When the Berlin Wall fell a third of a century ago, the West, led by the United States, thought it had secured a great political victory. 

And so it had, in a way. But political victories are seldom complete, and the ghost of the Soviet Union has taken its revenge on the West by the increasing Sovietization of western life.

Worse than the unnecessary material deprivation of the Soviet way of life was the violence it did to people’s mentalities. The constant and inescapable propaganda was not intended to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate: for people under a Soviet-type regime had not merely to refrain from dissenting from propaganda lies, they had actively to assent to them. 

The less true the propaganda, therefore, and the more it diverged from everyday experience of life, the better, for then the humiliation would be all the more complete. A humiliated population, forced to assent constantly to lies, would be a passive, compliant one.  

The compliance had its limits, though it lasted a long time. In the final days of the Ceaușescu regime,  people had to queue for hours for a few moldy potatoes but were regaled on television with film of bumper crops. Ceaușescu, the Conducator, the Danube of Thought, was eventually overthrown, and the self-proclaimed Epoca de Aur, Golden Age, was over, but only after decades of misery.

On the face of it, this might seem to have little to do with the current situation in the West. Wait a moment, though: increasingly, applicants for posts to universities have to sign up to an ideology and to orthodoxies in which they may not, and probably do not, believe, or else they will not get the job that they want. 

Almost certainly, this makes them feel besmirched: and besmirched people are easy for management to control because they have already lost their probity. Once having compromised their beliefs, they might as well go on doing so, as Macbeth found that he might as well go on spilling blood.

The examples are legion. Here is part of the oath that the medical students of the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus are now expected to take, according to a group called Campus Reform:

With gratitude, we, the students of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Medical School Class of 2026, stand here today among our friends, families, peers, mentors, and communities who have supported us in reaching this milestone. Our institution is located on Dakota land. Today, many Indigenous people from throughout the state, including Dakota and Ojibwe, call the Twin Cities home; we also recognize this acknowledgment is not enough. 

We commit to uprooting the legacy and perpetuation of structural violence deeply embedded within the healthcare system. We recognize inequities built by past and present traumas rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism, and all forms of oppression. As we enter this profession with opportunity for growth, we commit to promoting a culture of anti-racism, listening, and amplifying voices for positive change. We pledge to honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine. Knowing that health is intimately connected to our environment, we commit to healing our planet and communities. 

We vow to embrace our role as community members and strive to embody cultural humility. We promise to continue restoring trust in the medical system and fulfilling our responsibilities as educators and advocates. We commit to collaborating with social, political, and additional systems to advance health equity.

The unctuous insincerity of this is obvious: what would be the response if the Dakota or Ojibwe turned up and claimed their land back? 

And why confine multicultural obeisance to other ways of healing to ethnic minorities? Why not display respect for our medical ancestors by returning to bleeding, purging, cupping, and operations without anesthetics?

Is it worse if all the medical students who intoned this Soviet-style rubbish believed it or didn’t believe it but intoned it nonetheless because not to have done so would put an end to their careers before they had begun? Neither horn of this dilemma is attractive.

The West is reaching North Korean levels of saturation by propaganda. Yesterday, while crossing the road at London, I noticed that the little green man who lit up on the traffic light when it was safe to cross had been replaced by the sign for non-binary gender. 

A friend of mine who is publishing a book about Africa has been forced by his publisher to capitalize the word Black, surely an unintentional but illuminating sign of what the publishers really think of Black people, namely that they are incapable of making their way in the world without such condescending gestures from omnipotent whites.

It is difficult not to conclude that, culturally, morally and intellectually, the Soviet Union won the Cold War, and its victory is becoming more apparent every day.