While the West approaches war as if it’s a spreadsheet that can be adjusted to fit quarterly predictions, Russia still understands what war means – so writes German political commentator Constantine von Hoffmeister.
The conflict in Ukraine is not about Ukraine. It is the West’s last delirious attempt to exert control over a world that no longer needs it. The West, lost in the labyrinth of its own technocratic nightmare, flails like a dying beast, mechanized and blind. The German historical philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), in ‘Man and Technics’ (1931), wrote of the Faustian civilization’s ultimate downfall, where technology, once an extension of organic culture, becomes an iron cage, trapping its creators in a world they no longer understand. The Western response to Ukraine is precisely this: Drones, sanctions, media narratives manufactured in real-time, an illusion of omnipotence maintained by algorithms, and artificial intelligence. But reality is slipping through the cracks. The more the West mechanizes, the more it loses its ability to perceive the living, breathing cultures it seeks to control.
A ceasefire? A negotiation? The West proposes them like a bureaucrat offering a new tax code, as if war were a spreadsheet that could be adjusted to fit quarterly projections. US President Donald Trump’s emissaries meet with Russian officials, not because they believe in peace but because the old America – his America – has sensed the shift. A world order of raw power is replacing the West’s dream of digital hegemony, and Russia, China, and a thousand-year-old history stand against it. Spengler saw it coming: “The machines would overtake the soul, and the West would become incapable of organic thought” he wrote. This is why they cannot understand Russia – not because they lack intelligence, but because their intelligence has been reduced to an algorithmic process, stripped of cultural depth. The West is thinking in the way that a machine thinks, and Russia, still a creature of history, is thinking like an empire.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismisses the ceasefire offer because he knows it is a mirage. He speaks of root causes, of history, of a world that is not reducible to transactions and diplomatic manoeuvres. The West recoils in horror. This is the fundamental difference: Russia still understands what war means, while the West sees only an endless data stream of casualties, arms shipments, and strategic objectives. Spengler called this “the tragic turn of Faustian civilization – when man, having created his machines, no longer controls them”. The West does not wage war for power or territory but to maintain the facade that it is still in control. War as process. War as algorithm. The end goal is never victory, only perpetual management of crises.
Meanwhile, the financial technocrats of the G7 conjure $50 billion from thin air, leveraging interest from Russia’s frozen assets, a sleight of hand that Spengler would recognize as the final stage of Western decay – economic manipulation replacing genuine production, artificial wealth replacing true cultural strength. The West no longer builds. It merely extracts, redistributes, and sanctions, hoping that the machinery of global finance can replace the natural momentum of a rising civilization. Russia, in contrast, returns to the old ways: Industry, military strength, self-reliance. The difference is stark. One civilization grows more entangled in its own mechanical hat tricks, the other returns to the fundamental logic of history.
Spengler saw technology as both the great achievement and the final undoing of the West. It began as a tool, an extension of man’s will, but in the late stages, it turns against its creators, reducing them to mere components in a system that no longer serves them. The West’s obsession with sanctions, surveillance, and narrative control is not an expression of power. It is a sign of weakness. True imperial civilizations do not need to micro-manage the world; they shape it through sheer will. This is why Trump, despite his flaws, represents the only real possibility for a Western resurgence. He rejects the managerial ethos. He understands power instinctively, like the rulers of old. The new Conservative Revolution in America is not about ideology. It is about reclaiming agency from the machine.
And yet, the media apparatus, a monstrous organism birthed by technology, continues its relentless march, shaping reality through distortion. Spengler wrote that; “the press, in the late stages of Western civilization, ceases to inform and instead dictates what must be believed”. Ukraine is reduced to a symbolic battlefield in this grand narrative. Russia is the villain because the system requires a villain. The truth is irrelevant. The headlines are written before the events occur. The war exists less as a physical struggle and more as a media spectacle, a grotesque ritual in which Western leaders play-act as warriors while ensuring they remain far from the consequences of their own actions.
But while the West is trapped in its simulation, Russia operates in the real. The battlefield is not a metaphor. It is a place where men kill and die. Spengler warned that the civilizations of the late stage would become incapable of true war – they would engage in conflicts but only as technocratic exercises, devoid of the deep, existential struggle that defined the great wars of history. This is why the West cannot win in Ukraine. It fights as a bureaucratic entity, not as a people. And Russia, for all its flaws, fights as a people. The difference is everything.
So here we are, watching the end of an era. The West’s technologies cannot save it. The more it relies on technology, the weaker it becomes. The West’s technocrats believe they are guiding history, but history is slipping from their grasp. Ukraine is just a chapter in a much larger story – the story of the old world returning, of empire reclaiming its place over the managerial state. And Trump? He is not the solution, but he is a symptom. A sign that somewhere, buried beneath the layers of bureaucracy and digital wallpaper, the West still remembers what power looks like.
This war is not about Ukraine. It never was. It is about the final struggle between technology and history, between the machine and the soul. And in the end, the machine will fail. Spengler saw it. We see it now. And Russia, whatever else it may be, understands it better than the West ever will.
https://www.rt.com/news/614311-west-russia-simulation-reality/
Constantine von Hoffmeister, who studied English Literature and Political Science in New Orleans, is a political and cultural commentator from Germany, author of the new book ‘MULTIPOLARITY!’, and editor-in-chief of Arktos Publishing
https://www.rt.com/news/614311-west-russia-simulation-reality/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler
Great blog entry. Agree with the basic premise. You can kind of feel the wall of propaganda is collapsing. I personally would not even have used Russia/Ukraine as the the poster-child, since it really began just before that: I think it all began with Covid-19. The full scale MSM/political/science propaganda that was foisted upon the world cemented it’s demise. Misinformation/disinformation? It all sowed the current distrust in the system. No one trusts politicians. No one trusts scientists. No one trusts the MSM. It’s over, and while we are witnessing a great reset, it’s not the one the globalists (i.e. the WEF, UN, etc) has planned.
Re: “Russia is the villain because the system requires a villain. The truth is irrelevant”. Isn’t Russia a villain for invading Ukraine? Isn’t that the truth?
Historically the villain is the enemy and/or the loser in a conflict. Russia is the enemy, so has the villain for the west. If Russia win, or become a friend to the west – watch the narrative change.
Your talk about history without His story shows that you are only guessing the future also. While I respect people’s right to choose what they believe if your basic assumptions are wrong it’s incredibly difficult to arrive at the correct answer.
This Earth has a finite life and while I do not know the time of the end the same world events that you see tell me that we are rapidly running out of time.
Here is a question for you Malcolm;
Could you possibly contemplate that the Russian Federation might be an imperialist country?
I mean to say that they seem to tick all the boxes.
In 2018, it was reported that Russia operates at least 21 significant military facilities overseas….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_military_bases_abroad
Foreign military bases. Tick
In 2023, Russia illegally exported at least 4 million tons of grain from the occupied Ukrainian territories. The stolen grain allows the Kremlin to set world records for wheat sales in global markets, acknowledged Russian President Putin……
…..Russia has colluded with Sudan’s beleaguered military leadership, enabling billions of dollars in gold to bypass the Sudanese state and to deprive the poverty-stricken country of hundreds of millions in state revenue…..
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/29/africa/sudan-russia-gold-investigation-cmd-intl/index.html
Neocolonial resource theft. Tick
The head of Mali’s junta, Colonel Assimi Goïta, and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed security and economic relations between the two countries, their services reported on Wednesday….
https://www.africanews.com/2023/06/14/malis-goita-discusses-security-and-economic-relations-with-putin/
Supporting military dictators Tick
….On the third anniversary of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, an independent monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Russian air strikes and artillery shells have killed 18,000 people, including nearly 8,000 civilians, .
But the Kremlin says it killed significantly more in its quest to bolster the rule of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The head of its parliamentary defence committee announced on Sunday that it had killed 85,000 people, calling them all “terrorists”. Russia also claims it has not killed a single civilian in Syria over the last three years…..
Bombing Middle East countries Tick
Slainte Pat, I don’t claim to “know” much about anything but instead rely on the expertise and reasoning of others more qualified, such as the author of this post and others, like Professors Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, to inform my understanding. And to date they persuade me that, following its repudiation of Stalinism, Russia was well on its way to becoming an important member of the European community of nations – till the US decided that that particular trend didn’t fit with its “imperial” agenda and so engineered the situation we see before us.
Hi Malcolm you say, [you] “…..rely on the expertise and reasoning of others more qualified, such as the author of this post and others, like Professors Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer,”
OMG this post a cut and paste? I hadn’t realised.
My sincere apologies Malcolm I was under the misapprehension that you were the author of this post.
But still, I asked you the question, not the author of this post
“Could you possibly contemplate that the Russian Federation might be an imperialist country?”
You dodged the question
You didn’t answer the question.
You didn’t challenge any of the facts,
You didn’t deny any of the facts,
You side stepped the question entirely by claiming ignorance. I think admitting your ignorance is a good thing.
I think I can help you out there, by suggesting that you broaden your reading list.
To Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, I would add, Owen Jones, George Monbiot, and Mehdi Hasan
We must confront Russian propaganda – even when it comes from those we respect George Monbiot
….Obviously, real people have a right to express their opinions, however mistaken. But, given their utility to the Russian disinformation machine, I believe we have a duty to debunk and contest misleading justifications. In doing so we could, in our very small way, help the resistance in Ukraine.
This puts me in a difficult place. Among the worst disseminators of Kremlin propaganda in the UK are people with whom I have, in the past, shared platforms and made alliances. The grim truth is that, for years, a segment of the “anti-imperialist” left has been recycling and amplifying Putin’s falsehoods. This segment is by no means representative: many other leftists have staunchly and consistently denounced Russian imperialism, just as they rightly denounce the imperialism of the US and UK…..
Owen Jones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqrHVoJXH6c
Mehdi Hasan:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VaushV/comments/1f578e3/have_to_say_mehdi_hasan_has_become_one_of_my/
My submission to TDB carried the line: “Posted by Malcolm Evans” so to make it as clear as I possibly could that the author of the piece was German political commentator Constantine von Hoffmeister, but TDB omitted it.
I make no apologies for re-posting, properly attributed, material that displays far greater expertise than I have – to do otherwise is egoistic and leads to the silly tit-for-tat nonsense that replies to TDB posts so often collapses into. If some are more persuaded by the expertise of others then the question is – “who is the more qualified?” – you show me yours, I’ll show you mine. I back the sources I quote.
Before Gaza there was Homs
Drone footage of Homs in Syria shows utter devastation – video
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/feb/04/drone-footage-homs-syria-utter-devastation-video
….The footage taken by Russia Works shows nearly every building has been destroyed. Homs, the third largest city in Syria, was dubbed the “capital of the revolution”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9cDP-UdP3E
the question is – “who is the more qualified?” M.E.
Really?
Good Grief. That is not the question at all.
I asked you answer to the facts. I listed a few of the defining acts of imperialism as practiced by the Russian Federation.
You never denied any of it.
As simply as possible, I will ask you again.
Do you think that the Russian Federation is an imperialist state?
Yes? or No?
Argue the facts, or answer the question.
Or stick to your self admitted ignorance and reliance on others more qualified than you, to do your critical thinking for you. Your choice.
“I back the sources I quote.” M.E.
The problem I have with your sources Malcolm is that they are not reliable, where as my sources have always been on the side of the oppressed, (I defy you to claim otherwise), whereas, every one of your sources was a supporter of the Assad regime.
Unlike your sources, I have visited Syria and spoken with the people and witnessed the Assad regime with my own eyes close up. The genocide committed by that regime against the Syrian people, was aided and abetted by Iran and its proxies and by the Russian Federation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQni3qn6GIU&t=2s
Please don’t waste time saying cutting things to people who are making definite efforts to think their way over the mountain of propaganda and culture fables facing us. Of course we read what others say, everything isn’t original, likely to have come off facebook or one of the others. People who actually don’t have thoughts, just absorbed opinions from the bewildered, angry and cocksure.
“Please don’t waste time saying cutting things to people who are making definite efforts to think their way over the mountain of propagandal…..” Greywarbler
Hi Grey, cuttina and pasting a whole mountain of propaganda and dumping it here, is not making an effort. I invited Malcolm to think his way through it I hardly think that is cutting
So romantic!
Meanwhile in the real world, Russia is utterly fucked in several respects.
It faces demographic collapse due to low fertility, the youth escaping to the West and the best part of a million dead on the battlefields of Ukraine.
> It has the GDP of Spain and what little wealth it had has been stolen by oligarchs
> It cannot sustain its own exports of oil without foreign expertise and its cost of production will be above the world price of oil once Trump get drilling.
> Putin preferentially conscripted men from Siberia as an act of ethnic cleansing so that now Russia faces an incremental takeover of its far east by the Chinese.
“Posted by Malcolm Evans” so to make it as clear as I possibly could that the author of the piece was German political commentator Constantine von Hoffmeister, but TDB omitted it. Malcolm Evans
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2025/03/18/algorithms-and-ai-versus-a-thousand-years-of-history/
Q. Who is Constantine von Hoffmeister? Google search
A. Born 1976. A right-wing German nationalist, promoter of the pan-European nationalism, National Futurism idea of White Eurasia
https://otto-rahn.com/tags/constantin-von-hoffmeister
https://x.com/constantinvonh/status/1820130827084128409
“Constantine von Hoffmeister, who studied English Literature and Political Science in New Orleans, is a political and cultural commentator from Germany, author of the new book ‘MULTIPOLARITY!’, and editor-in-chief of Arktos Publishing” Malcolm Evans
Q, What is Arktos Publishing? Google search
A. Arktos Media is a publishing company known for publishing authors of the European New Right, as well as translating European far-right literature into English.[2] It has been described by historian Mark Sedgwick as a “radical-right publisher”.[3]
History
Arktos was founded in India in 2009 by Swedish businessman and former active neo-nazi Daniel Friberg and John B. Morgan, an American editor….
….The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified Arktos as being a bedfellow of Identity Evropa.[11]….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arktos_Media
Q. What is Identity Evropa? Google search
A. Identity Evropa (/juːˈroʊpə/) was an American far-right, neo-Nazi, neo-fascist,[8][9][10] and white supremacist[10][11][12] organization established in March 2016. It was rebranded[16] as the American Identity Movement in March 2019.[2][17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Evropa
Q. What is the Identity movement? Google Search
A. The Identitarian movement or Identitarianism is a pan-European nationalist, ethno-nationalist,[2][3][4] far-right[5][6][4] ideological movement centred on the preservation of white European identity, which it claims is under existential threat from multiculturalism, immigration, and globalisation.[4]….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identitarian_movement
(Constantin[e] von Hoffmeister, is a big fanboy of Oswald Spengler, who is quoted thoughout Malcolm’s post.
Q. Who is Oswald Spengler? Google search
A. Spengler was an important influence on Nazi ideology. He “provided skeletal Nazi ideas” to the early Nazi movement “and gave them a respectable pedigree”. Key parts of his writings were incorporated into Nazi Party ideology….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler
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