Eftim Kletnikov (North Macedonia) on Multipolarity (Fr.)
Eftim Kletnikov (North Macedonia) – poet, translator – speaks for the Global Conference on Multipolarity (29.04.2023).
Of course, it was Macedonian, my native language, the language of my homeland, my country of Macedonia. Now, already in French, I begin to talk about the complex, multifaceted subject of multiculturalism and multipolarity. Do they exist in our world? This is an overly complex subject, and I will quote the great German philosophers Leibniz and Schopenhauer, who tried to give a definition to the world in which we live.
The first definition is optimistic, but the second is a pessimistic one. Leibniz says that our world is the best, most beautiful world, while Schopenhauer, on the contrary, believes that the world in which we live is horrible. I am more pessimistic, and I am closer to Schopenhauer's definition than Leibniz's, because the world in which we and our civilization are today, as one would say, look very pessimistic. There is no diversity, only division. The world, and above all Western civilization, is divided into strong and weak, into large nations and small, petty ones.
I would like to give an example that refers to my homeland, Macedonia, a small country that has been crushed by Brussels and Washington, this civilization of hatred and genocide of Macedonian identity, which was to change the original name of our country, which would mean abandoning our roots, our past and so on. And it is very, how shall I put it... What I am trying to say is that this civilization is not humane. This is the first time in Europe, after the genocides committed by this civilization all over the world, that it commits genocide on European soil, and Macedonia was its target. I want to emphasize this because it is especially important to characterize this civilization, which calls itself a civilization of democracy, but it is not.
There is a great Russian writer, Zinoviev, who lived in Germany for a long time, but returned to Russia, where he later died. He was a slave to the Stalinist era. Zinoviev said he had studied this civilization well because he had lived there in Europe for a long time. He said it was a totalitarian democracy, and that is true. This is true because it is an arrogant civilization. Montesquieu, the great French thinker, and writer who was leaning towards cosmopolitan views, said: “I happened to be born French, but above all I am a man, a follower of humanism," something that no longer exists today. There is another French phrase that is no longer relevant in the West today: “Equality, Liberty, Fraternity." It was this motto that gave birth to democracy in Europe, but it did not last long, and now it no longer exists.
Even if we talk about the war in Ukraine, between Russia and Ukraine. If we can, and actually we should, do some research on this conflict more closely, we will see that this is a war not only between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia and the West of Brussels and Washington, between Russia and NATO. In this terrible war the West has sacrificed Ukraine. That is why I think our world is very depressing. It can be divided into two poles: one pole is the West, America, and Europe — the rich, great countries like Germany, England, France, etc., the colonizing countries, which today also colonize the world, but in other forms: through banks, capital, etc. This is the civilization of capital. A German philosopher said that the man of the West is a man of one dimension only, a man who is only a consumer of material goods and that is all.
So, in the world and, in general, on our planet the Western civilization dominates, and Russia, unfortunately, does not belong to it. After all, this is land, this is civilization, which is quite suiting Europe. We see a division between Western civilization and the rest of the world: Russia, China, India, Africa, etc.
Thus, I adhere to a more pessimistic definition of the world, because, as Zinoviev said, and I have already quoted him, our world is but a civilization of totalitarian democracy. The world needs a change and a rebirth, we must return to the motto of the French revolution "Equality, Freedom, Fraternity", which related to the ancient Macedonians, including Alexander the Great, who founded a global state on the principles of love, equality, freedom, fraternity, etc. Today we are dealing with the Western civilization, a civilization of corporate powers, a globalization of corporatism, of capital, and not of humanity and love between peoples. And that is sad. That is it from my side.
