Shameless Milne: Putin’s admirer at the Graun
The Graun‘s licenced in-house public school Stalinist, Shameless Seumas, has come out with his most craven exercise in pro-Putin apologetics yet.
This bit is a classic example of Milne’s method; a crude “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” view of the world that, dressed up in pompous verbiage, pretends to be some kind of serious analysis:
“Putin’s oligarchic nationalism may not have much global appeal, but Russia’s role as a counterweight to western supremacism certainly does. Which is why much of the world has a different view of events in Ukraine from the western orthodoxy – and why China, India, Brazil and South Africa all abstained from the condemnation of Russia over Crimea at the UN earlier this year.”
At least one BTL commenter has nailed Shameless good and proper:
In the 1930s, people like Seumas would have argued that the infamous Moscow Trials were an antidote to Western influence, that the Nazi-Soviet pact that carved up Poland was a necessary antidote to perfidious Western democracies, similarly the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia etc etc.
It’s simply wrong to counterpose Russian and Western power in the way he does. Ironically, this is simply a variant of the geo-political approach taught in bourgeois universities.
Neither Russia nor the US is a champion of democracy and Putin’s regime is increasingly totalitarian to boot. Socialists counterpose the struggle of workers and their supporters to the reach and policies of the states that oppress them and should never rely on these vary same states to come to our rescue.
Unfortunately, this is one of the most shocking articles I have read in a long time and an abject apology for a nationalist Kremlin regime that praises Stalin and rules for and on behalf of oligarchs.
What’s the betting that Shameless will soon be appearing on an exciting new TV channel about to launch in the UK?
Shiraz Socialist 
Jim Denham said,
October 31, 2014 at 11:32 am
Is this for real ?
(BTL comment in response to Milne’s article):
Vladimir_Putin
Mr. Milne again proves himself the most intelligent of all Guardian journalists.
He is able to see through the fog of propaganda to the beacon of truth and hope for humanity that Russian represents in the 21st century.
Thank you Mr Milne, for your bold voice of reason in defense of the downtrodden of the earth, when many of your western colleagues caught in the spider web of NATO lies fear to speak truth to power.
Together, Mr. Milne, we halt the bloody tide of CIA-NATO aggression in Europe.
Andrew Coates said,
October 31, 2014 at 11:54 am
This rhetoric about an “merging polycentric world” is common currency in circles close to the Morning Star, and Socialist Action – who tend to promote China in a similar role.
Milne’s claim that, “Along with the rise of China, it has also created some space for other parts of the world to carve out their political independence” is pretty thin.
New Left Review types used to argue that at least the Soviet Union promoted national liberation movements.
Where are they now?
How on earth has the entire Latin American left has benefited from the Russian Federation’s use of its energy resources is beyond me.
As for elsewhere, “political independence” is pretty thin gruel for a socialist to argue for – independence, in, say Iran, that is not much help to promote the demands of democrats, the labour movement and the left.
Aside from the failure to examine Stalinism one could be forgiven for asking if Milne is offering an argument for supporting the pre- Great War conflicts between imperialist nation states.
Seumas Milne and the ‘Multipolar World': Clutching at Straws. | Tendance Coatesy said,
October 31, 2014 at 5:24 pm
[…] studiously avoids (as Shiraz points out) discussing Stalinism and its immediate […]
februarycallendar said,
November 1, 2014 at 10:00 pm
Can’t we have a new Third Camp? “Neither Sky News nor RT.”
(Make that a Fourth Camp, on the whole, if you throw BBC News in)