This is Fighting Words, a weekly newsletter about what got me steamed this week. Let’s dive in. |
Item one: The Putin speech We begin with the relevant chunk of Vladimir Putin’s rather breathtaking speech on Wednesday, as translated by Michael Elgort: |
Yes, of course, they will bet on our so-called fifth column—on national traitors. On those who earn money here, with us, but live there. And they live not even in the geographical sense of the word, but according to their thoughts, according to their slavish consciousness. I do not at all judge those who have a villa in Miami or on the French Riviera. Who can’t do without foie gras, oysters, or the so-called gender freedoms. But the issue here is not in that, but in the fact that many of these people by their very nature are located exactly there, and not here, not with our people, not with Russia. This is, in their opinion, a sign of belonging to a higher caste, to a higher race. Such people are ready to sell their own mother if only they were allowed to sit in the hallway of this very highest caste. They want to be like [that caste], imitating [it] in every possible way. Yet they forget or do not understand at all that if they are needed by this so-called higher caste, then [they’re] needed only as expendable material in order to use them to inflict maximum damage on our people. The collective West is trying to split our society, speculating on the combat losses, on the socio-economic consequences of the sanctions, provoking a civil confrontation in Russia and using its fifth column to achieve its goal. And there is only one goal. I have already spoken about it: the destruction of Russia. But any people, and even more so the Russian people, will be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and simply spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths. Spit out on the pavement. I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our society, cohesion, and readiness to respond to any challenges. |
I asked Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment, where he oversees research on Russia and Eurasia (and whom I interviewed for a Tomaskycast episode not long ago), for his interpretation of these remarks. He said: “Putin is trying to convince the Russian elite and what remains of independent civil society that overt dissent will not be tolerated. It’s a chilling message that likely is to ripple through the state’s very extensive and well-funded apparatus of repression. It also may touch actions by nonstate actors who have targeted the regime’s designated enemies in the past. Very dark times ...” Beyond that, I would say: Pay attention to the language. Authoritarianism and fascism are all about language (well, until they’re about extermination, but you know what I mean). Miami. The French Riviera. Foie gras, oysters, and—what an unexpected yet somehow predictable trifecta of liberal-elite decadence!—“gender freedoms.” And of course, he “do[es] not judge” these things. Oh, no! In much the same way that Donald Trump allowed that some Mexicans, he assumed, were “good people.” Putin’s audience knows, as Trump’s did, that the ostensible praise was really intended as damnation. But Weiss is right. How you and I heard the speech isn’t what matters. It’s how his various enforcers heard it. The worse the war goes for the invaders, the worse it will be in Russia for all who are not “real,” midge-spitting Russians. |
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Item two: Listen to Steve Bannon On his War Room podcast this week, Steve Bannon soliloquized on a certain programming change at Fox News: |
We got a lot to go through; the biggest development overnight—I want to give you a signal, not noise—is Jesse Watters is now on the side of the angels with Tucker Carlson, the War Room, Revolver.news, of people who understand and can look at the world in a dispassionate way when you’re talking about lives, you’re talking about kinetic war, you’re talking about economic war. This is very serious. And Jesse only had one thing wrong—not wrong, I just want to make an observation to Jesse. He’s just done such an incredible job and obviously following the great Tucker Carlson. So Fox now has two—Fox the channel of—Fox, which is the home of stupid TV or TV for stupid people. And if you watch it, hey, sorry, it’s just all day long, just ridiculous. Jesse, the only observation I would make is that the most trigger-happy people are not, are not a journalist; and it’s not even the left-wing Democrats anymore. It’s elected senior Republicans. |
First of all, Watters comes before not after Carlson and appears at 7 p.m., so no, Sean Hannity hasn’t gone anywhere, alas. But more importantly, Bannon’s comments reveal that he’s counting on Carlson and Watters to advance the cause not just of Donald Trump, which is a given, but of global authoritarianism. These guys probably think of “dayside” Fox News as a viper’s nest of deep-staters and even see Hannity as something of a squish in this department: if you will, a FINO (fascist in name only). And what is this Revolver.news, you wonder? It’s a hard-right news aggregator. As I was writing this Thursday, I scrolled down the list of headlines on its home page. Here are the targets: Black Lives Matter, Fox News (see what I told you above?), Jimmy Kimmel, Hunter Biden, George Soros, Kanye West, Wimbledon … you get the picture. |
Item three: Are we so sure Liz Cheney is finished? I still remember when Liz Cheney was her father’s eyes and ears in the State Department when it was ginning up excuses to invade Iraq, so it’s not like I’ll ever join her fan club. But obviously, we’re all pulling for her to win reelection to her House seat, because on the vital issue of democracy, she’s taken a courageous stand and because her win would be abject humiliation for a bunch of really rotten people, starting with Trump and Kevin McCarthy. Her Trump-backed opponent is a woman named Harriet Hageman. Not a lot is known of Hageman. She is the senior litigation counsel to an outfit called the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a “nonpartisan” but right-wing nonprofit that specializes in litigating against the “deep state.” It gets (or at least has received) large donations from the Charles Koch Foundation, and it fights those evil vaccination and mask mandates. So here’s my news. Take a look at these numbers: Cheney: raised, $7.2 million; cash on hand, $4.7 million Hageman: raised, $745,000; cash on hand, $381,000 Granted, Hageman is just getting started. She only hit the campaign trail two weeks ago. But $4.3 million is a pretty big head start. How do you even spend $4 million on a Wyoming House race? I guess we’ll find out. In fact, before it’s all over, we’ll probably find out how you spend $14 million. |
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Quiz time! First up, answers to last week’s questions: | 1. | This great Russian novelist died of pneumonia in a railway station at age 82. Just before, he had left his family and home, determined to do “what old men of my age usually do: leaving worldly life to spend the last days of my life in solitude and quiet”; some time before that, his worldview had changed to such a degree that he called one of his two most famous works “an abomination that no longer exists for me.”
A. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
B. Georgy Malenkov
C. Leo Tolstoy
Answer: C, Tolstoy. I thought this was kind of easy because Dostoyevsky died pretty young (59), which I think a lot of people know, and Malenkov succeeded (however briefly) Stalin as the head of the USSR! The earlier work Leo denounced, by the way, was Anna Karenina.
| | 2. | Speaking of Dostoyesvky, he was plagued for many years by what addiction, until he just quit one day cold turkey?
A. Gambling
B. Morphine
C. Sex
Answer: A, gambling. He wrote a short novel called The Gambler.
| | 3. | Russian children are taught to recite these poetic lines: “Moscow … How many strains are fusing / in that one sound, for Russian hearts! / What store of riches it imparts!”—sometimes without knowing that they are from which beloved epic poem?
A. Chekhov’s “The Butterfly”
B. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”
C. Lermontov’s “Borodino”
Answer: B, Pushkin. I think it’s the most beloved epic poem in all of Russian history, or so I once read. But this one was harder as the other two choices were plausible.
| | 4. | She danced in the Ballets Russes under Diaghilev and was the first famous ballerina to star in her own world tour.
A. Marina Semyonova
B. Anna Pavlova
C. Svetlana Nijinsky
Answer: B, Pavlova. She’s really famous; I’d have thought this was really easy. Semyonova was another ballerina, but not nearly as globally famous as Pavlova. I made up Svetlana Nijinsky, using the name of the male ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky; then lo and behold, it turns out there was a female Nijinska, his sister Bronislava, who is far less celebrated but had the longer and more varied career (h/t TNR copy editor Kirsten Denker).
| | 5. | This early twentieth-century artist was known for paintings that he called “prouns” (rhymes roughly with croon, not noun), which were abstract geometric works that were his main foray into the visual language of Russian suprematism.
A. El Lissitzky
B. Kazimir Malevich
C. Vladimir Tatlin
Answer: A, Lissitzky. Russian constructivism and suprematism are my favorite genres of art of all time. I was in heaven in 2016 when I visited the New Tretyakov in Moscow, which has gallery after gallery of such art (as well as, in the interest of historical honesty, a couple galleries of Soviet realist art). It was stunning.
| | 6. | This composer’s towering reputation remains unmarred by the fact that he lived out his life in the Soviet Union and, while experiencing difficulties with the regime here and there, later in life joined the Communist Party and in 1961 dedicated his Twelfth Symphony to Lenin.
A. Alexander Scriabin
B. Sergei Prokofiev
C. Dmitri Shostakovich
Answer: C, Shostakovich. Scriabin lived earlier, and Prokofiev left for America not long after the revolution. |
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This week: world capitals I love geography. And world capitals is a cool category because aside from “what is the capital of X?” there are other ways to ask interesting questions along these lines, as we shall see below. So let’s get started. |
1. As everybody in the world knows by now, Kyiv is the capital of Ukraine. Match these four cities to the former Soviet socialist republics of which they are the capital. |
Yerevan Tashkent Baku Chisinau |
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Uzbekistan Azerbaijan Moldova Armenia |
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2. This is the only world capital to border two other countries. |
A. Montevideo, Uruguay B. Bratislava, Slovakia C. Nairobi, Kenya |
3. This capital was purpose-built and is notorious for being (a) quite beautiful architecturally but (b) so bereft of people and traffic that it is said that, most days, a 747 could safely land on the 10-lane highway leading to the government complex. |
A. Naypyidaw, Myanmar B. Berberati, Central African Republic C. Canberra, Australia |
4. This tiny African country has its capital city not on the mainland but on an island that is part of its territory. |
A. Malawi B. Mali C. Equatorial Guinea |
5. This country has not one but three capital cities—one executive, one legislative, and one judicial. You have in all likelihood heard of two of these cities, but not the third. |
A. Vietnam B. New Zealand C. South Africa |
6. This capital city, not often visited by Westerners, is the home of the world’s tallest unoccupied building, at 105 stories and 1,080 feet—the so-called “Hotel of Doom.” |
A. Pyongyang, North Korea B. Vientiane, Laos C. Port Vila, Vanuatu |
Answers next week. If you like what you read, sign up for this free weekly newsletter below. See you next week. —Michael Tomasky, editor |
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