{"id":19682,"date":"2022-11-03T08:34:41","date_gmt":"2022-11-03T07:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=19682"},"modified":"2022-11-03T09:01:36","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T08:01:36","slug":"vladimir-putin-at-valdai-international-discussion-club-27-10-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/?p=19682","title":{"rendered":"Vladimir Putin at Valdai International Discussion Club 27.10.2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

I would like to quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn\u2019s famous Harvard Commencement Address delivered in 1978. He said that typical of the West is \u201ca continuous blindness of superiority\u201d \u2013<\/span> and it continues to this day \u2013 which \u201cupholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present-day Western systems.\u201d He said this in 1978. Nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

Over the\u00a0nearly 50 years since then, the\u00a0blindness about which Solzhenitsyn spoke and\u00a0which is openly racist and\u00a0neocolonial, has acquired especially distorted forms, in\u00a0particular, after the\u00a0emergence of\u00a0the\u00a0so-called unipolar world. What am I\u00a0referring to? Belief in\u00a0one\u2019s infallibility is very dangerous; it is only one step away from the\u00a0desire of\u00a0the\u00a0infallible to\u00a0destroy those they do not like, or\u00a0as\u00a0they say, to\u00a0cancel them. Just think about the\u00a0meaning of\u00a0this word.<\/p>\n

Even at the very peak of the Cold War, the peak of the confrontation of the two systems, ideologies and military rivalry, it did not occur to anyone to deny the very existence of the culture, art, and science of other peoples, their opponents. It did not even occur to anyone. Yes, certain restrictions were imposed on contacts in education, science, culture, and, unfortunately, sports. But nonetheless, both the Soviet and American leaders understood that it was necessary to treat the humanitarian area tactfully, studying and respecting your rival, and sometimes even borrowing from them in order to retain a foundation for sound, productive relations at least for the future.<\/p>\n

And what is happening now? At one time, the Nazis reached the point of burning books, and now the Western \u201cguardians of liberalism and progress\u201d have reached the point of banning Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky. The so-called \u201ccancel culture\u201d and in reality \u2013 as we said many times \u2013 the real cancellation of culture is eradicating everything that is alive and creative and stifles free thought in all areas, be it economics, politics or culture.<\/p>\n

Today, liberal ideology itself has changed beyond recognition. If initially, classic liberalism was understood to\u00a0mean the\u00a0freedom of\u00a0every person to\u00a0do and\u00a0say as\u00a0they pleased, in\u00a0the\u00a020th<\/sup>\u00a0century the\u00a0liberals started saying that the\u00a0so-called open society had enemies and\u00a0that the\u00a0freedom of\u00a0these enemies could and\u00a0should be restricted if not cancelled. It has reached the\u00a0absurd point where any alternative opinion is declared subversive propaganda and\u00a0a\u00a0threat to\u00a0democracy.<\/p>\n

Whatever comes from Russia is all branded as \u201cKremlin intrigues<\/span>.\u201d But look at yourselves. Are we really so all-powerful? Any criticism of our opponents \u2013 any \u2013 is perceived as \u201cKremlin intrigues,\u201d \u201cthe hand of the Kremlin.\u201d This is insane. What have you sunk to? Use your brain, at least, say something more interesting, lay out your viewpoint conceptually. You cannot blame everything on the Kremlin\u2019s scheming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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I would like to quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn\u2019s famous Harvard Commencement Address delivered in 1978. He said that typical of the West is \u201ca continuous blindness of superiority\u201d \u2013 and it continues to this day \u2013 which \u201cupholds the belief … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}