Why the f*** would #Putin try to coopt the legacy of Immanuel #Kant?
It's probably not a serious question. Maybe it's just a silly immature dunk on #Germany / #German pride. Or maybe there's something darker in Kant's writings that #Russia thinks supports recent #Russian behavior (I have no reason to believe there is, I'm just openly musing).
Either way it's certainly a bizarre new front in the conflict: #philosophy war.
TL;DR
Kant was born in what Ukraine and EU call Crimea but Russia now calls Kaliningrad; since Putin invaded in 2014 and illegally annexed that part of Ukraine.
Putin has a real obsession with not being European enough. so his point of (mis)quoting Kant is about trying to prove that Kant wasn't really German, nor European; but Russian. that area + Poland were part of the historical German Prussia.
Scholz sees it as Putin's threat to eventually claim Germany & Poland as Russian too.
@blogdiva@benroyce In tomorrow's edition of "Dictators Lecture on the Liberal Arts," Prof. Putin will explain that the great writer Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was born to a Polish family in what is now Ukraine before emigrating to England, and that since both Poland and Ukraine are part of Russia, both the English language and the U.K. itself belong to Russia too.
@msbellows@blogdiva@benroyce ah but since proto-swedish vikings from the rus clan settled in what became russia, poland, the ukraine, russia, the english language and uk itself belongs to sweden
@blogdiva@benroyce Kant was born in Königsberg, which is now known as Kaliningrad. It is a port city on the Baltic Sea situated north of Poland. It used to belong to Germany until it changed hands in World War 2. Crimea is somewhere else. Not to take away from anything else you've said.
@Gargron@benroyce ugh, this is why am not an EU politics expert, LOL. thanks for the correction.
FWIW i never took seriously when people described him like +20 years ago as being obsessed with wanting to re-write EU history as a RU history but, WOW, were they right about that.
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