Meet cancel culture social justice warrior Vladimir Putin, the world’s premier professor of woke history

Michael Cook
February 14, 2024 12 Reactions

Vladimir Putin is preening himself as the white knight of traditional values jousting against the dark dragon of wokeness. In fact, his history lecture to Tucker Carlson last week was a master class in cancel culture. He “proved” that Ukraine has no right to exist because it had always been part of Mother Russia.

Carlson looked like a stunned mullet for much of the interview, overawed by Putin’s apparently encyclopaedic grasp of the history of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland. As an expert in deconstructing and ridiculing woke narratives, Carlson should have realised that he was being played for a sucker. The ploy of cancel culture historians is to seize upon one injustice which cries to heaven for reparation – like slavery in the United States or colonial domination in Africa. They use this narrative as a smokescreen to divert attention from other aspects of the history. They fail to mention, for instance, slavery within Africa, or the benefits of colonial administration.

Putin ignored counter-arguments from Ukrainian historians. He even ignored the most tragic example of Russian oppression – the Holodomor, Stalin’s genocidal policy of starving to death millions of Ukrainians to enforce collectivization and dekulakisation.

Weaponising history like this, however, is dangerous. It becomes a bomb which could blow up in your face.

Russia today is the result of imperial expansion under the Czars. Some lands governed by President Putin were only gathered into the embrace of Mother Russia in the 19th century. In the Caucasus region, Georgia, Chechnya and Dagestan were ruled by Persia until they were seized by Russia in a series of wars in the 18th and 19th centuries. What if Iran decided to take advantage of Russian weakness at some stage and recovers its ancient possessions? In fact, all of Russia’s neighbours could mount an academically respectable case for taking a bite out of Russia’s borders.

The vast lands of Russia’s east are sparsely populated. Across the border is China, a country with ten times its population. After Tucker Carlson’s interview, indignant Chinese nationalists suggested that China should reclaim Vladivostok, Russia’s main port on the Pacific. "Going further afield, today's Mongolia and Russian Siberia were both territories of China in the [7th century] Tang Dynasty with its capital in Xi'an," said one Weibo user.

 

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A war of conquest by China to take territory from a depopulated Russia seems unimaginable. But it’s not. In 1969 China and the USSR clashed over disputed territory along the border. A few dozen troops died. The dispute was not settled until 2003.  

Zichen Wang, a fellow at the China Center for China and Globalization and a former journalist with Xinhua News Agency, wrote on X: "historically some place belongs to somewhere can mean very little. why must we refer to the 8th or 13th century but not 220 BC? we live in the present day with laws, not the 8th century."

This is exactly the advice given by Tsakhia Elbegdorj, president of Mongolia from 2009 to 2017. He chided Putin for his historical amnesia. The Mongols ruled over the largest contiguous empire in history during the 13th and 14th centuries, including most of southern Russia. Does Mongolia have a right to reassert its territorial claims?  

Elbegdorj regards Putin’s history as a bare-faced pretext for domination. He wrote a year ago:

I know Putin does not tolerate freedom. I have sat with him on many occasions. He despises differences and competition. He fears a free Ukraine. As a deep narcissist, he could not afford to see more successful and prosperous neighbors.

Putin shines a klieg light on his country’s grievances and shoves its wars of colonial domination into a dark closet. If Russia’s right to Ukraine is accepted, what is to protect Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Mongolia, etc, etc -- from being gobbled up by the Russian bear? At one stage Russia ruled some or all of their territories.

Despite Putin’s urbane and reasonable tone in the Tucker Carlson interview, at the same time he was doing his damnedest to terrify neighbouring countries into thinking that they will be next. This week Russian authorities launched criminal proceedings against Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas plus officials in all three Baltic states for damaging or destroying Soviet monuments -- on their sovereign territory. 

The world has moved on since the Czars, except in the mind of Vladimir Putin.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani, gave a terrific speech to the Security Council about respecting the UN’s founding principle of territorial integrity. As the representative of a former colony, he spoke with some authority:

“Kenya, and almost every African country, was birthed by the ending of empire. Our borders were not of our own drawing. They were drawn in the distant colonial metropoles of London, Paris, and Lisbon with no regard for the ancient nations that they cleaved apart. Today, across the border of every single African country live our countrymen with whom we share deep historical, cultural, and linguistic bonds. At independence, had we chosen to pursue states on the basis of ethnic, racial, or religious homogeneity, we would still be waging bloody wars these many decades later. Instead, we agreed that we would settle for the borders we inherited.” 

Admittedly, since the UN charter was signed in 1945, territorial integrity has been ignored and violated countless times. But a rules-based international order must still be the starting point for the resolution of historical grievances. Otherwise the 21st century is going to become a jungle filled with ravenous beasts.  

The Estonian foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, delivered his annual policy speech this week. He was scathing about Putin’s woke version of history:

“No one wants to live in a world where Putins roam, kidnapping and orphaning children, attempting to cancel their neighbors and mining nuclear power plants,” he said. “Aggression must not succeed; it must not become a new acceptable reality. Otherwise, the world will become the domain of force, arrogance, callousness, authoritarianism.”   

Michael Cook is editor of Mercator

Image: Vladimir Putin on the Tucker Carlson Network

 

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  • Peter Fährmann
    Russia got its name from the Kievan Rus. That’s right, Kiev in Ukraine. The Russian heartland used to part of Ukraine. Perhaps its time to cancel Russia!
  • Kenneth Ndehi
    commented 2024-02-18 06:34:45 +1100
    Micheal, Eastern Ukraine is and has been – for many centuries – a defacto part of Russia (Novorossiya). Russia’s black sea fleet has had its home port in Crimea since the 18th Century; every second or third Eastern Ukranian has close relatives in Russia – including the new top Ukrainian general whose parents live in central Russia; the open border between the Dombass and Russia and the closely coupled industrial supply chains between both sides of the border; and for 29 years, the General Secretary of USSR was Ukranian etc etc. Therefore, Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO is the red line that would trigger a military response. To make matters worse, NATO has known this since at least 2008, when the then US ambassador to Russia – and current director of the CIA, sent the famous Nyet means Nyet memo to his bosses (https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html).
  • Michael Cook
    commented 2024-02-17 21:00:02 +1100
    I realise that this issue excites strong emotions. However, can you please keep comment brief and to the point. 200 words should be enough…. EDITOR
  • mrscracker
    It’s true Jurgen that few nations or empires have respected the borders of their neighbors historically. It doesn’t suggest that should be a model for the future though. But it is something that’s going to reoccur since human nature doesn’t change much.
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-02-16 18:46:37 +1100
    With regard to the Pandora-box-comment:

    That box is already open. Does Israel respect the borders of its neighbors, do the US and Turkey respect the borders of Syria?

    Before that background the Russian legalistic approach, including by the way popular votes by the people in the Donbass, does look ok.

    Each Swiss community has the constitutional right to leave its Canton, and it happens from time to time.

    And each Canton has the constitutional right to leave Switzerland.

    Kiew should have allowed its regions the leave.

    Maybe Ukraine would have become the next wealthy and highly innovative Switzerland over time.
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-02-16 14:51:58 +1100
    Marianna, let me repeat: Ukraine and it’s western guarantors France and Germany broke the Minsk agreements. Ukraine never stopped shelling Donetsk. Ukrainian politicians have publicly admitted and Mrs Merkel has publicly confirmed that Ukraine NEVER intended to honour the Minsk agreements. Instead, they signed the agreements only to buy time, to get more weapons into Ukraine plus US military “advisors”.

    Even you have to admit that this is a standard CIA practice. We have seen it in many countries during the past decades.

    The CIA needs to be closed! It’s leaders and Mrs Nuland belong in jail!
  • Мар'яна Чорна
    very correct conclusions. The problem of the Russian dictator is not only the manipulation of history, but also encroachment on recognized borders, which is the opening of the Pandopa box for other nations
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-02-15 17:54:13 +1100
    Michael, your argument, your article begins with a misunderstanding. You are, however, not the only one that misunderstand. Tucker, at least in the interview, had the same misunderstand and therefore drew the same wrong conclusion.

    Putin never said that Ukraine has no right to exist. Please, listen carefully to the interview again.

    What Putin said, was that Ukraine is an artificial state and that it shares history, economic connections, many personal connections, culture and languages with Russia. And remember that this situation is even more pronounced in eastern Ukraine.

    So yes, and Putin did not object to that statement, Russia has a “historic claim” at least on eastern Ukraine.

    But Putin never said that this claim or this claim alone allows Russia to go to war with Ukraine.

    Putin and the Russians in general tend to be legalistic, they tend to honour treaties.

    So, and Putin explains this in the interview, while he clearly did not like Lenin’s decision to give Novo Russia to Ukraine, he and the previous Russian government respected the treaty, that lead to Ukraine’s independence. Putin himself did negotiate some of the relevant treaties between Russia and Ukraine.

    But: a historic claim is not a right.

    A right basically needs a treaty.

    I assume this is the point that you and Tucker do not fully understand.

    Again: Putin and Russia, Russia as a guarantor, signed the Minsk agreements, agreements that were signed to end the civil war in Ukraine and that would have kept the Donbass, which is part of the old Novorossia, inside Ukraine!!!!!

    Also: see again, where Putin and Tucker discuss the hungarian region in Ukraine (min 20), where Putin explains that Hungary can indeed make a historic, claim, but that they do not have the right.

    Again, a right needs a treaty.

    Why did Putin then explain all this?

    During the civil war in Ukraine, that began in 2014 and was provoked and engineered by Mrs Nuland, the CIA and therefore also the US government of those years, the Russian government did not acknowledge and accept the independence of the two Donbass regions from Ukraine.

    A war by Russia against Ukraine, from Putin’s point needed a legal basis. That basis was created, when Russia accepted the statehood or independence of the Donbass republics from Ukraine and therefore could sign a treaty with them for the provision of military support to them, of formally going to war in Ukraine.

    The historical background Putin provided the, one might say, moral basis for these legal state-actions.

    Because eastern Ukraine is populated by Russians that have good and plausible reasons for wanting to join Russia, and Russia has good reasons to accept.

    Note that these legal things are obviously important to Russians, probably more than to Americans.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-02-15 09:01:31 +1100
    mrscracker, my mother’s documents say she was born in Germany. That territory is now part of Russia. Turns out I am theoretically eligible for Russian citizenship.

    As you say, borders and empires change.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-02-15 08:57:50 +1100
    Yes, yes, and yes.

    With one quibble “… Carlson should have realised that he was being played for a sucker.”

    He was not being played for a sucker. His agenda was to feed his fanboys what they wanted to hear, not to get to the truth of matters.

    I think he was disappointed that Putin proved so long winded and boring. But, by and large. I think he achieved his goal.

    By the way, I doubt Carlson is a “Russian Asset” as some people have claimed. His goal is simply to promote Tucker Carlson.

    In any case, I think Ukraine is in deep trouble. Trump and his lackeys in the Republican Party are effectively blocking the Biden Administration’s efforts to send aid. Xi is watching with interest.
  • mrscracker
    The Mongol Empire comments are pretty funny, thank you for sharing that.
    A late in-law was born in the Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century & her official documents clearly stated “Russia” as her place of birth. But I understand borders & empires change.
  • Michael Cook
    published this page in The Latest 2024-02-14 23:13:10 +1100

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