{"id":93998,"date":"2022-03-22T17:05:17","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T15:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=93998"},"modified":"2022-03-21T15:59:15","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T13:59:15","slug":"28-05-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=93998","title":{"rendered":"Putin\u2019s Fascism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Putin\u2019s Fascism<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n


\nJASON STANLEY AND ELIYAHU STERN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, 2019MIKHAIL SVETLOV\/GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The admiration of religious traditionalism and hatred of cosmopolitan liberalism is part of the Kremlin\u2019s fascist ideology<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

.<\/p>\n

\n

On March 2, Yale\u2019s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies published a statement<\/a> on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It condemns \u201cVladimir Putin\u2019s deliberate, coldhearted, and Orwellian abuse of the language of the Holocaust.\u201d In Putin\u2019s claim \u201cthat Russia must invade Ukraine to \u201cdenazify\u201d and end a \u201cgenocide,\u201d it finds numerous evils, including \u201ca diversion from his own fascism\u201d and \u201can expression of antisemitism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

If Putin\u2019s invasion has been justified in part by employing expressions of antisemitism, how does this square with the fact that Putin has made it a point to disassociate himself from the racist and antisemitic legacy of Nazism? To help decode the Russian leader\u2019s position, it\u2019s instructive to look at the positions espoused by Alexander Dugin, a Russian intellectual who has done much over the years to formulate what appears to now be the Kremlin\u2019s dominant ideology. While often described in Western media as \u201cPutin\u2019s brain,\u201d Dugin\u2019s influence on Russian leaders has waxed and waned over the years. More than political influence, his major contribution has been his ability to make the geopolitical ambitions of Putin\u2019s post-Soviet Russia intelligible.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Dugin began his intellectual career as a critic of the Soviet Union, identifying with underground nationalist and spiritual movements. Some of these groups, such as the ultranationalist Pamyat, promoted antisemitic sentiments. Eventually he disavowed these ties and emerged as a leading spokesperson for Eurasianism, a political movement that sees Russia playing a central role in the geopolitical order bridging the divide between Europe and Asia.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The French scholar Marlene Laruelle has described Dugin\u2019s political philosophy as an attempt \u201cto rehabilitate fascism in Russia\u201d by stressing its nationalist orientation while disowning its associations with Nazism and racism. Tellingly, Putin\u2019s invasion of neighboring Ukraine has exemplified this vision.<\/span>
\nAlexander DuginWIKIPEDIA<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Fascism embraces a mythic past, where the nation, once great, has experienced humiliation and loss of land, the result of weakness and decadence brought on by liberal democracy. To make up for these losses, real and supposed, fascist leaders encourage violent reassertion of previous greatness, as well as the destruction of liberal democracy in favor of a one-party state or, more typically, a single autocratic ruler who is synonymous with the nation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In the Russian nationalist version of the mythic past, Ukraine is central. According to this mythology, there are no Ukrainians\u2014just lost Russians living, whether they know it or not, in the heart of historic Russia. Under Putin, Russia has been harshly sexist and homophobic, familiar manifestations of fascist ideology. But Russia\u2019s violent imperial war against a neighboring cosmopolitan democracy that it seeks to absorb is the clearest manifestation yet that its animating ideology is something akin to classical fascism.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Dugin and Putin both claim to be opposed to racism and Nazism. They insist that their primary enemy is not any one people, religion, or race, but rather \u201cconfused\u201d cosmopolitans, liberals, and secularists. This 20th-century set of chiefly antisemitic stereotypes is also used to describe liberal democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Putin has enjoyed the support of Russia\u2019s chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, and Dugin counts right-wing Israeli Zionists among his comrades. As Dugin explained in April 2021 in the Israeli journal Dehak<\/a><\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The Gaon of Vilna said: in the End of Days the main enemy will not be the husk of Ishmael [Islam] or the husk of Rome [Christianity], but rather the husk of Jacob [Jews], those who are designated as the mixed multitude, the assimilated people who, according to the Gaon of Vilna, have underwent modernization and colonization. [In the End of Days], the chief enemy of the Jewish tradition will come from its own house and not from the outside in the form of Christianity and Islam. The chief enemy \u2026 is the Jewish People. They are the chief enemy of traditional Judaism \u2026 Perhaps this is not well understood, but I think this interpretation is very important. In our own community, in a similar way, the chief enemy of the Russian nation are liberal Russians and not the representatives of other groups. … In my opinion, it follows, we need a deep de-colonization of [the forces of modernization] from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Israel, in Russia and Europe and in the United States. In the United States this means being made free from the heavy hand of the elite-racist ultra-liberal that seeks to annihilate American values.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Here, Dugin represents himself as the champion of Judaism\u2014or at least his conception of traditional Judaism\u2014against the forces that would destroy it: Jews themselves. Dugin represents \u201ctraditional\u201d Jews as those who are attached to the land of Israel. The enemy<\/em> of Judaism are the assimilated, cosmopolitan Jews, those who are part of \u201cmodernization.\u201d More generally, Dugin says that each national community\u2019s existential threat consists of members of that community\u2014the ones who embrace cosmopolitanism, liberalism, tolerance, and democracy. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Dugin\u2019s appeal here is transnational\u2014it is made to the traditionalists in every group opposed to feminism, secularism, LGBT rights, and liberal tolerance. For Dugin, the enemy of each group is to be found within its midst: those who support multicultural, liberal societies. Traditionalists can and do operate within the parameters of liberal democracy, of course. But in the new Russian fascism, traditionalism is seen as inconsistent with and opposed to liberal democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Increasingly, the global far right denounces racism and antisemitism even while working to extinguish liberalism and multiculturalism. By identifying \u201creal\u201d Jews as the ones connected with the land\u2014specifically Israeli nationalists\u2014the global far right believes it is justified in its repeated use of antisemitic tropes aimed at Jewish targets.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Thus, for many in Putin\u2019s circle, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not really<\/em> Jewish. Similarly, former New York City Mayor and Donald Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani\u2014along with Brexit backers Raheem Kassam and Andy Wigmore\u2014have sought to challenge<\/a> the Jewish identity of George Soros, in the context of attacking him for his philanthropic and political efforts. Never mind that the rabbis, the State of Israel, and Adolf Hitler would all consider Soros a Jew\u2014\u201cI\u2019m more of a Jew than Soros is,\u201d said<\/a> Giuliani. That\u2019s because for them, \u201creal\u201d Jews are religiously traditionalist and quintessentially nationalist\u2014and not invested in, say, liberalism or democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

According to nationalists and traditionalists, liberals, cosmopolitans, and progressives undermine defined and necessary ethnic and religious identities. It is this set of values that contemporary Russian nationalism associates with democracy. Dugin\u2019s Russian nationalism tries to appeal to what it imagines as traditionalist Jewish allies in an attempt to justify violent opposition to liberal democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The Duginist invocation of traditionalism is clearly meant to appeal to members of minority groups historically targeted by fascism, above and beyond merely using them as tokens for narrow political purposes. But is Russian fascism free from racial, ethnic, gender, and religious hierarchies? Is it free from the antisemitism that is central to so many traditional European versions of fascism? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

When a contemporary society\u2019s institutions were formed under conditions of explicit discrimination, they will continue to contain practices that perpetuate various disparities, even if no one within those structures has an explicitly discriminatory attitude (a key insight of critical race theory). Far-right movements and political parties often campaign on a platform of eliminating attempts to reform or replace these discriminatory practices, as well as introducing new ones, like opposing immigrants, women\u2019s rights, religious and sexual freedoms, and the freedom to teach history.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In a very straightforward sense, this traditionalism is not free from antisemitism. A majority of the world\u2019s Jews still choose to live outside of Israel, and most of them would not meet Dugin\u2019s standards of religious traditionalism. A majority of Jews, then, are Dugin\u2019s\u2014and Putin\u2019s\u2014enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

It is one thing to wage cultural battles within the boundaries of liberal democratic politics, which preserve minority rights and allow the regular replacement of political leaders by democratic means. Traditionalists can and often do operate within this sphere.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Fascism breaks these boundaries. In fascist ideology, liberal democracy is itself the existential threat to traditionalism. Putin\u2019s willingness to massacre people he falsely regards as his own points to his real enemy: cosmopolitan liberal democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In Putin\u2019s ideology, it is Ukrainian liberal democratic citizenship that represents the real threat to Russian greatness. Traditionalism demands a \u201cdeep decolonization\u201d of these modernizers everywhere, perhaps especially the Jewish ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Jason Stanley<\/strong> is professor of philosophy at Yale University, and the author of five books, most recently How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them<\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Eliyahu Stern<\/strong> is associate professor of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history at Yale University and the author of Jewish Materialism: The Intellectual Revolution of the 1870<\/strong>s<\/a><\/span> (Yale University Press, 2018).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Putin\u2019s Fascism JASON STANLEY AND ELIYAHU STERN Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, 2019MIKHAIL SVETLOV\/GETTY IMAGES The admiration of religious traditionalism and hatred of cosmopolitan liberalism is part of the Kremlin\u2019s fascist ideology . On March 2, Yale\u2019s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies published a statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It condemns \u201cVladimir […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93998"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94027,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93998\/revisions\/94027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}