Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey -- Ukraine, Fascism and Imbecility

 Ukraine, Fascism and Imbecility

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, March 20, 2022

Devoid of hype and hysteria, this piece is dedicated to respect all mothers who lose children and whose tears all taste of salt

After three weeks I am finally managing to understand the international reaction to the situation in Ukraine and the more I understand it, the more shocked I am at how utterly uninformed, or misinformed, people are. I am appalled at the shallowness of the media’s approach which in turns feeds gullible audiences and readerships and I am astonished at the biased, one-sidedness which demonises one side and exonerates the other.

Russophobic chips

It is almost as if every western baby was born with a Russophobic chip in their neck, easily activated by a single sound bite. It is like watching a video of a family kicking a dog to death because it bit the postman’s son (who had spent eight years torturing it and pulling its tail). The sheer childishness of reactions among seemingly educated and intelligent people is as amazing as it is sad.

The collective reaction borders on hysteria, with erudite people restricted to breathy, breathless monosyllables about “He”, about “Putin” who is “invading a sovereign nation” and “killing civilians” because “he wants to take over the world” and “he’s coming for us next”. What happened to common sense, logic and a balanced and informed approach? What happened to those who like to do a lot more reading and listening than speaking or writing?

I am one of those and I only write about something when I know what I am speaking about. I am not easily influenced by the media, which unfortunately has taught me to adopt the Hinchey Principle, which is to take a story, stand it on its head, turn it inside out, view it back to front, read the comments under the piece and get somewhere near to the truth.

Drawing the time line

What is even more depressing, in this current situation, is the Pavlovian reaction to draw the time line arbitrarily, devoid of any logic other than to pull the wool over people’s eyes. What the western media has managed to do, and it has worked, is to draw the time line at the beginning of 2022 when the first Russian missiles began destroying, in 48 hours, the billion-dollars-worth of military equipment which NATO had saddled the Ukrainian taxpayers with. After that, censorship of Russian media and social media sources, hundreds of Facebook pages deleted, RT silenced, Sputnik silenced and what happens then? Censorship negates any legitimacy of an information flow, who is to say that it is not just propaganda?