Sascha Lobo: With the Putin glasses on your nose, the world looks very different

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Vladimir Putin with special glasses during a visit to Gorny University in St. Petersburg

Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev / AP

On the occasion of the Russian escalation against Ukraine, the EU and NATO, it can once again be observed in social and editorial media as well as in politics: There is a specifically German Putin psychology, a series of patterns of thought, communication and behavior that cover all matters concern around Russia.

I call them the Putin glasses.

The Putin glasses color every perception of reality ideologically for Putin's benefit. The Putin glasses help to regard double standards as normal, to block out parts of reality and to find explanations, excuses and perpetrator-victim reversals for every Putinian monstrosity. In Germany, essential components of the Putin glasses are: solid anti-Americanism, old-left dreams of fraternization and right-wing culture war fantasies, as the former head of the German Navy put on display a few days ago. The functionality of the Putin glasses is supplemented by a hypocritical, blatant German vulgar pacifism, which dumbly rejects everything military, but in case of doubt is of course outraged,that the Taliban or Russian mercenary troops cannot be persuaded to give in with a unanimous decision (two abstentions) of the “Non-smokers for Peace Kassel North Association”.

On the one hand, a surprising number of people in Germany enthusiastically put on Putin glasses all by themselves.

On the other hand, Putin's propaganda machine is working hard to spread the Putin glasses as widely as possible.

Oh bring a little understanding, have empathy, just look at the situation from the Russian perspective, poor Putin!

Has anyone ever heard it said, in the same almost pitiful tone, that you have to understand Biden, Xi or Erdoğan?

That the poorest had no choice but to do X or mug Y?

It is no coincidence that in the context of Putin, of all things, there is constant talk of having to understand, having to understand. Behind this is a clever, propagandistic game of deception that makes completely contradictory statements appear meaningful at the same time. Depending on what is better from Putin's point of view. For example, Putin is overwhelmingly strong and strategically brilliant at the same time - but also a victim of the mean EU and the even meaner NATO who can't help it. The victim pose, which is burned deep into the Putin glasses, is psychologically extremely effective.

The victim pose allows two things: On the one hand, responsibility for one's own actions can be projected onto the opponent.

After all, those who are victims only react.

On the other hand, the victim pose can also be used to prepare for an attack.

Because according to general human standards, self-defense is the use of violence that seems most morally understandable.

The fact that Putin has no other choice and should therefore be left to his own devices is one of the most common narratives in German people who wear Putin glasses.

The same, completely one-sided excuses for Putin's aggression perpetuate Putin's victim pose.

For example, that NATO has surrounded Russia to a certain extent, so that in its distress Russia cannot help it.

The press review is not really the basis for Putin's decision

This story completely ignores the fact that the interest of the Eastern European states in NATO did not come about because of the alliance's attractive logo.

On the one hand, this is due to the history of the occupation and, on the other hand, to Putin's grandiose and grand-Russian stories and deeds. At the latest, Putin's annexation of Crimea made these fears of a Russian invasion very real.

But with the help of the sacrificially posed Putin glasses, even in the case of a clear Russian attack on Ukraine, there will always be someone who seriously declares: It started with the fact that Ukraine hit back.

The classic perpetrator-victim reversal.

A particularly perfidious version of the shift in responsibility is currently being used very happily by those wearing Putin glasses: the mock-concerned appeal to the public, and especially the media, not to talk the conflict into existence.

As if the Kremlin orders a German press review every morning as a basis for decision-making, and when the deputy department head comments a little too harshly on the politics of the »Hanauer Landbote« – Putin attacks Ukraine out of anger after all!

Although until yesterday he actually wanted to be nice and just do a bit of military training.

Putin's glasses are particularly fatal for understanding Russia's current threat to Ukraine.

It ignores the patterns that Putin has looked for and found in frequent conflicts over the past 20 years in power.

Two of these patterns are particularly relevant at the moment.

The first is

and can be summarized with "Nord Stream 2", i.e. the gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

It was completed in early September 2021, then came the election, in which the Greens and the FDP, the least pro-Putin parties, played a very powerful role, and now the project appears to be in jeopardy.

That's where a nice means of pressure comes in handy.

Germany, as the most important actor in the EU from Putin's perspective, would use the gas pipeline for years, if not decades, to build major dependence on Russia into the country's political and economic operating system.

A major part of Putin's aggression is probably aimed at being able to get "Nord Stream 2" up and running without major obstacles in the end, as a price for de-escalation.

And to secure a lasting influence on Germany.

The other pattern is

and can be roughly seen in Putin's poll numbers.

Authoritarian leaders in particular depend on the broad consensus of the gut-felt majority in the country in order to be able to carry out their anti-democratic, corrupt and therefore often economically destructive game as undisturbed as possible.

In August 1999, Putin came to power and was viewed rather negatively by the public, with an approval rating of just 33 percent.

A little later, the Russian war with Chechnya escalated, and bang: Putin approval rose to an incredible 84 percent.

It is neither a new nor a surprising finding that armed conflicts can capture nationalistic publics.

The mantra of the warmongers

When approval ratings threatened to be damaged in 2008 between the economic and financial crisis and in connection with the change of president to Medvedev, the war against Georgia came just in time. Which catapulted approval to a maximum of 88 percent. However, because authoritarian regimes make everyday life difficult for many people, approval levels in the region have fallen steadily by 60 percent in November 2013, down to levels that Putin sees as threatening. The Crimea attack followed, and approval rose above 80 percent again -Brand. By mid-2020, when they fell back to their lowest levels since 1999, driven by the pandemic and Russia's continued economic weakness. You have to be wearing Putin glasses to ignorethat the conflicts with Ukraine and the NATO states have had a massive impact on the approval ratings and thus on the president's power base.

Of course, the whole situation is not

driven by these two aspects, Nord Stream 2 and approval ratings.

World politics is rarely pure and can always be complicated.

But ignoring these two factors with the German Putin glasses helps Putin to portray himself as a victim of the circumstances and thus of the West.

This is also the reason why people wearing Putin glasses use a term mantra-like for everyone who dares to raise their voice against Putin: warmongering.

Here, too, there are traces of the perpetrator-victim reversal, because of course it doesn't matter how many heavily armed Russian soldiers march on the Ukrainian border - Putin is never a warmonger.

But always and exclusively those who presume to actually see aggression in gigantic troop deployments and military threat exercises.

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Sasha Lobo

Reality shock: Ten lessons from the present

Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch

Number of pages: 400 pages

Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch

Number of pages: 400 pages

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Perhaps the most important mechanism of the Putin glasses is the belief that there are no Putin glasses. You see instead - as the only group ever! – unideological and objective to the world where everyone else is brainwashed, bought or malicious. This is based on a so-called cognitive distortion, which is a systematic misperception and misjudgment of the brain. The Putin glasses work with distortion blindness, which declares one's own distortions to be non-existent: I am unaffected! Of course you could try to turn the tables with the Putin glasses on your nose and accuse everyone else of distortion blindness. However, this leads to a dead end for one simple reason.You don't have to get lost in adventurously constructed worlds of thought to reject Putin's policies - because it

an ideology clearly and unequivocally opposed to Putin.

It is called liberal democracy, including democratic self-determination, and it is still the political essence of the EU and large parts of the western world, despite all the difficulties, necessary criticism and damage to it.

Anyone who applies the standards of liberal democracy and thus of fundamental and human rights cannot see Putin as an ally, a poor, cornered bunny, or a reliable political figure.

Under Putin, members of the opposition and journalists are being murdered, both at home and abroad.

Social commitment is threatened, figures uncomfortable for the regime are declared terrorists, freedom of the press is mutilated, and many fundamental social freedoms are deliberately destroyed.

In Putin's Russia, homosexuality and gender diversity are suppressed, domestic violence against women is legitimized, freedom of expression is massively threatened.

Not to mention the catastrophic corruption.

The Putin glasses play down these facts, ignore them or make Putin's imperial, authoritarian and totalitarian aspirations appear somehow acceptable.