Communists believe that their most dangerous enemy is Social Democracy. When they speak of 'Fascists' they don't mean guys like Hitler or Mussolini- with whom they would have happily done a deal with- they mean left-liberal politicians who believe in the Rule of Law. Jason Stanley, though a mere Philosophy Professor not an international gangster, like Vladimir Putin, calls those he attacks 'Fascists' or 'Nazis. He pretends, in a recent Guardian article, that Putin is not a gangster. Nazism is a genuine threat just as, if Putin chooses to attack Romania, Count Dracula remains a clear and present danger to the Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Jason writes-
When Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at dawn on Thursday, he justified the “special military operation” as having the goal to “denazify” Ukraine. The justification is not tenable, but it would be a mistake simply to dismiss it.
It would be a mistake to entertain it for even a single second. Putin and his goons had gotten lazy. They had previously had some success in claiming that Russian speakers were being discriminated against in Ukraine. Furthermore, a Jewish oligarch who backed Zelenskyy had got into trouble for fraud in the US, so there was an anti-Semitic type of slur ready at hand. It should also be admitted that the Russian intellectual diaspora shared a type of Nationalist mania which made Ukraine essential to Russian identity. Thus Putin had quite a good hand but the laziness and stupidity of his propagandists threw away this advantage. I suppose Putin- like the CIA- expected Ukraine to collapse. Kiev would be captured. Zelenskyy would flee. Perhaps there would have been some sort of rigged referendum. Perhaps Putin was banking on some Ukrainian oligarchs switching sides or else that his goons would get control of some militia/gangster networks.
Vladimir Putin is himself a fascist autocrat, one who imprisons democratic opposition leaders and critics. He is the acknowledged leader of the global far right, which looks increasingly like a global fascist movement.
This is nonsense. Putin is the ally of Communist China. He has some crazy ideology re. 'passionarity' which Turkic and Russian people have but which Western Europeans lack. This fits with China's vision of a Eurasia united under its leadership. There are no significant Fascist movements anywhere because there is no danger of a Communist insurrection. On the other hand crazy militias could arise in some countries very quickly. But, as we learnt during the Nineties, this is more likely in ex-Socialist Utopias like Yugoslavia. There are significant ethnic tensions in some East European countries. But Nationalism is not necessarily Fascist. Indeed, during the Second World War, Nationalism was a feature of much anti-Fascism. It should be remembered that there was a Fascist aspect to ideas about a European super-state which, after the War, was espoused by people like Oswald Moseley.
Ukraine does have a far-right movement, and its armed defenders include the Azov battalion, a far-right nationalist militia group.
But this group is against both Fascism and Communism for very good historical reasons. We must admit that it has showed valor and skill in defending Ukrainian territory.
But no democratic country is free of far-right nationalist groups, including the United States. In the 2019 election, the Ukrainian far right was humiliated, receiving only 2% of the vote. This is far less support than far-right parties receive across western Europe, including inarguably democratic countries such as France and Germany.
Putin can't afford to let democracy raise up the Ukrainian people as it has lifted up the Polish and Hungarian and Estonian and other people. For China, the question is whether a Eurasian bloc can prevent the emergence of a European defense Force able to act independently of the US. After all, America can always retreat into splendid isolation. However, if regional security is seen to work then dominance in Eurasia won't be any great prize. It will be what Stalin had. But Stalin's system only worked by stealing technology. Ultimately it collapsed.
Ukraine is a democratic country, whose popular president was elected, in a free and fair election, with over 70% of the vote. That president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is Jewish, and comes from a family partially wiped out in the Nazi Holocaust.
Plenty of Communists fit that description. But Zelenskyy is a democrat.
Putin’s claim that Russia is invading Ukraine to denazify it is therefore absurd on its face.
Just as Stanley's claim that everybody he doesn't like is a Nazi is prima facie absurd.
But understanding why Putin justifies the invasion of democratic Ukraine in this way sheds important light on what is happening not only in eastern Europe, but worldwide.
No. Understanding that the guy is a corrupt, incompetent, fool is what is important.
Fascism is a cult of the leader,
Not necessarily. Franco was plenty Fascist. Salazar could be described as fascist. But they lacked charisma. The fact is had Hitler and Musso not started unwinnable wars, they would have grown old and their 'personality cult' would have faded. Bureaucracy survives what charisma may have initiated.
who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by ethnic or religious minorities, liberals, feminists, immigrants, and homosexuals.
Which leader does not promise 'national restoration'? Who says 'vote for me and homosexuals from minority groups will sodomize us in the streets while feminists and liberals and immigrants watch approvingly while munching pop-corn?' Okay. Maybe Biden did promise this and I didn't notice. Nobody really listens when that old fart drones on.
The fascist leader claims the nation has been humiliated and its masculinity threatened by these forces.
Very true. Hitler didn't speak of a 'stab in the back' or his dream of vast colonies in Eastern Europe for German settlement, he said Jews were causing his penis to shrink. Also large numbers of African gentlemen were constantly humiliating him by inserting their penises into his rectum. 'If it can happen to me' Hitler would say, tears streaming down his cheeks, 'It could easily happen to you. Please join the SS so that you can defend yourself from shrinking penises caused by Jewish financiers and incessant sodomy performed by African gentlemen'.
It must regain its former glory (and often its former territory) with violence.
As opposed to regaining its former glory by taking it up the ass from large numbers of African gentlemen while Jewish financiers orchestrated the shrinking of penises.
He offers himself as the only one who can restore it.
Politicians say 'vote for me, not the other dude. Only I can restore things to the way the ought to be.' Jason thinks this very strange behavior.
Central to European fascism is the idea that it is the Jews who are the agents of moral decay.
No. Mussolini was central to fascism but he didn't start off as anti-Semitic though some have suggested that nastiness was always latent in him. What was central to European fascism was hatred of the Reds who were slaughtering millions in Russia.
According to European fascism, it is the Jews who bring a country under the domination of (Jewish) global elite,
This theory was put forward long before any Fascist party existed. It existed in Catholicism but also on the Left as 'the Socialism of Fools'.
by using the tools of liberal democracy, secular humanism, feminism and gay rights, which are used to introduce decadence, weakness and impurity.
because penises start to shrink and you suddenly find lots of African gentlemen are taking turns wrecking your rectum.
Fascist antisemitism is racial rather than religious in origin,
unless it is religious in origin. Franco made the Virgin Mary the Captain General of his Army. He also upheld the Hispanic and Portuguese notion that the blending of races was a salutary thing. Germany had some 'Aryanist' craziness which the Italians didn't have much time for.
targeting Jews as a corrupt stateless race who seek global domination.
This was very much a Tzarist idea. The Russian secret police published and disseminated the notorious 'protocols of the Elders of Zion'. After the First World War, some White Russian and Baltic Germans were active in the Far Right in Germany. Hitler was influenced by some such.
The truth is Christianity- both Catholic and Lutheran- has often been the worst enemy of the Jews precisely because Christ was a learned Rabbi in the Mussar ethical tradition. On the other hand, it must be admitted, Christians have been their own worst enemies. Strangely the Hindus and Confucians have never killed their own for theological reasons. But then neither has Christianity or Islam in those vast countries save when Europeans got involved.
Fascism justifies its violence by offering to protect a supposedly pure religious and national identity from the forces of liberalism.
Liberalism was no threat. It was fear of Communism that caused industrialists to fund Fascism.
In the west, fascism presents itself as the defender of European Christianity against these forces,
This is foolish. European Christianity defends European Christianity. Indeed, it launched plenty of Crusades and spread its own doctrine to distant continents using gunpowder and steel.
as well as mass Muslim migration.
Like peeps who don't like Muslims don't harbor an equal or greater hatred for Hindus, Sikhs, Confucians not to mention the fucking Belgians.
Fascism in the west is thus increasingly hard to distinguish from Christian nationalism.
If you are as big a cretin as Jason- sure.
Putin, the leader of Russian Christian nationalism,
says a non-Russian non-Christian who is as stupid as shit
has come to view himself as the global leader of Christian nationalism,
Jason is a mind reader. But he won't read my mind to find out what I think of him. Sad.
and is increasingly regarded as such by Christian nationalists around the world, including in the United States.
Ukraine, of course, has no Christian nationalists. The people there practice Zen Buddhism in between fighting off Putin's troops.
Putin has emerged as a leader of this movement in part because of the global reach of recent Russian fascist thinkers such as Alexander Dugin
who is as stupid as Jason
and Alexander Prokhanov
who could write quite well but who was clearly several kopek short of a rouble.
who laid its groundwork.
Putin's brains may have turned to mush but the guy is all about the money. Real Estate is valuable because God isn't making any more of it. Fascism is for fools.
It is easy to recognize, in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the roadmap laid out in recent years by Dugin and Prokhanov, major figures in Putin’s Russia.
Only because Putin's strategy is to have no fucking major figures in Russia. Crazy nutjobs are fine.
Both Dugin and Prokhanov viewed an independent Ukraine as an existential threat to their goal, which Timothy Snyder, in his 2018 book The Road to Unfreedom, describes as “a desire for the return of Soviet power in fascist form”.
The problem here is that all sorts of Russian dissidents shared this obsession with Ukraine. Joseph Brodsky was Jewish and anti-Soviet. But he greeted Ukrainian independence with a venomous poem which, thankfully for his reputation, was never published.
The form of Russian fascism Dugin and Prokhanov defended is like the central versions of European fascism – explicitly antisemitic.
Stalin was plenty anti-semitic. If he hadn't died, the 'Doctor's plot' would have led to a genocide of Russian Jews.
As Snyder writes, “… if Prokhanov had a core belief, it was the endless struggle of the empty and abstract sea-people against the hearty and righteous land-people. Like Adolf Hitler, Prokhanov blamed world Jewry for inventing the ideas that enslaved his homeland. He also blamed them for the Holocaust.”
In the Nineties some Jews rose up in private enterprise and, for a brief period, supported a more liberal type of mass media. Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky are representative figures. Both were plundered by Putin's cronies and had to escape from Russia. Gusinsky, it must be said, appointed himself the head of the 'World Jewish Congress' which I resented because I'm the President of the 'Galactic Jewish Congress and falafel stall'.
The dominant version of antisemitism alive in parts of eastern Europe today is that Jews
are like Gypsies. They are of Asian origin. Did you know Muslims don't eat pork? Thus, they are no better than Jews. As for the fucking Belgians- don't get me started.
employ the Holocaust to seize the victimhood narrative from the “real” victims of the Nazis, who are Russian Christians (or other non-Jewish eastern Europeans). Those who embrace Russian Christian nationalist ideology will be especially susceptible to this strain of antisemitism.
Very true. Jeremy Corbyn is clearly a Russian Christian Nationalist. The plain fact is that Jews didn't talk much about the Holocaust till Israel started kicking ass and taking names. Why put ideas into other people's heads? Pretend that Hitler set up nice Holiday Camps coz he lurved Jews. Only if Israel can send Mossad teams to capture Eichmanns or assassinate terrorists, should you bring up the subject. But the thing can be overdone. The fact is I lost my mother at Dachau. I don't make a big song and dance about it not because Mum turned up soon enough- indeed, she claimed it was Dad and me who had wandered off- but because as a Russian Christian nationalist I'm above that sort of thing.
With this background, we can understand why Putin chose the actions he did,
Fuck off! Putin and his buddies are about grabbing money and real estate and buying lots of Super-Yachts.
as well as the words he used to justify them.
Stupidity causes him to use the stupidest possible words to justify his greed.
Ukraine has always been the primary target of those who seek to restore “Soviet power in fascist form”.
Or Tzarist power in Tzarist form. The truth is Ukraine is beautiful, fertile, and has talented and hardworking people. Why not grab it, if you can?
Echoing familiar fascist antisemitic tropes, in a 2021 article, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev denounced Zelenskiy as disgusting, corrupt and faithless. The free democratic election of a Jewish president confirms in the fascist mind that the fascist bogeyman of liberal democracy as a tool for global Jewish domination is real.
The problem with Zelenskyy is that he is a Russian speaker- a very good one at that. This gives the lie to the notion that Russian speakers want to separate from Ukraine. Still, the fact that the President and Prime Minister of Ukraine are Jewish does cause people like Pakistan's 'Im the Dim' to go running to Moscow to congratulate Putin on his despicable act. This is like Iqbal fawning over Mussolini at the same time that the Italians were massacring Senussis in Libya.
By claiming that the aim of the invasion is to “denazify” Ukraine, Putin
is doing exactly the same thing as Jason Stanley who describes anybody he doesn't like as a Nazi. Yet, the fact is, Stalin hated Jews and, with Allied help, did actually 'denazify' Ukraine and Poland and so forth. After that he called a lot of Ukrainians and Hungarians and Poles and was just getting started on his own Jews before he finally dropped dead.
Communists have always called Social Democrats Nazi. I recall the pro-Albanian Marxist-Leninist General Secretary of the LSE Student's Union denouncing Ralf Dahrendorf as a Nazi in 1979. He was a a nice Hindu boy named Krish Maharaj from Trinidad. Since I am 'asli desi', I would say to him 'Maharaj, why you is praising this German fallow by saying he is devotee of Netaji Shubash's great admirer, Hitlerji? I yam telling you this filthy fallow is Liberal like Jeremy Thorpe! He is promoting putting of pee pee in chee chee place! Why you are condoning?' The Marxists decided I was too stupid to be recruited. They suggested I attend Amartya Sen's Social Choice lectures instead.
appeals to the myths of contemporary eastern European antisemitism –
on which Jason being American is naturally an expert
that a global cabal of Jews were (and are) the real agents of violence against Russian Christians and the real victims of the Nazis were not the Jews, but rather this group.
Being a victim sucks. Only after Israel beat the fuck out of the Arabs did it become safe or salutary to mention the Holocaust. If you are weak don't advertise your sorrows. Others may want to get in on the act.
Russian Christians are targets of a conspiracy by a global elite,
Actually, some Americans did publish articles saying that it was the homosexuals who were painting Putin as the bad guy! Crazy is no nation's monopoly.
who, using the vocabulary of liberal democracy and human rights, attack the Christian faith and the Russian nation.
Also they are causing our dicks to shrink.
Putin’s propaganda is not aimed at an obviously skeptical west, but rather appeals domestically to this strain of Christian nationalism.
What strain is Jason appealing to?
There are broader morals here.
People who describe those they don't like as Nazis have shit for brains. They will fuck up sooner or later.
The attack on liberal democracy in the west comes from a global fascist movement,
No. It comes from peeps who are getting shit in return for their tax dollars.
whose center is Christian nationalism.
But Christ was a great Rabbi from the Jewish Nation. Surely, there is something in his Gospel which all can benefit by? There is nothing wrong with Christian nationalism because many Nations rose above tribalism only through conversion to Christianity. But Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany were anti-clerical.
It will be hard to disentangle this movement from antisemitism (albeit a version of antisemitism that allies with forces pushing for a Jewish nationalist state in Israel).
It was Jason who did the 'tangling'. We don't need to disentangle his stupid shit.
Unsurprisingly, proponents of the view that a Christian nation needs protection and defense against
a military invasion or political subversion financed by foreigners are perfectly sensible. By contrast nobody needs defending from vampires or mythical creatures like
liberalism, “globalism” and their supposed decadence,
which is causing dicks to shrink.
will be marshaled to their most violent actions when the faces of free, secular, tolerant liberal democracy prominently include Jewish ones.
France has had 6 Jewish Premiers since the Second World War. Nobody cares. Kreisky was Chancellor of Austria for 13 years. So what? Liberal Democracies- including India which has a microscopic Jewish population- have Jewish faces in their Parliaments and Cabinets because all we want from politicians is that they give us value for money on our tax dollar. On the other hand if cats were allowed to stand for election, I bet you this country would be ruled by Persians except when it was being ruled by Siamese. But hairless cats are gross. Still, anything would be better than BoJo.
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