Zelensky is neither saint nor sinner. By Brendan O’Neill.
Choose your Zelensky. He can be either saint or sinner. Either valiant repairer of the liberal international order or compliant puppet of the WEF. Either a one-man defender of liberal democracy or a stooge of nefarious globalists. These are the only two Zelenskys. There’s no in-between. He’s either a Guardian editorial made dashing flesh or the willing jester of Davos Man. Take your pick. …
Irrelevant but funny: Zelensky and his body double appear together. Oops.
Both sides are projecting.
Globalist hero:
Take the pro-Zelensky set. These liberal fawners over a handsome president are not really expressing solidarity with the Ukrainian struggle for national freedom. How could they, given most of them are allergic to the ideal of national sovereignty, as evidenced by their seven-year hissy fit over Brexit? No, for them Zelensky’s fight to restore Ukraine’s national integrity takes a distant second place to what they imagine he’s doing — giving voice to their views, embodying their beliefs.
They’re so vain they think this war is about them.
Zelensky has become ‘the standard bearer for liberal democracy’, said the Financial Times. He isn’t only battling Russian aggression, but the broader ‘authoritarianism’ of the 21st century. Tell that to the brave young Ukrainians on the frontlines, I dare you — that they’re laying down their lives for the pompous ‘liberal’ pretensions of FT types as much as for their own right to self-determination. …
We’re expected to believe that the dream of being governed by Ursula von der Leyen and interminable regulations on the sale of cabbages were the inspiration for those bold 19-year-old men who have risked their lives against Russia? …
This isn’t solidarity – it’s the cynical milking of a foreign war for feels. …
WEF puppet:
And man, do they hate him. I find the virtual hostility to Zelensky incredibly disturbing. It is most pronounced among what we might refer to as the post-Covid right — that corner of the world wide web where the understandable agitation with lockdown has morphed over time into anti-vax conspiracism, an unhealthy obsession with the World Economic Forum, a distrust of everything and everyone, and a cast-iron conviction that Volodymyr Zelensky is a puppet of the globalist elites determined to drag us all into World War 3.
It’s like a mirror image of the liberal-elite fawning: where that lot dreams Zelensky will help to bring about the ‘rebirth of the liberal world order’, the Ukraine cynics think he is the liberal world order. The new world order. A mouthpiece of globalism.
Zelensky is ‘working with globalists against the interests of his own people’, says Candace Owens. He’s a ‘globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons’, said Arizona State senator Wendy Rogers. Apparently he’s aligned with those ‘global bankers’ who are ‘shoving godlessness and degeneracy in our face’. …
They believe everything, including that dastardly Zelensky, is faking atrocities in order to keep the dollars rolling in. The smartarse scepticism towards everything Ukraine-related can also be glimpsed in the use of that infernal phrase ‘The Current Thing’. Apparently supporting Ukraine is ‘The Current Thing’ now. It demeans those who genuinely want to offer solidarity to a nation fighting for its survival to suggest they’re only putting the Ukraine flag in their bios because some algorithm surreptitiously instructed them to. …
Cheap exploitation to score domestic political points:
They’re all really talking about themselves, not Ukraine.
Let’s change the record. Maybe Zelensky is neither saint nor sinner. Neither the world’s saviour nor its destroyer. Maybe he’s just a man doing what he thinks is best in the most horrifying and existential of circumstances. Call me a brainless dupe of Davos propaganda, but that’s what I’m going with.
