As the political developments of recent days show, the deep and subtle philosophical questions of good and evil have much simpler solutions than Thomas Aquinas, Jacob Böhme or Georg W. F. Hegel naively believed. There is a clear dividing line between evil and good, and good and evil can be distinguished at a glance. We are good and everyone else is evil!
We are good and everyone else is evil!
Thus, people and their states can be divided into good and evil, just as the world is divided into the realm of good and the realm of evil. Of course, we Czechs have always been the good and the good because we already are. We have always endured the vagaries of the various evil empires, despite the fact that the various evil empires, most recently the Russian Federation, have never had any objective reasons for their evil deeds. For the Russians are evil in a sort of substantive way, because evil simply amuses them, like the orcs of the realm of Mordor or the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, not to go too far. The wolf got hungry, poof, chlamst and that was it.
Of course, they could also be as good and noble as we are, they could hop on our high-speed train of endless consumerism, party at multicultural festivals and hold conferences on electromobility, social ecology and gender. They could have worked with us in a German assembly plant, restocked Tesco, bombed Serbia or sent weapons to Saudi Arabia. But instead, they are deliberately harming the whole world.
The Russians are evil on purpose.
If we have been able to arm the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks and the Azov Battalion militants with ballistic missiles and tomahawks, there is no reason not to do the same with the mountain Tajiks, the Dayaks and Papuans…
The basic way to understand Russia and its role in history and international relations is not to negotiate with the Russians, not to invite them to international negotiations, and to ignore all requests for compromise in Eastern Europe. As we know, you do not negotiate with terrorists. Terrorists must first be beaten over the head with a stick. Then we can brag and hand out medals for a while and, finally, be shocked by their reaction and be righteously indignant about it. This approach, by the way, has already worked very well for us years ago in Syria and, more recently, in Afghanistan.
In the spirit of the same strategy, I would personally suggest extending the EU and NATO at least as far as Kalimantan and Patagonia. If we have been able to arm the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks and the Azov Battalion militants with ballistic missiles and tomahawks, there is no reason not to do the same with the mountain Tajiks, the Dayaks and Papuans, or perhaps the Yanomami on the upper Orinoco. And the world will be a little freer again.
Apart from Ukraine, we should include Taiwan, Turkestan and Tibet in NATO. What Xi Tin Ping thinks about this is basically irrelevant, because you don’t negotiate with terrorists. If China doesn’t agree with us, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania will impose sanctions on them.
We will start by arresting Czech Orthodox priests, intimidating the population with 20 years in prison for “terrorism”, and then massively censoring the internet in the Empire of Good
Evil empires do not need any security guarantees, nor – apart from the perpetration of evil – do they have and have never had any state or national interests. Indeed, Russia has no strategic interests in Ukraine either, only we do. Only we are allowed to occupy Ukraine.
Moreover, Putin has anyway unleashed the conflict mainly to divert attention from the climate crisis and other pressing issues such as the fight against toxic masculinity or quotas for transgender people in the civil service.
But we will defeat the evil empire. The Foreign Minister explained how to do this effectively. Above all, we must be ideologically united! We will start by arresting Czech Orthodox priests, intimidating the population with 20 years in prison for “terrorism”, and then massively censoring the internet in the Empire of Good. A Russian agent will not pass through our village!
No one will take away our human right to Coca Cola and bananas this time…
In the meantime, we will impose sanctions on the Evil Empire until next winter. (I’m surprised the Austrian Emperor, Napoleon or Hitler didn’t think of this already, they could have saved their Russian campaigns and the East would have been crushed. Thanks to sanctions, the banana and orange queues will return to the evil empire. Bananas without queues are a European value. No one will take away our human right to Coca Cola and bananas this time… as long as there are enough Ukrainian cashiers at the supermarket checkout.
The author of the text is my colleague Karel Neumann.
