law of the strongest: “the important thing is not to get carried away and not to tackle too big pieces”. In other words, wage war without undergoing it. Take the lowest and divide the blocks to better annex them. Extend the Lebensraum Russian without suffering from a containment Western.
The real does not leave the choice
Faced with so much honesty like denying reality? The inventor of Russian doctrine reveals his sleight of hand, remains to take note and act accordingly. Yes, Russia is an enemy. No matter how obviously we will refuse, peace will not agree. Judging by the deterioration of the situation for ten years, it would be even the opposite. Because Putin’s strategy is not new. If we had acted upon the invasion of Crimea, war could have been avoided. Sourkov does not say otherwise when he describes a dishonest Russia, loose and without plume.
There is a lesson to be learned, whose ramifications go far beyond the only Russian threat. To see what we see is to accept that sometimes the real leaves the choice. And maybe let’s look away, it will nonetheless be what it is, with all the difficulties it imposes.
This inability to name things is undoubtedly one of the main causes of the turbulence that our liberal societies experience. To claim that Algeria is a democracy has not dissuaded the regime to imprison Boualem Sansal. And his relations with France would have been very different if we had recognized that his catastrophic situation resulted less from colonization completed for more than sixty years than dictatorship and corruption that succeeded him. Similarly, refusing to admit the authoritarian drift of the United States or the hybrid war that China leads us, will neither make allies nor friends, and will encourage either the other to take Europe seriously. To see reality in front is to admit that these countries are all threats.
Enemies of democracy
It goes from inside and outside. By excess tolerance, for fear of clashwe refuse to name the enemies of democracy. Worse, we veil each other, to the point of adorning them with virtues from which they are devoid of. Those who claim to fight against discrimination by referring individuals to their supposed essence affirm by the same as they classify and prioritize according to origins, beliefs or skin color. Therefore, they oppose the values of freedom, equality and secularism.
And intellectual honesty involves defining them for what they are: racists. Likewise, the movements fighting for the rights of women with the exception of the Jews or those living under the yoke of Sharia law are not feminist but anti -Semitic or Islamists. The groups which refer to the divine to prohibit or legitimize certain practices in public space are not religious but fundamentalist. And experts and former political leaders paid by foreign regimes should not be presented as experienced people but as agents of influence.
These clarifications made, it is finally possible to distinguish the adversaries from enemies, to draw the border between what is struggling and what is fighting. Reason why it is so difficult to see what we see: Mensetting things, is to force ourselves to get out of his torpor and prepare to fight.
*Pierre Bentata is an economist and lecturer at the Aix-Marseille University law faculty. He has just published The winner’s curse (The observatory).
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