Two Talks on BRICS: Lavrov and Crooke

Lavrov’s meeting with representatives of the relevant BRICS parliamentary committees on international affairs.

The above meeting occurred on the April 11, while Crooke’s paper was submitted to the XXII International Likhachev Scientific Readings, St Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, 12-13 April 2024 and is entitled “Is a peaceful accommodation between BRICS and the West possible?” Lavrov’s remarks provide an overview of what BRICS+ is now working on as it incorporates its five new members and can be described as BRICS+ current working reality. Crooke’s title while pessimistic is also based on reality and explores some very important historic European vantages to make its points yet little is said of the Americans despite their hegemonic position or the Zionists aside from their eschatological extremism. Hat-tip to reader Lubica for alerting me to Crooke’s essay being published today instead of Monday. Lavrov’s opening remarks are a short 17-minutes and begin now:

Dear Colleagues,

Friends

I am glad to welcome you to the Russian Foreign Ministry. I have no doubt that our colleagues and associates from both chambers of the Federal Assembly are doing and will do everything possible to ensure that you can fully experience Russian cordiality and hospitality.

I know that the programme of your stay in Moscow includes not only working events, but also a cultural programme. I hope that these days will leave you with the most positive impressions, as it happens with everyone who comes to us.

I am sure that you have followed such major events as the Games of the Future and the World Youth Festival. They stressed the relevance of such meetings, which are not burdened by attempts to politicize everything and everything, from sports to art.

Today, the world is truly at a turning point, a milestone stage in its development. This is due to the ongoing process of forming a multipolar world order. We see how the states of the Global South and the East (as we call the world majority) intend to further strengthen their positions in the international arena and pursue independent, nationally oriented foreign policies. We are pleased to note that the global majority is firmly committed to the tasks of fair reform of the global governance architecture.

We consistently advocate the implementation of a unifying international agenda aimed at creating favourable conditions for the development of all states and peoples without exception, and not just a narrow group of the "chosen". Unfortunately, the "collective West" led by the United States does not abandon its attempts, if not to reverse this objective historical process, then at least to postpone the onset of inevitable changes.

The destructive policy of the United States and its allies is based on well-known invented "rules," which are in fact a set of double standards. It has led to the destabilization of many countries and even entire regions. In order to preserve their own hegemony, the Westerners widely use the well-known colonial principle of "divide and rule." They deliberately provoke inter-ethnic, inter-confessional and inter-state conflicts. Western countries use various instruments of coercion against "dissenters" (you know this very well): from direct military intervention to illegal unilateral sanctions and "defamation" in the global information space.

We have no doubt that this selfish policy of holding back the development of new world centres in Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America is doomed. The course of history is irreversible. This is confirmed, among other things, by figures. The balance of power in the world is changing really and quite rapidly. For example, Russia's economy in terms of purchasing power parity has become the largest in Europe and fifth in the world ranking. The aggregate GDP of the BRICS countries in terms of purchasing power parity exceeded that of the G7 even before the expansion of our association. These processes are unstoppable. Trends have been identified. Experts are well aware of what we are talking about.

Against this background, we believe that the growing interest of an increasing number of countries in the Global South in the activities of BRICS is rational and logical. The bottom line is that our association is not trying to "turn back" the objective historical processes of polycentricity formation. On the contrary, BRICS seeks to promote and lead them in every possible way, but not in its own narrow selfish interests, but in the interests of all its (and not only their) members, but also of all countries that want to interact with BRICS.

Our cooperation is based on an equal dialogue, respect for each country's choice of its own path of development, consideration for each other's interests and focus on a collective search for solutions to all the problems of our time. It is no exaggeration to say that today BRICS acts as an "exponent" of the interests of the entire non-Western world. A truly breakthrough achievement was the decision to expand the association in Johannesburg in August 2023, when our leaders agreed to admit new members. From January 1, 2024, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia began to work fully in our association. These countries have significant economic potential, play a significant role not only in their region, but also in the international arena and, most importantly, share the basic values of BRICS that unite us, including the spirit of solidarity, equality, mutual respect, openness and consensus.

Harmonious integration of new members into the existing BRICS mechanisms is one of the main priorities of Russia's chairmanship this year. We are doing everything possible for this. Based on the results of events at the level of Sherpas, Sous-Sherpas and other formats, we see that the "recruits" are already making their unique contribution to the common work in all the main areas of the agenda. We hope that this activity will grow and will soon be embodied in new practical initiatives for consideration by our association.

Another important decision of the Johannesburg summit is the instruction to determine the parameters and criteria of the new category of "BRICS partner states". Relevant work is underway through Sherpas and Sous-Sherpas. The results should be presented in June this year at the meeting of BRICS foreign ministers in Nizhny Novgorod, where recommendations will be formulated for our leaders for the 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan.

We have no doubt that the involvement of a wide range of developing countries in cooperation with the association will contribute to the further consolidation of the efforts of the world majority to solve common problems in the common interests. Among the tasks of Russia's BRICS Chairmanship is to increase coordination between the BRICS countries and their like-minded countries at international venues, primarily the UN and the G20.

We consider the approval of the Joint Statement on behalf of BRICS during the Sixth UN Environment Assembly, held in Nairobi in late February and early March 2024, to be a significant result.

As part of the preparations for the summit in Kazan, we pay special attention to the development of counter-terrorism cooperation. We have the BRICS Working Group on Counter-Terrorism, which consists of five subgroups. The recent tragic events in the Crocus City Hall near Moscow have once again demonstrated the need to intensify the joint efforts of specialists in these fields and legislators to counter this global evil. Parliaments play an important role in ensuring that the legislative framework for law enforcement agencies to take the necessary decisions against terrorists is updated and strengthened in a timely manner.

We are also committed to developing anti-drug cooperation. On the common agenda, we have joint tasks in such areas as the fight against corruption, money laundering, terrorist financing, and the search for common answers to challenges and threats in the information space. Cybersecurity is another of the tasks of the day, as well as ensuring favorable conditions for the development of the states of our association, building up their innovative, technological and human potential.

We will promote the role of BRICS members in the international monetary and financial system, deepen interbank cooperation, transform the system of international settlements and expand the use of our national currencies in mutual trade. Just the other day in Washington, our representatives at the World Bank, including top officials, advisers and deputies, held meetings with each other. All the countries present here were represented. The issues of reforming the international monetary and financial system are becoming more and more acute. They are long overripe. If we are guided by objective macroeconomic financial indicators, then the share of the original BRICS "five" in the capital and in the votes of international monetary and financial institutions should have been greater than it is now, and the share of the United States should have decreased in terms of objective economic indicators. But at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the United States is trying to stall reforms, quota and vote revisions, and maintain its stake to block most decisions single-handedly. This is unfair and undemocratic, and simply unfair. We will work on these areas with particular enthusiasm. This is important for our practical actions.

Speaking of banking cooperation, I would like to mention the BRICS New Development Bank. It has its own specifics. Not only members of the association can be its shareholders, but also countries that are not members of BRICS. Over the past few years, there have been attempts by Western representatives to influence the activities of the New Development Bank and subordinate it to tasks that are not enshrined in the bank's charter. But now, as far as I understand, everyone is aware of the need to prevent such attempts and strictly rely on the enshrined statutory goals.

We attach great importance to strengthening cultural and humanitarian contacts. This makes it possible to establish horizontal ties between our citizens, between various segments of civil society, and in this context we are preparing a number of events, such as the BRICS Games and the Intervision International Song Contest together with other countries interested in promoting such international forums to support and develop national art in each of our countries. Events are planned aimed at creating a film academy next year, which will annually present film awards under the auspices of BRICS, BRICS Plus and its like-minded partners.

Speaking of humanitarian ties, we attach particular importance to cooperation between the parliaments of the BRICS countries. Inter-parliamentary dialogue has long been one of the most important areas of multilateral diplomacy. Our association is no exception. The idea to start cooperation between the BRICS legislative bodies was first voiced back in 2013, when the fifth summit of the BRICS association was held. After this discussion, the first parliamentary forum was held in Moscow in 2015, and next year we will celebrate our tenth anniversary. Since 2015, meetings in the format of parliamentarians have become regular. I would like to make a special mention of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding at the BRICS Parliamentary Forum, which took place in Johannesburg in August 2023.

We note the active cooperation between BRICS parliamentarians during multilateral events, such as the Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva, held in March this year. On the sidelines of the event, a separate meeting of the heads of delegations of the legislative bodies of the BRICS countries was held. It made it possible to compare notes on the current work of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly and discuss plans for the coming period. I believe that such coordination of our actions on universal parliamentary platforms is very useful. During this visit, you will discuss draft documents and practical issues of organising the BRICS Parliamentary Forum, which will be held in St Petersburg on July 11-12 this year.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will do everything necessary to ensure the comfortable and productive work of parliamentarians. [My Emphasis]

Just two main notes. The financial work is crucial and of top level importance and appears to be quickly advancing. The second is the focus on terrorism as much of what the Outlaw US Empire does is just that—Terrorism. Such a focus turns the world’s eyes to seeing the crime associated with Westen Hegemony and makes its prevention a criminal/legal mater instead of one that’s strictly military. So instead of gathering forces to confront specific nations in a war, national networks are already allied in Anti-Terror efforts—BRICS+, SCO, EAEU, CSTO, and CIS. I expect to see such international efforts to become more visible as the Outlaw US Empire resorts to the use of Terrorism via its Terrorist Foreign Legion as it desperately attempts to keep what it sees as its rightful status. But the ultimate power of historic trends can’t be overcome but must be flowed with and used to an advantage if at all possible. And on that note, we turn to Crooke’s paper. He presented it at the XXII International Likhachev Scientific Readings held in St. Petersburg. The Forum’s theme is “Dialogue of Cultures and Civilizations in the New Emerging Reality,” which conforms to the nature of Crooke’s paper. A report on the April 12 Plenary Session provides a recap of the numerous appearances including Crooke’s, all in Russian of course. But enough of the minutia, here’s Crooke’s paper:

In Rome, there still exists – just – the Domus Aurea, the golden house. This was a vast complex built by Emperor Nero on the Oppian Hill after the great fire of 64 CE. Strikingly, it was based on the Architecture of an ancient Egyptian temple and was magnificently decorated with birds, panthers, lotus flowers and divine entities – again, all nature, in the Egyptian mode.

Indeed, Nero modelled himself as a Pharaoh in the shape of Ra, (or Apollo, if you prefer). And as the bridge between the material world and the immaterial.

Long story short, within 70 years, all trace of the Domus was gone. It had been ‘cancelled’ (in today’s parlance): stripped, and simply filled-in with earth; built over and completely forgotten.

The shift to the one dimensional ‘world’ was at the doorstep.

But then, in 1480, a young Roman walking on the Oppian Hill fell into a hole and found himself in a strange cave floating with beasts, plants and figures. He had fallen unwittingly into Nero’s palace. Romans had completely forgotten even it had existed.

Soon, the great artists of Rome were having themselves lowered on knotted to ropes, to see for themselves. When Raphael and Michelangelo crawled underground and were let down shafts to study them, the effect was electrifying, instant and profound.

This is the world we in the West have lost: The ancient world’s diversity and its metaphysical excitement.

After this momentary ‘flicker’ as the Renaissance took hold, the text of the Corpus Hermetica, known to antiquity, and thought to reach back to the ancient sage, Thoth, serendipitously arrived and was translated in 1471.

This too, swept through Europe. It seemed to hold the allure of a possible defusing of the looming civil war between Protestant and Catholic.

The point here was that the Hermetic understanding of society and history – the world – was that of an integrated totality. It offered a more holistic perspective; one which can account for – rather than annul or strike out – the contradictions within the fabric of reality.

Contradictions and oppositions within history and understanding were, and are today, regarded as dangerous’ and signs of a threat to established order. The Corpus Hermetica offered a very different perspective. The contradictions were but multiplicity working itself out. Seen correctly, they underlined organic unity.

It was all too late: The multivalent revolution was stillborn. A radical Calvinist, Isaac Casaubon, was paid by James I of England to write in 1614 a ‘hit piece’ arguing that his philological analysis proved the Corpus to be ‘fake news’, largely authored by Christians in Alexandria.

Egyptian primordial philosophy was wholly de-bunked as heretic and magical. It never recovered. And by 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was afoot.

We know now that the Corpus did indeed reflect elements of the oldest Egyptian teachings, dating back 4,500 years, or more, and certainly to the early Old Kingdom.

The bubble anyway had burst. The Hermeticists were discredited; some were burnt alive, and Europe duly was wracked by Inquisition dogma and burnings. It is estimated that between the Inquisition and the Great Witch Scare, some 10,000 Europeans were burnt at the stake or drowned.

Eschatological Dogmatism

Today, western Europe is seized again by enforced dogma: an eschatological dogmatism, just to be clear. Just as Israel today sees itself as a redoubt against the ‘end of all things’, and accordingly militarises and is willing to dispense military violence to preserve its vision of itself, so too, Europe though less plausibly is taking a ‘secular eschatological stand’ (if that is no oxymoron) to crush Russia’s refusal to embrace the ‘new moral revolution’, and for its leading a global counter-revolution.

Western Europe today is as if it were St Petersburg of early 1917, after the February Revolution, though our ‘Bolsheviks’ have long since arrived at Finland Station (since the 1970s at least).

We, in western Europe, are in a period of revolution and civil war: History tells us that civil war tends to be extended with peak episodes that are viewed as ‘revolution’ (i.e. BLM street protests), but which in reality are alternate modes of the same; the long toggling between revolution and cultural war.

One cannot but notice how bad-tempered Americans and Europeans generally have become. Calm, reasoned discussion of issues is gone; Yelling, emotivism and ‘othering’ is commonplace. These are dark omens for the future.

The premonitions are a gut feeling, Tucker Carlson says: “There are “angry people who feel like they have no recourse, who don’t think elections are real…”.

Why has western society been so supine, so unreflectively supportive to the sheering away of its civilisational ethos? It is truly paradoxical that half of western society sees a revolution, yet the other is too distracted, or simply does not notice. There is no simple answer to this paradox.

Yet, it was thus also in St Petersburg. General Wrangel (a Tsarist officer and commander) wrote in his memoirs about arriving in St. Petersburg in February 1917 (after having thrashed a man on the train with a red ribbon for insulting a woman). He was appalled, on arrival, to see the widespread disorder and profusion of Communist paraphernalia – and most of all, the red ribbons and flags.

He wrote of his shock that the people as a whole, and the upper classes in particular, acted as if everything was normal: They paid “no heed to the approaching storm”.

Put bluntly: the appearance of normalcy, it seems, says nothing about whether a society is about to founder.

Today, our élites too, sport a ribbon – not red, but a Rainbow one.

Imagined Realities

The late American thinker Christopher Lasch, near the end of his life, concluded that the American upper class had essentially seceded from the American nation and emigrated into a separate reality in which they envisaged the disassembly of the existing western Order, in the name of justice and retribution. [The Revolt of the Elite]

The contemporary French philosopher, Emmanuel Todd, concurs; suggesting, in La Défaite, that America, is no longer a nation-state, but a nihilist empire, in constant revolt against its own past and with a ruling élite determined to break the preponderant hold of the white, blue collar and middle classes over American society.

Todd notes that this secession has given birth to “a breath-taking dogmatism across the spectrum of Western élites, a kind of ideological solipsism preventing them from seeing the world – as it actually is”.

Nonetheless most in the West still just ‘don’t see it’; they cannot admit that the Revolution’s objective (though it is not hidden) is that these well-to-do, ribbon-wearing members of the middle classes are precisely the ones (not the technocratic-élites) that the cultural revolution targets; seeks to displace, to subordinate – and to sanction.

To sanction them as redress for historic discrimination and racism; not for who they are now, but for who or what their ancestors may have been. To further this aim of ‘rotating out’ the predominantly ‘pale, male and stale’ western Middle Class from their ‘privileged positions’, the Revolutionaries injected their ideological opposition to national borders and the embrace of something like open-door immigration.

Adjunct to this has been the revolutionary ‘transition’ from a real manufacturing economy – the mainstay source of employment for ‘deplorables’ – to a new high-tech, ‘Climate’ focused and AI-driven economy, which these new diverse elites would find easier and more amenable.

Meanwhile, in this scenario, blue-collar ‘deplorables’ – as the real economy inevitably atrophies – become economic outliers, an ‘expendable’ sector.

Just to be clear, when an ideology – in open revolt against its own past – claims ‘a man can become a woman, and a woman a man’ in such an explicit affirmation of falsehood, it has a direct purpose: It is obviously intended to draw the line under the western (Latin) Christian tradition. This is also Emmanuel Todd’s prime conclusion.

Enter the BRICS

What might be the lessons here for the BRICS?

Firstly, these cumulative ‘transitions’ clearly require mammoth money-printing. This was just about manageable when the project could be financed at zero cost interest rates; but the scheme’s Achilles’ Heel of inflation and spiking interest rates has arrived. The exponential western debt explosion to fund ‘transitions’ now threatens to take the entire ‘revolution’ into financial crisis and collapsing standards of living.

The tool of ‘free money’ facilitated many things but has proved lethal. It created inequality of a kind not seen for generations (though familiar to Russians who recall the 1990s), a polarised politics, and huge ­financial bubbles.

However – and secondly – the flood of fresh money opened the door to new media: Platforms that previous had relied on selling the news were replaced by entities beholden to advertisers that only cared about grabbing people’s attention and selling it to the highest bidder. A new economy of attention arose.

The Power Strata ‘got it’; they were delighted. So, thirdly then, words no longer needed to have objective meanings. Everything is about ‘attention’ – however achieved. True or false. That’s what the advertisers wanted. Words could mean what those in power say they mean. The ‘truth’ behind the narrative was irrelevant. They could lie freely.

Fourthly, the West – in willfully propagating and imposing a morally vacuous ideology that has no appeal in most countries and cultures of the world – simply has no clue as to how much of the world rejects the value system of contemporary globalist neoliberalism. It repels, rather than appeals to them. So, the western Nomenklatura doubles-down on enforcement.

The question before us then, is how will the global, multi-polarity bloc manage a West edging towards moral, political, and possibly financial collapse? Is a peaceful accommodation between the BRICS and the West possible?

Will the West come out ‘the other side’ of their cultural revolution as a more amenable potential BRICS partner? Or will the West come apart with prolonged in-fighting? The post-war history is not encouraging: It is that of the West attempting to keep itself whole through creating a Manichean enemy, around which it can gather and unify.

History suggests too that even with some accord, the Revolutionaries seldom agree fully to revert back to the Old Constitutional Order. There will be a new one, perhaps some return to confederation in the U.S. and Europe. This, for now, is pure speculation.

The cold reality is the ‘Blue Revolutionaries’ in the U.S. own the wealth, the key institutions in society and the levers of enforcement. To be plain, they hold the ‘Commanding Heights’.

Yes, a nascent counter-revolution – mainly in the U.S. (and somewhat in Europe, too) – is building; they are (rightly or wrongly) defiantly unwilling to recant traditionalist moral values, nor are they prepared to assume ‘guilt’ by submitting to the demands for ‘reparations’ for historic injustices.

The point here is obvious: Is this counter-revolution going to be enough? Whilst Emmanuel Todd believes that the situation is so far gone that there is no hope of saving Western civilization, and turning back the clock, others hope that there is still time to salvage something. Let us see.

What then is the ‘tiny’ fulcrum around which some common ground betwixt BRICS and the West eventually might be found?

The schism has arisen with BRICS partly because the non-West now sees only too clearly that the post-modern West is not a civilisation per se, but rather something akin to a mechanical ‘operating system’ (managerial technocracy). It does not fit the Multipolar blueprint, as it is no longer a civilisational state.

Europe of the Renaissance, in marked contrast, did consist of civilisational states – but subsequent European nihilism prevailed.

Today’s western myth of being the inheritor of superior values from Athens – ‘from Plato to NATO’, if you like – has proved a fatal conceit. It undergoes various makeovers of narrative to claim that the West somehow is ‘winning’, but its new narratives lack conviction.

So, here we get to the root of it: the biggest hurdle for the BRICS in trying to negotiate a peaceful modus vivendi with the western sphere is that by being ‘a self’; in being an unique civilisational-state is inseparable from existing in a space of moral issues.

It is not enough just to declare that ‘one is multi-polar’. True non-alignment must mean what the Algerian writer Franz Fanon called ‘disalienation’ – a commitment to action; an invitation to take real steps towards autonomy and sovereignty.

A Sensibility to the Numinous

Is it possible for BRICS states to keep a foot in “a world, cut in two”? Likely not – at least until the U.S. and European Cultural War arrives, at least, to some partial outcome. Being a participant in the western financial system – alone – becomes highly problematic because of its social toxicity; but the insurmountable obstacle, plainly put, is that the main impetus to western mechanistic epistemology is derived from a teleological anti-morality.

Put starkly, the ‘new values’ we are seeing are intended to drive a stake through traditionalism. Where is the stake thrust? It strikes at what BRICS members have in common on the plane of moral issues, which might be called a sensibility to the numinous. Much of contemporary western thinking simply ignores the dimensions of our moral consciousness and dismisses it, as either confused, or irrelevant.

The point of commonality is that all the BRICS civilisations employ ‘strong evaluation’. That is, they all involve the ability to discriminate between right and wrong; justice and injustice; and of dynamics that uplift, and those drag society down.

Our ability to discriminate on these key issues lies deep within us. But it is precisely here where the BRICS might seek common cause with Europe. They could adopt a moral language that resonates within the vestiges of such moral sentiments that still linger on in the West.

With the rediscovery of the Domus Aurea and the Hermetica, the Italian Renaissance believed itself to have rejoined the ancients in spirit – a release, after the Middle Ages had brought barbarian repression and the closing of the European ‘mind’.

Thus, when Florentine Neo-Platonism became the dominant view, it is understandable that those artists like Michaelangelo, who had been lowered into the Domus, viewed its distinct beauty as connecting them to the wider world of earthly beauty. This experience was seen by the artists of the time to be the mortal veil through which we discern eternal human values, shining out through the veil.

Their moral reaction then, was so to speak, an assent, an affirmation of what it is to be human. It is over the latter experience that a dark epistemological cloud of subsequent empiricist or rationalist theories of knowledge has hung.

What makes any conjuncture of this nature so subject to fiery passions is simply that anything that was good and true about Western civilization is preserved and thriving in Russia. This is the unspoken insight that so infuriates the western élites. And it is also why, in part, BRICS states so evidently look to Russia for leadership.

In a sense, Russia fell into the hole on Rome’s Oppian Hill when Russians flung open the doors to its churches after the Communist period, and people poured in. Orthodoxy and traditionalism somehow self-ignited. Russia was finding a new ‘Self’.

This occurrence perhaps was impelled in part, by the fact that when Byzantium fell in 1453, bringing to an end the millennia-old Roman imperium, Russia found itself in a unique position. It was now the only Orthodox Christian power remaining in the world.

This fact created a sense of world-historic religious siege; surrounded on all sides by Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Turco-Mongol Khanates, Russia itself became a prototypical Eschatological Garrison State – the last redoubt of authentic Christianity and of meaning, beyond the literal world, in the wider Hartland.

As I have indicated, Europe has the elements to multi-culturalism buried within memory. We do have common sources that reach far-back. That is the hope; but first, we in the Atlanticist West, must dispense with the charade of today’s fabricated European values. [Emphasis: italics original; bolded italics mine]

I wonder if “Hartland” is a typo. IMO, Crooke’s point about Russia being the only genuine Christian power left is very important as all others including the Vatican long ago vacated Christian values, a fact the West is desperately trying to hide. There’s more I might have emphasized. It’s good the West comprises only 1/8th of Humanity. Regardless the brand of Metaphysics, there appears to be a universal goal toward Harmony within civilized society that can be seen as thousands of years old, particularly in the Clean Slate processes that were once done and is actually the fundamental principle of Jesus and why he was worshiped at the outset—his mission was to absolve people of their debts, not their sins, but that can’t be seen today as his brand is now Christianity Inc. But Russia and BRICS+ are more than just one religion’s values however skewed they are today. Two very large components aren’t Western at all, the Chinese and Indian, and I’m defining Islam as Western because of its ties to the Abrahamic religions when its most populous nations are in Asia. and the greater majority is African. So, we can see that Crooke’s is an Eurocentric POV, one that has never really sought balance and harmony despite or perhaps because of what became Christian Values. I’m sure readers will reread and comment for there’s no way one can’t have some sort of reaction not just to Crooke, but to both Lavrov and Crooke.

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