The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war – which had, in fact, been ongoing since 2014 and continued throughout the Covid-19 pandemic – had led to a sharp escalation in intra-family conflicts. This conflict was primarily generational and had its roots in Crimea, where tensions had been simmering for many years. Furthermore, the divisions between those in favour of and those against the war spanned several fronts: between the hawks, influenced by years of state propaganda that fed the population with utterly implausible stories of crucified youths, and those who believed that ‘not everything is quite so simple’; those who championed ‘loyalty to the flag’, believing that ‘this is my country; right or wrong, I must stand by it’, and those who believed in the arguments in favour of a ‘pre-emptive strike’ and the fight against NATO: those who prioritised ethnic arguments about the ‘protection of Russians’, those who believed in the mantra of ‘one people’, those who bought into the Kremlin’s narrative of a ‘Nazi junta in Kyiv’ and ‘denazification’, and those who simply believe that ‘our president knows what he’s doing’...
This diverse chorus of supporters of an imperialist, unjustified and ineptly conducted war has divided countless families, ruined countless friendships and severed relationships that had lasted for generations. Today, it is difficult to find a single person who has not fallen out with their parents, grandparents, siblings, closest friends, or even their spouse, over differences of opinion on this subject.
Thus, whilst the modern world hurtled down the political path to the point where it now stands – the Covid pandemic, lockdowns and vaccinations, the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East from Israel and Gaza to Lebanon and Iran, Trump’s election and so on – it has been marked by significant social processes that remain poorly understood, in Russia and almost everywhere else. Whilst the political consequences of these upheavals are more or less evident, the social consequences – which are far deeper and more enduring – are scarcely recognised or are perceived as unpleasant and sad excesses of a more personal than social nature: ‘My grandfather is addicted to television propaganda and parrots everything they say’, ‘My elderly relatives are completely mad; they support the war’, ‘My brother spouts a load of militaristic nonsense’, ‘My schoolmate is completely obsessed with anti-Semitism’, and so on. There are countless stories of this kind.
Can a family really be torn apart because of Crimea’s political affiliation, simply because it will be depicted on the UN map in the same colours as Russia, rather than Ukraine? Or because the Crimean parliament will fly the Russian tricolour instead of the yellow-and-blue flag?
Does a brother really hurl outrageous insults at his brother simply because children are supposedly starving in Gaza, when children in Syria have been starving for nearly fifteen years, and the two brothers haven’t given it a second thought? Does a mother really cut off contact with her daughter because she doesn’t support Putin, as if she cared who delivers the New Year’s greetings? The questions posed here seem absurd. To regard these as causes of conflict and rifts is to fail to see the wood for the trees. It is politics, and people argue not over politics itself, but over what lies behind it.
Modern Russian society is characterised by cynicism, rooted in a deep mistrust of social institutions, official slogans and the motives of those around you; but ideologies do not choose us: we choose them. Taking on the forms of one’s psychological profile and rationalising the symptoms of one’s traumas, ideologies encapsulate them in narratives, formalise them discursively and create an emotional aura in which political opinions, morals, values, interests and inclinations align comfortably with the characteristics of one’s psychological structure. Outside this ideological framework, it is not possible to express oneself socially. In this sense, ideologies are like language, without which we are unable to formulate thoughts.
The modern world has entered an era of political polarisation. Polarisation leads to radicalisation. Radicalisation, in turn, drastically simplifies one’s worldview. This simplification, in turn, presupposes the schematisation of political opinions; and the more schematic and abstract these opinions are, the more difficult they are to defend and argue for, the less rational – and, consequently, the more emotional – the process of social interaction becomes. Just as language shapes thought, so too do political opinions represent a rationalisation of the psychological foundations of personality.
After eight decades of liberalisation and a shift to the left, the modern world is witnessing a rise in right-wing ideologies of the most extreme persuasions. Among these are the primitive ideologies based on social Darwinism, preached so openly and cynically on television by the Russian president, who has suddenly forgotten his own ramblings about the ancient peoples of the Polovtsians and the Pechenegs, and the denazification of the neo-Nazis entrenched in Kyiv, directly comparing the war in Ukraine to a ‘food chain’.
In this way, he justifies inequality between countries and peoples (in all its historical manifestations, from unbridled capitalism to colonialism and racism), replacing international law with the law of the strongest, arguing that the strongest survive, even though the last eight decades of unprecedented peace and prosperity have shown that the basis of social progress is not natural selection within society or a blind intra-species struggle, but rather cooperation, mutual assistance and cultural diversity.
However, in a country whose population has been poisoned by years of vitriolic propaganda comparable only to the toxic media climate of the most odious regimes such as Iran, Hamas or North Korea – where the cult of force, contempt for minorities, disregard for human life and aggression are omnipresent – such ideas find resonance in the persistent socio-psychological state of contemporary Russian society.
It is characterised by cynicism, rooted in a deep mistrust of social institutions, official slogans and the motives of those around us – from family and neighbours to politicians and opinion leaders. This cynicism stems from objective social factors: the atomisation of society, political apathy, ideological double-think, the cult of personal survival, extremely low levels of empathy and sensitivity to violence, and a rise in depression and burnout, fuelled by a sense of injustice, powerlessness and pervasive, blatant lies. This is also the source of the conspiracy theories that are so widespread in this context.
Looking at the brutal version of social Darwinism, of which Russia is the standard-bearer in the modern world, one can see that the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic ideas of right-wing libertarianism and the so-called ‘dark Enlightenment’ – originating in the far west of Silicon Valley and espoused by far-right politicians and technocrats – also boil down to social Darwinism.
If one attempts to identify the psychological foundations of these ideas, they actually have nothing in common with the Russian case: the techno-right is far from being dominated by resentment. On the contrary, unlike backward Russia, which has thwarted one attempt at modernisation after another, it promotes ideas of radical techno-optimism and accelerationism, more akin to a modern iteration of futuristic fascism and to the cult of modernity of a century ago.
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