Podcast | Why I'm Optimistic America Will Go All-In for Ukraine?

President Zelenskyy's fluent in 21st century emotion-moving activities (trolling). He’s a master of what experts call the “magic-religious” aspect of the mysterious practice of leadership and sovereignty. He’s also an expert in the other aspect of the sovereign: the juridical.

Duncey Putin and Don Disinfolklore Trump, by contrast, are stuck in the twentieth century.

Let’s break them down into the constituent elements of the Sovereign Archetype which all three fit inside. Sovereignty has two functions, according to Dumézil (who discovered the tripartite structure immanent in Indo-European linguistics, cultures and communities): the Magico-religious and the juridical.

Druidey Don Trump – Don Disinfolklore - is brilliant at forging a mythos that convinces people he has a superhuman ability to make the unexpected happen. Druidey Don – as I shall refer to him - may seem to have magical powers, yet what he does and what those around him amplify is in fact as I shall show a mechanical process that uses archetypes deeply embedded in our culture and in our minds in ways that are quite familiar to those of us who study Indo-European culture within the timeframe of the last 6,000 years

The Zelenskyy effect for the archetype of The Comedian: a much closer match between archetypes at various levels (the artist, the actor, and ordinary peoples’ emotional triggers, as evidenced by creating one of the post-Soviet space’s most successful entertainment companies)…I'm quite optimistic. So I still believe there will be a moment when America goes all in, Germany has gotten it all in. And I marked the moment, I think it was in April 2023. It was too late. I marked the moment in a tweet. I just saw it yesterday or next.

So I still believe America will go all in. Certainly President Biden went all in a few days ago in his Valley Forge speech in the context of fighting Trump and Trumpism. And in pointing out that the theatricalness of Trump's use of the Jan 6th insurrectionists now in his rallies is, and President Biden referred to it as a fairy tale, a bad fairy tale. And then he went on to say, if you were reading about an ex-US president saying these things, saying that he pardoned these insurrectionists, you'd think it was a bad novel. So President Biden gets this disinfolklore element that these are just kind of stories.

And I think what is going on with the Russian government, disinformation, as well as with what I call Trump Brexitism, which is a part of it, this Trump Brexit disinfo-clore as well, is they are, through this carnival, through this PT Barnum spectacle, they are turning us in from being mere voters, from electors, from participants in our own destiny. We have a human right of public participation and decision making. It's one of the core human rights. And what they're trying to do is using media to turn us from participants in this into watchers, into, you know, we just see the The theatricalness of it.

It's just over the top. Everything is over the top. And it's a dictum I came up with relatively recently, but it's basically the media is not mediating. The media is creating the reality. It is using, it is creating the reality, it is reporting the reality it is creating.

But in many cases, it only exists as a phenomena on that particular medium at that moment. It doesn't, so polling is used as this magical chrysanthem to say, oh, so what is completely made up only exists in the minds is said, oh, polls say this and polls say that. But what that is actually, we are thinking of that this is reporting reality, but actually is creating reality. And what also gives me optimism is that we have in President Zelensky a master, an absolute master of communication. So he, as we know, he was chief executive of the most significant privately held entertainment company in the post-Soviet space, arguably. He is an actor.

I, in my experience of Eastern Ukraine, I got to know the actual building where he grew up. I used to go there to speak to an LGBTQIQ group who who operated out of there and who suddenly weren't getting persecuted by Russians, by Russia's infused far right when President Zelensky became president because there was police around.

And so President Zelensky has probably one of the best ideas of how the narrative arc of this conflict. And obviously with the resources, all of us as individuals fighting for Ukraine in the information space have, and even Ukraine has, it's not enough to always defeat these vectors and these stories that are coming out.

And so even this story, which I've seen as well, and the White House logs showing X and Y person has gone there to advise. And now we, I didn't understand what the word tanky was, and these are the Westerners who are sympathetic and empathetic, and I plead guilty as charged in certain moments of my life. But Crimea, the invasion of Crimea did change everything, even before I ended up working there in my mind. But these tankies going there, the people who are willing to surrender our civilization to the big bad wolf, because the big bad wolf says if we don't, they'll do x and y and of course it makes no sense um but they are you know inside this visiting the white house can itself be used as a story to depress sentiment and the core tenet where Zarina Zabrisky who's who does great work and who actually studied philology in saint petersburg um so i've studied philology i've gone back into linguistics and it it because I needed to understand what was going on in this world in Eastern Ukraine. And then I discovered that actually the Russians creating this content are philologists.

And as part of your philology degree, which is an alien word in the Anglo-Saxon sphere, but linguistics, they study combat propaganda as part of their university course. And so I, almost by accident, have ended up in the realm of these particular sounds which work, like right, writ, rt, rt, rach, reich, these sounds which come from very deep Indo-European roots, meaning what is.

RTA in Sanskrit, what is, and Russian Disinfolklore creates this artificial reality and it tries to claim what is. So there is a danger that even when we're reporting about these people visiting the White House, that we are knowledgeable as us are where our sentiment has been depressed and so for me an early insight for me was that when I feel my emotions being triggered then i go on guard so it's obviously hard to keep um you know this watch on your mind what's going into your mind but when i feel my you know fear anger disgust sadness happiness being triggered then My aspiration, I don't always achieve this, whether it's on Twitter or watching TV or reading a newspaper or hearing a story like this, I try to say, okay, this is triggering my emotions. I'm on guard now. And I'm wondering, am I going to end up in the state of mind that... Who wants me to end up in this state of mind?

And if it's depressed about Ukraine's prospect, if it's depressed about America, or whether America will go all in, then I realize the manner of that is Russian, that's benefiting them. On the other hand, when I hear President Zelensky's speech, or just talking because he is the master communicator, and I feel happy, then I know this is Counter Disinfolklore. And so I have this sense that there's no better head of state to have, who is this genius of communications. He studied Charles Chaplin. He knows how to provoke emotions.

As he said recently, you know, I spent most of my career trying to make Ukrainians laugh. And that was my raison d'etre. And now I'm trying to stop them from crying. And so you have this. So I like it. I wrote early in March 2022. I said, let's compare trolls. And I wrote this piece about Putin.

know we see this as genius no he's a 20th century troll he knows the mechanics of it uh if i do this if i torture this person they will cry they'll fear they'll surrender they'll be vulnerable but president zelensky is working on a much different uh level he's a 21st century troll he has the full uh control troll is in this the sounds going in there of his emotions and the effect of his emotions, because he created these works of art. I mean, it was quite bawdy and populist stuff, but they were able to leverage a way of making comedy.

And of course, He got into comedy, and Krivyi Rih, maybe you've been there, Jonathan, I've been there a lot, and it's a rough place. It's a tough place. He grew up in a place his parents were and are academics, but they grew up in a really tough town, and he used humour from the beginning to avoid getting beaten up. And then they turned this in this entrepreneurial way, and this is again why I'm optimistic, is because Ukraine had this, their core competency is you give them X and they'll turn it into this universe of amazing things.

Give them a few javelins and they'll defeat the second army of the world. They'll push them back from Kharkiv, from Kherson, from Kiev. And President Zelensky and himself and his friends embody this sense, characteristic of Ukraine and as many of us who love Russia and loved Russia and had spent a lot of time trying to understand Russia through its literature that often folklorically inspired Dostoevsky's you know about but anyway know that Russia doesn't have this core competency so I suppose when we hear these stories, we become part of this story, we become a part of the spectacle.

And if we can just withdraw a little bit and see if our emotions are triggered, then the Disinfolklore perspective helps us.

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