This year I started watching Putin speeches. It was the beginning of a new war that the US decided to get involved with from half a world away and so I took it upon myself the responsibility to know who and what we were deciding to go up against. Before this year I don’t recall watching any full speeches by Putin. Actually, I might have watched a couple of his annual press conferences. These are long question and answer sessions with journalists, they routinely last over 4 hours. Not quite the same as a speech but interesting and impressive none the less. Impressive in the sense that I’ve never seen any US politician do such a thing, much less the US President.
I think that most of my interest in watching his speeches came AFTER being called a Putin Lover. Liberals were trying to silence the antiwar left by basically labeling anyone who was critical of Biden’s proxy war against Russia all sorts of names. Putin Lover, Putin apologist, tankie, fascist, etc. Well, I was embarrassed, because I was being put into a camp with Putin and I really didn’t know a thing about him! I knew that I was going to be one of those difficult people who couldn’t be silenced, but I also knew that I needed to bone up on who this leader was that all the liberals considered an authoritarian dictator and whom Biden wanted to overthrow in a regime change.
I had been reading lots of articles about the situation in Ukraine for years. I admit I am prone towards being generally against the US picking and arming a side in an armed conflict in a foreign country. I don’t exactly remember a situation where that worked out well for the people of that country. I generally understand that the US enters into these conflicts, or begins them, for our own reasons having to do with money, resources or control. I also know that we never say that is the reason, instead we say it’s for some sort of worldly good. This is the bias that I have formed through understanding the bloody history of such things and honestly I think most people in the US and the whole world would agree.
Yet every new war that the US seeks to involve itself in, despite basically being a reformulation of the same plot device, the American people fall for it. Well, not exactly. A vapid minority clamor loudly for it complete from day one with supplemental educational materials, speaking tours for victims and speaking bureaus for experts. All working the humanitarian lie from every angle to target every potential antiwar audience. They’ve got people and arguments to appeal to the peace doves, to the democracy and freedom arguers, to the genre of socialist, to the anarchists, to the liberals of all stripes. Basically anyone the government thinks might decide to march in the street, they have a special custom propaganda (pamphlet, article, meme, video) made for your special audience. And it works!
Generally speaking there are a couple things that always happen. The US has a tendency to demonize the leader and infantilize the population of any country we don’t like. In this case Russia.
These days it’s basically become a shrieking, purse clutching, name calling, virtue signaling, Karen and Ken reporting, silencing, blocking, algorithm strangling, canceling, canceling, canceling ordeal. I’ve heard it called Woke Imperialism.
Therefore, I went back and watched his speeches, in full, from the start of the February 24th Special Military Operation and any other important speeches from the past I could find that people say were important. Speeches of Presidents are a way of understanding the direction of a states administration in their terms. I’ve watched great speeches of US Presidents as well, although you have to go pretty far back in time to find particularly great ones. The speeches of Putin are therefore worth hearing, maybe even more so if you consider him your enemy.
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