From One Ben to Another
There is an awkward, somewhat unkempt Englishman named Ben who left Britain and moved east.
Hey, I’m not talking about me! There is another awkward, somewhat unkempt Englishman named Ben who left Britain and moved east.
The other Ben moved to Russia. He is posting about his life on YouTube.
Russian propaganda is anything but subtle. In fact, it is often completely incompetent. Russian propagandists have such little taste that they funded Dave Rubin and Tim Pool — perhaps the dimmest right-wing commentators in the West, and this is like being the most materialistic people in Dubai. (To be clear, there is no indication that Rubin or Pool knew that the money was coming from Russia.)
West-facing Russian influencers are far too blatantly opportunistic to be effective. Russian-American influencer “Sasha Meets Russia” spends her day posting things on X like “Real men travel to Russia” and “Someone needs to do a study on how being pro-Ukraine physically makes you look bad”. Even if one accepted her premise, isn’t there a book about trading one’s soul to maintain one’s youthful looks?
Indeed, you can look into the eyes of “Sasha Meets Russia” and see nothing but darkness. Behind her smile lurks a deep, profound nihilism — like a decaying building behind an opulent facade. She couldn’t see a cute kitten without posting, “WOW! RUSSIA HAS THE BEST KITTENS IN THE WORLD! NOT LIKE THOSE EVIL UKRAINIAN KITTENS!”
Ben, or “Ben the Brit” as he calls himself on YouTube, is something else entirely. I can’t help liking him.
Sometimes, Western commentators travel to Russia and report in an adulatory style that is either deeply cynical or incredibly stupid. Tucker Carlson, for example, visited Moscow and raved about the low, low prices in the supermarket — ignoring the fact that salaries are also a lot lower than in the West. You can buy real estate in Pakistan for very little money — you just wouldn’t want to actually live there.
You won’t get that from Ben the Brit. Sure, he kind of wants to indulge in the sort of “wow, it’s so much nicer here than in the West” rhetoric that Carlson or “Sasha Meets Russia” have traded in. One video finds him roaming the streets of Kursk at night — commenting on how much safer it is than Western cities. Look, I’m not about to disagree with the claim that Western cities are far more dangerous than they should be. They are. But you could film a similar video in London or Paris and have good odds of not finding any trouble — besides which, the homicide rate in Russia, while far lower than it used to be, is still higher than that of the UK or France.
Ben the Brit has a kind of instinctive honesty that kicks in at random, often humorous moments. There is a touch of E.L. Wisty to him. “One thing you need to know about Kursk, which is a bit of an interesting fact,” he says at one point, “Well, actually, [it’s] probably not interesting at all.” (He wants to say that Kursk has a lot of shopping centres. Your sceptical impulse was correct, Ben.)
“That’s what I love,” he says, commenting on the way that people feed homeless cats, “I like to see people looking after the stray animals here … Apart from the dogs.” His asides can be fascinating in their elliptical nature. Does he mean that people don’t look after stray dogs or that he doesn’t like to see people looking after them?
In another video, Ben reflects on the highs and lows of his time in Russia. He likes how the locals can be cold on the outside but warm on the inside, while Britons can be the other way around. (This is something that I also like about Poles.) He appreciates how safe it is. (Where did this guy live in England? Newham? Angell Town?)
He finds it beautiful. In my opinion, it looks pretty bleak — all crumbling tower blocks and desolate parks. It’s a common feature of pro-Russian influencers that they will rave about the most nondescript places as if they are among the Seven Wonders of the World. I’m not going to mock someone for finding beauty in their hometown, though. I’m biased too. For me, a desolate park in Kursk is a desolate park but a desolate park in Upper Silesia has deep poetic qualities.
Still, there’s a poignancy to Ben. “Look at the wonderful view I have sitting here,” he says, gazing across a shabby waterfront, “There are other spaces for friends … if I had any.” At this point, I wanted to buy Ben a kvass. I had a pretty lonely time in Poland for my first months here — all the lonelier as someone who had come from abroad. I’m just not sure why Ben chose to live in a country that is about as much at odds with his motherland as a country can be without him being considered a defector.
He talks about the negatives of life in Russia with enough frankness that I worry about him. (If his latest video hadn’t gone semi-viral already, I wouldn’t have drawn attention to his channel.) Prices are too high compared to local salaries. Bureaucracy is frustrating. The country is no bastion of traditional values. (Nowhere is a bastion of traditional values, and it’s futile to hope for one, but I digress …)
He still likes it — and I’m sure that life in Russia can be good. In fact, I know it can be. My sister lived there for years and she had a nice time. Its virtues and its vices — in domestic terms — are unexceptional.
But that’s the point. Putin and his comrades, and their propagandists, want to portray Russia as being some sort of civilisational stronghold — a mighty fortress of traditional virtues. There are different ways to respond to this. People who think the Russian government is some sort of alternative to a disloyal cosmopolitan Western elite have to explain why it is sending North Koreans, Indians and Africans to massacre Europeans. People who think it is a beacon of traditional Christianity have to explain its almost world-leading divorce rates (as well as the whole “killing innocent people” thing).
But there is also the fact that life in Russia is, well — quite a lot like life in other places. Very little of it resembles the sort of picturesque scenes in front of which “Sasha Meets Russia” takes her dead-eyed selfies. It’s a bit run-down. You have to work hard to get by. There are some nice places for spending time with friends and family — if you’re lucky enough to have them. People can use this as a platform for developing their interests, and their ambitions, and their beliefs. But you don’t want to get eviscerated by a drone for it unless there is no option.
I don’t know Ben the Brit, so I don’t really know what he’s like, but he doesn’t seem to have much in common with an oikophobic sociopath like his fellow British expat in Russia Graham Phillips. Come and live in Russia if you like Russian culture, he says, but not if you’re driven by a “hypothetical political persuasion”. It would be a fine message in better times, but I’m not sure that he’ll be able to avoid politics.
One book that hasn't been written yet but I'd love to read would be something about the everyday lives of the Cambridge Five in the USSR. Like, how Philby reacts to seeing his first Moskvitch in the wild. I think I'd find Philby the most sympathetic, Burgess the most insufferable and I'd hate Maclean the most because he seems too much like me (an A+ student, learns Russian right away, volunteers for the most arduous bureaucratic work).