The New World Order is being dismantled and will be replaced with an order that is based on justice and law that is respectful of all, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin who used an address at the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club to promote his vision of a multipolar world.
Putin’s wide-ranging speech encompassed topics as diverse as the future world order, biodiversity, and “cancel culture”, and was followed by hours spent answering questions from members of the audience.
Here are some key takeaways from the speech.
Intoxicated by their sense of superiority, liberal elites seek to destroy – or “cancel” – those who are different to them. Where Nazis burned books, the Western “guardians of liberalism and progress” now ban Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky, Putin said.
Liberal democracy, which was once based on toleration of different ideas, has transformed into something unrecognizable, Putin added. The so-called “cancel culture” destroys anything that is alive and creative, eradicating freedom of speech and crushing culture, economics and politics.
“History, of course, will put everything in its place,” Putin said, adding that the the arrogance of those who seek to cancel them is off the charts, “but no one will even remember their names in a few years, while Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky and Pushkin will endure.”
Liberal elites in the West insist their culture and worldview should be universal, Putin said. They behave as if these values must be unconditionally accepted by everyone else.
It’s a case of rules for thee but not for me.
Yet when some other countries, notably China, began benefiting from globalization, the West “immediately changed or completely canceled” many of the rules it long insisted were set in stone and sacred, Putin said, with free trade, economic openness, fair competition and even property rights “suddenly forgotten at once, completely.”
“As soon as something becomes profitable for themselves, they change the rules immediately, on the go, in the course of the game.”
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