On Sunday, 29 December 2024, Croatia held presidential elections. The incumbent President Zoran Milanović won the first round in a landslide against the pro-globalist challenger Dragan Primorac. Primorac was strongly backed by the ruling party, the Croatian Democratic Union, led by the Prime Minister Andrej Plenković who has been a loyal supporter of NATO, US, UK and EU policies. In winning the Presidency, the ruling party would have captured all of Croatia’s key institutions of government.

(Another) Putin’s stooge wins

To push their candidate over the line the ruling establishment and the media relentlessly demonized President Milanović as Putin’s stooge and a pro-Russian player on account of his unwillingness to engage Croatian troops in NATO’s excellent adventures in Ukraine. Well, their cunning plan backfired spectacularly and Putin’s stooge won nearly 50% of the popular vote vs. less than 20% for the pro-freedom & democracy challenger. That’s about as close as it gets to a landslide in Croatian politics.

It would appear that, not only is there no appetite for the Empire and its military misadventures, but below the surface, the mood toward Russia is changing, and changing in a big way.

Ballet or twerking?

On Christmas eve, Milan’s La Scala theater gave the performance of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky‘s Nutcracker ballet. This wouldn’t seem exceptional: the ballet is a masterpiece and the music is among the most famous and most beautiful in our cultural heritage.

But barely three years ago, everyone across Europe was falling over themselves to cancel all things Russian, including the performances of Tchaikovsky’s music and university courses in Russian literature. Last week La Scala not only presented Tchaikovsky’s ballet, it did so based on Rudolf Nureyev‘s choreography and invited a Russian conductor, Valery Ovsyanikov of St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre to direct the orchestra. To boot, Italian national TV broadcast the whole performance.

I am not a ballet fan, but La Scala’s production was done so beautifully that I ended up watching a good chunk of it. The music, the scene, the costimography and the music were a feast for the eyes and I remained glued to the TV for a good half of the performance (otherwise I never watch TV anymore). It was a wholesome contrast to the twerking and other such lewd spectacles like the opening and closing ceremonies of Paris Olympics – the kind of demoralizing cultural poison we’ve come to expect in the West.

Are the countercurrents gathering?

I couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t something purposeful in La Scala’s choice of production and artists this Christmas: a deliberate and explicit rejection of the Western devious junk culture as well as the forced, mindless hostility against Russia. If so, it seems that the same cultural countercurrents seem to be gripping many nations as the recent elections in the United States, Slovakia, Romania, Georgia, Hungary, France, Germany, Croatia and Moldova have shown (yes, Moldova too).

It may be that in spite of the loud banging of the war-drums in mainstream media, and among our political class, very different currents are gathering below the surface. These currents might continue to gain strength; it’s what our ruling establishments like to label as Russia’s malign influence. More likely, the truth is that ordinary people got tired of the lies, hatred, hostility and the wars, as well as the intellectual and cultural junk food that’s become the pervasive staple among Western nations. This is a hopeful sign, because escalating the wars could prove difficult for the imperial establishment. What if peace starts to break out all over the place in 2025? It’s a worthwhile idea to pray for and struggle for.

This post was originally published on I-System TrendCompass on 31 December 2024.