The Internet and the European Union: Enemies of Putin Due to Existing?

[dewline]

You might remember my comments the other day about Mr. Putin claiming the Internet to be a CIA plot.

Something came up towards the end of this particular set of interviews conducted by Anna Maria Tremonti for The Current on CBC Radio One that got me wondering: could the European Union - like the Internet - simply by existing, be deemed by Mr. Putin as a threat to his ambitions for what he believes should be Russia's future?

(Fair warning: as the bulk of that audio is devoted to exploring anti-Semitism's usage as a political weapon in the currently-disputed regions of Ukraine, it seemed proper to the production team of The Current to open that particular segment with an excerpt from one of Adolf Hitler's recorded speeches.)

Comments

[blog-matveev.livejournal.com]

Why Russia always gets its land back? Письмо американским депутатам и президенту Обаме (http://blog-matveev.livejournal.com/797449.html)

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I'd say there's a lot of people in Ukraine, the Baltics, and elsewhere who will continue to contest this perception of their own histories. Because they've never believed it to be true.

Also: were I to believe this argument's logic, I should be an American citizen by now in spite of my own continuing desires to the contrary. Because by such logic, Canada should not exist. But we still dare to remain on the map of the world in spite of that argument. It's a Russo-supremacist variant on the concept of "Manifest Destiny", if I understand it correctly, and it works no better with me than what's been uttered over the centuries by various Americans, despite the fact that it's been around longer than either the USA or Canada.

(Yes, I'm aware of the irony of saying that, given Canada's own history with her own pre-contact First Nations. Well aware.)

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

Certainly. The prevailing Russian opinion seems to be that the EU--and by extension, the postnational order it promotes--is illegitimate and fortunately vulnerable to fragmentation.