by Roberto Massari
ENGLISH - ITALIANO - ESPAÑOL - FRANÇAIS
The true reasons for which Van Gogh cut off his ear and then had it delivered to a woman have never been clear. However, that act of self-harm certainly was the result of a state of mental alteration, let's say personal madness. On the other hand, the cut of the ear of Saidakrami M. Rachalbalizoda (to whom the ear was then put in his mouth) is not mysterious, insane, or personal: it was an official decision of the Russian government under Putin.
This is demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt by the fact that the mutilation was recorded in a video, which was then posted online, with the announcement by the soldier «butcher» that the knife used will be sold at auction. To imagine that in a dictatorial and fiercely police state regime like the Russian one, all of this was done without the consent of the authorities would mean not understanding anything about Putin's regime and the functioning of his State police (FSB and other agencies that I have described in a previous article and in my book on Čeka).
In 2004, I published (as Massari publisher and edited by the Free Iraq Committees) a book entitled: Torture «Made in the USA». Journey into the American Gulag. The book took the opportunity from the torture practiced by CIA agents and American soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison (in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein had about 4,000 detainees killed), but then expanded the discussion to Guantánamo Bay, Bagram (Afghanistan), and the many other repressive horrors employed by the US government after September 11. I am proud to have published it (the only one in Italy) and I would very much like to do the same (again as a publisher) for the tortures and assassinations carried out by Putin's government. Moreover, now it would really be worth, not only for the recent tortures made official by the government but also for the way in which Navalny's and others opponents are being killed. For lack of information, though, I would have some difficulty publishing a book on the spread of the «oligarch syndrome», which for some years - specifically since the beginning of the aggression in Ukraine - has been claiming dozens of victims among the economic elite.
However, some important differences must be understood. The photographs that made the world aware of the barbarism of Abu Ghraib were not the result of official decisions, but of the torturers' stupid vainglory. So much so that they were then tried and variously condemned by the US government itself, not for the photos, but for having carried out the torture. Something unimaginable in Putin's regime or Lukashenka's Belarus.
None of this, in fact, will happen in Russia, where the other three attackers of March 23 at the Crocus City Hall were also tortured and exhibited in public with the obvious signs of torture. In short, it is clear that Putin's government intends to tell the whole world that in Russia torture is practiced with State consent and that it will normally be used against anyone guilty of attacks or other forms of savage aggression: over time, perhaps it could extend to other categories considered dangerous for the stability of the regime. Therefore torture - in the past always and only practiced unofficially by the Soviet and Brezhnevian police - now becomes official in Russia, while the practice of mutilation is added, always officially.
And this is news, at least officially. (I am not aware that official mutilations were carried out under Stalin's regime: indeed, in the Solovki Gulag, for example, prisoners were allowed to die of gangrene rather than amputating the limb of the inmate who was no longer fit to work... )
I will be told that Tajik ear cut is nothing new on the face of the Earth, given that «legal» mutilations are practiced in various countries, especially Islamic ones, among which Iran obviously stands out as it cuts off the toes of criminals or thieves' hands and practiced judicial blinding even as recently as 2016. Furthermore, some Iranian political currents that are more reactionary than the government (is this ever possible?) propose that judicial mutilations and rapes also be used as punishment for male opponents and female opponents of the regime.
But what about the barbarism of ISIS-K? There is nothing to add because the condemnation of the entire world was unanimous, immediate and without hesitation or mincing words. And this is a great step forward for humanity, given that there was no similar unanimity in condemnation for the Hamas pogrom of October 7, which was certainly superior in terms of ferocity. But there it was Jews who were killed and this still makes a difference today for a large part of humanity, certainly for the worst and most inhumane part.
But returning to Russia, it is certainly painful to think of those poor Moscow civilian victims (around 300 dead or missing) whose death is now being exploited by Putin to try at all costs to involve Ukraine: it is as if they were killed for a second time, because with this abysmal State lie they want to hide that their massacre is actually due to faults of the government, to the Russian repressive policy towards national minorities or to the inability of the Putin’s government to resolve old questions of national self-determination left unsolved legacy from the end of the USSR.
It is not even excluded, however, that due to torture or the spectacle of a cut off ear, some Islamic terrorist will end up accusing the Ukrainian government of involvement. Nobody will believe it, in the civilized world, but Putin is never interested in being believed abroad: it is enough for him to deceive consciences in his own country and gain mass consensus, even if only at the moment and on the basis of an emotional impulse, because then we'll see... Just think of the accusation of Nazism leveled against the Ukrainian government and which Putin continues to repeat, against all evidence, in the manner of those boxers who continue to punch into the void, although dazed by the blows received.
And these blows outside Russia are more than well known: 1) strong unforeseen Ukrainian resistance and no victory in the planned blitzkrieg; 2) strengthening and enlargement of NATO (with Finland and Sweden); 3) further development of European unity; 4) economic difficulties due to sanctions, even if resistible for now (but for how long?); 5) international indictment of Putin for trafficking in Ukrainian children; 6) increase in popular discontent, even if forced by ferociously police methods to be underground (not to underestimate the families of killed soldiers and the flight abroad of young people who do not want to be mobilized); 7) Prigožin’s revolt; 8) first serious differences between the oligarchs; 9) placing the Baltic countries and Poland on military alert; 10) moral and cultural isolation of Russia in the slightly more civilized world of non-dictatorships; 11) constant use of the nuclear threat, which is a demonstration of weakness and certainly not of strength; 12) end to any sympathy that Russia might have had among the Ukrainian population, even if Russian-speaking: it will also have an undying hatred from this.
Russia has truly closed with the Ukrainian people, after a history of contrasts and rapprochements lasting several centuries and dating back to the times of the little Ruš. In the future, a Russian-Ukrainian friendship may perhaps reopen (as we should all hope for), but it can only be with a democratic, pluralistic, non-imperial-colonialist and obviously no longer Putinian Russia.
Russia is paying all these prices only to allow the oligarchs to maintain their mafia-capitalist power and snatch some pieces of land from Ukraine, according to the old colonial logic of territorial conquests: something that the USA has not done since 1898, that is, since the Spanish-American War, having since then preferred the penetration of financial capital and the use of wars of aggression only for the purposes of containment (even if sometimes of extermination, as in Vietnam, for example). But if unfortunately the Russians were to manage to maintain the occupied territories militarily, it would be the first time that their war of conquest was victorious. Previously they had lost them all (with Japan in 1904-1905, with Poland in 1919-21, twice with Finland, with Afghanistan, with East Germany). The only ones who won were thanks to the alliance with the Nazis.
Therefore, it couldn't have gone any worse after the aggression against Ukraine and it's not over yet...
However, I would like to make one final consideration, always taking inspiration from the cut of the ear and its insertion into the mouth of the Tajik terrorist. And it is the discourse on rampant barbarism that is objectively unifying a reactionary front that is firstly anti-American (anti-United States), then anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish, then anti-European and, who knows, at a certain point it may also become anti-Christian in a militant form (culturally it already is)… Do not be fooled by the fact that this time ISIS-K has struck Russia, an important component of the most reactionary front, because in reality the world of Islamic fundamentalism is not interested in whether there are democratic or dictatorial countries, Kirill’s Orthodox Russians or Lebanese Maronite Catholics or Trump’s Evangelical fanatics or moderate and tolerant Catholics like Pope Francis: due to their fanaticism they are all infidels, enemies of Islam and therefore sooner or later to be exterminated. Starting with the Jews, of course.
And this is where Putin is making a tragic mistake of historical perspective because he is primarily concerned with maintaining his personal power and not with Russia's political future. He does not realize that the reactionary and post-medieval forces of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and other various Islamic components - who would like to destroy Israel and massacre its inhabitants - if unfortunately they succeed (but fortunately they have no chance of succeeding) , they would then turn against other countries, including Russia. The Crocus attack - preceded over the years by similar Islamic attacks in Russian territories - is only a preview of what could happen in the future if Israel were to collapse under the blows of one or more Islamic states. Islamic terrorism would spread across Europe (Western and Eastern) without any more restraints. For this too we should be grateful to the people of Israel who resist on the front line, despite mistakes and terrible right-wing governments, produced in turn by the genocidal climate that arose after the aggression of the Arab League in 1948 which destroyed the social democratic ambitions of the new State decided by the United Nations.
If Russia were run by a government capable of looking to the future and the true interests of its people, it would stop the war against Ukraine and integrate itself into the European Community (where Russia could have a preponderant role, with great advantage for the living conditions of its citizens) and would create a pan-European counterweight to the growing Chinese aggressiveness: this represents a real and terrible threat for the future of the new generations, if there also does not take place a turning point towards democracy (even if imperfect, but still better than the current ruthless «Marxist-Leninist» dictatorship).
Of course, the world would require a much different investment of energy, not to wage war, but to fight climate change, the degradation of planet Earth and digital dehumanization (with its devastating consequences on the intellectual maturation of the new generations). But Putin, the Chinese government, Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, and many of the dictatorial regimes around the world are fighting on the front lines against this prospect of progress and peace for humanity.
And regarding the dictatorial regimes, how can we fail to take into account the investigations of the Democracy Index, according to which out of 167 countries examined annually, there are 24 considered fully democratic, 48 imperfectly democratic, 36 hybrid and 59 fully dictatorial? Is this the level of political maturation of humanity at the beginning of the Third Millennium? Can anything still be done to change this political drift of humanity?
It would seem not, given that currently initiatives in support of dictatorial regimes, Islamic anti-Semitism and the destruction of the State of Israel are growing in the world, while there are no demonstrations against the killing of Naval'nyj or the cut of the ear in Moscow, or Russian aggression in Ukraine, or Hamas' genocidal program against Israel. These demonstrations are not only anti-Semitic, but reactionary in the deepest sense of the term because in a comparison between capitalisms of different levels of social development, they side with the more retrograde and reactionary ones, sometimes even still imbued with medieval legacies (Tsarist, Islamic, etc. )
And so to the barbarism of Putin, the ayatollahs, Hamas, North Korea and the Chinese government, we are also adding the barbarism of those young people who, although born in imperfectly democratic regimes, are expressing support for dictatorial regimes and rampant anti-Semitism. At the basis of this degeneration in the processes of youth radicalization there is certainly ignorance of historical facts, but above all there is the need for digital protagonism which has now become unstoppable, also induced by the spread of social networks, digital tools and false myths of mass society.
On other occasions in the past, the discomfort of young people or their deviated radicalization has led to tragedies for humanity (Fascism and Nazism first and foremost). Let it not happen again, because this time, in the face of Putin's atomic threats, the world is truly risking disappearing for the first time in a single large explosion. Putin's supporters (explicit or camouflaged) could try to understand at least this, perhaps starting from a reflection on the meaning of an ear-cut officially decided by the government of a country that instead has a great history of culture and scientific achievements behind it.
Putin's atomic threats make the world context truly dangerous. I believe that humanity has never risked as much as at this moment.
And let's remember what it meant in August-September 1939 that there was on one side the reactionary alignment of Hitler-Stalinist totalitarianism and on the other that of democracies divided among themselves…
ITALIANO
