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.
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.
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.
And let the Nazis recoup and build up forces… just like allowing Putin to do so when he had asked for a ceasefire before.
Putin could have stopped […]. But like Hitler, he wanted more
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.
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
Putin himself have used neo-Nazi groups to his own benefit. There are plenty of those groups linked to Kremlin, nevermind Putin cosying with and funding far-right political parties.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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