Can you check a favorite theory of mine?

If we categorize nations as habitual war winners / war losers, occupiers / occupied, strong or weak, we see the following. Pretty much every ideology or ideological keyword as created by the winners, the strong at the height of their power, left and right was invented just before the French Revolution, liberalism and conservatism descends from the Gladstone-Disraeli era and so on. Ultimately the ideologies are all about how to handle conflict INSIDE a society, like a rich vs. poor, state vs. capitalists, religious vs. atheists and so on. All this because the winner, strong nations can afford to have such internal conflicts, as they were not threatened much from abroad. And the winners being winners, they export their culture and ideologies so now anywhere you go on this planet you find people who describe themselves as left or right, liberal or conservative, but often they are meaningless terms. (Boris "all power to the presidency, fsck parliamentarism, charge 'em with tanks" Yeltsin as a "liberal", really?)

However these ideological categories do not reflect the actual experiences of weaker, defeated nations. They could never really afford having such internal conflicts, external threats were more important than internal conflicts. Their experience is more like that of internal cooperation in defense. Their primary political categories are the 1) rebel, patriot, who defends the country 2) the quisling who cooperates with foreign, often occupying powers.

This does not map to conventional Western left or right or liberal or conservative. The 1) patriot-rebel is often nationalistic, even racist, hates cosmopolitanism, but with leftie economic views and ultimately their goals are lefty in the sense of liberatory and emancipatory on the grand scale, independence of weaker nations both politically and economically, national self-determination and anti-colonialism and all that, however they will have little patience for lifestyle liberalism, rather they will have a warrior ethic that requires social conservatism about gender roles, gays etc. The 2) quisling-cooperator will be a cosmopolite, often coming accross as enlightened, humanist, clever and non-provincial, but ultimately he is selling out an oppressed and exploited population to ruthless international profit-making forces, so often you will shockingly discover how little empathy he has with the poor of his own nation - all those people who dug ditches all their lives and have nothing to show for should just have modernized themselves and adapted to capitalism better instead of being stupid smelly superstitious peasants - roughly like that.

And these two really don't map well over.

Sometimes I try to "translate" between Western Europeans and Russians i.e. trying to get people to understand each others political views better in order to reduce these tensions we tend to have these days because it is not smart to hate each with the guys who heat your house in the winter :)

I tend to tell Russians that basically the way Westerners see things is that they are far more afraid of their own leaders than foreign forces. Their No. 1 goal is to prevent tyranny at home and this is what all the talk about liberal democracy reduces to, and this why they call Putin an anti-democrat, an anti-liberal, a tyrant in the making. Russians simply tend not to understand this. They think defending the country is far more important than preventing tyranny, they fear foreign forces far more than their own leaders. They are aware of Stalin's many crimes against his own people as well, but due to his leadership role in the Great Patriotic War he is still seen somewhere between mixed to somewhat positive. They simply don't see why would a leader of their own be more dangerous than external powers. Westerns see it oppositely. They tend to see emphasizing foreign threats and using it to sell authoritarianism at home is pretty much a nazi trick. Which it is, but it is essentially just an exploitation of a basic tribal trait that was there all the way through history and prehistory. And this divide, I think, it is not even new, it is not even about the modern ideologies created in the Age of Enlightenment. Having these kinds of internal conflicts, fearing oppression and tyranny at home far more than occupation from abroad is the defining trait of the West since it exists: it was already there in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in Ciceor's speeches or Athenian democracy. Every ideology the West created, left or right, is based on this rift: not trusting one's own leaders completely. This simply does not work in a non-Western environment where foreign occupation or influence is seen as far more dangerous than homegrown tyranny. And again this all reduces to being habitual war winners / war losers, occupiers / occupied.

What do you think?