Victor Danilchenko
Member
"Fascism" is a complex and somewhat heterogeneous phenomenon without clear and universally accepted definition; so we must really refer to history of fascism, and combine it with scholastic attempts to define fascism, in order to understand what it is.
By pure historical comparison, today's russia is a straight-up nazi state, by which I mean fascism combined with genocidal chauvinism. Using the "duck-typing" approach (if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck), let's check out what russia has in common with nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy:
What we get is a clear practical conclusion: today's russia is a nazi state. Not even merely fascist, but outright nazi.
If we then compare it to some commonly used scholarly definitions of fascism, we will indeed observe a near-perfect match. From the link above, one widely used definition comes from Umberto Eco:
Paxton also argues that fascism's foundations lie in a set of "mobilizing passions" rather than an elaborated doctrine.
Yup. Today's russia is a naze state.
By pure historical comparison, today's russia is a straight-up nazi state, by which I mean fascism combined with genocidal chauvinism. Using the "duck-typing" approach (if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck), let's check out what russia has in common with nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy:
- Fuhrer embodying the nation
- Cult of tradition
- Victimhood and obsessive quest for enemies
- Historical resentment and irredentism
- Wars of [re]conquest
- Subordination of various aspects of society to the state (politics, media, religion, sports, etc).
What we get is a clear practical conclusion: today's russia is a nazi state. Not even merely fascist, but outright nazi.
If we then compare it to some commonly used scholarly definitions of fascism, we will indeed observe a near-perfect match. From the link above, one widely used definition comes from Umberto Eco:
- The cult of tradition
- The rejection of modernism
- The cult of action for action's sake
- Disagreement is treason
- Fear of difference
- Appeal to a frustrated middle class
- Obsession with a plot
- Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak
- Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy
- Contempt for the weak
- Everybody is educated to become a hero
- Machismo
- Selective populism
- Newspeak
A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Paxton also argues that fascism's foundations lie in a set of "mobilizing passions" rather than an elaborated doctrine.
- a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;
- the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;
- the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
- dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
- the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;
- the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;
- the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;
- the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;
- the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.
Yup. Today's russia is a naze state.
