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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Putin had also asked for ceasefire when he started losing. It is naive to think he won't use it as opportunity to regroup and attack again. Even the Nazis offered terms for ceasefire before to the West.
Putin could have stopped at Crimea when the West basically gave him the Munich moment, when they only gave the Russian president a slap on the wrist for annexing the peninsula despite others having demanded harder sanctions. But like Hitler, he wanted more. Don't try to enable another fascist by thinking the tears are not from a crocodile.
Edit: wording
There are so many differences between Nazi Germany and present-day Russia, between Putin and Hitler, and between this war and WW2. It's a great rhetoric tool for shutting down discussion though.
No matter how badly the war goes, no matter what the actual things that Russia says they want, no matter that Ukraine is destroyed and hundreds of thousands soldiers dead: They have to keep on fighting. Can't negotiate with Hitler! Can't trust anything they say! Have to keep on fighting until Putin is no more or everyone is dead, because, you know, HiTLeR!! Hitler is coming to kill us all and we need to fight to the death!
No need for analysis, no need for evidence. HITLER! Argument over.
Whether you admit it or not, Russia is a fascist state. I'm sure there were German versions of misinformed peaceniks and vatniks who implored the same to the Allies when Germany made overtures to them with fingers crossed behind their backs.
Let's look at some hallmarks of the Nazi regime and compare this to Russia, shall we?
Ethnonationalism? Russian nationalism is multi-ethnic, quite unlike Nazi ideology. The state-promoted Ukrainian Banderites, on the other hand, love to go on about the difference between white Europeans and "asiatic" Russian orcs.
Brownshirts? United Russia does not have a bunch of SA-like street thugs. But in Ukraine I've seen pictures of Right Sector & co that look exactly like that.
Anti-communism? Most types of communists are tolerated in Russia to some degree. Ukraine, on the other hand, has outlawed all left-wing parties and criminalized communist symbols.
War as a first resort? Putin was in power for 20 years before he started this alleged master plan of conquering half of Europe. Hitler always wanted to go to war, he wrote that shit down even before he came to power. Putin spent until 2008 trying to get along, then started pleading for Russian security interests to please please please not be ignored. In 2014 he signed the Minsk agreements, even though it would almost certainly have been easier for Russia to roll over Ukraine right then and there. In 2022 immediately started peace negotiations after invading. Clearly didn't even bring enough troops for a proper war. So no, war was clearly not plan A here.
Genocidal SS death squads trailing the front line and murdering whole villages? Hmm, no. In fact, the amount of civilians killed in Ukraine since Feb 2022 is pretty low for how much fighting is going on. Israel already killed more civilians in 4 weeks. The US invasion of Iraq was a lot worse, by comparison. This doesn't even come close to the organized mass murder of the Nazis.
Fascism comes in different forms and sizes. The Nazis are fascists but not all fascists are Nazis. One of the common misconception about fascism is thinking they value nationalism based on ethnicity alone, which is not the case. The original fascism of Mussolini tried to rally people under the greater Italian nationality. Mussolini did not care about ethnicities and did not care about persecuting the Jews as matter of fact. It was only later under Hitler's pressure that he did. After all, Mussolini was trying to recreate the Roman empire, a multicultural empire.
Similarly, Salazar's Estado Novo in Portugal would also be considered fascist but expected his subjects of other races and ethnicities to rally under the Portuguese identity. He was fervently anti-Nazi and disliked Hitler which is why Portugal benefited from the post-war NATO alliance and received tremendous Western economic aid.
One of the fascist value is rallying under common group heritage, whatever a fascist group deem it may be, but not necessarily under one ethnic identity. Putin basically demanded the same from Ukraine by writing a childish essay of his that Ukrainians and Russians are one people, denying the Ukrainian right to self-determination and distorting history. And there are multitudes of reports of Russians abducting Ukrainian children and sent to Russia. Not to mention the mass graves found a week after the initial invasion of Russia north of Kyiv. So, I don't know what you're talking about civilians weren't killed deliberately in huge numbers. Obviously you're consuming pro-Russian propaganda to claim "not many civilians died". Doesn't matter if there were Brownshirts or einsatzgruppen group alike that did those from the Russian side. The fact of the matter is that it happened in large scale.
There is a video explaining that Putinist Russia is basically a fascist state. Putin and many elites are inspired not by Alexander Dugin-- a fascist-- but by Ivan Ilyin, who is arguably a fascist adjacent, who himself was inspired by the idea from 19th century czarist Russia that the country is "eternally innocent". Many Russian intellectuals including Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy subscribed to it. This laid the groundwork to Russian ultranationalism and exceptionalism to pursue their own sphere of influence.
As for the usual pro-Russian rhetoric of Azov and the likes, there are fascists and neo-Nazis in all countries. It doesn't justify attacking invading another country. The Azov and other Ukrainian neo-Nazis were insignificant until Putin meddled in 2014, stoking tensions. Before 2014, ordinary Ukrainians and Russians get along quite well.
Putin could have just let the "Russian peacekeepers" he stationed, just before the invasion, to act as deterrent in Donbas and Luhansk to support the separatists. He said the soldiers are not there to invade; but he lied and invaded anyway. Putin's invasion would be like if Turkey invaded from Turkish-controlled northern Cyrus to invade the rest of Cyprus "to protect" Turks in the southern part of the island. Or, the Irish government invading Northern Ireland and the rest of UK under the excuse of protecting Irish Catholics (as a matter of fact, the Irish government did have a plan to invade Northern Ireland using the excuse to protect Irish Catholics in the North but did not act on it because, unlike Putin, it is a terrible idea).
Putin did not bring enough troops into the war, because the planning was made under the FSB and not the military who should know better (but then again, the Russian military hasn't done well even up to this point so even if they drew the invasion plan themselves, it may not have been any better). Russian soldiers did not even know they were going to invade. It was only Putin and his inner circle of yes-men who knew of the plan and thought it is a good idea to invade a country that historically dislike them. Deluding themselves that Ukrainians will welcome them with open arms which is why they planned things shoddily. That's how much Putin's circle think low of the Ukrainians; and that could not get anymore fascistic.
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video
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In your other comments you did specifically mention Hitler and Nazis, now you're "ok ok not Nazis more like some other fascist". Goal-post shifting much? Your logic was basically "Hitler won't stop and wants to conquer", but not every fascist set out for world conquest. Even if you conceded this is some kind of fascism, you need to actually analyze what the Russian goals actually are. Just going "that's just what fascists do" is not enough.
Btw I have heard all this stuff about Ilyin and Dugin or whatever before. This seems like pretty weak sauce to me, I'm sure you can find some influential fascist-ish writer or another in pretty much any liberal's bookshelf, especially a politician's. I suggest you try to play your game of "find the fascist influence" with Britain, or France, or the US.
The fact that you then dismiss state-funded and state-promoted Azov as "there are neo-Nazis in all countries" kinda makes it clear you don't really care about fascism, because no one who looks at this thinks this normal in any way, even for liberals. They declared Bandera a national hero in parliament already in 2010 or so, and that was before they outlawed all the left-wing parties. They put up statues and named streets after these people everywhere. Zelensky himself has done a bunch of photo ops with the Azovs (he even suprise-broadcast Azovs directly into the Greek parliament -- they were not happy). They took in full-throated Russian Neo-Nazis that had fled persecution, gave them a bunch Bradleys and other weapons, and told them to raid across the border in the north. The Ukrainian propaganda then celebrated this is as some massive win for all the world to see, and they do this shit in their propaganda all the time. Open fascist propaganda combined with massive repression of leftists.
But according to you, that's totally normal and not fascism, but I guess Putin might be influenced by some writer, and, to get back on point, that's why he's Hitler and you can't reason with him and we need to fight to the deeeaaath!
You know what actually reminds me of Hitler? It's this fucking death cult of fighting to the bitter end.
Like I said, not all fascists are Nazis. I always referred to Putin as fascist, not Nazi. There are overlaps among the fascists sub-groups but they're not identical. Mussolini was willing to oppose Hitler with annexing Austria before and side with the Allies but Mussolini found he had more use for allying with Hitler at the time (then we know how things ended up). Putin does things that mirror Hitler and the Nazis, but like the mirror image, it is still different. Nonetheless, not all fascists are the same, like democratic countries are not all the same either.
This is something many outsiders don't understand. Russians are first and foremost nationalists. They don't care what kind of government rules them so long as they could carve their own sphere of influence. They ascribe to what is called [Eurasianism] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasianism?wprov=sfla1). That's primarily the Russian foreign policy. There is a strong Russian exceptionalism. Even the liberal opponent of Putin, Alexey Navalny, is also a hard nationalist. Consider that Mikhail Gorbachev, who was friendly with the West and led the dissolution of the Soviet Union, still expressed concern of NATO expansion. One would have thought that the man who is more liberal would be open to embracing Western liberal values and possibly get the country to join NATO, still expressed concern of NATO expansion. That says a lot that Russia see themselves as their own power and that their realm is Eurasia, not identifying with the West or others.
Putin himself have used neo-Nazi groups to his own benefit. [There are plenty of those groups linked to Kremlin] (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-22/putins-fascists-russias-home-grown-neo-nazis/100927582), nevermind Putin cosying with and funding far-right political parties.
The Azov only sprouted in 2014 after Putin meddled and annexed Crimea. Had Putin not interfered, he would not have stoked Ukrainian nationalism. Ukraine and Russia were friendly before but Putin did not want Ukraine to join the EU, and possibly join NATO (by the way, NATO still did not admit Ukraine to the alliance despite what happened so Putin's fear of NATO expansion is delusional).
Even if that's the case, you don't invade another country. No one is saying to invade Saudi Arabia to "de-Wahabbisised" the country for radicalising Muslims across the world. Funny that Russian apologists ignore those analogies, don't they? I'm sure you'll ignore this as well.
Then I suggest you watch the video I linked. Putin and many other Russians regularly cite Ilyin more than Dugin.
Britain, France and US are not dominated by fascists so mentioning them doesn't make sense, unless Sunak, Biden and Macron proudly proclaim they are inspired by fascistic writers.
Going back to Putin. He is not going to let go of Ukraine. It's a geostrategically important country for Russian agenda. Not only is it resource-rich but it's Russia's vulnerable point because of the flatlands and close proximity to oil-rich Caucasus and access to the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean. And I also mentioned Putin writing an essay denying Ukrainian national identity so Ukraine is personal to him.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Not only is it resource-rich but it's Russia's vulnerable point because of the flatlands and close proximity to oil-rich Caucasus and access to the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Previously:
You compared Putin to Hitler and the Nazis, and explicitly drew your conclusions from this comparison. Maybe don't draw conclusions if the analogy is bad? But you did that not because it's a good analogy, but because it's a neat shortcut for dismissing any call for diplomacy without having to make a coherent argument.
That's not a response to my point about you downplaying fascism in Ukraine. Funding far-right groups in other countries is something liberals do all the time, just look at all the far-right parties, regimes and insurgents the US has supported over the years. But you're claiming the US isn't fascist, so you have to extend the same leeway to Russia here. Liberals support and work with fascists all the time.
What is exceptional is how Ukraine very openly supports and glorifies Azov "heroes", promotes fascist Banderite ideology, and criminalizes all left-wing parties and orgs. This is actually pretty weird for a liberal democracy, and you are pretending this is totally normal. Since you're not at all concerned about this, I conclude you're not opposed to fascism, you're just opposed to Russia. You used fascism (well, Nazis before you backtracked) as a shortcut argument for why Russia can't be talked to, without being able to substantiate what exactly is uniquely fascists about Russia (apart from I guess Ilyin, which you very well know nobody's going to read in order to find out, so that's more of a "trust me it's fascist and trust me Putin loves that shit"). And btw, I'm not going to watch a Kraut video, from what I gather he's a dipshit and I don't want to.
Even if we, for the sake of argument, pretend like Russia is fascist, it doesn't follow that they want to conquer Europe, will never stop, can't be reasoned with, will commit genocide if not stopped, or whatever. That's actually part of your Hitler analogy, and I already went over why that one is bad.
I never even fucking argued that Putin is fighting this war because he wants to denazify Ukraine, since I don't believe this. I'm pointing out this: You're making the argument that Putin must be opposed at all costs because he is a fascist in bad faith, since you downplay and excuse the very obvious fascism that infests the Ukrainian state, which you support. That fascism is a lot more obvious to me than the alleged Russian one.
Again, because Nazis and fascists are similar. They exalt their own group while dehumanising out groups. Putin is doing the same.
How hard is it understand you don't invade another country because for those reasons? Same way as it is wrong for US to invade or meddle another because a country elected a socialist government.
Moreover, Ukraine is far from being a Nazi state when they have a Jewish leader and the neo-Nazi parties in Ukraine only got measly 2% of the votes in the elections prior to the invasion. There are Nazis in Ukraine just like everywhere else. Austria also have a far right party ruling but you don't invade the country for it! Would you promote to invade Saudi Arabia for its Wahabbism? And just as I suspect, you ignored the analogies. You are definitely consuming Russian propaganda whether intentionally or not by keep whatabouting Azov.
Again more than likely, Putin stoked nationalist tensions to create pretext to invade Ukraine. He is an ex-KGB agent after all (but he did say there is no such thing as ex-KGB agent after all). Many authoritarian leaders do the same to make excuses to attack another.
I never said Putin wants Europe. He wants Ukraine because of its importance. Putin is not going to invade the rest of Europe. Why would he attack NATO Europe? He wants to extend Russian borders as far away as possible from the core regions around Moscow and to expand their own influence. That has always been the Russian strategy and having Ukraine within Russian orbit is critical to the Russian geopolitical ambitions.
I'm sure you would rather watch Russian propaganda dipshits and parrot what they say.
You brought up the Azov and Nazis in Ukraine as Putin's justifications, the usual whatabout. What else could you be implying? Putin must be opposed because he carries a dangerous precedence that invading another country for trumped up pretext is okay and the last 70 years of peace could be thrown away. It would set precedence to others that it is alright to dump the UN Charter to respect national borders and invade another country. It's like being back to the days before World War II with Wild West-style international relations. Putin may not invade Europe and only stop at Ukraine, but his actions will influence others with far-reaching consequences.