Looking in the Mirror

Writing in Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal about the statement by Alexei Mitrofanov of the LDPR faction in the Russian State Duma, who suggested on Wednesday that the parliamentary policy committee should limit the coverage the Pope’s death receives in the Russian media, saying that the Russian media paid “excessive attention to the Vatican’s mourning for the death of Pope John Paul II,” Leonid Radzikhovsky comments:

Alexei Mitrofanov explained that since we are an Orthodox country, there was no reason to get so worked up about the death of this pontiff: after all, the Pope was senile, a Russophobe, and there was no reason to send our prime minister, let alone a Jew, to the funeral of such a personage. Our media need to be brought into line: they’ve done enough talking about this Pope.

"It seems to me,” Radzikhovsky writes, “that the ardent desire to insult the deceased Pope John Paul II has a very weighty underlying psychological cause.” The argument, he suggests, goes something like this:

“All human beings are swine. (There are also some simpletons. But they are just unsuccessful swine). There are no others. Nobleness is a game. Kindness is a fake. Love of God is hypocrisy. There are no decent people, because they don’t exist anywhere, and never have done. What lies behind everything is money (dirty politics, the CIA, Freemasons, a conspiracy, etc., etc,).”The reasons for thinking this way are the most solid ones imaginable: people first take a look at themselves in the mirror, and then judge others by themselves. You will agree that it’s just too insulting to admit that there may indeed be people of quite a different sort, not like yourself. So they vote for Zhirinovsky, Mitrofanov & Co, who prove that everything is indeed like that, that it all comes down to money, that everyone is a scoundrel, and that it can’t be any different.

Ultimately, Radzikhovsky asserts, the central question needs to be asked of the Russian Orthodox Church:

Why, as its “physical” strength and political importance grow (it’s clear that today the Orthodox Church is the most influential force in the country after the Kremlin, and the Kremlin is constantly taking it into consideration), are the aggressive manifestations of “Orthodox public opinion” growing more and more widespread, while the Church itself does nothing to counter them?

(via Marius)