Historian Emmanuel Todd is one of France’s leading public intellectuals. At the age of just 25, he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in his book The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere. Later in his career, he carried out pioneering work on family structure and how it impacts societal development.
Now at the age of 71, Todd doesn’t seem to mind ruffling feathers – as his remarks in a recent interview with Swiss magazine Weltwoche make clear. “I’ll give you the first interview because you write in German,” he begins by saying. “This war is about Germany.”
About Germany? What does he mean? Todd explains:
The financial crisis of 2008 made it clear that with reunification Germany became the leading power in Europe and thus also a rival of the USA. Until 1989 it was politically a dwarf. Now Berlin showed its willingness to get involved with the Russians. Combating this rapprochement became a priority of American strategy. The United States had always made it clear that they wanted to torpedo the gas agreement. The expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe was not primarily directed against Russia, but against Germany.
Asked who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines, Todd replies, “Of course the Americans. But that is completely unimportant. It is normal.” The important question is, “How can a society believe that it could have been the Russians?”
“We are dealing here with an inversion of possible reality,” says Todd. “The newspapers tell us how the Russians are shooting at prisons they have occupied. That they shoot at nuclear power plants that they control locally. That they blow up pipelines that they built themselves.”
It’s clear, then, that Todd subscribes to the theory I first discussed back in August: that the U.S. deliberately provoked conflict between Russia and Ukraine to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, thereby ending (or at least severely curtailing) Russo-European interdependence.
Unfortunately, Todd doesn’t provide any specific evidence to back up his provocative claims. So the theory remains speculative. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should accept the conventional narrative that America just really cares about democracy.
So what, in Todd’s view, should be done? “I wish the Germans would understand: The side of the good they want to be on this time is not that of the United States,” he says. “The good means: end this war.”
While Todd certainly represents a minority viewpoint among Western intellectuals, as he himself acknowledges, it’s still worth considering.
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“We are dealing here with an inversion of possible reality,” That’s correct, file it with all the rest, after all, vaccines are safe and effective, trans women are women, carbon dioxide is killing the planet, ‘global warming’ can beaten by higher taxes, oh and ‘leave means leave’. Coming soon, down is up.
For older readers: “This will not affect the Pound in your pocket”, and ‘Joining the EEC is purely about trade and is definitely not about sovereignty’.
It’s the way they tell ‘em.
Exactly.
Nothing new really.
20 years ago we were told that a Saudi freedom fighter operating from a cave in Afghanistan coordinating the simultaneous hijacking of 4 commercial planes and suicide flying them into buildings with extreme precision is a plausible explanation, but the very same thing orchestrated and coordinated by a faction within the US military or intelligence community is the conspiracy theory of a loony crackpot. And we all believed it.
Society basically believes what it is told to believe.
Brilliant posts from all of you.This is why I love DS. The articles cross the line of the narrative snd these great commentators take the ball and run it to the try line.
We should meet up.
‘Coming soon, down is up.’
War is peace. Freedom is slavery,…
I think Germany has been suspicious of US intentions since at least 2013, when the Snowden files revealed the US had hacked Angela Merkel’s private phone to spy on her.
That kind of thing is kind of a big deal between “allies”…
Well it was a good thing someone spied on Germany. Just think how many Soviet and Russian spies have been close to the German Chancellor and other senior Ministers over the years.
Fifth columnists in Germany are actively suppressing the fact that the US just impoverished the German nation.
The lack of evidence is definitely a weak point…..
Well we do have evidence from observation… revealed preferences, what is done not what is said.
From observation of these revelations over the past few decades, we can be reasonable certain that whatever the official line is on any matter, the opposite will be true.
Realistically, there are only two ‘hot’ protagonists in this conflict but the blindingly obvious has never been allowed to get in the way of a good yarn by a French or any other writer in search of book sales.
The lack of evidence cuts both ways. I was surprised that after the initial flurry, there was very little curiosity or film evidence from the sea floor about what exactly had happened. No carcass of a big limpet bomb with Cyrillic writing all over it, for example.
I have no doubt that the US is involved of much skulduggery and may indeed be responsible for the Damage of Nordstream 2 . However , Todd does not convince that Germany has been a threat to The US . I believe that the integration of East Germany has resulted in integration of the old Stasi into German positions of influence . The evidence is in the actions of Germany. It has consistently failed to be a paid up member of Nato . It has had an Energy Policy which has played into the hands of Russia and during the Merkel years , was a dominant player in Europe but appeared a patsy of Russia .
Not sure he really needs to convince. It is clear from their policies and the disjuncture between words and actions that they have been drifting towards Russia for some years. I put it down to hedging and self interest. I’ve always found the Germans very considerate on a personal level, but when it comes to politics, Germany has always held a certain aloofness and disdain for other Nations.
The EU: ‘A German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe’ – Nicholas Ridley.
Yep.
A more ridiculous statement is hard to imagine: The origin of the EU was the EGKS (European Coal and Steel Community). On the German side, this was architected by Konrad Adenauer of the CDU who was a former Zentrum (Rome-controlled catholic party) member who already wanted the dissolution of Prussia and a Rhenish western state closely aligned with France after the first world war. The purpose of the EGKS was specifically, to intertwine the German and French coal and steel industries to a degree that would make further Franco-German border wars impossible, ie, eternally settle the Franco-German border disputes which had been going on since the late middle ages in favour of France.
As precondition for the so-called German unification, the former allied powers demanded that Germany must abolish its own currency and accept the Euro instead, which is outside of German control and subject to the exact political meddling the German currency was supposed to remain free of in order to prevent a rerun of the hyperinflation of 1923.
One of the two most important currently ruling parties in Germany is so anti-German that its members voted on a proposal to remove the word Germany from the party manifesto before the most-recent federal election (the Greens). The other sort-of accepts the existence of Germany but only as an administrative unit with a completely open borders immigration policy which will eventually be subsumed by the EU.
The Germans are the purse of the EU and – to a lesser degree – also the purse of everything else the US democrats want to support around the globe. They’re not in control of anything, they’re just paying for everyone and everything.
And that of Brits and Poles…
That’s a nice picture. But for as long as a Russian nuclear base called Kaliningrad exists in the depopulated wilderness of former East Prussia, Putin (or whoever controls the Russian state) can try his charm offensives elsewhere (at least insofar I’m concerned).
BoJo has a lot of blood on his hands.
That bankers and Oligarchs are investing.
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=29133
“…The war has revealed that Europe is a farce. It is not a collection of countries operating in concert for the common good. It is a collection of territories of the Global American Empire run by provincial clodhoppers with no real power.
Baiting the Russians into war served no European interests. It is obviously bad for the people of Europe. There is nothing to be gained for them by this war. It is wrecking the economy and reducing the standard of living. It is not good for European business, which now finds itself uncompetitive due to the costs of war….
If the European political class existed as anything more than a carnival act, they would have told Washington to pound sand and made a deal with the Russians long before this war in Ukraine could get started. …”
Konstantin Kissin’s view is that, if you listen to what he is actually saying, Putin is not really so concerned about NATO or Ukraine but is attempting to upend the world order. His translations of Putin’s speeches make for an interesting read. This article from the point of view of the West’s politics, is actually consistent with that, because it was clear that as confidence in the Western World Order has degraded, Germany has been drifting towards Russia. My own view is that the gaslighting we are increasingly experiencing from our own governments is because the “Elites” have always had a globalist outlook. The people of the West have felt their governments have their backs because we have been represented a pool of middle class wealth that needed to be cultivated. But as the economic power of our middle classes has waned we are getting to feel some of what it has always felt like for the rest of the world. The “elites” no longer feel the need to cultivate and respect the wishes and values of the people. Democracy has been paid lip service and apparently defended all the time our interests have been aligned, but they no longer are, so now the Globalists of this world are flexing their muscles and far from defending our cherished freedoms and principles, they no longer respect us and are, in many ways openly and in other ways clandestinely, actively undermining our values and the world as the electorate wants it to be. As crazy as it sounds, in some ways Putin and the Western middle classes now have a common enemy. However Putin will not seek to defend democracy. Call me old school, but I agree fully with Churchill’s dictum that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.
FYI here is a tweet by Constantin Kisen with links to his translations of Putin’s speeches and summaries of those speeches. The thread also contains quite a few good other bits he’s written on other subjects. The guy’s on fire at the moment after his Oxford Union speech went down a storm.
https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1615645935610085378?s=20&t=XVIGjuQ0w8Lg5aHNVh_u7w
IMO well worth a look.
It seems pretty obvious that the US has been and continues to be terrified of any country or countries or alliances which they consider a threat to their “world dominance”.
So, very bad news should Europe ally itself to Russia for her mineral wealth etc.
Not very Green though is it, to transport all that LNG from the USA to a grateful Europe – think of all that bunker oil – and also lose 20% in the gas/liqiud/ gas process.
So yes, it’s perfectly obvious that Putin blew up his own pipeline.
It beggars belief that society swallows it as Emmanuel Todd states.
But, err, Climate Change, Covid.
What’s next.
So i’ve reached this comment and the summary of DS comments regarding what the Ukraine conflict is really about is… no one knows, no one can agree.
What we all do seem to agree on is that the world is going nuts and our system and our democratic order is unravelling pretty quickly.
My personal experience of systems, companies, organisations that were once functional and successful and start failing is that chaos often ensues and very quickly it becomes every man for hinself.
If that is what we are observing in our society, then I wouldn’t be surprised if at the level of the plutocrats, top policy makers etc, there is also an unravelling taking place with plenty of disorder and factionalism.
I’m pretty sure we are living in a world where no one is in charge anymore and there are quite a few powerful groups of people duking it out.
I have never believed the USA (State Departrment, mainly) have appreciated how dangerous to their interests the EU and a united Germany would be. It was that foolishness that led to the USA putting pressure on the UK to get ever deeper into the EU. It led Obama to travel to the UK to tryt to blackmail the voters to refuse Brexit, but Cameron was so ham fisted he and Obama got it all wrong and we voted even more against the EU.
I clearly recall the Clinton administration openly and overtly chose Germany as they best mate this side of the Atlantic, ignoring all the security and historic links to the other 4 eyes.
“The U.S. deliberately provoked conflict between Russia and Ukraine to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.”
So presumably when President Putin wakes up and realises he was a dupe of such a cunning American plan he will immediately withdraw his invasion forces from Ukraine to show that he is no longer going to be their geo-political puppet…
It makes no sense to me that the Russians would blow up the pipeline. All they had to do was turn it off to show the power they have over energy supplies.