Two anonymous “Russians with Attitude,” proud of “manoeuvring the globe-spanning American monoculture,” have been tweeting pro-Putin agit-prop about what they insist on calling the “special operation” in Ukraine. Their glorying in the power of Russian arms has been undercut by Ukrainians’ stalwart resistance. Not that RWA cop to the fact Russians have suffered thousands of casualties. Their triumphalism seems a paltry thing when they post odd snippets of video meant to wow their followers with wonders of Russian weaponry. This mindless one, for example, has heavy artillery firing on Ukrainian positions “somewhere in Kharkov oblast.” And here’s a “new chopper video.” RWA and their fans have a hard-on for that heli–“…a work of art, beautiful machine…a marvelous looking beast.”
RWA et al. are thoroughly revanchist. Yet even if they are backward motherfuckers, their case for Russia hints it’s hard out here for Putin’s pimps. Right-wingers never really belong on the sunny side of the street, yet most reactionaries nowadays aren’t at ease in the deep dark. They’re no longer able to will themselves back into hoary beast modes. (That Rasputin type in the Camp Auschwitz t-shirt at the January 6th riot remains an outlier over here.) Putin may resort to Stalinesque rhetoric of patriotic cleansings and spat midges, but his fellow travelers in America seem averse to such post-humanist raps even if they amp up the big lie that Ukraine needs “de-nazification.” While RWA are suck-ups[1], their tweets hint there are heartless places they won’t go even if they mean to be all in with Russia’s iceman. Take this next video which invites you to scope out a Ukrainian column bringing supplies to a building, before a “precision strike.” The drone’s eye zooms out on the kill-shot so it’s impossible to tell if you’re watching death from above. Who knows if the big boom blew away anyone in the column on the ground? The video shies away from the final horror. It fails to give viewers a sado-populist climax.
It seems even RWA realize they must not come across as voyeurs who get off on Russian terror. The spring of 2022 may be really bad but it won’t be 1984…
“April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child’s arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never—”[2]
The near-universal excoriation of Russia’s invasion—that “typical prole reaction”—suggests we should have a decent respect for the opinions of humankind.
Glory to Ukraine (and a bow to Brandon).
Notes
1 RWA are too sophisticated to align with conspiracists who assert “Antifa types are going to Ukraine and receiving training, probably from Ukrainian forces trained by the US. When they come home, they end up being the ones most likely to participate in BLM/anarchist stuff–‘autonomous zones’ in the PNW had Americans who joined the YPG in Syria.” But their attitude toward “the hellscape of American cultural hegemony” is pretty close to that of paleo-con cranks.
2 H/T to Lulu/Stephen Schwartz for invoking the passage from 1984.