And when you tell them that, they will make you pay for it.
An extremely good and important article, please read and share.
"There is a machine in Western liberal culture, and it runs on one specific fuel: the Good Russian.
The Good Russian is not a person, exactly. He is a function. He is the individual Russian who opposes Putin — usually through artistic or journalistic or activist means, usually having suffered professionally or personally for it, usually now residing in comfortable exile in Prague or Berlin or London or Copenhagen — who the Western liberal establishment elevates as proof that Russia is not irredeemable. That Russia contains, within its vast and complicated body, the seeds of its own moral reconstruction. That if we are patient and generous and appreciative enough of the Good Russians among us, the arc of history will eventually bend.
The machine is always running. It has been running for decades. Before Talankin there was the Navalny documentary. Before that there were the dissident artists, the exiled journalists, the human rights lawyers who became household names in Western capitals while remaining strangers in their own country. The cast rotates. The function does not change.
Here is what the function is.
The Good Russian releases the West from a demand it cannot tolerate: the demand for a reckoning with Russian society, not just Russian leadership. Ukrainians have been saying for four years — for longer, since 2014, since before — that this is not just about Putin. That Putin is the expression of something, not the cause of it. That Russian imperial culture, Russian colonial consciousness, the Russian refusal to acknowledge Ukrainian identity as real and distinct and sovereign — these are not the invention of one man and they will not die with him. That the poll numbers showing majority Russian support for the war are not manufactured by the Kremlin but reflect something real and deep and socially embedded about how Russian society understands its relationship to the territories it considers its own."
This is an extraordinary piece. Do yourself a favor and read it.
