Scales in Turkey. Photo by one2c900d.
Julia Ioffe is a wildly popular Russian-American writer whose articles on Russia and Russian-American relations have been featured in all the major publications.
She's young, attractive, and very talented as you can see from her kick-ass website with clips from everything from the New Yorker to Foreign Policy to Bloomsberg.
The post-Soviet bloggers on Russia love Julia -- she is endlessly reblogged and retweeted.
Yet every time I read one of her articles, I pause and I think to myself, "Hmmm, what's wrong with this picture?"
And that's because I think I've detected a certain formula to these pieces -- the key to their popularity for many, especially the gaggle of pro-Kremlin bloggers who hold the mindshare on Twitter -- but also a reason why I am troubled by article after article by Julia Ioffe.
THE IOFFE FORMULA -- BLAME THE FRENCH
A good example is this one on Khimki -- in which the awfulness of Russian thugs and shadowy companies is acknowledged -- and of course we know these are people prepared to break journalists' arms and maim journalists for life and cause enormous damage -- and yet in the end, we are to blame it on...the French. And their construction companies that gravitate to dictators.
Whatever the perfidy of Parizhskaya oblast -- and I'm always ready to highlight it myself -- somehow, I think Putin and his cronies are more to the point here, and it's not really a moral-equivalence problem; $112 million is a lot for a company to lose, but in a normal country with an independent judiciary and free media, there are ways to bring remedies to a conflict of interest of this sort -- so the problem isn't really Parizhskaya oblast.
Julia is too young to share the sensibilities of the shestidesyatniki, which includes the best-known Soviet dissidents -- although I don't know if she has written on this subject per se, you sense that she would hold these people at a distance -- after all, they were pro-Western, and used by rightwingers Reagan and Thatcher, you know?
So...The formula usually seems to work like this:
1. Say something critical about Russia to establish one's credentials as a credible liberal writer -- liberals have to admit at least something's wrong with awful things like Russian human rights violation and bullying (look at what happened to the Khimki activists.)
2. But then note how whatever bad thing that Russia is doing is also a bad thing done by the US or the West in general, or that bad thing is being done with Western connivance or support (the French, McCain, etc.).
3. Contemplate how the West's doing of that bad thing makes it hard to be persuasive to Moscow in trying to convince them not to do bad things.
4. End with a sobering lecture to the West, a minor critique of the Kremlin, and the "net effect," as Evgeny Morozov knows (as he practices this same formula even more expertly) of convincing the reader that the real problem is the US, which perhaps he as a Westerner can change, and not Russia, which he can't change. Therefore, the US or Europe, which should be "held to a higher standard" are objectively...worse.
Neat trick, eh? And a formula many endorse unthinkingly. Kremlin propagandists may wince at part 1 of this formula, and certain Russian right-wingers may wince at part 2 and 3 of the formula, with their moral equivalence of Russia to the US. They think that the US is far worse (like Chomsky or something) yet they enable Julia to beat off detractors from the far right and enhance her liberal credentials.
But given the net effect, the Kremlin spinners can't help but be pleased. Let her talk. Let her be bashed by Nashi types. And let her be on the cover of every media read by Western intellectuals with the message that the West -- which intellectuals should be able to control -- is worse, in the end. It's all good.
OBE KHUZHE -- BUT THE US IS REALLY WORSE, IN THE END
Let's take Julia's article in the New Yorker, Russia and Georgia, Three Years Later.
But first, take my blog at the time about events at the UN, which indicate that before the Georgian invasion of Tsinkhvali, in July, Georgia was coming to the UN Security Council and pleading for the UN to "do something." This was awfully hard to expect, given the Russian veto and how that paralyzes virtually any work on the post-Soviet space, but even so, it can get on the agenda -- and then get at least reported about.
A member of the Elected 10 countries at the time privately took up Georgia's case and Georgia had some backing from the permanent 3 of UK, France, and US -- but not enough to overcome the Russian veto problem (and that means not just a literal veto, should a resolution be drafted, but a veto on even discussing anything or making a consensus statement issued by the current president of the Security Council.)
Russia was intruding into Georgian air space in July -- Russia's provocative buzzing was cause for Georgia to go to the SC. People forget that piece of it as they set their clock running only when Georgia's David-like provocations against Goliath-like Russia begin in August. Russia's meddling and provocations before that -- issuing Russian passports, forcing out UN and OSCE monitors -- this also doesn't get reviewed, in the heavily magnetized space of Russia's propaganda on this in all available outlets.
This isn't to exonerate Georgia, of course -- they could have taken in refugees and displaced people that they refused to for years -- giving Russia the grounds to offer their own passport as protection. People in these countries need residence permits to get schooling and jobs and medical care and even food -- so not granting people citizenship is cruel.
CLAWING FOR CONTROL OF...A MUDDLE
So Julia starts off her New Yorker piece squarely placing the weights on the scales -- in the moral equivalency part of the formula. It's all a muddle, who knows what's right, and the two sides are "clawing for control of the conflict's narrative."
This sets her up as that wise and urbane persona known as the Western liberal who can see "a plague should go on both their houses" because, as they say in Odessa, obe khuzhe.
Then she whirls around to Russia-bashing to establish those liberal credentials I told you about -- "Russian state television offered a characteristically unsubtle take..." -- just so we know she's no patsy, and sees weepy Russian-incited TV propaganda for what it is.
But then, on again to point 2 in the formula -- "But things, of course, were not that simple."
Georgia started shelling the city close to midnight on August 7, 2008 according to the EU report. Yes, the EU report is about as even-handed as we'll ever get on this conflict -- but it's a clock-starting problem -- one could start the clock July 7, when Russian planes intruded in Georgian airspace, or other set-points involving Russian provocations. Julia doesn't "go there."
Then -- more even-handedness: the Russians cried genocide saying 2,000 South Ossetians were killed; the Georgians said it was 200, and Georgians were chased out by Ossetia militia -- then the EU said it was 800 people. Human Rights Watch -- that ever-lasting barometer of balanced saddlebags -- said the death toll was "greatly exaggerated." Even so, 800 is a lot of people -- but not a genocide.
Liberal credentials established; Russia-bashing check-box checked; balance, balance.
AMERICA DOES BAD THINGS
Now, time to swing around to part 2, where we discuss Bad Things the US is Doing. Bad right-wing figures and Joe Biden (conservative on this issue anyway) condemned Moscow for its aggression.
And why not? Russia is big, Georgia is little. Russia is supposed to be "peace-keeping" -- it didn't.
John McCain called Russia's role in this conflict "an act of aggression."
But thoughtful liberal Julia Ioffe is now ready to ask: whose aggression, exactly? Here, she recognizes Georgia was provoked -- she even mentions that Russia handed out passports, something I mention every time these debates are held, and almost no one else ever does.
And now she's ready to REALLY assign blame: "But Georgia, perhaps expecting supoprt from Washington, did shoot first."
Really, Julia? *Perhaps* expecting? Do we really have authentic evidence of that? And what kind of support? A full-bore invasion backup? Really?
Maybe they just fought back after being provoked and buzzed; but they wouldn't be *shooting* with an expectation of American troops arriving, surely.
Julia doesn't develop this theme here, but other bloggers have or will -- they will point to McCain's aide who become involved in "technical assistance" to Georgia. Bad aide with bad aid! They will point to military advisors, perhaps even dredging up Israeli military advisors to ring all the anti-Zionist chimes they can.
Julia never really backs up the insinuation that the US was going to proxy-invade Russia (!) but then weaves back to some more equal-opportunity bashing -- neither Russia or Georgia will speak to each other -- such infantiles! Russia refuses to acknowledge Saakashvili -- but -- and now back to formula 2 -- Saakashvili is "mercurial, charismatic and Western-educated" (and therefore inauthentic for this region) -- and "continues to stoke fear" of Russia at home.
But why can't you fear a country that buzzes your airspace, gives its passports out to your people, refuses to validate your existence, and provokes you in every way, Julia? You know why that TV stunt could even work? Because it was plausible.
Russian media is "happy to let bloggers on both sides pore over the details" and focus on its broader messages "Georgian aggression, Ossetian genocide, Russia as the only moral force in the region."
Oh? Russia, a moral force? Could I cite about 100 reasons at home and abroad why that isn't the case?
THAT NASTY PUTIN! AND LETTING LAVROV HAVE ALMOST THE LAST WORD...
But it's back now to showing how Bad Russia Is -- Putin's nasty quotes, Medvedev, who is usually the good cop, with nasty quotes, too -- and then those "elderly" US senators ("senile" is how some translated it).
Congress tends to get its information on the region from Georgia? Well, maybe. But what exactly is wrong with the Congressional call on Russia to remove its troops from Georgian territory? It's invading foreign territory with its troops. Why is that ok?
Finally, a coda that lets increasingly vicious Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have nearly the last word (see, Kremlin? Wince at some parts of these pieces, but it will be ok in the end.)
Lavrov called Saakashvili "a pathological case, an anomaly among the Georgian people." Then Saakashvili is referenced as saying that the war isn't over because "Russia doesn't recognize the peace agreement and officially wants to overthrow our government."
Well, yeah. That would be about right, Western-educated, mercurial, or whatever. Why are the troops still there, Julia? Why would you see a refusal to negotiate with this government, and a characterization of it as "pathological" and an "anomaly" as anything but a desire to see it overthrown -- and maybe help that process along?
And we're worried about McCain's aide and his aid? Like that's going to move the needle?
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
I'm not a specialist on Georgia and I will likely be unable to do anything except ask some hard questions about Russia here.
But Julia's mission is accomplished, once again. Yes, we get a bit of criticism about Russian heavy-handedness and spicy language. But at the end of the day, rather than calling on her hyphenated native land to do the right thing -- and that would be Russia, and that would be removing troops -- she shrugs phlegmatically and says, "Well, there's always next year" -- maybe just wait for Saakashvili to go away, eh?
In the New Yorker, commentor Alex Korn thinks that Julia's carefully-calibrated formula leaves the reader thinking "it isn't really a muddle, because Georgia provoked the war thinking they had American backing."
Bingo! See, she can call it a muddle when she sets the stage for appearing like an even-handed weight-balancing on-the-one-hand, on-the-other liberal -- but then leave the reader with the poisoned chalice that in fact, it's all America's fault for "making Georgia think it would back up its aggression."
Yet I think this sort of simplistic anti-Americanism loses sight of how America has actually functioned over the decades to deter and contain Russia -- which, BTW, definitely needed deterring and containing because of its mass-murdering leaders.
For example, America definitely supported the mujahedin in Afghanistan -- but that wasn't to actually confront Russia by proxy and attempt to actually overthrow it or force "regime change" -- it was to bloody its nose and block what seemed a kind of domino theory. When NATO waltzes around with various post-Soviet states today, it's not because they would actually invade Russia if Ukraine or Georgia asked them to, in "self-defense". It's because they are trying to build a wall of deterrence around Russian aggression. Russian aggression -- against its own Caucasus, against its own people, against neighbours, when it turns off the gas -- this is all amply evident.
Meanwhile, any notion that the US is actually going to get into a *nuclear war* with Russia via escalation of some proxy war with conventional weapons is just preposterous. And the Kremlin knows that, despite their blustering and their whipsawing of their bloggers.
MAMA GRIZZLY -- AND MAMA MORAL EQUIVALENCE
There's lots more where this came from -- I don't have time to play the game now, but I see in her last post to True/Slant, Julia is true-to-formula by first having a "thoughtful" discussion about Russophobia -- but then likening one Russian critic who "know no truth but his truth and sees any alternative view through the sight of a rifle" to..."our mercifully unseated president, George W. Bush, as well as his spiritual heir, Ms. Mama Grizzly" -- always establishing the liberal credentials, the equal-opportunity bashing, even though there's a big difference between a leader of a liberal democratic country whose election, even while challenged by the left over the chads in Florida, was affirmed by an independent judiciary, and leaders whose elections have never been validated as free or fair by OSCE.
Julia can look especially convincing as a Western progressive when she can round up some Neanderthal quotations from Russophiles who see her as "wanting Russia to fail, collapse, become the 52nd US state" etc. Oh, no. Not our Julia! They just haven't followed her formula. Read what she just wrote about the Georgian-Russian conflict, for example, where the take-home is clear: the Bush administration misled Saakashvili, a loose canon, into thinking he'd have backing going up against Russia. The take-home is *not* "Russia really ought to remove its troops, and those Congress people aren't so senile for asking for that, you know?" The take-home is *America is the problem, not Russia."
BTW, the whole Russophobe debates bores me and seems like a modern bloggy affectation. I myself have been accused of *being* La Russophobe, who incites a lot of these pro-Kremlin kids to frenzy. I hardly think I'm a "Russophobe" if my own children are half-Russian, with a Russian mother-in-law, speaking and reading Russian fluently, with a great interest in Russia and having spent a good part of my life *helping Russian dissidents, because they asked us to* -- not to "impose Western values" or "hatred of Russia". Guess the question you always have to ask is: whose Russia?
Now, to pre-anticipate the pro-Kremlin anklebiters: am I saying you can't criticize America, ever? Or America is an unalloyed good in the world? That's what always happens when you point out that the moral equivalence game exaggerates the evils of America.
Of course not. I criticize America. I live here. I voted for Obama. Will I vote for Obama again? I may well do that if there is no viable Democratic candidate. I criticize ill-conceived wars abroad -- wars that I neverthless point out Russia helped set up in its way -- propping up Hussein for years in Iraq, propping up Iran, for that matter, and then, of course, invading Afghanistan and killing a million people.
A million people. And forcing a lot of them into refugee camps, where a lot of fatherless boys studied in madrassahs and became the Taliban, you know? Not merely because we supported the mujahedin. But because the Soviets invaded the country, killed the people, forced them into refugee status, and radicalized them -- even before we could apply our meager aid or pushback. This is worth thinking about; almost nobody does anymore. Even so, even with the historical record clearly showing Russia as the worse actor in Afghanistan, and a continuing trouble since then in the region (forcing troops on Tajikistan), we can say that our role there is destructive and we should wind it down.
But as a good liberal, I apply universality, and when you do that, you do find that Russia is worse on many fronts. In Russia, journalists are tracked, blocked, injured, killed. So are lawyers, human rights activists, judges, priests. A lawyer dies in pretrial detention just for defending a Western company in the crosshairs of the corrupt state tax agency -- none of this is right, none of this is normal, none of this happens in America -- and it's ok to say so.
I'm also -- to pre-empt that geek gambit that becomes so annoying in forums battles -- NOT "imposing my view" or "telling somebody else they can't have their view". I'm sticking to it. That isn't being some hoary mouth-breather of the type Julia invokes with their "my truth is the only truth" -- only on the other side (which is how she'd no doubt like to see it, as would her admirers.) It's about a common-sense dedication to the obvious which shouldn't be forsaken for "progressive" expediencies: Russia still has political prisoners, Russia still restricts the media, Russia bullies its minorities and its neighbours. Whatever transgressions the US has in these areas is dwarfed by the badness of Russia -- and it's ok to say that without silly brandings of "Russophobia." Because if you don't, you are guilty of truthophobia you know?
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