RT Chief Margarita Simonyan “Why we don’t respect the West anymore”

In this stunning letter, RT editor and chief, the magnificent Margarita Simonyan explains in her own words, why no more shall Russians respect the west. Below is a translation of the original published in Russian at RIA Novosti. This is a must-read for Russia watchers.

 Margarita Chief Editor of the TV Channel RT and MIA “Russia Today”

The west should fundementally be horrified, not simply because 76% of Russians voted to relect Putin, but because this past election has affirmed that 95% of Russia’s population supports conservative-patriotic, communist, and nationalist ideas. As a result, liberal ideas anemically stuggle to survive in Russia, among hardly 5% of population.

And it is you who are to blame for this, my western friends.[1] It was you who drove us into “Russians never surrender”[2] mode

For a long time I’ve said to you: Find normal advisers on Russia! Fire all those parasites, With your short-sighted sanctions, and heartless humiliation of our athletes (including those with disabilities ).

Or your “Skripals” and blatent disregard of the most basic liberal values, like the presumption of innocence. You manage to hypocritically combine, along with the forcible imposition of ultra-liberal ideas in your own countries, a certain mentally insane, mass hysteria.

All of this creates in a healthy person, a sigh of relief that he lives in Russia, and not in Hollywood, with the post-electoral mess in the United States, or in Germany. Or in the Brexit-zone [England]; with their attacks on RT, which they cannot forgive for taking advantage of freedom of speech, and showing to the world how to use it.

It turned out that this “freedom of speech” never was intended to be used for good, but was invented as an object of beauty, a false ideal that you never intended to implement for real.[3]

By way of your injustice and cruelty, your inquisitorial hypocrisy, and your lies, you forced us to stop respecting you. You and your so-called[4] “values.”

We no longer want to live like you. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we wanted to live like you, but not any longer.

We no longer respect you. And for all those who still support you among us. Those who still bother to support you? They represent that less than 5% of the population.

And you only have yourselves to blame for that – your Western politicians and analysts, media, and intelegence.

Our nation is capable to forgive a lot. But we can’t forgive such arrogance, no more than any normal nation would.

Your only remaining Empire [trans: America], would be wise to learn the history of its allies; all of them are former empires [trans: England, France, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Ottoman Empire etc.].

Study history, learn the reasons they lost their empires. It was because of their arrogance!

White man’s burden, my arse.[5]

But the only reamining Empire among you [trans: America], does not respect history, and those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.[6]

And now, you’ve pushed us to unite around your enemy [trans: Putin]. As fast as you declared him an enemy, so quickly we united around him.

In years past, he was just our President, who could be reelected. Now, he has become our Chieftain[7]. We won’t let you change this. You created this reality – it was the work of your own hands.

It was you who created among us, an opposition between patriotism and liberalism. Even if they shouldn’t be mutually exclusive notions. It was you who created this false dilemma, and we chose patriotism.

Even though, many of us are really liberals…myself, for example.

Pull yourselves together. It’s not long now.

Margarita Simonyan’s letter speaks for many Russians. To sum up, in the Russian elections, Putin not only took 76% of the votes, but his immediate runner-ups were the Communists at 12% and the nationalistic-patriotic candidate Zhirinovsky.

So even the most popular opposition to Putin, put together, only make up around 15% of the electorate, and they are even potentially MORE hostile to the west. The only popular opposition to Putin are NOT pro-Western – Westernizers are simply irrelevant in Russia.

The actual candidates who support western liberalism make up less than 5% of the electorate put together, and they know this themselves!  And it would be hard to argue, that the election was simply rigged, and the liberals would have been more popular if it was “fair”.

Ksenia Sobchak, one of the Anti-Putin, pro-Western liberals, who got less than 2% of the vote, does not even deny that Putin is popular, saying that the majority of the country really did want him.

The most important thing to take from  Margarita Simonyan’s letter, however, is that the west caused that themselves.

In years long gone, many Russians really were liberal, and some still are. In the 1990s, Russian nationalism and patriotism were not nearly as popular, as they are now.

As Simonyan perfectly explained, the west has made Putin’s victory, and the resurrection of Russian patriotism a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They were poking and prodding at what they considered to be a weak, sleeping, and toothless bear, willing to perform circus tricks for them, but instead, they awoke the full might of the Russian Bear.

Their violent Russophobia has not scared Russia, but United Russia behind Putin, and now Russia is completely and resolutely done with the west.

Russia has left the poshlost’ (vulgarity, bad taste, and satisfaction with one’s own sinfulness) of the 90’s and is rebuilding the Sobornost’ (unity) of Eternal Russia. This is not a government policy, this is something the west created in the hearts of the people, and that is much more ingrained. And they only have themselves to blame.

—

Translators notes:

Below are some footnotes from the translation, to contextualize, which may prove interesting, especially to those interested in the meaning of the original Russian words.

[1] When she said:

“And it is you who are to blame for this, my western friends.”

It was hilarious to find that, in the original Russian, Simonyan wrote “My western friends” phonetically in Cyrillic (май вестерн френдз – Mai Vestern Frendz), rather than translating it into Russian. It’s hard to explain in English how funny that was, but to Russian ears, the only slang phrase that can describe it is to say, that it was just Savage. It’s as if she is now calling them out to their face.

[2] It is worth exploring what “Russians never surrender”, means in this context. That phrase has a very deep meaning, it is a patriotic slogan or meme. It also doesn’t convey its power in the English translation. You will often see it written or said in Russian “русские не сдаются” (pronounce: Russkie ne sdayutsya), when a Russian does something incredibly heroic. For example, when a Russian soldier loses his life, fighting terrorism in Syria, or when talking about the Great Patriotic War, it is popular to say русские не сдаются. It conveys a certain patriotic pride, which is memetic in nature, a call back to heroic days of old, and means more than just the words themselves. What she means in this context, when she says:

It was you drive us into “Russians never surrender” mode,

Does not simply mean “You made us fight hard” or “because of you, we will never give up fighting for Russia”. What she is actually saying, is that the west has awoken in Russia their dormant patriotic wrath, the same spirit that crushed fascism during WW2.

She is essentially implying that before the west constantly attacked Russia in these latter years, Russians were like Ilya Muromets, the legendary Hero sleeping passively. They were not ready to take action, they were perhaps even blind to the beauty and truth of their own culture, and saw the west as something to emulate.

Then when the west began its latest push of attacks against Russia, especially after recent events in Syria and Ukraine, Russians awoke to defend the Motherland as before. The west thought they would punish Russia with sanctions, and isolation, and force Russia to do their bidding, but instead, they woke the Russian bear. The west has awoken the dormant righteous fury of Russian patriotism, they have sewed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind.

[3] Paraphrase. The translation was an approximation of what she said which makes more sense in English than the Russian phrases literally make when translated:

It turned out that this “freedom of speech” never was intended to be used for good, but was invented as an object of beauty, a false ideal that you never intended to implement for real.

here is an example of a literal translation found at the Vineyard of the Saker:

it turned out that the freedom of speech never was intended to be used for good, but was invented as an object of beauty, like some sort of crystal mop that shines from afar, but is not suitable to clean your stables, with all your injustice and cruelty,

[4] “So called” is written as an English phrase phonetically in Cyrillic. Once again, she uses an English word in Russian, it’s very interesting, it’s almost her unique style of speech.

[5] This time she literally just wrote this phrase in English, in the middle of the Russian text, letters and all.

[6] Paraphrase

[7] вождь means the leader of a tribe, a leader not only with political power, but a certain ceremonial charismatic legendary status among the people. A living meme – like Putin. The west (with their hatred of him) has turned Putin from a Russian leader to a Russian legend.