JRL NEWSWATCH: “A dark state; Vladimir Putin is in thrall to a distinctive brand of Russian fascism; That is why his country is such a threat to Ukraine, the West and his own people” – The Economist

Vladimir Putin file photo, adapted from screenshot of video at shareamerica.gov

“… A decade ago [when][] Putin’s popularity began to wane[] [h]e … [started] drawing on … fascist thinking … caught up in a cycle of grievance and resentment that has left reason far behind. … culminat[ing] in a ruinous war that … defied the weighing of risks and rewards. … Without the rhetoric of victimhood and the use of violence, […]

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Nicolai Petro: “New book by Marlene Laruelle [‘Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West’]”

File Photo of Kremlin Aerial View, adapted from .gov source

Subject: New book by Marlene Laruelle Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2021 From: Nicolai Petro <npetro@uri.edu> Dear David, I think JRL readers would be interested to learn about Marlene Laruelle’s new book. Here is an excerpt from the Cornell web page: Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West by Marlene Laruelle | Hardcover | Cornell University Press Publication date: 03/15/2021 […]

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Is Russia Really “Fascist”? A Comment on Timothy Snyder

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

(PONARS Eurasia – PONARS Policy Memo – Marlene Laruelle – September 5, 2018 – ponarseurasia.org/memo/russia-really-fascist-reply-timothy-snyder) Marlene Laruelle is Research Professor, Associate Director of IERES, Director of the Central Asia Program, and Co-Director of PONARS Eurasia at The George Washington University. Over the past decade, and even more overtly since the annexation of Crimea, there has been a growing tendency to […]

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Fascism Remains a Greater Threat in Russia than in the U.S., Mitrokhin Says

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 14, 2017) The clashes in Charlottesville have raised the specter of the rise of fascism in the United States, but Yabloko leader Sergey Mitrokhin says that while Donald Trump has unleashed these forces and Vladimir Putin currently is trying to control them, fascism remains a far greater threat in Russia than […]

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Russians Want Fascism but Don’t Yet Have the Leader Full-Blown Fascism Requires, Ikhlov Says

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, December 19, 2016) Russians, polls suggest, would like to see Russia become a fascist state but it lacks one necessary ingredient, a genuinely fascist-type leader, Yevgeny Ikhlov says. As a result, it and they may be saved not by legal structures which unfortunately Russia does not yet have but rather by the […]

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NEWSWATCH: “Beware: The #Russian bear is getting bolder” – Washington Post

Europe Map

… In #NATO member #Hungary, #Russian agents have been fingered for training with a #neoNazi militia; in … #Monte­negro … on the verge of joining the transatlantic alliance, #Moscow is accused of plotting a violent #coup. … In Hungary … [there was] a gunfight … between police and the leader of the National Front movement …. Police … discovered large […]

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NEWSWATCH: “Russia’s flirtation with fascism: Putinism is real, but fleeting” – The Daily Star (Lebanon)/Vladislav Inozemtsev

Kremlin and River

Assessing the Russian political system, Vladislav Inozemtsev writes in Lebanon’s The Daily Star that: … the Russian system should be characterized as proto-fascist – tamer than European fascist states during the 1920s and 1930s, but still featuring key elements …. the structure of Russia’s political economy; the idealization of the state as a source of moral authority; and … international […]

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Many Fear Real Elections Will Bring Fascism to Russia But Their Absence Helps It Rise, Piontkovsky Says

Arm and Torso of Person in Brown Sweater Placing Paper Ballot into Ballot Box

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, May 21, 2016) Both before the 1917 revolution and since 1991, Russian liberals and their foreign backers have often feared that genuine elections, ones in which the outcome was not determined by those in power who supposedly were committed to reform might lead either to a return to communism or the rise […]

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Nazis Triumph Over Communists in Ukraine

Map of Ukraine, Including Crimea, and Neighbors, Including Russia

(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – May 19, 2015) It’s goodbye Lenin, hello Nazi collaborators in Ukraine these days. Laws signed into effect by President Petro Poroshenko require the renaming of dozens of towns and hundreds of streets throughout the country to eliminate Soviet-era names. At the same time, Ukraine will begin to honor groups that helped Hitler exterminate […]

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NEWSLINK: i24news.tv: One man’s journey to the heartland of fascism. Hostility to minorities and attempts to rewrite Holocaust history …

Auschwitz Concentration Entrance with Sign Arbeit Macht Frei

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Baltic independence and more than a decade of full membership in the European Union and NATO. If the assumption was that those developments would cure Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian society from the scourges of fascism, racism, and anti-Semitism, the events of the past month clearly show that these plagues have not been eradicated. […]

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RIA Novosti: Ukrainian Teens Tweet Nazi Propaganda, Boast of Burning Russians

Twitter Logo and Faint World Map

[Graphics and tweets here en.ria.ru/society/20141012/193990648/ Ukrainian-Teens-Tweet-Nazi-Propaganda-Boast-of-Burning-Russians.html] MOSCOW, October 12 (RIA Novosti), Ekaterina Blinova – Since the Euromaidan turmoil and events triggered by the Ukrainian coup of February 2014, Ukrainian youth has been used as the main propaganda force of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Ukrainian right-wing nationalists attract young people by romanticized the image of OUN-UPA and Stepan Bandera, the famous […]

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Interfax: Far-right groups threaten Kyiv region priest with reprisals

Church Domes with Crosses file photo

MOSCOW. Aug 15 (Interfax) – Members of far-right groups disrupted a religious service being conducted by Priest Volodymyr Navozenko at the Church of the Holy Intercession in the village of Chervona Motovylivka outside of Kyiv. A video posted on YouTube shows several dozen people entering the church holding Ukrainian flags and symbols of the far-right party Svoboda (Freedom) and the […]

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RIA Novosti: Nazi Symbolism Flourishes in Post-Maidan Ukraine

Ukraine Map and Flag

[Photos here http://en.ria.ru/world/20140813/191975347/Nazi-Symbolism-Flourishes-in-Post-Maidan-Ukraine.html] MOSCOW, August 13 (RIA Novosti) – Ukrainian authorities have vehemently denied that Ukraine’s armed forces have slightest correlation with neo-fascists. However, open use of Neo-Nazi symbolism in their crusade against militia forces and civil population of eastern Ukraine explicitly suggests otherwise. The country’s special unit for protection of public order – the Azov Battalion, often referred to […]

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After Putin, Russia Will Be Either Fascist or Federalized, Ukrainian Analyst Says

Aerial View of Kremlin and Environs

(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 10, 2014) Ever more people around the world want Vladimir Putin to leave the scene but very few have asked themselves what Russia will be like after his departure. One who has, Sergey Klimovsky, suggests that Russia will either be a fascist state even worse than the current regime or a […]

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Putin’s ‘Russian Spring’ Idea was Invented by Russian Fascists in 1920s

Kremlin and Saint Basil's File Photo

(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, July 30, 2014) Commentators in Moscow and the West ever more frequently draw parallels between Vladimir Putin’s ideas and actions and those of fascist regimes in the first part of the 20th century, but few have focused on the fact that one of the Kremlin leader’s most-cherished ideas, that of the “Russian […]

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