Vladimir Putin’s “Great Satan”
Those of you who were around then will recall when so-called Iranian “students” laid siege to the American embassy in November of 1979. It didn’t take long for everyone to figure out that they did so at the behest of the recently installed Ayatollah Khomeni. Khomeni in turn took every opportunity to employ the epithet “Great Satan” for the United States to justify his unlawful outrage against America’s sovereign territory on Iranian soil. According to the Imam, it seemed that Iran’s Great Satan was responsible for every imaginable Iranian ill, from the price of bread to the Ayatollah’s haemorrhoids.
It was an infuriating trick, one later perfected by American Republicans, who these days use Joe Biden as their own personal Great Satan. They would have you think that the price of gas and the “crisis” at the border are all the fault of their Republican Great Satan. They do so despite the fact that American gas is cheaper than it is elsewhere in the world, and Biden’s extensive border bill, complete with every Republican demand, was killed by the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress.
It’s a coward’s political expediency, employed with Machiavellian duplicity to deceive fools. Its most recent practitioner is Vladimir Putin. That’s right, Donald Trump’s favourite dictator is now claiming that Ukraine, not Isis, is responsible for the recent terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall in Moscow, which left at last count a staggering 137 people dead.
Putin’s claim is made despite the provable fact that Isis has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack, and four of the surviving gunmen hail from Tajikistan, not Ukraine. But facts are rare commodities inside Russia, and a heavy price is exacted from anyone who questions the word of Vlad the Impaler.
Nixon had his hippies, Hitler had his Jews, so it follows that Putin’s Great Satan is Ukraine. It’s a cheap trick to add the fuel of outrage for his destructive, unpopular and unprovoked war on Ukraine. It’s also a sign of Putin’s desperation. It’s difficult to determine what percentage of Russians are fooled by Putin’s obvious attempt to unjustly apply this blame, but I suspect the answer is not many. Whoever is buying it probably didn’t need Putin’s false flag to remain loyal to the Russian dictator in any case.
I’ve always hated Vladimir Putin, but my antipathy for the Russian dictator was made personal back in 2018 when he murdered my neighbour with novichok, the world’s deadliest binary nerve agent. He is what Donald Trump would be if Trump were a clever man, and his hideousness is underlined with this latest hypocrisy.
Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine, his murder and rape of innocent civilians, his murder of scores of Russian journalists and dissidents, and now this cowardly and unjust assignment of blame for this terrorist attack on Moscow, all serve to underscore what Putin has shown himself to be time and time again, a despicable, evil, disgusting monster. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.