The latest US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) information warfare narrative against Russia is that it’s a so-called “empire” that must therefore be urgently “decolonized”. This is nothing more than weaponized multiculturalism wielded by the unipolar liberal-globalists to cloak their imperialist aims against one of the world’s top multipolar conservative-sovereigntist leaders under a faux decolonization guise. Accordingly, this Hybrid War scheme must be comprehensively debunked, ergo the present piece.

The world is in the midst of “The Great Bifurcation” that’s dividing the globalized international order along three levels: the systemic, ideological, and tactical. The first refers to the division of the world into the US-led Golden Billion and the developing world’s Global South, the latter of which includes Russia. These emerging blocs have different worldviews that can be imperfectly be described as ideologies, hence the second level of bifurcation that will now be touched up.

This one is between the unipolar liberal-globalists (ULGs) and the multipolar conservative-sovereigntists (MCS). The former are trying to revive the US’ declining unipolar hegemony in order to impose their hyper-liberal socio-political system onto others while the latter want multipolarity in order to preserve their unique such systems and as well as their sovereignty. The ULGs are united in their vision of what each country’s domestic affairs should uniformly look like while the MCS respect their natural diversity.

The final level of bifurcation is between the establishment and populists. The first refers to existing stakeholders while the second relates to aspiring ones. The Golden Billion is presently witnessing the most dynamism in this respect due to the regular political fluctuations associated with their Western model of democracy while the Global South doesn’t always experience this as much. Nevertheless, the developing countries are expected to soon suffer weaponized populism as will now be explained.

The US’ Government’s (USG) Helsinki Commission earlier announced that it’ll host an online briefing on Thursday on “Decolonizing Russia: A Moral And Strategic Imperative”. This follows weeks of notorious Russophobe and former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul amplifying this weaponized narrative on Twitter to his over 800,000 followers. Elite media outlets like The Atlantic have also run with this narrative, among many other influencers, showing that it’s rapidly becoming the next talking point.

The gist of their claims is straight-forward but dishonest. They posit that Russia is only an ethno-religiously diverse country due to imperialism, which has resulted in it continuing to colonize non-ethnic-Russian and non-Orthodox lands into the present day, most notably the North Caucasus and Siberia. In order to right this alleged historical wrong, they say, the so-called “last remaining empire” must be completely dismantled as soon as possible. To this end, they support a new wave of separatism within it.

Advocates of this approach point to President Putin’s recent comparison of himself to Peter the Great to push their narrative that the Russian Federation is simply the modern-day version of the Russian Empire, with all that this negatively implies. Inspired by the Biden Administration’s “Summit for Democracy” last December, which was in reality just a propaganda event to concoct a pretext for reunifying the West under the US’ declining hegemony, they’ve now placed Russia in their false “decolonization” crosshairs.

What’s really happening is that the Russian leader’s comparison was spun out of context for the politically self-serving ends that were explained since both he and his imperial predecessor were justified in using force as a last resort to protect ethnic Russians and defend their national security. Moreover, Russia’s ethno-religious diversity is genuine and continues to persist despite the empire’s dissolution and the USSR’s seven decades afterwards because its people truly believe that it’s natural.

Instead of praising Russia’s historical multiculturalism, the Golden Billion’s ULGs are condemning it even though they themselves promote something superficially similar albeit substantively different within their own borders. The purpose behind weaponizing multiculturalism against Moscow by claiming that it’s the unnatural and forced outcome of a modern-day empire is to provoke separatist-terrorists to attack the state under the false pretext of being populists at odds with the establishment.

Put another way, the New Cold War is expanding from Eastern Europe into Russia’s own borders through Hybrid War means as the tactical level of bifurcation is being artificially exacerbated within that targeted Great Power. The ULGs don’t sincerely respect minorities’ unique socio-cultural traditions there like Russia’s MCS leadership does but are hoping to mislead them by manufacturing the narrative that their own government is actually ULG while the West is supposedly the real MCS.

To elaborate, no minority would ever consider separating from their civilization-state that truly respects their uniqueness like Russia does unless they were indoctrinated into believing that doing so would maximize the expression of their said uniqueness. The Golden Billion wants them to think that Russia is the one trying to impose its own socio-political systems upon them in violation of their traditions while their bloc will supposedly respect them to the utmost and let them live however they want to the max.

This is nothing but a siren song meant to manipulate Russia’s minorities into launching more doomed-to-fail separatist-terrorist campaigns so as to boggle that Great Power down within its own borders and thus give the Golden Billion an edge in the geopolitical battlefields of the New Cold War. The modus operandi is to weaponize multiculturalism by extending insincere assurances that the success of their campaign would lead to them “finally being able to live as true (insert minority group here).”

The reality is actually the opposite: MCS Russia respects all of its minorities and lets them live however they want so long as they don’t support separatism or terrorism, while the ULG Golden Billion strips everyone within its “sphere of influence” of their identity as it mashes them into an amorphous blob. It should also be a dead giveaway that something foul is afoot that the West supports a superficial form of multiculturalism within its own borders but is vehemently against Russia’s variation thereof. .

Having explained the strategic dynamics of what’s going on, it’s now time to forecast the end result of this incipient campaign. In all likelihood, it’ll remain in the realm of cyberspace and the media since Russia’s crackdown on foreign agents means that it’s practically impossible for subversive ones financed by the Golden Billion to operate in organizing separatist-terrorist campaigns. There might be some isolated lone wolves inspired by this infowar, but no meaningful Hybrid War offensive is expected.

Nevertheless, the false narrative of Russia being an “empire” that must urgently be “decolonized” will be maximally amplified to Global South audiences in an attempt to simultaneously discredit that Great Power there while also trying to make themselves look good by this fraudulent comparison. Astute observers should remember, however, that this is based on nothing but disinformation and the hypocritical weaponization of multiculturalism, wider awareness of which discredits the West.

All of this connects back to “The Great Bifurcation”. Russian minorities are targeted with false populist narratives to convince them to tactically turn against their government on the misguided ideological basis that it’s actually a ULG one that doesn’t respect their rights. The resultant destabilization is meant to force Russia to divide its resources between the internal and external fronts of the New Cold War, which the Golden Billion hopes will then give it an edge in shaping the global systemic transition.  

The separatist-terrorist campaigns that the ULGs hope to provoke are doomed to fail, but in the theoretical scenario that one or some of them succeeds, this would actually result in the militant minorities ultimately being worse off than they were under Russia. That’s because the Golden Billion, and not their cosmopolitan civilization-state, is the true ULGs that eventually intends to strip them of their identity as it seeks to mash them into an amorphous blob for ideological reasons.

The trend that all objective observers should be aware of is that the Golden Billion will weaponize everything, even their own superficial belief in multiculturalism no matter how hypocritical it exposes them as being, in pursuit of their grand strategic goal of winning the New Cold War. Nothing’s off the table, and that which was previously considered un-weaponizable is now “fair game” in this worldwide struggle over the direction of the global systemic transition that catalyzed “The Great Bifurcation”.