Author : Zaza Bibilashvili
The eighth issue of the New Iveria magazine was supposed to be published shortly after the 26 October parliamentary elections, but the preparation and publication of the issue was considerably delayed. The reason is easy to guess: After the special operation called “Elections”—the main lesson of which was that Russia will not lose control over Georgia and will not give up by vote what it achieved through elections 13 years ago—all routine has ended and a new era has begun in Georgia. An era of general awakening, an era of understanding and realization, and sometimes even admission of our own mistakes. After the Ivanishvili regime’s effective rejection of Georgia’s integration into the European Union on 28 November, which shattered everyone’s illusions about the goals and motives of “Georgian Dream”, the life of Georgian society turned into a continuous force majeure. Constant, anxiety, struggle, confusion, thoughts about history revived and vague future... In this situation, who has time to write long texts or time to read them?
100 years after the 1921 Russian invasion and occupation, the moment has come again when intellectual struggle for freedom—yes, for freedom, not for European integration or simply for “new elections“—must be replaced by physical struggle. It is impossible not to recall the episode in our history when the great Ivane Javakhishvili urged his students to put aside their books and take up arms to defend their homeland.
Unexpectedly even for realists, we have found ourselves in a situation where thoughts and emotions are conveyed not in sentences but in interjections. As one conscientious Georgian intellectual said after witnessing such a blatant injustice: “Today all decent Georgians are cursing.” Indeed, everything has become so obvious that conventional rules no longer seem to apply. It is as if argument has lost its meaning when rational thought is confronted with the cynical propaganda of the post-truth era - propaganda, which repeats the same memorized nonsense despite all kinds of counter-arguments, examples and basic common sense.
But before that… before that, there was the vast spectacle of political and civic dishonesty, as party, media, and civil society “elites” orchestrated campaigns—complete with sponsored videos and voice-overs from omniscient figures—convincing us that political fragmentation was preferable to unity for a common cause (even though, as they assured us, this was not an ordinary election but a referendum). They insisted it was “impossible for the regime to rig” elections, unwittingly doing the regime’s work… What grounds did they have for such an assertion? What grounds did they have to think they could start thinking about dividing the skin of an unkilled bear?
None. Absolutely none!
When an ordinary citizen raised this concern (I understand that the voices of ordinary people do not always reach the lofty heights of the “elites“—especially when the latter rely on “research” and “polls”, dismissing the value of an ordinary citizen’s knowledge of history and ethnopsychology), the response was: Well, should we tell the people that the elections will be falsified?
Am I the only one who sees the intellectual dishonesty in this answer? No, one shouldn’t tell people that the elections will be rigged! But one also shouldn’t tell them that they can’t be falsified—that’s a lie from the outset. Unless, of course, someone genuinely believes that, in which case they’ve completly lost their grip on reality and don’t deserve a serious role in this existential fight….
As one, not-so-popular, American politician said two decades ago, if there is even a one percent chance that something bad can happen, we should act as if it will. Besides, it is the duty of any responsible person—especially the one with a claims to tule the country—to prepare for the worst-case scenario, and to have a „Plan B“ for every eventuality. What we witnessed was utter unpreparedness—at best, criminal incompetence—for which no one has taken responsibility to this day. The CEC Chairman and his handlers in the State Security Service or the ruling party must have been laughing hard watching this spectacle unfold (let us also note that Georgia is now effectively under a one-party dictatorship—thus, when we speak of “the party”, there is only one party which is means, while the remnants of other political parties remain in a state of denial about this reality).
Then came the ruthless raids and the systematic torture of hundreds of protesters—exposing the absurdity of the regime’s propaganda about being somehow better than the previous government. That government had used force to disperse protests only twice during its 9 years in office, whereas Ivanishvili’s Zonder brigades sometimes staged several brutal, spectacular crackdowns in a single day. This was followed by the rushed adoption of a cascade of authoritarian laws by the self-proclaimed parliament, the appointment—by Ivanishvili—of a former footballer as president, a man utterly unfit for the role in terms of education, intellect or personal qualities, chosen solely to further humiliate and isolate the Georgian state. Then came the full-scale deployment of newly introduced repressive sanctions to intimidate citizens and economically cripple them, accompanied by cynical, Russian-style propaganda…
When people finally took a breath and regained some emotional readiness to write about all this, the world was confronted with an even greater and potentially catastrophic threat. To avoid accusations of bias, I will note here that I did not utter a single critical word about Donald Trump before his inauguration. My criticism began only when his cascade of reckless rhetoric and actions directly threatened the global order. After all, isn’t the blatant violation of international law, suggesting that Canada should become a U.S. state, Greenland will be American territory, the Panama Canal should be reclaimed, and 2 million people should be deported from Gaza without the right to return, precisely what Russia desires? The morally and pragmatically incomprehensible stance on Russian aggression, culminating in a UN vote against Ukraine, alongside Russia, Belarus, and North Korea, is beyond any reasonable justification. Equally inexplicable is the alienation of all traditional allies, effectively amounting to the voluntary surrender of American soft power. Meeting with Russia in Saudi Arabia while deliberately ignoring Europe and excluding Ukraine from the negotiations was yet another step in this pattern. In these very talks, the message was clear: Ukraine should forget about its “old borders” (what exactly does “old borders” mean?), NATO membership is no longer on the table, and the only so-called peace plan is to remove President Zelensky through elections—eliminating this inconvenient figure to then settle with Putin.
What does America gain by pursuing a policy of unilateral concessions and sharing all the aggressor’s key demands before negotiations even begin? Doesn’t such an attitude contradict all the ideals America always stood for? Doesn’t this situation speak not of the restored greatness of America, but of the weakness and foreign policy incompetence of the Trump administration?
The foundation of America as a beacon of liberty was laid by Thomas Paine’s landmark pamphlet “Common Sense”. Today, 250 years after the publication of that pamphlet, in the age of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s showmanship, social media and the post-truth epoch, we are frighteningly close to the end of common sense. And if that happens, it will not be the golden age of America (as Trump proclaims), but rather the end of the American century and the collapse of the post-World War II Western order.
Events are unfolding rapidly. The topic of elections was overshadowed long ago, and the so-called foreign agent law has already been replaced by an even more draconian version (under a dictatorship, even the mechanical copying of democratic legislation becomes a tool of oppression). Meanwhile, Georgian Dream now speaks to us through a Russian propaganda playbook. It is impossible to ignore the fact that Igor Giorgadze—the KGB general accused of international terrorism—and oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, along with the occupier’s Deputy Foreign Minister and “Prime Minister” Irakli Kobakhidze, are all parroting the exact same rhetoric about the occupied territories. Against this backdrop, political parties teeter on the brink of extinction, freedom of speech and expression is being dismantled, and under the new legislation, every patriotic Georgian is a potential prisoner.
In this situation, to even think about local elections is extremely inadequate. Today Georgia has lost not only the prospect of European integration, but also state independence. The country has effectively become part of the Russian world... Many say that time is running out. Fatalists even say that time has already expired. But let’s not be apocalyptic and remember what Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during her visit to Kyiv in February:
“Heroes always win at the end. If they aren’t winning, then it’s not the end.”
