About 90 years ago, a German theologian by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer took a firm stand against the Nazi party and that section of Germany’s religious establishment (the so-called German Christians) who supported the ideology of National Socialism.
Boenhoffer had warned against the danger of the leader (Führer in German) gradually becoming the Verführer (which in English can translate as seducer as well as misleader.)
His firm convictions and unequivocal opposition to the Austrian-born dictator saw Boenhoffer join the ranks of a secretive cabal that ultimately plotted the assassination attempts on the Führer. Imprisoned in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, Boenhoffer was promptly found guilty by a kangaroo court and hanged on April 9, 1945. Three weeks later, the Misleader-in-Chief committed suicide in his bunker, thus ending the war in Europe.
This sinister, disastrous drift from head of state to seducer/misleader of his people has also affected Vladimir Putin, and—by consequence—Russia as a whole.
In order to justify his second invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin convinced a gullible, propaganda-addled populace that this so-called “special military operation” was aimed at the “denazification and demilitarization” of the neighboring sovereign country.
But the Russian dictator himself had been misled by his generals and surrogates, and while he was busy looking for the right suit to wear at the victory parade in Kyiv the following week, his army was bogged down and unable to seize its ultimate goal.
Fast-forward seven months or so. With the Russian military operations dragging on and the losses in blood and treasure piling up, Putin finally pulled the trigger on a nationwide “partial mobilization”. Not even a consummate deceiver as Vladimir Vladimirovich could soft-sell this to his fawning population. This was a bridge too far and the “denazification” battle cry had run out of steam.
So the regime—through its propagandists, spokespersons and the Man himself—decided to shift their nonsensical rhetoric into overdrive.
During a rambling speech in late September*, Putin told the world that the war was really a crusade against Western values and debauchery, with emphatic verbal attacks on junkies and homosexuals, Anglo-Saxon dogs of war and, unsurprisingly, satanist cults. It was a bizarre speech and, when the camera panned over the Kremlin audience, most faces were stony and unresponsive (see photo).
Later, encouraged by his boss’s recent rants, Russian ambassador to the UN Vasiliy Nebenzya denounced the West’s attempts to: (a) develop pathogens engineered to attack Slavic people, (b) infect migratory birds for spreading diseases within the Russian Federation, and (c) breed Covid-positive bats and disease-ridden mosquitoes to be secretly let loose on Russia. As for Ukraine, the ambassador accused it of working on a “dirty bomb” to be detonated as part of a false-flag operation. If all this does not earn Nebenzya the moniker “Dementia” nothing will.
Motivational speeches to Russian frontline troops have been promptly updated to contain the above verbiage. Chechen fraudster and Tik-Tok warrior Ramzan Kadyrov has already promised that his crowd will launch a jihad against all above enemies.
Russian political analyst and vlogger Maksim Katz ** was horrified at how low the official rhetoric had sunk “[This is] basically Al-Qaeda. A large, Northern Al-Qaeda spanning 11 time zones. How can they insult Russia like this?”
* The September 30, 2022 speech announced the sham annexation of Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions while the Ukrainian army was actively liberating them.
** On October 29, 2022 Maksim Katz was placed on the federal wanted list by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.