No sooner had I put out the Friday update and all news channels were awash in reports of an attack on a music venue in Krasnogorsk, a Moscow suburb in Russia. As the event has now sunk in we are tallying 137 dead people and 182 injured after targeted shootings and explosions. The rush of course was to determine who was behind this and a few scenarios are getting attention, let’s look at each of them:
(1) Putin did it - the easy go-to explanation of course as there have been longstanding theories that the current ruler in the Kremlin was behind similar attacks on some Moscow apartment blocks in 1999 and the attack on a Moscow theatre in 2002. The 1999 attack served to help Putin in power, the 2002 one helped him solidify his freshly won power. Yes he’s been around for that long. Although the theatre massacre was carried out by Chechen rebels, rumours about Russian security forces involvement have always swirled around this attack.
Is this scenario plausible? Maybe, but note that the dynamics of domestic Russian politics has changed so much with Putin now solidly in power and recently securing another presidential term that we could argue that Putin did not really need a staged terror event to strengthen his role as a war leader.
(2) Ukraine did it, the Mossad did it - diametrically opposed to ‘Putin did it’ are these two pretty wild explanations which in particular in the Ukraine case could actually serve Putin extremely well. But it is so far-fetched and would not serve any of Ukraine’s military goals and given the civilian carnage would totally work against Zelensky. As for the Mossad: any terror attack anywhere has an Israeli angle according to conspiracy theorists, of course, but it is so batshit crazy that we don’t need to seriously look at this one.
(3) Islamic State did it - this is the explanation that is gaining the most traction, apparently many international intelligence agencies had warned about this a number of weeks ahead of last Friday’s carnage. There were reactions of disbelief about this analysis because we all thought that IS had long been defeated. The responsibility however was claimed by a regional IS offshoot, Islamic State – Khorasan Province. This is a credible explanation, Polish journalist Paweł Wójcik has been tracking these different IS outfits and how they have run afoul of Russia in various instances in Central Asia, Syria, and interestingly, Africa. Yes, Russia is close to many terror groups (Hamas has sent its condolences of course) but still is in conflict with many other, notably Sunni oriented, outfits.
Four suspects have been rounded up, detained and questioned, including one whose ear was cut off and he was forced to eat it. I will spare you the video of this (it was doing the social media rounds over the weekend), but my point here is that Russia will do literally anything to frame the narrative that best suits itself and it has the tools at its disposal to do so. Although the IS narrative is the most likely one, Putin will use it to play it up and somehow connect it to Ukraine to justify his acceleration of the war there which has already started with intensified nightly attacks on urban centres.
Israel and the Press
To be honest, I can run this newsletter exclusively on Israel and fill it every day, but there needs to be time for other areas like Russia, Ukraine and China (see below). Still, there are so many unique nuggets and Douglas Murray’s interview with South African journalist Jane Dutton is one for the books. It illustrates so very clearly how many in the international media have framed the story of the Israel-Gaza War by contorting or completely omitting facts, a point I have often made here on these pages. Many journalists get away with it, until you run into the eloquent and Oxford educated Murray. Enjoy:
Netflix Sparks Debate
It is not a stretch to say that after the Holocaust, China’s Cultural Revolution is one of the 20th century’s seminal events, at least to me. Yet it is still relatively unknown and undiscovered territory for most. I have written about it when I re-read and discussed Jung Chang’s Wild Swans and it is a topic that is sometimes really hard to let go, it can truly haunt you. In particular because there is limited historical evidence around and Hollywood never touched the subject in a lot of detail. And it certainly has not made it into school curricula.
Last week Netflix released ‘3 Body Problem’ based on a novel from the Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin. The series starts out with a struggle session during the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and the video of that went viral on social media last week:
This scene played itself out across the China of Chairman Mao for many years. This is where thought control, denial of science and the resulting mass hysteria takes us. It is not hard to see how certain political dogmas which often attack science and objective facts have recently gained similar momentum in western democracies. And like in the China of the 1960s they are often spawned at universities. Think about that when you watch this horrendous scene. Humanity falls prey to these obscene ideologies time and again, in particular in times of deep uncertainty and political upheaval. Like now. Keep your eyes open and stay truthful. It is not easy, but it is the right and best thing to do.
Welcome to all the new subscribers, in particularly the paid ones joining last week, much appreciated. Feel free to look around the archives and comment.
Xi Jinping with his 'Xi Jinping thought' threatens to drag China back into its late Mao morass. It is worth remembering the pain and confusion of the Gang of Four period. What happens in places like Russia or China when the autocrat dies?