“The myth of ‘Western values’ died in Gaza.
Myths do not die. They are debunked or refuted. They often persist for a long time and are adaped to new contexts; they are part of a belief system.
I remember well after Iraq and Afghanistan how people invoked ‘democracy’ and ‘Western values’ in a way not dissimilar from what the Bushes and Blairs and later the Obamas and Bidens articulated them.
Recently, a student at the ‘best’ European university in social sciences told me that the myth of sectarianism in the Middle Ast is still being repeated.
A white liberal, ‘MeeToo’ English woman what Russia was doing in Ukraine was ‘a Russian thing. It's in their history’.
Zelenskyy's recent rise in ‘popularity’ among many is built upon ‘the myth of Western values’ defending Ukraine against an authoritarian Russian regime.
Myths are strentghned through amnesia. History is brushed aside and Pavlovian conditioning is enforced.
We should remember how the emergence of ISIS was analysed. How 'Islam' vs the ‘Western values' has been sold to the Western public. All in order to foster myths.
A couple days ago a black British man of 60 years old thought that once the war in Ukraine ends we will have peace. I had to take him back to the early 1990s and remind him of the 'peace divident’ promised by the Western regimes’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Was not 'trickle-down' economy policy a myth?
Isn't that Germany has reckoned with its Nazi history another myth?
We should remember the avalanche of corporate media and even leftist positive obituaries for Jimmy Carter.
Russians too have their own myths as well as Ukrainians. Each national construction was forged into a furnace of myths.
Related
- Myths that underpin European identity
- The myth of the Muslim woman
- The End of an Illusion
- Hypocrisy and savagery
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