Kit Knightly
Belarus had their presidential election last Sunday, and the incumbent Alexandr Lukashenko apparently won. This was evidently not supposed to happen, or in some other way counter to the Western world’s grand plan – because now we have a little colour revolution happening.
You can always tell an Eastern European colour revolution, because Shaun Walker emerges from his burrow, dragging with him 3000 words of total speculation, unsourced anecdotal evidence and some partisan quotes from Western-backed NGOs. You know, like this.
Another good indication is just how irate Simon Tisdall is, and judging by this column…he’s pretty irate. Granted it’s mostly about Erdogan and Turkey, but he has words for Lukashenko too, and they are not friendly. I wouldn’t be surprised if he broke the keys on his laptop, so furious is his typing.
If you can’t be bothered to read it, I don’t blame you. To sum up: NATO needs to “do something”, or “take action” or “intervene”. He doesn’t use the word “coup”, because our side don’t do those, but he definitely means coup.
The Economist is talking about the “right way to get rid of Lukashenko”, while Chatham House is insisting it’s time to “play hardball” in Belarus.
Europe’s foreign minister, Josep Borrell, has gotten involved too, issuing a statement that Belarus’ elections were “neither free nor fair”, and that “the people of Belarus deserve better”.
I have no idea if the vote was rigged or not. But I do know that none of the people claiming it was have provided any evidence to back that up, and I’m always suspicious when a fact is asserted without proof. Because you know if they had they would use it.
It’s also perfectly true that Europe – and the Western world in general – don’t care in the slightest about elections being fair. Witness the total lack of rebuke for the corrupt mess that was the 2014 Ukrainian election.
As for the police violence against protesters, Lukashenko and Belarus have received more harsh words in the Western press in the last two days, than Macron did during the 18 months of Gilets Jaunes protests, or the Spanish government ever did for their fascist destruction of the Catalan independence movement.
History is very clear in this precedent: Corruption and/or violence would be no obstacle whatsoever to doing business with the West, were Lukashenko willing to be biddable and serve a NATO-backed Deep State agenda. Lukashenko’s coronavirus policy shows he is not, and so twenty-six years of being gently tolerated are over and it’s time for him to go.
All the hallmarks of a narrative roll-out are there.
The sudden widespread and uniform use of terminology (In this case “Europe’s last dictator”), protest placards helpfully being written in English, and the social media-spread accounts of “heroes” overcoming adversity (eg. the woman who can’t live steam the protests so weaves them into a quilt instead. Yes, seriously.)
Making the marches in Minsk all women holding flowers and wearing white is a nice touch, a new spin. The question is what they’re going to call it. They absolutely can’t call it the “White Revolution”, for fairly obvious reasons.
Maybe the Flower Revolution? The Petal Revolution?
Their options are limited, but whatever they end up with can’t be any worse than “the snow revolution”.
