We live in a time of global darkness rising. Once again, like in earlier eras, imperialism kicks in the door to your home, invades your reality and says: what was yours before is mine now — your land, your freedom, your life …
On top of everything, it is also an era of mind-boggling cruelty. Sometimes, it is the cruelty of a person pressing a button and sending off another batch of deadly drones, distantly destroying hundreds of peaceful homes and thousands of peaceful lives.
“Death of one person is a tragedy; death of thousands is just statistics” — these words of Josef Stalin, a bloody dictator from the past (who is enjoying a comeback as well) could be a fitting motto of today.
But there is also a different, especially terrifying feature to our era: deliberate, sadistic, eye-to-eye kind of cruelty.
The proud one. Like the documented and internationally verified case of Russian occupiers invading a private home near Kyiv, killing the owner and gang-raping his wife for days — while their four-year-old child was weeping, locked in the next room.
Like the gruesome Russian video of a young Ukrainian prisoner being castrated that went viral in 2023.
Like proud social media postings of Russian soldiers executing Ukrainian prisoners on camera.
Like Ukrainian prisoners being deliberately starved in Russian detention camps.
These cases are endless. They are meticulously documented and filed for the purpose of future tribunals.
Yet one cannot help but ask the big-picture question: all this savagery — where does it come from? Wasn’t the 21st century supposed to be better than this?
To take Russia specifically — how can the nation of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky also be a nation of castrations and beheadings? Sadly, in Russia’s case, a lot can be explained by two poisons that have thoroughly permeated its national mind: imperialism and militarism.
Today’s Russia sees itself as the heir to the Russian Empire. Empires notoriously do not care about being nice or humane to others.
Africa knows this better than anyone. If you divide the world into those “who do as they wish” and “who suffer as they must”, you automatically think you are entitled to inflict pain on others. That is the prism through which today’s Russia looks at its neighbour, Ukraine.
If you saw Braveheart, the Russia-Ukraine relationship can be compared to how the English saw the Scots during colonial times: lowly peasants, the “pig breeders”, who refused to become part of the empire. Hence, in need of subjugation by brutal force.
On top of this, official propaganda has told Russians (and they have bought it) that Ukrainians are Nazis, satanists and paedophiles — essentially all bad things imaginable. Hence, whatever terrible thing is done to them is (a) well deserved, (b) in the name of God and (c) will not count in future. This last point is especially important.
Because — and here is another important thing about empires — they are deeply convinced that history is written by victors.
So even if you do something horrible today, tomorrow it will be forgotten or even celebrated and glorified, as long as you become victorious.
And because you are a “magnificent empire”, while the opposing side is nothing but lowly “pig breeders”, it is only a matter of time until victory is yours, bringing full and unconditional impunity, no matter how many people you have killed, tortured, raped and beheaded in the process.
Sadly, another key inspiration for the horrors of today is religion.
In 2010, the patriarch of Russian Orthodoxy, Kirill, famously said: “Kyiv is our Jerusalem.” These words explain much now — the zeal of the Russian church that eagerly co-created this war; the religious fanaticism of this new-era crusade; and the unimaginable treatment of Ukrainians as new-era “Saracens”.
While propaganda and the church legitimise cruelty, the daily cult of brutal force on TV gives it a sense of inevitability and even normality.
The prevailing leitmotif is: “Everybody does horrible things; we are just being honest about it, while others pretend to believe in chimeras of freedom and humanity.”
Or, as Russia’s chief propagandist Vladimir Soloviov bluntly put it: “War is a more normal state of things for a human than peace.”
So if you thought the Dark Ages were over, you were overly optimistic. A new Dark Ages era might be upon humankind: an age of cruelty, legitimised and often even encouraged by four authorities — politics, church, media and academia.
What can be done about this global rise of darkness?
First, to borrow a line from historian Timothy Snyder: “Do not obey in advance.”
Do not buy the notion of cruelty and lawlessness as something normal and inevitable. Because, aside from being gullible and merciless, people can be smart and kind.
They are inherently flawed but not necessarily rotten. The difference between autocracies and democracies is that the former believe in the bad in people, while the latter believe in the good in them.
That is why democracies empower people, while autocracies do not. That is why keeping faith in humanity is essential to holding ground in the face of global darkness.
The right thing to do would be for people and nations who do not accept the notion of war as the “normal state of things” to stand together and not allow this idea to divide them.
The rise of darkness indeed splits the world — but not into white and non-white, Europe and Africa, Global South and Global North.
It divides us into those who believe in humanity and those who feel entitled to do whatever they want.
Depending on how we act at this watershed moment — whether we “obey in advance” or resist — the 21st century will be either the “age of new empires” or the age of normal human behaviour: maybe flawed but not rotten.
Dr Olexander Scherba is the ambassador of Ukraine to South Africa.
The rise of darkness indeed splits the world … It divides us into those who believe in humanity and those who feel entitled to do whatever they want