A contemporary topic that can be connected to the poster Happiness is a Warm Club is Russia’s blaming of Ukraine for the current conflict between their two countries. In both scenarios, the oppressors attempt to justify their act of violence via dehumanizing their opposition, or another form of making the other seem ‘less’ than themselves. To start, our poster has the saying ‘Happiness is a Warm Club,’ the phrase in which had been popularized by The Beatles and essentially says that the usage of a gun ensures joy, then by replacing the ‘gun’ with ‘club’, being the weapon of choice for riot officers then, satirizes that the police find pleasure, or some kind of gratification, in beating the protesters for the BSU at San Francisco State at the time, the majority of which were part of minority groups. The phrase’s meaning is solidified by the officer in the poster having a rather snarky grin on their face, displaying sinister intent as they hold their club. Indeed, the authorities at these riots had built a narrative that these groups are somehow deserving of the harm from police on top of repression by even permitting the violence to begin with. No measures to mitigate injuries were taken. But this can be mapped to the modern conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

A similar structure exists in that conflict. To justify their invasion of Ukrainian land, Russia deploys several narratives built from of flawed, olden ideologies. Namely, the One People argument. This claims that Ukraine and Russia are historically and culturally one nation, which is meant to justify the need to take ground that Russia asserts truly belongs to them. This does have some merit in the shared histories between the two, namely their common descendance from Kyivan Rus’. However, this conflates historical relations between two peoples with modern identities. This isn’t the case, as seen with English, Scots and Irish, making this a flawed justification. Additionally, it oversimplifies the complex development of the two nations over the centuries and discounts the oppression of Ukrainians as a distinct people under Polish-Lithuanian and Soviet rule. One could also argue, due to the patriotism the Russian military cultivates via schemes like Yunarmiya, a military youth program, that the armed forces of Russia takes pleasure in their invasion of Ukraine, as the soldiers are taught to be particularly patriotic from a young age, and are to think that they’re fighting a truly evil enemy who has taken land from them, or perhaps rebels to an empire. Although, this is a harsh generalization and dehumanization of the force, one can see the underlying motivation in Russia’s constant need to make any narrative they can to make their violence seem rational.

To tie it together, the oppressing sides in both of the presented scenarios are attempting to justify their violence, and may even take some form of pride in their duties, the former scenario being very likely. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is but an example of this phenomenon repeating itself, and it can surely be extrapolated to a larger scale. The poster, though very relevant for the time, was really much bigger than the specific instances of government abuse at San Francisco State, and is relevant on a geopolitical scale. The message behind the poster holds up well, it’s like a message to all those who have faced oppressors in this manner that their oppressor likes the force, and the bloodshed fulfills a false agenda the oppressor clings to.

Works Cited