FIRST: Tankies Gonna Tank:
What impels someone to sneer at Volodymyr Zelenskyy in these times? And what compels the New York Review of Books to publish it?
“Tankies gonna tank” is a truism:
Tariq Ali: The Churchill Cult: ‘The English cult of Winston Churchill… near-absurdist… backlash from anticolonial critics… received a further boost in March this year…. Russian president Vladimir Putin was assigned the role of Hitler. Zelensky took the part of Churchill. Members of Parliament from all four parties drooled with pleasure. NATO-land may have conferred a temporary sainthood on Zelensky, but we should not overlook how misplaced his analogy is. The spinal cord of the Third Reich was, after all, crushed at Stalingrad and Kursk by the determination and courage of the Red Army (in which many Ukrainians fought, in far greater numbers than those who deserted to Hitler). The strength of the US war industry did the rest…
LINK: <https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2022/04/18/the-churchill-cult-by-jingo/>
I really do wish I had more of an insight into the… peculiar psychology… that leads somebody today to sneer at Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians.
There was, after all, at least a kind of dishonorable grandeur in being a stooge for Stalin—if you sincerely thought that he was a brutal and unworthy standard-bearer for what would become a real utopia sometime in the future; or that you had to choose between totalitarianisms because liberalism’s day was over, and Stalin was a lesser evil than Hitler.
There is neither honor nor grandeur in being a useful idiot for Vladimir Putin.
All honor to the soldiers of the Red Army who won the decisive battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, and all honor to the workers of Magnitogorsk who built their tanks, and to the peasants enserfed on their collective farms who fed them. But you have to either be lying or have worked hard to keep yourself ignorant to think that “the spinal cord of the Third Reich was… crushed at Stalingrad and Kursk…. The strength of the US war industry did the rest.”
Up to the end of 1942, Nazi war industry produced 8600 medium and heavy tanks. Thereafter they produced 29,500. Yes, the Nazis lost about 1000 tanks at Stalingrad and Kursk each, but the Nazi army was still far more deadly after those battles than before.
Anyone even slightly well-informed about World War II in Europe who is not a liar says that all three of the major allies were essential. Without Russia, there was no path to victory for Britain and the U.S. (save, perhaps, for the one that turned Germany into a sea of radioactive glass). Without the U.S., it is very difficult to see any path to victory at all for Britain and Russia. And without Britain’s holding out from summer 1940 to summer 1941, Russia cannot hold when the Nazis attack, and the Americans never get into the war in Europe at all for they have no place to stage their army and air force to.
Without Churchill, Britain does not hold out.
But we did have Churchill, and we did have a British Labour Party, headed by Clement Attlee, that was strongly anti-fascist and insisted that Churchill had the government, rather than someone who had not been an out-and-out opponent of appeasement. The British Labour Party was right.
Churchill was a great asshole, but he was the asshole that the world needed in the summer of 1940.
One Video:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “We Are Still Here” <https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=wgCNKhtZYks>:
One Image:
Very Briefly Noted:
Bartosz Ciechanowski: Mechanical Watch <https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/>
Paul Campos: The 25th Amendment Road Not Taken LINK: <https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/05/the-25th-amendment-road-not-taken>
Yair Rosenberg: Russia Is Not the First to Blame Jews for Their Own Holocaust: ‘Why people try to pin the Nazi genocide on the Jews, and why it’s so dangerous… <https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/6273f904582ffb002080ccbd/russia-is-not-the-first-to-blame-jews-for-their-own-holocaust/>
Laura Blasey & Amy Hubbard: All Types of Drought, All at Once: ‘This year will probably join 2002 and 2021 as the three driest years in the last century, and most likely the driest since the 1700s… <https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/newsletter/2022-05-06/todays-headlines-2022-05-06-california-drought-todays-headlines?sfmc_id=625826>
Josh Marshall: Putting Together the Pieces on The Campaign to Stop Roberts <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/putting-together-the-pieces-on-the-campaign-to-stop-roberts>
Martin Wolf: A Call to Arms for Diverse Democracies & Their ‘Decent Middle’
<https://www.ft.com/content/83ba0474-70ea-4759-81f1-e14f6ea269fa>
Duncan Black: Off The Record <https://www.eschatonblog.com/2022/05/off-record.html>
Victoria Cavaliere: How Covid–19 Transformed the U.S. Economy <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-04-30/bloomberg-weekend-reading-musk-faces-new-challenges-as-twitter-boss>
Simon Kennedy: What’s Happening in the World Economy: How U.S. Economy Was Changed by Covid <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-05-02/what-s-happening-in-the-world-economy-how-u-s-economy-was-changed-by-covid?cmpid=BBD050222_NEF>
Twitter & ‘Stack:
Duck of Minerva: Strategies of Unusual Size
Steven Beschloss: Liars for a Lifetime: ‘The draft opinion rejecting a women’s right to choose and banning abortion lays bare the ugly truth of Supreme Court justices who pretended they would not overturn Roe v. Wade… <
Addison del Mastro: ’The Case for More Backyard Bodegas and Sidewalk Salons… “New York City is beloved for its corner stores, just as Portland is for its in-house pubs,” Beyer observes. “But most of America makes it illegal to replicate that.” People resist a lot of new things, and then get used to them… LINK:
Noah Smith: What is the Right’s Economic Plan?
James Fallows: What People Might Remember from Nerd Prom 2022
