"I am not pro-Russian, but if Ukraine loses the war, Europe will win it"

Interview of the French anthropologist Emmanuel TODD

From https://twitter.com/Galadriell__/status/1843684848940040445

Emmanuel Todd: "If Russia is defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans will be extended by a century. If, as I believe, the United States is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will be free"

The book "The Defeat of the West" has triggered a series of criticisms against the French anthropologist, accused for a decade of having pro-Putinist positions.

Professor Todd, in France, it has been written that you want to "pass off your dreams as reality" and that what you say has no scientific basis. What is your response?

"The question is not what the French press writes about me, but to know the facts that current history reveals. The fact is that the United States has not been able to produce the military equipment that the Ukrainians need, because it is a fact that the power of their industry has been dried up by financialization. It is a fact that the Ukrainian army is in retreat and is having difficulty recruiting soldiers. It is a fact that Western economic sanctions have done more damage to the European economy than to the Russian economy, and it is also a fact that the political stability of France is today more threatened than that of Russia. The restructuring of the Russian economy has been made possible because this country produces more engineers than the United States and because countries that are not allied or subject to the United States have continued to trade with Russia. The comments of a large part of the French press on my dreams — “Le Monde,” “Libération,” “L’Express,” etc. — suggest that it is they who are living in a dream. The success of my book in France also suggests that this press is not always taken seriously by the French.”

However, the volume is based on your theories on nihilism and religious decadence in Europe. Can you tell us about their significance?

“The last traces of the social and moral edifice of religious origin have disappeared. The zero state of religion has been reached. The absence of beliefs, norms and habits of order or religious origin, however, leaves the anguish of being a man, mortal, and not knowing what he is doing on earth. The most banal reaction to this void is the divinization of the void: nihilism, which leads to the impulse to destroy things, people and reality. A central symptom of this for me is the transgender ideology that pushes our middle and upper classes to want to believe that a man can become a woman and a woman a man. This is an affirmation of the false. The biology of the genetic code tells us that this is impossible. I speak here as an anthropologist, as a student, and not as a moralist. We must protect individuals who think they belong to a gender different from their own. As for the LGB part of LGBT ideology (lesbianism, male homosexuality and bisexuality), these are sexual preferences that have my blessing. It is also surprising but significant that in accepting the inflexibility of the genetic code, science and the Church are today on the same side. Against the nihilistic affirmation of the false. »

You argue that Europe has delegated the representation of the West to the United States and is now paying the consequences. How do you think this trend can change?

“As things stand, there is nothing else we can do. A war has begun. The outcome of this war will decide the fate of Europe. If Russia were defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans would continue for a century. If, as I believe, the United States is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will be left free. More important than a Russian victory will be the stopping of the Russian army on the Dnieper and the lack of will of the Putin regime to attack Western Europe militarily. With 144 million inhabitants, a declining population and 17 million km², the Russian state is already struggling to occupy its territory. Russia will have neither the means nor the desire to expand once the borders of pre-communist Russia are restored. Western Russophobic hysteria, which fantasizes about the desire for Russian expansion in Europe, is simply ridiculous for a serious historian. The psychological shock that awaits Europeans will be to understand that NATO does not exist to protect us but to control us."

Do you think that Europe took the last step towards this subordination during the conflicts in the Balkans, and especially with the Kosovo issue?

"No, it all started in Ukraine. During the Iraq war, after Kosovo, Putin, Schröder and Chirac held joint press conferences. This terrified Washington. It seemed that America could be expelled from the European continent. The separation of Russia and Germany therefore became a priority for American strategists. Aggravating the situation in Ukraine served this purpose. Forcing the Russians to go to war to prevent Ukraine’s de facto integration into NATO was, at first, a great diplomatic success for Washington. The shock of war paralyzed Germany and allowed the Americans, in the general confusion, to blow up the Nordstream gas pipeline, a symbol of economic understanding between Germany and Russia. Obviously, in a second phase, that of the American defeat, American control over Europe will be pulverized. Germany and Russia will meet again. This conflict is, in a sense, artificial. The natural thing, in a Europe with low fertility, with its aging population, is the complementarity between German industry and Russian energy and mineral resources.”

Why do you adopt a pro-Russian position on the war in Ukraine and do you see this conflict as an example of the end of the West?

“I am an objective historian. I want to understand why we, the West, provoked this war and why we lost it, and with this defeat we also lost our grip on the world. I am not pro-Russian. But I read the texts of Putin and Lavrov and I think I understand their goals and logic. If our leaders had taken researchers like me and a few others more seriously, they would not have led us to such a disaster. An intelligent Putinophobe could use my book to fight Russia. On the other hand, when newspapers like "Le Monde" hide from their readers - the French elites - the economic and social recovery of Russia, as they did, they misinform our leaders about Russian stability and power and serve Putin." You introduce the concepts of "liberal oligarchy" for many European states and "authoritarian democracy" for Russia. In which system would you prefer to live?

“The liberal oligarchy is not a practical problem for me. Don’t forget that I was born into the French intellectual establishment. My grandfather, Paul Nizan, published with Gallimard before the war and had Raymond Aron as a witness at his wedding. His wife, my grandmother Henriette, was the cousin of Claude Lévi-Strauss. My father, Olivier Todd, was a great journalist for the “Nouvel Observateur”.

Basically, I am just a dissident member of the intellectual oligarchy. Moreover, I passionately love my country, France, and I will live there as long as the regime is not fascist or racist, and I do not have to become a political refugee. If I were to become a political refugee, I would not go to the United States as was the tradition in my family, because they are plunging into something worse than the liberal oligarchy, nihilism. I have no taste for barbarism, I am too culturally conformist, too educated, as they say in French. I think I would go to Italy, because everything is beautiful there, or to Switzerland because part of the country speaks French. What would I do in Russia?”