“Russian propaganda”, the alleged cause of the Western drift, recalls the penis envy of a few decades ago: everyone talks about it, no one saw it.

I don’t know if it’s propaganda’s fault, but many of us no longer know how to reconcile the founding myth of Western civilization (based on freedom, brotherhood and equality) with the atrocities committed, or sponsored, beyond our borders.

Cancellation culture, the unsustainably correct, positive thinking… are the effect, not the cause, of disaffection with our contradictions.

I don’t think the solution to alleged Russian propaganda is counter-propaganda. A few days ago, Federico Rampini again tried to crowd us together with piquant words: «Biden was not the hawk who incites the Ukrainians to fight a proxy war, according to the caricature in vogue among self-styled pacifists, Russophiles and Putinists».

Oh no?

His tom tom perhaps aims to take away the slices of ham from our bleary eyes, but more than a moral “beacon”, the new Federico Rampini reminds us of Caesar Flickerman, the presenter of Hunger Games (here).

Brief subjective synopsis of the film The Hunger Games. In a dystopian future, America stages a gigantic show, where dozens of pubescents are drawn by lot, and forced to fight against each other to the death. Caesar Flickerman doesn’t have red suspenders like Rampini, but he is a colorful character whose task is to make death spectacular, separating and exalting the strong emotions it arouses, and discarding everything else.