The Rage of the Cultural Elites

Yoshitoshi Kanemaki

CLUBORLOV
Reported by ClubOrlov's special Kiev correspondent, Yu Shan-TUESDAY, MARCH 17,
2015
A certain unhappy incident happened to my aunt in the summer of 1966. The Cultural
Revolutiona political movement initiated by Mao Zedongwas beginning to engulf the
country. That same year many American college students were protesting against the Vietnam
War and Leonid Brezhnev was keeping his seat warm as the General Secretary of CPSU,
having replaced the somewhat volatile Nikita Khrushchev two years earlier. My aunt was then
a freshman studying literature at Fudan University in Shanghai.
It so happened that my aunt, then a sensitive and somewhat dreamy young woman, had
stubbornly and haplessly clung to certain musical tastes which at that time in China came to be
regarded as politically incorrect, being said, in the trendy ideological jargon of that time, to
reflect decadent bourgeois revisionist aesthetics. To wit, my aunt had kept in her record
collection a rendition of The Urals Mountain-Ash ( ), a Russian folk
song in which a young girl meets two nice boys under a mountain-ash tree and must choose
between them, performed by the National Choir of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It
was an old-style LP spinning at 78 RPM. It had a red emblem in the middle emblazoned with
CCCP.
One of my aunt's roommates, who probably had always resented her for one reason or another,
found out about it and reported her to the authorities. For this rather serious infraction, student
members of the Red Guard made my aunt publicly smash her beloved record, then kneel upon
the fragments and recite an apology to Chairman Mao while fellow-students threw trash at her
face shouting Down with Soviet revisionists! This generation of Chinese young people, who
once donned Red Guard uniforms, beat people up around the country and smashed various
cultural artifacts, is now mostly living on government pensions or earning meagre profits from

home businesses, but some have prospered and can be found among the upper crust of
contemporary Chinas business, cultural, and political elites.
This episode came to my mind when in the summer of 2014 I came upon video clips of
Ukrainian student activists storming university classrooms in mid-lecture and ordering
everyone to stand up and sing the Ukrainian national anthem, then forcing the professor to
apologize for the lecture not being adequately patriotic. There were also ghastly spectacles of
Enemies of the People (guilty only of having served under the overthrown president
Yanukovich) being paraded around in trash bins. In Ukrainian schools, children were made to
jump up and down, and told that Whoever doesn't jump is a Moscal (a derogatory term for
Russian).
Add to this the destruction of public monuments to World War II and the ridiculous rewriting of
history (turns out that, during World War II, Germany liberated Ukraine, but then Russia
invaded and occupied Germany!) and a complete picture emerges: the Ukrainian Maidan
movement is one of a species of cultural revolution. The new, fashionable term being thrown
around is civilizational pivot, but it and the old cultural revolution can be understood as
approximate synonyms, sharing the need for frenzied spectacles of mass humiliation and
destruction.
In 1971 the Vietnam War began to draw toward an agonizing and, from the American
governments point of view, highly unfulfilling conclusion. That same year Dr. Henry Kissinger
made a secret trip to Beijing, flying in from a military airport in Pakistan. This was followed by
the joint Nixon-Kissinger summit in 1972, which culminated in Nixon's historic handshake
with Mao Zedong, completing China's civilizational pivot away from the USSR and toward the
west. In hindsight, this dramatic opening could only be properly characterized as a swift
dagger-in-the-back against the USSR, in both geopolitical and ideological senses. The
decrepitating, inflexible body of the USSR never recovered from this stab wound, leading to its
final collapse, from a multitude of internal and external causes, two decades later.
In late February, 2014, just as Ukraine was attempting its civilizational pivot away from Russia
and toward the west, I interviewed a senior captain of the Right Sector, a radical Ukrainian
nationalist group with neo-Nazi stylings. The burly man looked aggressive in his paramilitary
garb, and arrived with bodyguards, but turned out to be rather amiable. He was particularly
glad to see me because I look Chinese. He spoke Russian, reluctantly, after announcing that he
was ashamed of it. (This is typical; Ukrainians use Ukrainian to spout nationalist nonsense, but
when they need to make sense they lapse into Russian.) He said that he had served in the Red
Army and had been stationed in the Far East, on the Chinese border. He expressed hope that
China would soon do something big in Siberia.
That was my only meeting with the man from the Right Sector. It's safe to guess that the recent
Russian-Chinese embrace has dashed his hopes concerning Siberia. The Chinese governments
unambiguous expressions of solidarity with Russia starting in March of 2014 have been noted
by all. But he would have been far less disconcerted, and the many international supporters of
Russia far more discouraged, had they been able to read the comments on various popular

Chinese social sites, which abounded with slogans such as Crimea to Putin, Siberia to China!
or Putler will hang on lamppost! or Glory to Ukraine! China sides with the Civilized
World!
To explain what is behind this phenomenon, which affects certain Chinese internet users, young
and old, we need to introduce a Chinese neologism: Gong Zhi (). The literal meaning of
the term is public intellectual, but it is used sarcastically and sometimes even derogatorily. It
denotes a cute, successful, popular, trendy individual, who is often involved in the mass media,
and who, for various reasons, has millions of virtual followers via Tweeter and various social
networking sites. Such individuals make daily, sometimes hourly, witty and biting public
remarks on a vast range of social and political subjects, and, to add human interest, on their
own kaleidoscopic emotional states.
In a Russian/Ukrainian setting, more or less analogous figures are to be found in the public
personae of Ksenya Sobchak, Irina Khakamada, Masha Gessen, Lesha Navalny, and the late
Boris Nemtsov. The base audience for such people consists of what in Russia and the Ukraine
came to be known as the creative class, or creacl () for short. In China such a term
does not yet exist, but the reality of a very similar social group definitely does and, by an
overwhelming margin, they are inclined to follow and worship the Gong Zhi. Many of these,
in spite of carefully maintained youthful appearances, are in their late 50s or early 60sin
other words, they are former Red Guards who did well financially by becoming informal
spokespersons for what they regard as a hip and new ideology and attempting a new,
technologically enhanced civilizational pivot.
The trendiness of said ideology comes from the use of a kit of parts that includes canonical
words and phrases from which clichd narratives can be generated effortlessly. It includes:
institutional building, civil society, rule of law, enhance democracy, raise transparency,
economic growth, entrepreneurship, innovation, privatization, good guidance, western
expertise, human values, human rights, womens rights, minority rights. There is also a mantra;
instead of OMing, they west: the west, the west, the west, western values, western
civilization, west west west west. Never mind that this kit of parts fails in application; these are
articles of faith, not reason.
And the opposite of all this western goodness is the horrible, unspeakable easternness of
Russia. Here we have another kit of parts, from which one can fashion any number of
Russophobic rants: Putin/Stalin, tyranny, gulag, low birth rate, alcoholism, mafia, corruption,
stagnation, aggression, invasion, nuclear threat, political repression, the dying nation. Never
mind that this kit of parts does not reflect reality; again, these are articles of faith, not reason.
And the reason Russia is so horrible is, of course, the Russian people. When will the Russian
people wake up? Will they ever rise up and overthrow their dictator, their tyrant? Will they ever
become civilized, cool, happy, normal, WESTERN people... like we already are, or at least, like
we will be... someday... if western people pick us up, take us home and make love to us...
The overall goal of this civilizational cross-dressing is one of personal transformation, personal
rebranding: If we look western and we quack western, then we will BECOME western, we

will become cool, accepted, rich and prosperous and civilized. And what's holding us back is
this country, and these people, who are so uncool, so un-trendy, so un-western. Ugh! There
is nothing to be done about them, so let's just accept funds from western donors who want to
destabilize Russia, and spend this money organizing virtual opposition parties like little girls
organizing tea parties for their dolls. But we are getting lots of sympathetic western press
coverage, so whatever we are doing must be working!
The above-mentioned events, trends and movements arose in very different historical periods
and in distant, non-contiguous parts of the world, but they share a singular emotional overtone
and an orientation towards a singular goal: to cut Russia down, in word, if not in deed.
And then there is what is real.

It is really hard tell Ukrainians apart from Russians. About 90% of the conversation one
overhears in the Kiev metro is and probably will remain in Russian, some speaking it with an
accent, some with hardly any accent at all. A man or a woman from Yaroslavl (where the late
Boris Nemtsov held on to a seat in the regional legislature) could without the slightest effort
blend into the crowd surging through the Kiev metro. But should a Russian or a Ukrainian be
traveling through the Beijing metro, it will be rather simple to tell them apart from everyone
else.
It would also be quite easy to tell an American tourist, reporter, NGO-representative, or
Ukrainian wife-hunter apart from the rest of the people in the Kiev metro. The signals would be
unmistakable: the demeanor, the style of speech and the facial expression, regardless of ethnic
or racial traits. But most of the young Ukrainian students who were shouting and jumping up
and down on the Maidan would also take great pride in showing off their English language
skills, good or not, and in being seen hanging out with Americans. Why would Ukrainians want
to jump out of their Russian skins and try to impersonate Americans?
And are Americans, by some quirk of mystical collective nature, spontaneously anti-Russian?
Are wethe Americans I have lived and studied and worked with for yearsanti-Russian?
Now, come on, of course not! But we certainly are anti-something else! Take a couple of
minutes to gaze at the face of Victoria Nuland, or Jan Psaki, or Samantha Power, or Hillary
Clinton. Don't they all remind everyonethat is, us regular American guys of whatever ethnic

originof that quintessential cool crowd we had to contend with during our student days?
Aren't they all a bunch of uppity up-tight feminist radical liberal bitches who once made a
living hell out of our fresh, green and nave college days? Well, now that we are not so horny
and stupid any more, and they are all wrinkly and saggy (or worked on and Botoxed to hell)
dont we all want to metaphorically get down on our knees and thank Jesus or Yahweh or Allah
or whoever that we didn't end up marrying one of these specimens?
But our country, the former land of the free and home of the braveit has sunk. We all know
this, deep in our hearts, dont we? The Victoria Nuland clone army, like a cruel, evil, insidious
high school rumor, like the reflection of a witchs face in a polluted river, spread and flew into
every crevice and corner of this land, high and low, far and wide. We encounter her avatars and
lookalikes everywherein Hollywood, in the publishing houses, universities, school boards,
kindergartens, in elevators on the way to our offices, and of course, on the pages of the
Washington Post and the New York Times.
The questioning, seeking, original, fearless, rebellious, fractious and individualist American
soul is expiring on its air-conditioned deathbed. America is not an interesting place any more.
When was the last time we heard a new singer who could be compared to Tom Waits, or
Suzanne Vega? Which one of you loose-pants hip-hoppers ever heard of Robert Altman, Wim
Wenders, Gore Vidal, John Cassavetes? All of them are fading away, dying away, withering
away, and this started to occur during roughly the same time period when the lookalikes and
talkalikes of Victoria Nuland started to make their appearances around American universities,
en masse.
Thirty years was the portion of my lifetime which fate had allocated to America. As a nonphilosopher, non-psychologist, non-cultural historian, I attest with my own irretrievably lost
youth that Americas unprecedented and unexplained spiritual, intellectual, cultural, romantic,
literary, linguistic and political decline did mysteriously and biblically occur during this same
period.
Within these same 30 years the world also witnessed the miraculous rise of Chinas economy,
whose windfalls and overnight profits I had largely missed out on. But observing Americas
bitter and terminal illness had taught me something. For example, when people talk about
China being the next America, one thing I've got to ask myself is: will the 1.4 billion Chinese
people make good neighbors and interesting company? Will they be liked and likable, or will
many of them likewise come to be regarded as impudent louts and aggressive, greedy, egotistic,
crafty pricks and bitches?
Regarding my own original motherland and my own people I have mixed feelings. The initial
signals arent promising. The drastic and depressing contrasts in personal manners between
your typical Chinese tourist and the meek and quiet locals of Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taiwan,
Singapore, indeed all of East Asia, is a dreadful omen. In 2014, the outbursts of hysterical and
ludicrous hostility towards Russia from the clueless Chinese Creative Class and the internet
mobs who follow them has to be another big sign. Those who have bright hopes for RussiaChina geopolitical alliance would be well-advised to keep them in mind.

Keep what in mind, exactly? What we need to keep in mind is the normally hidden collective
psycho-mental pathology of populations, which is often embodied in erratic and destructive
intellectual trends, and is upheld by their self-doubting and neurotic cultural elites. This
pathology has everything to do with self-identity.
For the Chinese and the Russian/Ukrainian creative classes, America represents the Ultimate
Cool Place, the Olympus of Coolness, to be strived towards intellectually, culturally and
emotionally, if not always physically. Because America represents to them not only a theory or
a line of argument, but a profound source of emotional self-identification, there arise within
them ferocious flames of fury and rage whenever someone is perceived as preventing them
from basking within the aura of this self-identification. They become like adolescents who put
on the cool clothes and want to go and dance to the cool music, but are told that they can't wear
these clothes and can't dance to this music. Why? Because they are not as cool as they think,
and because those cool kids dont care about you, and dont really want you as their friends.
Actual political, economic and social problems are of secondary importance. What is of upmost
importance is that theythe cultural elite, the creative class, the cool kids who consider
themselves so much cooler than the restfeel insulted and denied their self-respect. They are
angry that real life in Russia/Ukraine or China does not back up a certain concept of their own
aspired coolness. Russia gets a special designation in such a line of discourse, or cultural
narrative: it gets to be the ultimate spoiler of coolness. Even before the February 2014 putsch,
Eastern Ukraine was always referred to as ground zero of Sovok, the land of Soviet-era
retrogradesbackward, dim-witted slaves who held cool, cute Ukraine back from its welldeserved western coolness.
I will never forget the sight of the torn limbs of a five-year-old Donbass girl, or the bits of
blood-soaked shawl and the mangled grandmother's aged body scattered about on the ground.
What have they doneand tens of thousands like themto deserve this end? On the Kiev
metro, most people appear modest, polite, humble, gentle, and, occasionally, very kind. Over
the last year many of them have also looked weary, worried, numb and exhausted. But I could
not detect one iota of disparity in features, skin tone, bone structure, and the modest yet lively
style of clothing between these riders on the metro in Kiev and the dead girl or the dead
grandmother in the Donbass. Is it all because of someone wanting to be cool, and throwing a
tantrum, because they didn't get to feel cool like they wanted?
Returning to America, the supposed Olympus of Cool, trudging through trash-strewn sidewalks
of Queens, tramping along the endless alleys of Brooklyn, stepping into a dimly lit Manhattan
office elevator and there encountering yet another Victoria Nuland lookalike, I began to
understand. The year 2014 was the fatal year when it was suddenly revealed who is who and
what is what, like a sharp knife slashing through an old, moldy, dusty curtain. Think not of
conspiracies and dark, complex, sinister geopolitical plots. These went with a different
generation, when people might have been greedy and cruel, but they also had the ability to
distinguish reality from fiction. That was the era of western imperialism, which is long dead.
Churchill and Roosevelt and Nixon are all dead; Kissinger is a nonagenarian. Their

replacements do not think in terms of Realpolitik; they think in terms of optics, and dwell in a
mirrored hall devised to generate an optical illusion of their hallucinated greatness.

Don't think of reality; instead, think of neurosis, obsession, delusion, perpetual psychic
adolescence (real adolescence long gone and even menopause unacknowledged). From the
midst of these there arises a white-hot fire of rage so fierce and so random that Nietzsche or
Sartre, in their most diabolical existential revelations, could never have foreseen them. Thus is
the new Zeitgeist, in this advanced stage of decay of the collective consciousness of America's
cultural/political elite and their overseas groupies. It explains their reckless and maniacal love
affair with the Ukrainian Maidan, their rekindled but now impotent rage against Russia, and
their despicable, narcissistic indifference to the tragedy suffered by the population of the
Ukraine.
[Reported by ClubOrlov's special Kiev correspondent, Yu Shan.]