[spectre] Dispatches from Ukraine: Tactical Media Reflflections and Responses

[xname]

Dear Rasa,

It seems there are a lot emotions and frustration and the attitude to 
see things in binomial opposition is making you interpret anything I say 
as if when I was 8 years old I was a dumb kid brainwashed by the Soviet 
Union.

The conversation here is not constructive as there is no space to say 
anything that isn't aligned with what you wrote earlier, that you are 
either willing to throw bombs with Biden "in the name of freedom", or 
you are willing to throw bombs with Putin "in the name of Russian 
totalitarian regime".

And because I do not want to align to any of this, but rather NOT THROW 
BOMBS AT ALL, you are attacking me and my naive 7 or 8 year old self 
with a certain ferocity which is exactly the opposite of peace and 
dialogue.

But don't worry, I forgive it, I understand that the feelings at play 
are intense.

It did surprise me to see that from my first email there was no reaction 
to my comment on Dutch journalism and Dutch society, whilst the gun was 
shot twice towards the desires of a little girl offended by the 
supremacy of a foreign culture which colonised her country dropping 
chocolate bars and female tights from the sky. I don't know how familiar 
you are with Italian history in general and Togliatti's role in 
particular. A very good book I may suggest is Paul Ginsborg's "A History 
of Contemporary Italy: 1943-80".

Also, for your information, I wasn't raised in Disneyland, and being the 
last child in a large family, my parents had both seen fascism and the 
second world war. I heard first hand stories about the war, what it 
meant to go to a school without windows or having to change city every 
few months to escape the bombs. And being my dad from Milan and my mum 
from the very South Lecce, I have heard the same stories narrated from 
different geographical perspectives. I have also seen documents, such as 
primary school books of the fascist era. What you tell me about Lenin's 
Russia has similarities to what I have seen or heard from my father's 
Mussolini Italy (however, when I was that age the secretary was 
Gorbachev).

Then again, apart from attacking my personal histories, why haven't you 
commented on the war in Afganistan?

And also, why have you ignored what I have said about being raised in a 
country where the naked female body was splashed all over the city to 
sell everything, from tyres to bubble gum? Don't you think that that 
form of communication was violent? Or is it also part of Disney's total 
animation?

Among the reasons I was trying to fantasise that perhaps there was an 
alternative to the real I was experiencing were the modalities of 
pervasive capitalist communication and their use of the female body. But 
I supposed that, as they were teaching you to operate guns at school, 
your social identity as a woman wasn't defined as a "walking bum with 
boobs and several holes to be fulfilled" by the "more intelligent and 
technically capable" Man.

Anyway, i will leave the conversation here, I don't have any more time 
to respond to irrational attacks , I am trying to say that things are 
complex and there are many perspectives; personally, I don't think Biden 
is much better than Putin (they are both full of crap), you think one is 
good and the other one is bad. Fine. Let's agree to disagree.

PEACE TO ALL, LOVE TO ALL

I send you my deepest, heartfelt blessing,

Eleonora

On 2022-07-18 00:14, Rasa Smite wrote:

> Hello
> 
> Eleonore wrote: "My anecdote was in response to Rasa, to highlight that 
> there are multiple perspectives and modalities for cultural 
> appropriation (and rejection)".
> 
> With this war, we have landed in the situation, where its not anymore 
> that easy to play with "multiple perspectives and modalities" before 
> the ground is not clear and stable enough, before we are not on the 
> same page..
> I wrote already, in this situation there are only clearly two sides - 
> either supporting Ukraine or being pro-Putin, there doesn't exist 
> democratic "multiple perspectives and modalities" in this case as we 
> don't deal with democratic country...
> 
> And your anecdote just shows that there are many misleading ideas 
> around.. this is what I wrote in my reply to Heath: the problem is that 
> most of the marxist-communist-thinking people in the West (who have 
> read bit too much of French and Russian philosophy or literature) today 
> have to revise their theories, notions and realise finally they have 
> been following the wrong dreams (nightmares, trust me...).
> 
> So it's now your turn, dear people living in UK, and other wealthy 
> Western countries, to put some effort in changing your thinking, your 
> perspectives, and before joining the funny May day parades, and reading 
> 100 years old authors (who have no clue how the communism works in real 
> life), or listen 92 years old capitalism critics (such as Chomsky) 
> please re-think twice before you write something that naive as 
> comparing America's Disney's land "propaganda" with Russia's aggressive 
> invasion targeting civilians, killing children, raping women in 
> Ukraine, which is happening there everyday.
> 
> So why not, please do so - change your way of thinking, finally! Please 
> be so empathetic that you at least pretend to do so - for a sake of 
> Ukraine's disaster... We, people here in Eastern Europe are used to 
> switch our perspectives constantly, we have done it so many times that 
> we now even cannot answer a simple question: "and how is your tradition 
> (e.g. in Latvia) with the education, for example?" I am sorry, there is 
> no such thing as "our way or our tradition!" we have been listening for 
> almost 30 years British experts, we have learned from the most amazing 
> Finnish school experience, and we have adapted exams from German 
> "abitur", we have been trying hard, and still are one of the most poor 
> countries in EU,
> BUT - I wouldn't call it "colonising", and never ever would even think 
> of going back to anything similar that was once called "the Soviet 
> Union" - NB! btw- there never was such a thing as USSR, it was just an 
> extended Russia'n Empire with unfairly and aggressively occupied 
> neighbouring countries before and during WW2, who were forced to 
> believe that Russians have "saved and freed us" and that "they brought 
> the real culture" (making us feel lesser), but they didn't succeed, 
> nobody inside of USSR believed in this bullshit... Just sadly I never 
> realized that the communist propaganda was so effective beyond the USSR 
> border, that some people in West and otehr parts of the world truly 
> believed that USSR may be a better alternative to Western capitalism...
> 
> But talking about the "Soviet times", there was even big difference 
> between Ryszard's and mine childhood, because Ryszard lived in Poland, 
> but I lived in Soviet Latvia, which was a part of USSR, and this was 
> such a big difference that for some time I even didn't realize that 
> Poland, Yugoslavia, Chechoslovakia etc. belonged to the so called 
> "soviet" block, because for us at USSR (with completely cut any 
> information or culture coming from the West) - even Poland seemed like 
> beautiful and shiny country "abroad", where everything was much more 
> better then in soviet uni.
> 
> When I went to the school in 1970s, I had to participate in special 
> military parade competitions every year couple of times; we were 
> singing the hymn of Russia and the hymn of USSR, and when we won the 
> competition in the school level - then we participated in the national 
> level..., and singing all these songs (in Russian), marching, and 
> shouting loud how much we love Lenin... while at the same time, we all 
> - everybody of us: starting from the 1st grade children to the director 
> of the school knew that all this are the lies, the total bullshit, but 
> we were not allowed to question anything of that, we just did it, as we 
> had to. And if you ever asked something or initiated anything (because 
> all things around which I saw in my childhood were so wrong, so dirty, 
> so terrible, and grey...), you were shut up quickly as you gradually 
> realized that nothing ever can be done, neither achieved, nor 
> succeded... the holes on the roads would never get repaired, the light 
> in your corridor if once broken, would never get fixed either, your 
> staircase in communal house of course was never cleaned, in the shops 
> was only the seller herself, as nothing was available (e.g. from drinks 
> - only birch juice, sweet with sugar, in 3l jars, from vegetables - 
> stinky sourkraut...) but if it was (some piece of meet or sausage - 
> unexpectedly appeared), there were so long cues.. - and I think it was 
> done intentionally, this is one of the KGB strategies to "zomby" people 
> by making them to live in ugly, non-comfortable, hopeless gray 
> environment, and to feed them with lies - from the age of 
> kindergarten... nothing was real, because the only thing soviet 
> Russians were good at - was to make an other great lies to pretend, to 
> make a 'facade' for the beautiful socialist ideas to whom only 
> anti-capitalists in West or Latin America believed... we here didn't 
> believe in anything they told us... yes, and soviets were bad even in 
> toy production - awful light pink plastic doll or braun (everything 
> else..) were the only colors they hardly succeeded to make, and I had 
> to play with these very few badly made toys, it was annoying and 
> humiliating - and you complain about the Disney! OMG - that would have 
> been our dream...
> Later, when I was in arts college in 80s, we had special trainings in 
> air rifle shooting, and I was very good in it, and I also had to learn 
> how to disassembly the Kalashnikov, which was quite a fun, as nobody 
> really did manage to do it properly, so we were laughing, and making 
> fun.. (really?)
> 
> and if someone, anyone, who thinks that it was bad as you were 
> culturally "colonisied" by Disneyland in the 80s and therefore were 
> dreaming of living in Soviet Union, I can only say one thing - please 
> mind, this is a very very dangerous idea as you should now rather 
> become aware of that you have been brainwashed by Russia's imperialism, 
> who has been running a very sophisticated propaganda machine for almost 
> a century long..
> 
> and if you still think, here can be "multiple perspectives", I also 
> would recommend to apply for residency in Russia, could be an 
> interesting and useful experience... But also coming to Poland or 
> Baltic countries may 'heal'... it's quite an adrenaline living here in 
> these difficult times, following the news on Ukrianan Telegram every 
> day hour by hour, while reading Western intellectuals' messages full of 
> unnecessary tolerance and critic, or utopian pacifism promotion.
> 
> Best,
> Rasa
> 
> On 18/07/2022 00:26, xname wrote:
> 
> Hello Ryszard,
> 
> Thanks for your email, and for sharing your view and experience.
> 
> I'd clarify here: my childhood desire was towards the unknown, that 
> which was not described, as no one was telling us what was really going 
> on in Russia, all we had was the fake American dream (which included 
> the commodification of female bodies) and literature from the past. I 
> am also aware that I was very lucky and privileged growing up in a 
> house full of any sorts of books, also having access to many libraries.
> 
> My anecdote was in response to Rasa, to highlight that there are 
> multiple perspectives and modalities for cultural appropriation (and 
> rejection).
> 
> I am not disputing what was better or worse, or whose childhood was 
> happier. The idea was to acknowledge that also in the West some had a 
> curiosity or a wish that that which was not the status quo could be 
> better than the real they had to experience.
> 
> And I am not at all saying that being under Russian influence is in any 
> way a good thing, I am simply saying that the game at stake is a power 
> game, it is unfortunately not about anyone's freedom, or better 
> interest, but profit.
> 
> I am sorry if my email was unclear and you had the impression I was 
> trying to decide where to move to, it couldn't be further away from 
> what I was trying to express.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Eleonora X, PhD.
> 
> On 2022-07-17 21:47, Ryszard Kluszczyński wrote:
> 
> Dear Eleonora,
> 
> let me quote you:
> "During my childhood, in Milan in the 80s, I had an opposite experience 
> than yours: my country had been culturally colonised by the US (cinema 
> TV clothing etc), and they did think they were better. Most people did 
> not notice at all they were colonised, because they had been 
> brainwashed. As I happened to dislike American cinema and Disney's 
> total animation, but I did read a lot of Italian and French and Russian 
> literature and philosophy, I must say it did happen to me during my 
> childhood to wish I was in the Soviet Union instead, hoping that that 
> would be a better alternative from the dumb hypnotic imperialism that 
> had subsumed my contemporaries."
> 
> During my childhood in Poland in the 60s, I was not so happy as you in 
> the 80s. You could have decided what to read. The Soviet-Russian 
> censorships deprived me of such possibilities.
> You were happy to avoid the experioence what it really means to live in 
> the colonised country, colonised society. But it doesn't mean you 
> should not try to imagine and understand what it is really.
> Anyway you can try to realise your desire from your childhood. You can 
> move to Russia to become the resident. But resident not just visitor.
> I understand if you don't decide to do it. A French famous film actor 
> who did it once (to avoid paying taxes in France) is already back as I 
> heard.
> 
> Good luck whatever you decide to do
> 
> Ryszard
> 
> ......................................................
> Prof. Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, PhD.
> Chair of Department of New Media and Digital Culture
> University of Lodz
> 171/173 Pomorska Street
> 90-236 Lodz
> Poland
> tel  +426655133
> 
> On 17 Jul 2022, at 18:00, xname <xname at xname.cc> wrote:
> During my childhood, in Milan in the 80s, I had an opposite experience 
> than yours: my country had been culturally colonised by the US (cinema 
> TV clothing etc), and they did think they were better. Most people did 
> not notice at all they were colonised, because they had been 
> brainwashed. As I happened to dislike American cinema and Disney's 
> total animation, but I did read a lot of Italian and French and Russian 
> literature and philosophy, I must say it did happen to me during my 
> childhood to wish I was in the Soviet Union instead, hoping that that 
> would be a better alternative from the dumb hypnotic imperialism that 
> had subsumed my contemporaries.

-- 

phantasmata and illusions

@oracle666
http://xname.cc

-- 

phantasmata and illusions

@oracle666
http://xname.cc
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