Adam has spoken about Darya Dugin, and while it will be uncertain for quite some time, if not always, who is responsible, I do want to note that this is the kind of thing that concerned me when the War in Ukraine started. Right now we are hearing about partisan actions behind the lines, and partisans rounding up traitors and what not, and it sounds very sanitary and necessary, but over time this is the kind of destabilizing mess that leads to widespread atrocities and normalization of political violence, and could usher in the kind of instability that could make eastern europe look like the middle east. Every murder leads to retaliation, every act of retaliation leads to a response, and so on.
It’s the first thing I thought when Putin invaded- even if he “wins,” he loses, because unlike Americans, there are long memories and long lists of grievances that have always been simmering below the surface. It’s also why although I support wholeheartedly the arming of Ukraine to defend herself, I also am aware that one day we may regret it.
Life is nothing but bad choices and hoping for the best, I guess.
R-Jud
Well. SOMEone’s got a case of the Mondays.
japa21
I don’t think we will ever regret it. No matter what happens down the road, the alternative to just allowing Russia to run over Ukraine would have been far worse.
dmsilev
I question the “unlike Americans” bit. How many people here are stilled pissed off that the South lost the Civil War 160 years ago? That still echos through our politics.
Antonius
@dmsilev: And how many people are dealing with the slavery aftermath to this day?
As Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
zhena gogolia
It probably wasn’t Ukrainians.
stinger
Ireland.
Elizabelle
Usually, I feel some sympathy for the victim of an assassination. None here. Whatsoever. She was a hatemonger. Taking out a lot more would be helpful
ETA: And I don’t believe it was the Ukrainians, either.
Raoul Paste
We can add this to the list of factors that will affect the future. Of course, when you start a war of conquest against your neighbour, there will be consequences at home.
And then there’s always the unknown unknowns, as Rumsfeld would say
Frankensteinbeck
@dmsilev:
I think the ‘unlike Americans’ is meant to mean that we are not going to carry a grudge about this specific war, but Ukrainians sure as Hell will. For the American people, not long after it’s over, this will drain out of memory.
Cacti
Not sure if we’ll regret it, but there are always unintended consequences. Time will tell what they are in this case.
But I have zero qualms about western nations arming Ukraine to defend itself from Mordor and the Orcs.
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: We’ll, you’re wrong. The FSB has already solved the case, and it was the Ukrainians.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: But of course.
ETA: Oh, I just saw your comment from last night. Yes, some mysteries remain unsolved.
Ken
@dmsilev: @Frankensteinbeck: I took it as meaning that Europe has some grudges that go back a thousand years or more.
Sort of like when someone from the US brags about how old Harvard or Independence Hall is, and people from the UK or France snicker because they grew up in a house that is twice as old.
PST
@Cacti:
Definitely a better way to think about it. We will have to deal with those consequences understanding that they flow from our support of Ukraine, but I sincerely doubt that they will be worse than establishing as a principle of our foreign policy that Russian can grab what it wants and we will stand by and allow it. There may also be unintended benefits, like accelerating Europe’s conversion from fossil fuels.
Timill
@Raoul Paste:
“When Putin has the Dneiper crossed,
A mighty empire will be lost.”
Steve in the ATL
These Russians are such marbled godwits.
J R in WV
Let’s think now… Who in Russia might want, nay, need harshly, to create a beautiful martyr to the cause of Mother Russia?
Hmmmm!? So many options right there in town… and such a long way from Ukraine, also, too.
Baud
Via reddit, not sure how reliable this is.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Not too.
sab
@Ken: A lot of the European grudges that supposedly go back a thousand years actually go back only into the twentieth century, from actions in WWI and WWII.
dnfree
@dmsilev: yes, I thought “unlike Americans” was intended sarcastically, but maybe I’m wrong.
Why did Reagan go to Mississippi to give speeches about state’s rights? Why did he go to the place civil rights workers were murdered and fail to mention it?
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/44535
WaterGirl
I want to know what the first post called “It will never end” was.
edit: Found it! It Will Never End from 2010. Talking about Afghanistan. Hey, it only took another 10+ years, but Biden did it!
Van Buren
@sab: I remember back in the 90s, the Serbians were said to have a held a grudge against the Bosnians dating back to 1389 and the battle of Kosovo.
zhena gogolia
@Van Buren: They completely forgot about it until Milosevic reminded them.
ETA: And it wasn’t exactly “Bosnians” who were attacking them in 1389.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Ooooh. Thank you for finding that.
And: more applause for Biden. For doing the right thing.
And pain to Mr. and Mrs. Peter Baker and everyone else screaming about the “debacle.”
Frank Wilhoit
@dmsilev: The corresponding grievance for the Serbs dates to the 14th Century.
Mallard Filmore
@Elizabelle: Mr Dugin was graciously given the opportunity to share the joy he is spreading throughout the world.
frosty
Not true IMHO. We’re at a minimum, still fighting our Civil War. After reading Albion’s Seed several years ago, I’d argue that we’re still fighting the English Civil War from the 1600s between the Cavaliers (autocrats) and the Roundheads (democrats).
Maybe not grievances so much as diametrically opposed views of how the world works.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Elizabelle: debacle, no but tragedy yes. Has everyone forgotten that the place where we were welcomed with music and flowers was Afghanistan?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
In my day, never was longer.
MisterDancer
I have a few nits to pick on this one, John.
Others have addressed this, yet I would underline the person who rightly pointing out that America’s core issue, today, is basically the nth iteration of Sore Losers: Former Plantation Owner Edition. Holding a grudge is not unique to cultures with a longer history than America’s, and to pretend otherwise risks missing why we’re in the shit we’re in, right now in the US.
I’m always discomforted when people put shit on the Middle East, mostly because the issue there have too many ties to shitty decisions made by westerners when they were in power. Hell, I’m currently reading a history on Homosexuality in the Middle East, during Colonialism, and I’ll be the first to say it’s not easy nor simple to unwind the impact of centuries of abuse and neglect in that region, from the sometimes-toxic ways Islam, as Governmental and Cultural identity, can act.
The Ottomans bear some blame, too, for the situation in Eastern Europe, but that doesn’t at all negate what happened when the West just decimated that empire.
All this to say — I’d avoid this comparison like the fuckin’ Black Plague. Eastern Europe’s cultural/governmental issues aren’t the same as any culture in the Middle East; even under duress and infighting they aren’t promised to look or react the same. Moreover: implying that the Middle East is just always in turmoil, end-to-end, for “no good reason” is just a toxic-as-hell take that was best left on the cutting room floor for this post.
sdhays
@japa21: Maybe we’ll regret not intervening more forcefully and sooner. Maybe not, but that’s more likely than regretting getting involved at all. I certainly regret that the West didn’t find a way to punish Russia for its aggression over the last 20+ years so that whatever Czar they have at a given moment would be hesitant to launch wars against its neighbors.
And I definitely regret that George W. Bush flushed away any credibility about restraint in a post-Soviet world with his awful invasion of Iraq. All of the futzing about blaming the US/NATO for Russia’s actions always managed to ignore the one thing that really is the US’ fault and definitely did contribute to the current global geopolitical situation.
MattF
It should be noted that a lot of the ‘grievances’ you hear about were invented by 19th century nationalists looking for ways to generate resentment. ‘Hate thy neighbor’ works best in areas with mixed populations.
Baud
@sdhays:
Whenever I see some talking head talking about our failures in Afghanistan, they always blame all four presidents for screwing the pooch. They never put the lion’s share of the blame on Bush, and the reasons for failure never include Iraq.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: agree 100%
WaterGirl
@Baud: I laughed out loud. And added it as a rotating tag.
LeftCoastYankee
@sab:
which were based on bad feelings from the Franco-Prussian war, which was payback for the Napoleanic Wars, and the Wars of Spanish Succession and the 30 Years War, etc.
I don’t think folks today are holding grudges from these wars, more a rolling series of grudges and wars, up until the WW’s.
Tom Levenson
@frosty: I think there’s a residue of Edward I’s dust up with Scots at play as well.
sdhays
@Baud: Of course not. Dwelling much on that topic would quickly go to some pretty nasty places that no one (in the elite discourse) wants to touch with a 100 ft. poll.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Susan Glasser put out a tweet– I’m not good enough at twitter to find it– that was the perfect, horrible and laughable confluence of Emo-ism, Broderism and Blobbism about how Bush, Obama, trump and Biden were all equally to blame!
the other thing that scarcely got mentioned, except by Barry McCaffrey, was that Biden was adhering to the Doha accord signed between trump and the Afghans, right around the time he wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David for a sleepover.
Besides the usual blindness to the fact that a new administration is actually bound by agreements made by the old one (see also: Obama Iraq withdrawal and the Bush approved SOFA with the Iraqi gov’t), it’s a reflection of how for much of the media and the country, trump benefited from his cartoonish buffoonery by an inability of people to think he was really POTUS, he was just some goofy accident who should be taken neither literally nor entirely seriously
coin operated
Nah…couldn’t be the FSB. They would have gone whole hog and bombed the Kremlin with a dozen schoolchildren from Pskov* inside.
*shamelessly swiped from Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising”
What scares me about that thought is that, knowing Putin’s depravity, if the blond-haired blue-eyed woman doesn’t do the martyr trick a dozen schoolchildren might just be an option.
Uncle Cosmo
@sab: Just FTR, let’s have a glance at the nations on the podium for the National Resentment competition in the European Geopolitical Olympics:
The bronze, to Serbia, which has never forgiven the rest of Christendom for standing by as the Ottomans stomped them on the Field of Blackbirds (Kosovo Polje) on 28 June 1489;
The silver, to Greece (acceding to the slot formerly reserved for the Byzantine Empire), which has never forgiven the Fourth Crusade for hanging a sharp left on its way to the Holy Land, seizing Constantinople, and installing a gaggle of their own (bookended by Baldwins) as Latin Emperors for the next 57 years; and
The gold, to Eire, which has been pissed off at the transplanted Norsemen who seized the next isle over in 1066 and a century later (1170) came after them via Norman landings led by the Earl of Pembroke, Richard “Strongbow” de Clare.
(Which may help to explain the popular definition of Irish Alzheimer’s: When you forget everything but your grudges.)
sdhays
@sdhays: Atrios brings this up from time to time – the country’s elite went insane and really let their racist bloodthirsty monster freak flags fly after 9/11, and they completely believe that that was an unavoidable, though perhaps regrettable, reaction. Best to move on and let bygones be bygones.
Tom Levenson
Kos has piece up about the current state of Dugina “investigation” in Russia that I found interesting.
Andrya
@Tom Levenson: Being half Scottish-American, I was raised to hold a grudge about the massacre of Glencoe in 1692- and specifically against Clan Campbell and Archibald Campbell, Duke of Argyll. This came in handy in the 1990s, when a neighbor named Campbell spouted racist garbage when I was present, and defended himself by saying he was raised that way. I was able to retort that I was raised to be racist against people named Campbell.
Ruckus
John, you served during a war.
I served during a war and I’m at least a generation older than you.
The generation after you served in a war.
The generation before me served in a war.
The generation before that served in a war.
War is the one constant among generations, at least going back a few generations, like quite possibly every damn generation for the last few hundred years. We fight each other, because for someone it’s profitable. And because we really, really have not learned any better. One would think that as the planet gets more populated we might figure out a way to actually live without war. But no, we go with what we know. And do we ever seem to know war.
I for one could do without that memory in my head and I wasn’t even in the shooting/dying part of war. I do get to see the remnants of it at the VA every time I’m there, and no, it’s not the same at all.
Humanity needs to grow the fuck up, but I suspect that will happen about the 12th of fucking never.
satby
@Uncle Cosmo: You know, a famine that cost the nation 1/2 of it’s population to starvation and emigration while the English overlords of Ireland EXPORTED food to England still has a bit to do with that grudge.
Ruckus
@Uncle Cosmo:
“Irish Alzheimer’s”
It seems to me that nearly every country (as in 99.9999999%) has it’s version of that.
Uncle Cosmo
@satby: NB I never said (or meant to imply) that the Hibernian grudges were without cause.
IIRC (can’t find a direct quote at the moment) Jonathan Swift once remarked in print that, while Parliament invariably sent Englishmen to administer Ireland who were just, wise, and generous, on their way to Bristol (to take ship for the crossing) they were invariably set upon by vicious brigands who robbed them of their possessions and commissions, and arrived in the Emerald Isle to rule in their stead.
eversor
@LeftCoastYankee:
Not all “wars” are the same though. Case in point the US and Vietnam have good relations today, even though that was horrific. But there are some nations that have thousand year old grudges that have existed longer than some nations were nations and those old wounds die hard.
There are groups of peoples that have been bullied by others for hundreds and thousands of years. They have grudges, deep seated and are part of the national identity now. My SO is a filipina and many of them burn with hatred of Chinese and Japanese due to centuries of bullshit that still has not fully ended.
America is a young country and we never really had to deal with being dominated and living in the shadow of our abuser. We threw a tax tantrum and then became best friends forever with England but there are ethnic and religious grudge matches out there as old as when “rock meet skull” was the top of battle tactics.
These aren’t war related entirely. It’s a mix of humiliation, cultural domination, and a lack of choice that angers the hell out of them. They might be a “nation” but what is that worth if you can’t make your own choices and choose your own path if someone else all the way overthere who doesn’t know fuck about it you is meddling in it? It’s the same reason groups are justifiably pissed at the US now.
We think of wars in the American way. You go up bomb the crap out of a place or take it over then deliver jeans and burgers and everyone gets along after. But that’s not the reality of most nations conflicts. It’s a long history of violence longer than the US has existed along with dipshittery like setting up radio stations to pump out propaganda that the nation has no way of stopping, trade embargos, setting up an elite caste there which gets all the good jobs.
Crap happens on a personal level and a cultural level. Nobody likes a grudge match it never ends well but a lot of those grudges are completely justifiable. And if it’s gone on for x hundreds of years it doesn’t go away easily.
dr. luba
Ukrainians understand. We weren’t allowed to emigrate, but the UkrSSR (Ukraine – the western bits) lost between 4-7 million to famine in 1932-3, while Stalin was exported our grain abroad to raise hard currency. Many millions more were “resettled” to distant parts of the USSR.
And we’ve had our intelligentsia killed off/imprisoned/deported so many times……including Chornovil in 1999.
Plus our language and culture outlawed by Russia (and, to a lesser extent, Poland) since the early 1800s.
dr. luba
@Tom Levenson: I found this bit interesting:
dr. luba
Never mind
Bokonon
Gosh, nothing suspicious at all how the FSB wrapped up its investigation in such an amazingly short time, and simultaneously blamed Ukraine and … Estonia (for harboring the person the FSB accuses of setting up the car bomb).
How convenient.
Ascap_scab
Remember the Alamo!
Remember the Maine!
Remember my dry cleaning!
Remember to feed the cat!
Too many damn things to remember!
The Lodger
@Steve in the ATL: Now you’ve got me checking Albatrossity posts for pictures of the Marbled Godwit.
Bokonon
Years ago, a new neighbor moved in next to my parents. He promptly annoyed them with a series of obnoxious actions (leaving his boat trailer parked up front of their house, etc.)
The first time they met, the guy boasted of his Scottish heritage and his pride of being a Campbell. My father looked at him and grinned hard – like a mouth full of icicle teeth – and said, “We are McDonalds.”
The new neighbor visibly wilted. Oh nooooo … oh hell … oh crap …
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Charles P. Pierce @CharlesPPierce. 16h
Spadizzly
@Uncle Cosmo:
The bronze, to Serbia, which has never forgiven the rest of Christendom for standing by as the Ottomans stomped them on the Field of Blackbirds (Kosovo Polje) on 28 June 1489;
Forgive me, but I think you meant to write 1389, but hey, 100 years here, 100 years there, and pretty soon you’re talking real time.
Origuy
Flower of Scotland is the unofficial Scottish national anthem. It was composed in the mid-1960s. Its refrain goes:
And stood against himProud Edward’s ArmyAnd sent him homeward tae think again
The Edward here is Edward II, who lost the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
Ken
@Spadizzly: 1389, 1489, whatever. As Fomenko showed in his New Chronology — variations of which are popular among the Russian elite — all of these dates were invented by Western “historians” to hide the true history of Europe since 800 AD, which was a thousand-year continent-spanning Russian empire.
SiubhanDuinne
@Bokonon:
@Andrya:
The unmourned murder victim in Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Five Red Herrings is a thoroughly obnoxious Scotsman named Campbell. He’s an arrogant, abusive drunken bully who’ll pick a fight over anything with everybody. Little wonder he met an untimely end!
SiubhanDuinne
@Origuy:
Up the Bruce!!
(And now I’m going to have Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy as an earworm for the rest of the day!)
Andrya
@Bokonon: Thanks. Although I don’t condone being hostile to anyone based on their ancestry, I totally enjoyed your story. (Key difference- neither your father nor I were hostile to a Campbell until they had otherwise proved themselves obnoxious.)
For “Song of Ice and Fire” fans, I should have mentioned that the Glencoe massacre was part of GRRM’s inspiration for the Red Wedding. In both cases, the massacre was also a gross violation of the sacred rules of hospitality: for the Glencoe massacre, guests murdering hosts, for the Red Wedding, hosts murdering guests.
Finally, Winston Churchill (who had bitterly opposed Irish independence in the 1920s), expressed indignation that the Irish would not allow a British base on Irish soil during the Battle of the Atlantic. (In his History of the Second World War, he neglects to mention the Donegal Corridor which allowed British planes to fly from Ulster over Republic of Ireland territory straight to the Atlantic.). If the Republic of Ireland had allowed such a base, and if Churchill had be re-elected Prime Minister in 1945, do you think the British military would have left after the war?
Ken
@SiubhanDuinne: My 1/8 Scottish heritage might take offense at this, but I’ll have to check whether my (very minor) clan was allied with, or against, the Campbells.
J R in WV
I read somewhere that Dugin pere believed in the sacrifice of beautiful youth to further serious movements. Greek mythology was mentioned in passing. I dunno, but nut jobs are capable of anything. He was there in the video, could have pushed a button…
Nettoyeur
@zhena gogolia: Well, a previously obscure Russian nationalist group claimed credit, and there are also Russian govt reports that it was the Georgians. Kinda like the evolving excuses for Trump having classified docs at Mar a Lago.
Quiltingfool
@Andrya: So, a bit of my ancestry is Scottish (or maybe Scots-Irish)…anyway, is there any sort of grudge against the MacKenzie clan?
Speaking of grudges, I do think my father’s side of the family does have a bit of Scottish blood running through their veins. My father holds on to grudges tighter than a miser holds on to a dime.
Spadizzly
@SiubhanDuinne: If you’d like to change it up, you could do worse than this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=newJOqUYPBc
Andrya
@Quiltingfool: I’ve never heard of anything regarding the MacKenzies. My mother’s side is Clan MacPhee. Let’s consider ourselves honorary cousins!
SWMBO
@Gin & Tonic: My first guess was Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with a hammer. But NO! It was Miss Scarlett in the parking lot with a pipe bomb.
RaflW
When our family moved to Texas from the Northeast, and a classmate (originally from Mississippi, and an honors student and in French club with me) unironically referred to “the War of Northern Aggression” I had a snap adolescent education in multi-generational grudge-holding.
(Like a lot of Yankees, I barely thought about the Civil War. Why would I need to?)
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I nominate for rotating tag line: “One of Life’s Bad Choices”
Balconesfault
You know what’s weird about Civil War stuff? The small town people across the Rust Belt who grew up with some monument to the Ohio 6th or the 24th Michigan Volunteer Infantry or the 2nd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery in their town square … and who can over to the Courthouse and read on a bronze plaque the names of some of their ancestors who fought for the Union, or relatives who died from Confederate gunfire … who now regularly side with and even march with those waving the Confederate flag.
Maybe the whole Confederacy fetish thing is about something else than a grudge about a 160 year old war?