It's not going to end well for Yevgeni Prigozhin
Also - Putin's Palace vs. Prigozhin's Palace: ¿Quién es más macho?
Russian security forces raided Yevgeni Prigozhin’s “palace” yesterday and found an assortment of wigs, gold bricks, a massive amount of cash, religious icons from the Orthodox church and among other knicknacks, a giant sledgehammer with the inscription 'for use in important negotiations.’ Charmed, I’m sure.
It was not unlike season 19 of MTV’s Cribs, but with a stuffed alligator and various passports, denominations of money and rifles instead of unnecessary automobiles and overstocked fridges. The prevalence of dollars, though, is curious thing. As Russian oligarchs — like Prigozhin — should ostensibly all be on the same page vis-a-vis the devaluation of the dollar. But, as saying goes, regarding honor and thieves …
Prigozhin is not a sympathetic figure by any means. He murdered the opponents of bloodthirsty Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad (and let’s not forget Assad’s wife, the subject of a wildly inappropriate Vogue puff pastry piece). Prigozhin also presided over indiscriminate massacres in Mali, mass rape in the Central African Republic (where Wagner have been plundering diamonds) and sledgehammering his own troops when he’s in a particularly itchy mood. Yevgeni Prigozhin, to put it mildly, is not one of the good guys.
And money, to be sure, cannot buy taste. The raid revealed some of what we already know — that Russian oligarch wealth is obscene, even to the world weary, Cribs saturated eye. His palace involves, regrettably, a grand carpeted staircase leading, ostentatiously, to a grand piano. Again: Cribs, but scaled up to 11. Would that it had ended there. Alas, it did not.
But, truth be told, why be a mercenary leader if you can't stuff gold bars in your palace? Fer realsies. What’s more, among his crimes: the warlord spent $300 million in cash to manipulate European elections in favor of far-right candidates and also the 2020 US Presidential election. It is hard, to be quite frank, to muster up any human sympathy for him. The former hot dog vendor has treated African, Syrian and Ukrainian lives as only so much meat. So when the karma police came knocking on his door yesterday, I was not, to put it mildly, spraying hot tears.
Prigozhin’s 17th-century predecessor, Major Karpakov, was spit-burned alive after betraying Peter the Great. And considering Vladimir Putin’s psychological history of profound “betrayal issues,” it is hard to imagine a scenario in which Prigozhin doesn’t end up either sledgehammered, the main ingredient in a vodka marinade sauce or, perhaps poisoned on live Russian TV. "When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die,” Cersei Lannister told us in the first season of that most meaningful of neo-medieval political dramas. “There is no middle ground." I bring this up, dear reader, not to be gruesome. But because of my understanding of autocrats — whether African or Russian — which tends to veer more towards the animal kingdom than the kingdom of God.
You see, Putin fancies himself to be in the image of Peter the Great. File under the category of “not a Democrat.” With that in mind, it is not a leap to think that such a (flawed) student of history might see Prigozhin’s betrayal as akin to Major Karpakov’s. Such are the dreams and the dreamlike reality of tyrants. It is not a leap to think that there might be some poetic, culinary justice in spit roasting the former hot dog vendor on live TV. That is the sort of man that we are dealing with, he who has vexed three American Presidents, at the most perilous point in his “Presidency.”
The pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia published images and video of the raid yesterday, ironically borrowing from the playbook of Russian activists who a little over a year ago leaked images of “Putin’s Palace.” Last January, nearly 500 photographs of “Putin’s Palace” — the Russian autocrat’s $1 billion dacha on the Black Sea — were published by Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund. The images of the palace on Russia’s Black Sea coast showed a vast marble swimming pool decorated with busts of Greek gods, and a hookah lounge with a pole for … dancing. MTV’s Cribs; always, Cribs.
Why spend so much time on these palaces and internecine Russian battles?
Putin is the prototype of the far-right autocrat. Putin represents hopped up hyper-masculinity, ethnic, pseudo-Christian nationalism all wrapped up in a sweaty, beefy package. This is what the far-right — across the globe — seeks to emulate. His style of governance. Putin, further, knows how to keep the gays in line. “Alphas” obsessed with humiliating and, if possible, killing their enemies look down at due process. They despise the restraints of due process. Observe Dutarte’s War on Drugs that killed thousands of Filipinos. Look at proto paleo Pinochet, hero of the far-right. What would a Trump — or even a Netanyahu, for that matter — be without the rule of law to contain their thumotic excess?
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