In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine many in the West described Putin as crazy. Yet for 30 years, Putin repeatedly claimed in his speeches that Russia and Ukraine were ‘one people’. When it comes to China and Taiwan it can seem that Westerners are making a similar mistake of not listening to what Xi Jinping is actually saying. So why are we so reluctant to take foreign adversaries at their word? What is it that prevents us from entertaining their perceptive on the world, however “crazy” it might seem to us? Are we worried that acknowledging a different way of thinking will put into question our own? At HowTheLightGetsIn festival London 2022, Peter Hitchens, Paul Mason, and Bhavna Davé debated why the West refuses to really understand its adversaries.

It’s fair to say that in the West we have become rather cynical about our politicians. We are used to them saying one thing, and then doing another. Bold statements about policy and vision before elections might rally the crowds, but few are surprised when those are not followed through. The question is, are we making a mistake when we apply the same thinking to leaders very different from those of Western liberal democracies?

The truth is, few people pay proper attention to what foreign leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping say anyway. When was the last time you listened to a speech by either? But even when the media pays attention to something alarming a foreign authoritarian leader has said, we tend to do one of two things: either dismiss their statements as bluster and rhetoric or explain them away as the words of madmen who have lost all contact with reality. Neither attitude is helpful when trying to predict what will happen next on the world stage.

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In a recent debate entitled “The Fantasies of the West” that took place at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in London’s Hampstead Heath, two of the UK’s most outspoken columnists, Peter Hitchens on the right (the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens), Paul Mason on the left, author of How to Stop Fascism, together with international politics academic Bhavna Davé, debated whether we should be making more of an effort to really understand the perspective of our adversaries. The worry often seems to be that if we do so, we are in danger of recognising the relativity of our own perspective: they see the world one way, we see the world a different way - who’s to say who’s right? But the alternative seems even more dangerous: living in a collective delusion where all our adversaries are evil, irrational, mad, and therefore totally unpredictable.

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Xi Jinping is still wedded to a Marxist ideology, and even though Mason is a self-described Marxist he recognises a dark, dangerous element in Xi’s thinking.

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