Eurasian Federation, 2049.
Half a year ago I wrote about the absurd legal case against Dmitry Bobrov, a Russian nationalist who was sentenced for using extremist terminology such as “the great Russian people.”
No, I am not even exaggerating, here is the formal conclusion of the court’s “linguistics expert,” Galina Melnik (who is also a professor at Saint Petersburg State University and a published author in American scientific journals):
Linguistic terms are used that constitute evidence of propaganda of the exclusivity of the white race and ethnic Russians. For instance, there are epithets that positively characterize ethnic Russians – “The great Russian people,” “Russians are the most prospective white people,” “planetary significance,” as well as phrases, that negatively characterize other races – “Non-white peoples,” “races of a second order”; various exaggerations; writing words with capital letters so as to give a specific meaning to concepts – White people, Russians, Russian Popular Socialists, Russian Socialism [AK: The names of ethnicities are uncapitalized according to standard Russian grammar]; phrases such as that some peoples “have a phase of obscuration, degradation, and disorientation,” while others are experiencing a “steady growth in the national consciousness.”
I assure you that this sounds as deranged in Russian as it does in English. Apparently, the phrase “great Russian people” is propaganda of exclusivity, the phrase “white people” demeans non-whites, and violating the standard grammatical rules of capitalization in the Russian languages constitutes the most outrageous sort of extremism. American SJWs are nervously smoking in the corner.
The only possibly questionable phrase in the quoted paragraph is “races of a second order.” However, in the article that got Dmitry Bobrov into trouble, “Racial Doctrine of the National Social Initiative” (which is blocked in Russia), it is explicitly stated that the phrase refers to subraces, as opposed to implying a racial hierarchy.
The combination of evolutionary and historical processes led to the fact that now a large White race consists of several subraces, or races of the second order.
Evidently, Galina Melnik did not feel the need to give this vital piece of context in her summary.
This Orwellianism echoes the arguments of another contributing “linguistics expert,” Rezeda Salahutdinova (who has a degree in the joke subject of “Scientific Communism” from Kazan University):
In particular, she declared that the phrase “white race” just by itself fans the flames of hatred, because “they don’t talk like that in modern science” and that the expression “non-white people” is extremist, since it attacks the national dignity of other peoples.
It is heard to describe this theater of the absurd under the guise of a law court. When she was asked, “What specific racial, national, ethnic, social, or other groups were insulted?”, she replied: “All those groups, that are not identified with whites.”
Even though Dmitry Bobrov, representing himself, absolutely destroyed the arguments of the prosecutors’ pocket linguistic experts – court transcripts show even the judge becoming annoyed with their incompetence – he still ended up getting sentenced to 2 years in a penal colony.
In the event, Bobrov went missing on the day the verdict was set to be announced and is now considered to be on the run. Hopefully he is safe in a foreign country.
And to top it all off, citizens of Country 282 have to listen to lectures from Hillary Clinton about how Putler heads the global white supremacist movement and read Washington Post op-eds by affirmative action Kremlinologists on how Russia “disparages black people” and “centers the Russian slav.”
Anyhow.
This Kafkaevschina finally motivated me to run a guide on avoiding Russia’s hate speech laws at my Russian language blog: Руководство по Избежанию 282
Here is a summary in English.
1. Strictly avoid any Nazi symbology.
That includes “ironic Nazism” of the sort that the Alt Right likes to play around with.
But all rules have exceptions.
If you are sufficiently close to the Kremlin you may well write articles along the lines of “Hitler did nothing wrong” (at least up until 1939). You can also organize conferences for foreign Neo-Nazis freaks, such as the International Russian Conservative Forum in 2015; some Galactic Brain in the Kremlin even came up with the idea of inviting German Neo-Nazi Udo Voigt, with his entirely non-ironic demands to return Kaliningrad to Germany.
2. Don’t insult Caucasians.
All countries have differential racial hierarchies for the permissibility of insulting different racial and ethnic groups.
Handshakeworthy anti-Russian racism from /r/politics.
For instance, ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper thought nothing of saying that Russians are “almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique” in a meeting with NBC journalists – one wonders how long somebody who said anything remotely similar about Jews would last in his job (actually we don’t have to wonder at all). Clearly, Jews, Blacks, the gay race, and the fat race are at the top, while white rednecks and Russians are at the bottom.
In Russia, there is a similar Great Chain of Racial Privilege.
One Russian nationalist, Konstantin Krylov, got convicted under Article 282 for his considered and entirely mild-mannered position on the issue of federal transfers to the Caucasus: “It it time to do away with this strange economic system.” In contrast, Holocaust denial only became illegal in 2014, and authors such as Israel Shamir with a reputation for anti-Semitism haven’t encountered significant problems (unlike his French language publisher, who was faced with a ban of the book he had translated and the prospect of three months in jail). On the other hand, you can’t relax too much: The Stalinist singer Alexander Kharchikov had one of his songs, consisting entirely of folk sayings about Jews, banned for extremism in 2012.
In fairness, Russia does also jail the most cartoonishly extreme Russophobes, such as Boris Stomakhin, who called for terrorist actions against Russian civilians to fight against “Chechen genocide.” In the West and amongst Russian liberals, Stomakhin is considered a prisoner of consciousness, because in their world, supporting terrorism against Russians is far more handshakeworthy than waxing lyrical about “the great Russian people.”
3. Don’t be an oppositionist.
This is so obvious that it hardly needs an explication – but that doesn’t make it into a rock-solid defense either.
For instance, just a few weeks ago, the police searched the offices of the Institute of Russian Civilization, a bookshop that focuses on republishing historical works – not Mein Kampf or Last Will of the Russian Fascist, but entirely mainstream texts in the Russian conservative and theological tradition, many of whom Putin has himself cited in his speeches (e.g. Berdyaev, Danilevsky, Ilyin, Karamzin, Pobedonostsev, Soloviev, Trubetzkoy, Khomyakov).
Apart from blocking the oppositionist Sputnik i Pogrom, Russian censorship authority also blocks the website of the Russian Imperial Movement, even though it is Orthodox-monarchic and entirely non-racialist in character, and even went to the trouble of advancing Russia’s geopolitical goals by sending a batallion to the Donbass in 2014.
4. You can’t be pro-Ukrainian.
You can if you’re a liberal – in that case, that’s actually expected of you – but you can’t if you’re a nationalist, especially with respect to the Crimea, for which there is a “separatism” clause on the lawbooks.
5. Don’t appear on law enforcement’s radar.
Possibly what really did Bobrov in is that he has a previous (and justified) conviction from back in the 2000s, when he headed the Schulz-88 Neo-Nazi gang that beat up immigrants. The current conviction is unjust, not only because this time round he literally did nothing wrong, but because the state is essentially sending violent Neo-Nazis a message: Regardless of whether your active is legal or illegal, violence or non-violent, we are still going to lock you up the same.
But let’s assume you’re not already “marked” by dint of previous legal troubles.
Here’s something you should bear in mind: The various Russian silovik agencies are not staffed by especially bright or conscientious people – in the case of Roskomnadzor or “Center E” (police anti-extremism division), their priorities are to fulfill their monthly quotas for finding “extremists” and get their bonuses for doing so. As such, they spend much of their time in the rich and easily accessible hunting grounds of VKontakte, which remains Russia’s most popular social network. As such, it would do well for “politicals” to limit their VKontakte posting to cat memes, while maintaining the bulk of their “meaningful” presence on Facebook and Twitter.
NSFR (Not Safe For Russia): What got Andrey Voronin in trouble just a few days ago.
Incidentally, this applies likewise for Westerners. Since nationalism is an almost purely “export” product so far as the Putlerreich is concerned, The Daily Stormer has been able to maintain an uninterrupted presence on VKontakte – even as Russians on the platform get in legal trouble for reposting historical illustrations that happen to feature a swastika.
6. Pay your mite to ZOG.
Liberals have an admirable tendency to stick up for each other, thanks to their higher IQs and levels of trust.
Nationalists are the opposite.
Whereas a liberal in Bobrov’s position would have gotten no end of attention from (predominantly liberal) human rights organizations, hardly any nationalist website anybody apart from Sputnik i Pogrom even bothered to highlight his case.
This problem is a very hard one and frankly the dearth of human capital is the single most crippling problem for conservatives and nationalists well nigh everywhere.
It is ironic that if anybody is going to seriously represent and advocate for you if you get in trouble, it will likely be a liberal with an idealistic commitment to free speech.
Therefore, the least that you can do is to pay at least symbolic fealty to ZOG – for instance, by affirming your commitment to free speech and human rights – so that when you do get sent off to the Gulag, the liberal sphere – which has at least ten times as much media influence as the nationalists – can’t just dismiss you by saying that this sort of world is what you were fighting for anyway.
7. Don’t listen to all this advice.
Doing so will just make you a mindless Kremlin propagandist. They’re a dime dozen anyway, and you probably won’t get rich even if you stand out, since all the most lucrative positions have long been carved up anyway.
Besides, as the host of our ROGPR podcast Kirill Nesterov acerbically noted, at the rate the wheels are coming off the Kremlin’s prosecution machine, it won’t be long before people start going to jail for justifying the return of the Crimea – and we’re not even entirely sure that this will happen after Putin loses power.
Well, “races of a second order” sounds rather demeaning, if you ask me. Had Mr Bobrov managed to restrict himself to praising the great Russian people without addressing others, who (no doubt) like to think of themselves as great peoples too, I’m sure he would’ve had no troubles today.
One of the greatest disappointments of the right, I’ve found.
Incidentally, has there been something of the study on the average IQ of the siloviki?
So even in Russia not many of the top graduates gravitate towards nationalism? If say 95% of the most recent Harvard College class fit in the progressive cultural sphere what percentage would you say of the most recent MGIMO class is part of the comparable sphere in Russia?
Yes, I am sure that as a Stalinist you are very happy with what was evidently a telephone verdict handed down with zero evidence of a crime.
What the “linguistic expert” didn’t bother doing was giving the context behind the phrase. From the article that landed Bobrov in jail:
That is, “races of a second order” refers to subraces, as opposed to implying a racial hierarchy.
Hilarious…as you mentioned yourself, quite a few Western right-wingers have fled Western social media for Vkontakte (e.g. quite a few from Germany, given recent attempts at internet censorship)…what a strange world we’re living in.
Pretty depressing though. When you can be locked up on such spurious grounds, I’m not even sure there’s much point to such a guide tbh, seems like random chance whether you’ll get into trouble or not.
There will be much fewer SJWs (though they are already a noticeable phenomenon in those sorts of elite circles) but extremely few nationalists.
Here are the results for the 2016 elections for the local electoral region that contains Moscow State University:
http://www.moscow_city.vybory.izbirkom.ru/region/moscow_city?action=show&global=true&root=774027013&tvd=4774027133060&vrn=100100067795849&prver=0&pronetvd=0®ion=77&sub_region=77&type=242&vibid=4774027133060
The nationalist parties (LDPR + Rodina) indeed got 5%.
Even if you add some possibly more “based” people from United Russia’s 16%, you’ll still get 10% at the very most.
Stalinist? Puh-leeze. What does it even mean? Here’s my favorite Dovlatov quote: ‘next to communism, the thing I hate most is anti-communism’.
Anyhow, why didn’t you give the context in the post? I agree that it sounds unobjectionable.
I have generally got the impression that you are an unironic Stalinist. My apologies if that was incorrect.
That is a good idea, I will edit this into the text.
Well, I’m unironically against the demonization, and for a realistic assessment of the historical period. Just ’cause it would make a more interesting conversation.
what a strange world we’re living in.
Pretty depressing though. When you can be locked up on such spurious grounds
Yes, very depressing, especially considering the long and storied history of freedom of thought and expression in Russia and its antecedents.
Yeah sure, it’s not like something like this could ever happen in beacons of liberty with long traditions of political freedom like Britain and France (and if it does, it probably happens only to icky Nazis who deserve it anyway…nothing to be concerned about).
Yes, now you are getting to something that is actually depressing.
It’s a conundrum that I haven’t solved for myself and I remain conflicted.
Nothing is absolute. All liberties have to be balanced against all the others.
I cherish freedom of thought and expression while at the same time I recoil from some expressions that are culturally degrading. I would like a political speech only exception if such a thing was possible.
Free speech for Nazis and hard core commies when you know that they would not allow it if in power?
It is irrational to aid in the destruction of what one values.
Catcha 22 perhaps.
Well yes, I’m not necessarily in favour of tolerance for subversive movements myself (arguably there was far too much tolerance for leftist subversives in Western Europe during the Cold war era, with negative consequences until today). But let’s get real, you don’t have to be a hardcore Nazi wanting to erect a Führerstaat with race laws to get in trouble with authorities in Western Europe today. Expressing strong opposition to non-European mass immigration and its consequences is enough for that.
(((Galina Melnik)))
It really isn’t all that complicated and if it hasn’t been pointed out to you directly before then it certainly has been explained on threads on which you’ve been active.
The reasons for ensuring that points of view you find objectionable are not criminalised or censored are:
that every case of suppression weakens the overall defence of freedom of speech, and precedents set in one area can in due course be used in others, often those cherished by the very people who championed the original censorship, and finally;
the historical record shows that such censorship does not work (though it inflicts plenty of misery and harm along the way). In arguably the strongest recent case for the imposition of speech controls on the liberal self-preservation basis you propose (the rise of the Nazis to power in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany), legal suppression of speech utterly failed and indeed most likely provided said Nazis with more effective platforms and justifications for the very positions that were supposedly being suppressed. And in perhaps the most powerful example, draconian blasphemy laws and practices utterly failed to prevent the reduction of Christian orthodoxies first to ridicule and then to utter disregard, in the post-enlightenment European societies.
Really? And yet the only kind of censorship you pursue consistently and with any energy is the explicitly and rather straightforwardly political censorship of “Nazis” (real and presumed) and “anti-Semites” (likewise).
Problems usually arise in this area when what you are actually doing is trying (usually for entirely self-serving reasons) to “balance” a genuine liberty against some spurious pseudo-liberty such as a concocted “right” not to be offended, or not to be frightened or disadvantaged in some vague and political sense.
Stop doing that, and you’ll find balancing liberties in the area of freedom of speech is a lot easier.
Mr Karlin, thank you very much for your highly informative pieces on what is really going on in Vladimir Putin’s Russia
This is hugely significant for the Western dissident community, which is overly tempted to seek various presented ‘opposition heroes’, such as Putin’s guest the known CIA hoax & fraud ‘Edward Snowden’, or Vladimir Putin himself, absurdly touted as some kind of ‘anti-Zionist anti-NWO hero’ by naive alt-media, such as the black USA citizen resident in South Korea, Jonas Alexis, writing continual panegyric love-letters to Putin on the ‘Veterans Today’ website
It’s been a great tragedy for Western dissident hopes, that Putin is not really to any great degree ‘opposition’ to the West, & that Russian glossy media such as RT Russia Today never became the hard-hitting exposé news service which the world desperately needs
As people have been trying to tell us at least ever since the great assassinated anarchist leader of Barcelona, Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936) – Wherever we are, we are on our own, and there is no great ‘champion’ government out there which is going to help us
And yet your expressed views suggest that you are the subversive now, as far as the authorities and the political, media, academic, business and cultural establishments of your country are concerned.
It’s not necessary what’s going on in Russia though, even if it may look that way. My intuition is that what they’re trying to do is quite pragmatic: to maintain stability and avoid inter-ethnic hostility, which could easily turn into an existential crisis. I could be wrong, of course; I can only judge by what I see in the media.
Yes, you’re right about that, and in general I have much sympathy for your views. It’s just that I sometimes wonder if in retrospect Western countries in the post-war era weren’t far too tolerant towards various forms of subversion. Conservatives believed too much in fair play and complacently let left-wing activists infiltrate all sort of important institutions. Now we’re in a situation where people who were members of Maoist sects etc. in the 1970s are part of the establishment and shamelessly use their power to crush dissent. It was a mistake to allow that to happen.
While this is a valuable point, it is not really a convincing argument* per se. For example, I can maintain perfectly consistently that the government has a right to shoot murderers, but that a gang of murderers has no right to shoot me.
*I had a better phase than this, but I can’t remember it. Perhaps unconsciously censored.
I think there might be solutions to that that stop short of overt heavy-handedness (+ hypocrisy) on our part.
For instance, surveys shouw that academia is ridiculously biased towards the Left; humanities and non-economics social science, even more so. So what you initially frame as calling for less tolerance for subversion can be reframed as, say, promotion of ideological diversity in academe. At the very least it doesn’t make us sound like the baddies! 🙂
Emil Kirkegaard has some good initial proposals: http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=6948
I think you are probably correct in that, though whether they can succeed in that remains to be seen (see my point 3 above).
The particular (deliberately encouraged) delusion of over-extending individual rights concepts into inappropriate areas seems to be much stronger in the modern US sphere than elsewhere, though I don’t doubt there are Russian “liberals” who might regard this kind of point as important.
I’m not sure there’s always that much of a difference though, e.g. a few years ago there was a case in Britain in which some stupid student (named Liam Stacey, one can still google it) was jailed for tasteless comments about a black football player on Twitter. Part of the reasoning for giving him a prison sentence was, iirc, basically that his provocative comments could have led to violent reactions (presumably from black people or others who might feel offended by anti-black racism). Mass immigration has created a situation in Western Europe that in some ways might be not that different from Russia’s.
Yes, I wonder that too. However, while it’s tempting to think that perhaps jailing a few more lefty activists and “piss Christ” underminers of basic decency and societal cohesion, and more vigorously using the blacklists, employment pressures and general shunning that they moaned about so much back then and now seek to use themselves, might have prevented the takeover of the establishment by leftist (internationalist, anti-white racist, etc) radicals, I’m not really convinced by it. In the end, the tide was running in their direction, in terms of individualism, irreligion, identity politics and greedy globalist big business.
And in that context “we” (hypothetical advocates of using state censorship to hold the line) lost the arguments, basically on the “Voltaire” principle (which I’ve expressed above) and similar powerful arguments for freedom of speech.
Really, we must hope that the same powerful arguments can be deployed successfully now against the hypocrites of the left as they try to do to conservatives etc what you suggest should have been done more effectively to them. It’s by no means certain, but the stakes are high and the outcome still not set in stone.
Some truth in that, although western Europe is not yet in an equivalent position to Russia, which is a federation with large minority constituent nations.
Outrages against basic liberty like the Stacey case, in practice, are enabled mostly by the confluence of general disapproval for the tasteless with the opportunism of the powerful identity lobby groups and their ideological fellow travellers, and the latters’ established success in indoctrinating the population, and especially the elites, in convenient political taboos.
Maybe. But dismantling or not enforcing basic obscenity laws is already a complete loss, regardless of whether further losses will occur.
You can, but as an argument it’s not going to help you in discussion with anyone who is not prepared to agree with you about who counts as the murderers.
In the case of murderers it’s usually fairly easy within a reasonably culturally coherent nation (though by no means always so) to agree reasonably objective definitions to allow them to be identified most of the time. The same is not the case when it comes to defining political opinions as subversive or not.
The issue concerning Dmitry Bobrov is indeed quite depressing and unjust. After serving his time, he made a decision to stay entirely within the law concerning his political activity. However, apparently someone had it out for him (although the reason for this may have been simply due to a need to fill a quota) and hence he was convicted on the most trivial and truly embarrassingly foolish grounds.
A man who supports the violent overthrow of the government is a murderer in petto and his opinions deserve suppression by a legitimately constituted government.
Now, some disagreement might ensue between him and others whether the government is legitimately constituted– but them’s the breaks.
Maybe so, and perhaps in a well ordered and reasonably culturally homogenous nation it’s possible to hold the line on basic obscenity and even blasphemy whilst still allowing sufficient political freedom of speech – the position to which iffen appeared to be claiming to aspire in post 12 above.
But it’s a hard line to draw in the absence of shared cultural assumptions. Certainly by the mid-C20th the elites in the US sphere had evidently lost any capability of holding to it in the face of the radicals seeking to use obscenity and blasphemy to subvert the society they hated, and the identity lobbyists exploiting and encouraging them.
Of course, for the radical left they were not subverting society but fighting oppressive structures in pursuit of greater justice, or some such. Enough people agreed with them or were in doubt to allow them to triumph, anyway, so it has to be questionable whether firmer suppression could have succeeded.
Which merely moves the question on to what you mean by “supports the violent overthrow of the government” and “a legitimately constituted government”. Does it have to be explicit or can it be implicit, and inferred? Who makes the inference? Is it implied sufficiently if the desire to overthrow the government is aspirational and hypothetical, or does there have to be some plausible concrete connection to action?
Does “supporting the violent overthrow of the government” include supporting a change to the basic form of the government that arguably would not be accepted without violence?
Presumably all those who regarded the British monarchy as the legitimately constituted government of Britain and its colonies were in your view perfectly entitled (excepting only their disagreement with you about what constitutes a legitimately constituted government) to regard the American founding fathers who chose to take up arms against their government in 1775-83, and all those who supported their cause, as murderers whose views fully deserved suppression by the said government.
“Them’s the breaks” is simply a cop out.
The above aside, this statement is clearly quite simply incorrect. A murderer is someone who has murdered a person, and someone who supports the violent overthrow of the government is, in the vast majority of cases, not going to be that.
You could better argue that such a person could be an aspiring murderer or an accomplice or enabler to murder in some way, but you would still have to do a lot more work to make your case.
Yes. Otherwise, what of those who did try to suppress them? Are they murderers?
It is– it’s also the simple truth. There will be disagreements in this world which will only be settled in blood, so long as human nature remains human nature. Presumably, someone will in each case have been in the wrong and his opponent in the right.
“aspiring murderer” = “murderer in petto” in my English. Perhaps it is not quite correct.
It is questionable in the extreme. Nevertheless lack of suppression of obscenity would be failure, rather than merely along the road to failure.
I don’t think we disagree here.
I have rather a pompous manner of expressing myself. Please disregard same, as Charlie Chan would say.
It may not be complicated to you, but it is to me.
I think I understand your slippery slope argument, I just don’t accept it. In fact, I reject it as it is a slippery slope avenue to safe spaces for neo-Nazis and obnoxious racists.
You make several inferences and insinuations as to my motives that are incorrect. So I will send a not so hidden one your way. I get the impression that you are not a “pure” free speech advocate but rather you are concerned because the authoritarian left is wielding power now.
I don’t advocate censorship of anti-Semitic propaganda. I just reject the idea that most proponents seem to have which is that they are entitled to have their views and blather replace what passes for journalism these days.
I don’t believe that some idealized notion of free speech is of much importance. Free speech is important as a means to something; something like good government.
I also disagree with your contention that suppression of free speech is not effective. I think it works pretty well.
I disagree with Mao Cheng Ji on this (shocking I know).
Look, Russia is 83% Slavic – that’s more than the Jewish State is Jewish. It is not some kind of multi-cultural empire like Austria-Hungary that can potentially fracture at the seams. (Even the USSR wouldn’t have been that with a saner nationalities policy).
The runaway craziness with Article 282 is a product of the past five years, and especially the last couple. 95%+ of the people now getting convicted for hate speech would have been let go with a slap on the wrist or not even bothered with in the 2000s, when as I recall Russia didn’t break up, let alone in the 1990s… when there were, of course, big problems with separatism, but they were most assuredly not caused by Russian chauvinists being verbally mean to ethnic minorities.
What’s the reason for that change? (sorry if you’ve already explained that, if so, I must have missed it).
You have let yourself here down badly, Anatoly.
We all remember the massive number of arrests in Russia for social media activity on VK or facebook – for making fun of the numerous (30+) Kyrgyz who died in a factory fire last year, or commenting on the dangerous people in the Uzbek community- following the nanny who cut off the head of the child she was looking after in Moscow……or on general criminality in Russia’s main cities from Chechens, Tajiks,Uzbeks,or from Dagestani fights in Moscow cemeterys …….or on the racist commentary from some famous and anonymous liberast cunts attempting to insult the brilliant Margarita Simonyan and also Kandeleki……oh wait…no sorry……NO arrests took place ever for any of these incidents…because Russia is a true free speech country and open country.
When a terrible accident happens like what happened to those poor Krgygyz people in the factory fire…Russian media correctly and compassionately reports it…but never does it in a way that would imply a non-slavic persons tragic death is worth more than an ethnic Russians (just equal).
Limonov is now a regular on Russian TV
All those “miscarriages of justice” you mention are nothing of the sort…they are similar to my moans at referees during football matches…where the referee is under the impression that I have never made foul, ever, and have never lost the ball without being fouled…..blinkered commentary.
Sputnik i Pogrom had a huge part to play in the protests against the Moscow renovations.
Russian nationalists are more intellectual than their counterparts in other nations,,,it is ridiculous to call that conference in Saint-Petersburg a “Neo-Nazi” one.
When a dickhead working as a commentator for Match TV insulted Russian nationalism ( he was georgian) , Mikhalkov on his show called him out for being a dipshit- Vesti didn’t release his show that week ( he did release it independently on Youtube, to millions of views) -the point being that after this ,Mikhalkov was invited back the following week to continue doing his show on Vesti
He is. Iran-what’s-his-name and Xi are too.
You should support Russia not because it’s a white Christian ethnistate (it isn’t) but because it’s a counterweight.
I smell concern-trolling but what do I know.
these people are fkn tea leaves readers. psychologists, too. they corrupt the justice system (remember the satanic abuse scare.)
can we stop basing court decisions on soft sciences, please? just asking 12 people if something is extremist/pornographic/whatever is more meaningful, but no, it has to be this cargo science nonsense.
PS sorry, I meant to reply to the top-level thread. But, to continue in the spirit of Randal’s post:
4. qualifications on free speech gives power to “linguistic experts”.
I’m not sure “Russia is 83% Slavic” is correct. I have the impression that 83% are self-identified Russians, and that’s different; I’m sure it’s mostly cultural or political self-identification. For example, I heard from Margarita Simonyan that she self-identifies as Russian. And that’s typical. Similar to many Russians in Ukraine self-identifying as ‘Ukrainian’. Or people self-identifying as simply ‘American’. You start broadcasting racists shit all over, and it’ll collapse.
My bets are that the Russian government knows that ethnicity and immigration (along with economic inequality) are serious weak spots where its policies are unpopular, and they want to stop enterprising opposition politicians from capitalizing on them. You can be a SJW liberal in Russia because SJW liberalism is so unpopular it will never be a threat to the government. Ethnic nationalism and immigration restriction are actually popular, and the government is worried that this is an issue out of which the opposition might make hay, so they’re anxious to stop this from happening.
BTW, how happy are you about Sunday’s election results in your neighbours to the south?
I congratulate the Kyrgyz on free elections that brought a nationalist to power (his program refers to the “originality and uniqueness of the Kyrgyz folk culture”: That makes him a nationalist by Eurocuck/Russocuck standards).
Hopefully we can all learn from the great Kyrgyz people in the years to come.
LOL I was addressing German reader and meant the election in Austria, which was, as they say, all about migration.
AK, it looks to me like you are on the same page with Stalin regarding Ukrainian nationalism.
Anne Applebaum Red Famine:
Anatoly wants Ukrainians to be on his team; he regards them as Russians who mistakenly took on a separate identity; he’s also horrified by the idea of mass murdering them, just as you would be horrified at the idea of murdering your brother. Stalin perhaps wanted Ukrainians to be on his team, too; but he was happy murdering them by the millions. This is a significant difference.
Does he still want it? I read on Wikipedia that he’s a huge Putin admirer. In any event, if the NPD truly non-ironically wants to change Germany’s eastern borders, then I can see what the Verfassungsschutz did with its agents in the NPD leadership. I remember the hilarious story that when they wanted to outlaw the party in the early 00s, it turned out that some 10-20% of the party’s top leadership were Verfassungsschutz agents, and the court rejected the petition because the case seemed to be largely based on the actions of those undercover agents.
Recently, Russians and Ukrainians, however defined, have been dying in The Ukraine, however defined, and Russians and Ukrainians, however defined, are pulling the triggers in a dispute over nationalism.
I thought the “neighbor to the south” was Lower Saxony : )
This encapsulates the obtuseness and absurdity of the Russian nationalist position. The Ukrainian identity is as genuine as any other one, and is here to stay for as long as the Russian one. To think otherwise is folly of the highest order, and I’m surprised that somebody as bright as Karlin might entertain such revisionist thoughts.
In any event, during the Donbass war, neither party was mass murdering civilians in the millions. Obviously some people accept killing thousands or tens of thousands in such internal disputes. And please note that in a sense both parties consider it an internal dispute: Russians (many of them, at any rate) might consider all Ukrainians to be essentially just mistaken Russians (“little Russians”), while Ukrainians (many of them, at any rate) might consider all citizens of Ukraine as Ukrainians (even if Russified Ukrainians). I’m not sure about the more extreme positions, but probably the vast majority of Russians and Ukrainians, and this includes probably the majority (probably vast majority) of nationalists on both sides, don’t want millions of either Russians or Ukrainians to be mass murdered.
Look, it’s really quite the same in Russia and Ukraine as it is mostly throughout the world today. You may have Russians living in Ukraine who identify with the Ukrainian state, but are of Russian ethnic origin and vice versa. That’s not to say that you don’t have individuals that are ‘bi-national’ and feel equally comfortable in either a Russian or Ukrainian milieu. This phenomena is common throughout most of the world today, especially in Europe and is not unique to the Ukrainian/Russian situation. But, to try to re stamp Ukrainians as being Russians (or Little Russians) today or in the future is just plain nonsense that’s been already tried quite fervently and has failed miserable. If Karlin and his ilk feel that this is still a viable alternative, I feel that they are living in a complete fantasy world devoid of reality.
Popper’s Paradox strikes again!
Peace.
My game.
Play by my rules or I will take my marbles and go home. 🙂
Correct. The elites defend their power by any and all means. “Free speech” is bullshit. Doesn’t exist anywhere, never has, never will.
As Vladimir Lenin famously said (at least according to Slavoj Zizek): “Freedom? Yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?”
Once one comes to this realization, the real serious conversation can begin. What do you wish to block? What is your motivation to block it? What is your evidence? Where do you derive your authority to do such? What are the hidden consequences?
Peace.
I haven’t finished the book yet, but what I have read so far and elsewhere makes me accept your point as valid.
Stalin and the Bolsheviks went way beyond mere coercion, civil war activities and revolt suppression to mass indiscriminate terror and willful activities that worsened the famine.
The motivation is to protect the power structure.
Now, for the evidence. Since I’m playing the stalinist type here, I’ll suggest that the evidence doesn’t matter. Mr Bobrov was punished for stirring up ethnic hatred. An example was made of him by the authorities. Maybe he did, and then it’s fair enough. Or maybe he came close but didn’t, and that’s even better: ethnic-hatred-stirrer-up wannabes will know that there’s no chance to get off on a technicality. Mission accomplished.
It’s great, people in Austria seem to be rather sensible (also interesting that the 16-29 age bracket voted massively for FPÖ and ÖVP). Unfortunately I can’t say the same about Germany. There are now some calls from within the CDU itself for Merkel to step down, but on the whole the establishment seems intent to continue just as before. And the AfD is very far from becoming a serious party like the FPÖ. But the political situation is quite volatile, hard to know what’s going to happen.
Quite possibly so, the NPD people are that demented. They really are Nazis, it’s not just a slur against them (Voigt actually is relatively moderate, there were other elements within the party that were far worse and had links with violent Neonazi skinhead gangs, and one minor NPD politician was even involved in a series of murders of Turkish shopkeepers). They’re pretty irrelevant nowadays however (and never really were relevant as a political force anyway).
Is this what happened to the Dalai Lama?
Alas, Dalai Lama failed to protect his feudal power structure.
We know that fifteen years ago 30 of the 200 top leadership positions were held by Verfassungsschutz (or other intelligence services) undercover agents. The intelligence services were unwilling to share the identity of their agents with the court, however, one of the most important arguments for having them banned was an extremist anti-Semitic tract written by someone who was proven to be a Verfassungsschutz agent at the time.
So… what is your estimate of the proportion of undercover agents among the most demented skinhead types?
(By the way I don’t think they are “Nazis”. Even moderate nationalists in 1950s Germany wanted a revision of the eastern borders. Even many moderate nationalists didn’t like Jews, even if they understood that the Nazis really went way too far. But I get your point, they really seem to be demented.)
That’s the difference between being taught your country was “Hitler’s first victim” and that it was “willingly complicit in the worst ever crime in history”.
I heard it somewhere that the definition of Austrians is that they are the people who managed to convince the world that Beethoven was an Austrian, but that Hitler was a German.
Yes, there are certainly grounds for suspecting that the German state does some extremely dubious things in regard to subverting and controlling opposition in the establishment’s interests. However, it’s a bit misleading to talk of “undercover agents” imo, that sounds as if these people had taken on a totally fake persona and been infiltrated into the NPD. “Informers” would be more accurate imo. Most of them probably are genuine far right extremists, and they may often be acting out of self-interest, not just in a personal sense, but also for their movement…e.g. some of them have gotten huge sums of money for their services (which they then used for their political activities). It’s really not always clear who’s using whom here…some of the NPD people may have enjoyed feeding fake information to the security services and getting money from a state they reject as illegitimate.
And I don’t use the term “Nazi” lightly (I’ve been called one myself multiple times, and thought that wasn’t really justified), but in the case of the NPD I’d say it’s legitimate. These really are people who think what happened between 1933 and 1945 in Germany was pretty great, and repeating it might be a good idea.
True, Austria is very different in this regard from Germany (it’s also much more openly antisemitic tbh). But there may be other factors as well…Austria was neutral during the Cold war after all, so I’d suppose American influence was more limited.
True, Austria is very different in this regard from Germany (it’s also much more openly antisemitic tbh).
This is interesting in that there are few Jews in either country. Correct? At least in the US they are in the millions and are a disproportionate presence in many important sectors. And yet it seems from the comments here at Unz that the threat from “actual” Nazis is much greater there than here.
In Soviet POW camps there inevitably came a time several weeks into captivity when the Austrians decided they were not Germans after all but oppressed Austrians.
The Germans would then proceed to whine at their former comrades/countrymen for “betrayal.”
Well, that’s sort of to be expected since the Nazis were a German phenomenon, don’t you think? And regarding the “threat” by Nazis I obviously have a different perception. There were some very serious problems with militant and violent Neonazis in Germany (who committed a non-trivial number of murders), especially in East Germany, in the 1990s, and some of that persists, albeit at a much lower level…just like occasionally some white supremacist nutcase in the US goes on a killing spree (or some black nationalist nutcase…or some militant Muslim). But there is no “threat” in the sense of real Nazis coming to power.
But then I suppose you wanted to make some point about the antisemitic commenters on Unz review and how misguided they are…sorry, not interested in participating in that discussion.
So let me get this straight Anatoly…..you supported the dipshit Saakashvili in 2008?…or were at least neutral? Russia acted brilliantly, proportionately and successfully to assist Abkhazia and South Ossetia and I prefer a sense of responsibility to these people then outright ethnonationalism…..though I think there is nothing wrong with any proponent of the ‘Russian-world’ also mixing it in with ethnonationalist concepts…which VVP does many times.
lol, hadn’t heard that before. Did the Soviets believe it?
Stalin mentioned to Churchill (who wanted to create a separate South Germany to forever isolate and weaken Prussia) that he didn’t believe South German soldiers fought any less fiercely than Prussians, and that in the Soviets’ experience it was only the Austrians who weren’t as determined as other Germans. But probably it was all bull. A lot of elite troops and commanders (also a lot of police commanders in the SS) were Austrian, including Hitler himself.
Okay, that sounds plausible.
Had Hitler stopped in 1939, and avoided Kristallnacht, it wouldn’t have been that bad, compared to a lot of other political systems, and unfortunately by now even liberal democracy slipped into the “other political systems” category here. (Basically, it’s now totally destroying Germany and many other countries with no hope for recovery…) August 1939 German borders minus Bohemia and Moravia, plus Danzig would not be totally unjust either.
The issue with totalitarian Nazi dictatorship was that the dictator at the top was a living Wagner protagonist, and as Regietheater directors rather unoriginally “discover” all the time, Wagner protagonists are not always perfect or even particularly good people, and of course always go on to create tragedies. Otherwise in peacetime it provided probably just as much happiness to the vast majority of its subjects as any other political system, and maybe even more. But then it started one of the most destructive wars and topped it off with one of the most murderous genocides ever.
Well, that’s sort of to be expected since the Nazis were a German phenomenon
It just seems to me that making anti-Semitism work without having any Semites around would be an uphill task all the way.
But then I suppose you wanted to make some point about the antisemitic commenters on Unz review and how misguided they are
Well, I wasn’t, but since you are expecting it, I can oblige.
The anti-Semitic commenters here are misguided. They are also not a political threat to anyone. The US political arena is so devoid of Nazis that the MSM has to create them out of the likes of people like S. Gorka and Pepe the Frog. (No disrespect to either; I like them both.)
One of the goals of the Nazi project was creating a world (or at least country, later continent) free of Jews (judenrein or judenfrei). I think an ideology intent on creating a world free of Jews (but with many other goals) could work just fine without Jews at all.
So, in your mind the Nazism phenomenon is defined by antisemitism?
I think anti-Semitism was an integral part of Nazism. Would it have worked without it? Perhaps. Mussolini is described as a fascist and he seems to have made fascism work for a while without the intense Jew-hatred that exemplified Hitler’s Germany.
Hitler didn’t invent anti-Semitism, he just perfected its use as a springboard to political power.
Well, Austrians were overrepresented among high-ranking Holocaust perpetrators unless I’m mistaken (e.g. Eichmann, Kaltenbrunner, Globocnik, Stangl). It makes sense in a way, multiethnic Austria-Hungary had been a breeding ground for the most extreme forms of pan-German nationalism after all.
Depends how we count the Russians.
Ancestry, culture, language, dna, citizenship, etcwhatever.
Numbers would range from 50-100%
Well, Germany in 1933 had only a few hundred thousand Jews (about 600 000 iirc), many of them very assimilated…that is much less than the millions of Muslims it has nowadays. Nazi antisemitism wasn’t very rational, as reiner tor has indicated it was a highly ideological project of “redeeming” the world by removing all Jews. It probably makes more sense when one considers Nazism as a quasi-religious movement (I watched the Deutsche Wochenschau of March 1945 on Youtube recently…the vocabulary used – e.g. “fanaticism” in a positive sense, Gläubigkeit, that is faith – is quite striking in this regard).
bigger parties and bigger nations, tend to be more currupt.
the Austrian parties are probably closer to “pure”.
Merkel party probably has influences from so many groups outside her own.
the Bavarians are smaller and more balanced then Merkel party.
Which it was. This is why – together with the Volksgemeinschaft, a community of the people supposedly bound by blood – it satisfied a lot of psychological needs of its subjects which liberal democracy is utterly incapable of, and in this secularized world people try (quite unsuccessfully, in my opinion) to fill with things like esoteric beliefs or anti-racist activism (or both).
Of course, liberal democracy theoretically has its advantages, like freedom. But since we’re losing more and more of it every day, and it’s actually producing a catastrophe which in its long term consequences looks even more horrible than what Nazism produced, the equation is no longer tilting in its favor.
In the memories of assirology I. Dyakonov (he was in the war years was an interpreter in exploration), says that the Austrian prisoners (especially Tyrolese) much more willingly cooperated with the Soviets
and it’s actually producing a catastrophe which in its long term consequences looks even more horrible than what Nazism produced
I really don’t see how that you can make such a statement. It really makes me question your judgement.
Nazi antisemitism wasn’t very rational
It was straightforwardly rational if you wanted to remove all Jews, assimilated or not, from their positions in many of the most important sectors of the nation. I am pretty sure that few objected to this goal. Later, when it was obvious “something” had to be done with them after their removal, I assume many got a little queasy, but were afraid to speak up out of fear.
It was pointless to kill so many Polish Jews who were in no danger of becoming titans of industry.
You are missing one of the key appeals of anti-Semitism and Nazism. It wasn’t just a matter of getting rid of the elite competition for “your” elites, it was getting rid of competition across the board, all the way down to butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.
Or did you just want to take a swipe at Polish Jews?
They were competition for Poles, not Germans. Nazis didn’t care a hang about Poles.
They killed plenty of them too.
Or did you just want to take a swipe at Polish Jews?
I’m curious to know why you would think that, or even why you care.
Please describe the difference in your reaction if I had answered “yes” or “no”.
They were competition for Poles, not Germans. Nazis didn’t care a hang about Poles.
They killed plenty of them too.
Nazis were interested in killing Jews from all countries, captains of industry or street sweepers.
I’m curious to know why you would think that, or even why you care.
Please describe the difference in your reaction if I had answered “yes” or “no”.
I don’t care and my reaction would be the same.
It looked like you were trying to carve out an exception that says it’s okay to kill Jews if they are, or have the potential to be, captains of industry, but if they are just a bunch of Tevyes, leave them alone.
Going back to the earlier discussion, supposing you were appointed Censor Commentorum with arbitrary powers, should this resemblance have resulted in an investigation, or merely in the comment being blocked, or in my arrest and interrogation?
😉
Yes, this was irrational. And it couldn’t have been a matter of popular appeal or made any difference to competition because most Germans probably didn’t know or care what happened in Poland whether to Poles or Jews.
I don’t think Hitler’s program was ever intended to be rational. The 25 Points were the closest he got: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program .
But that’s the point “anon” was making (at least I suppose so), that Nazi antisemitism can’t just be explained by wanting to remove Jews as competition or by material concerns. Sure, material considerations (that is robbing Jews of their property, down to the fillings of gold teeth) did play a role. But that can’t have been decisive for killing dirt poor Jews from rural places in some remote corner of Poland. That only made sense if one regarded Jews as an almost metaphysical source of evil that to be removed for creating a better world.
That only made sense if one regarded Jews as an almost metaphysical source of evil that to be removed for creating a better world.
I agree that this became a big part of the push to exterminate them, but the impetus goes back to the disproportionate success of the Jews in the important sectors.
Look at the black/white divide in the US, all the way back to the Civil War. It was economic competion in the lower and lower middle class that was the wellspring. The captians of industry keeping a lumpen black class ever at the ready to attack the living standards and power of the working class. Nobody ever tried to genocide the blacks. Nobody worried about them taking over Wall Street. Hence no widespread ideology that they were inherently evil and needed to be destroyed down to the little children and babies.
There was a theory of Polish nationalists (who were themselves antisemitic) in the 1930s that Nazism was an essentially Judaic ideology. The so-called Aryans were the Chosen people (like Jews), they were entitled to lands and to eliminate others from them (Slavs), theirs was a national “religion”, etc. Hitler spent some of his formative years among Jews.
From this perspective Jews could be considered a similar rival to be destroyed. The new version must eliminate the prototype.
That’s news to me tbh, I’ve never heard that before. There was a Jewish doctor who looked after Hitler’s mother when she was dying of cancer (and whom Hitler held in high regard), and iirc he had contacts with Jewish art dealers in Vienna before WW1. Bizarrely enough even his landlord in the 1920s (when Hitler already was leader of the Nazi party!) apparently was Jewish, and Hitler seems to have occasionally had a friendly chat with him. But Jews as a formative influence on Hitler is pretty unlikely imo.
The idea that Nazism copied in some form the “chosen people” idea of Judaism probably wasn’t totally uncommon though, not just among Polish right-wingers, I vaguely recall that Victor Klemperer – well-known for his Nazi-era diaries – had similar ideas (he also rejected Zionism since in his view like Nazism it denied his status as a completely assimilated Jew, or rather ex-Jew since he had converted to Protestantism).
I wonder if he somehow envied them and wanted the Germans to be the Chosen People. But who knows what twisted paths his mind took.
My theory is that smaller countries (or more specifically, smaller population countries) work better than big ones, in general.
Sri Lanka is like a better functioning version of India, Canada like a better functioning version of the US, Taiwan like a better functioning China, Belarus like a better functioning Russia. (To my mind, anyway).
Austria also never indulged in colonialism (their land empire in Europe doesn’t count). Germany was a colonial power in the Second Age of Empire and in some instances e.g. Namibia a very brutal one. I suspect colonialism guilt might be part of it.
That being said, I wonder if some of what’s going on is just the effect of being a small country rather than a Great Power, and how that affects people’s political psychology.
Yes, I think showing overt or covert nostalgia for the 1933-1945 German regime, even if you don’t explicitly agree that e.g. Jews should be killed, is a pretty good definition of “Nazi”.
Slovakia seems to be the one country today where an actual neo-Nazi party is a significant force (LSNS, I forget the leader’s name at the moment). Believe it or not they actually got 25% of the youth vote. (There is a ‘softer’ post-fascist party, SNP which is actually part of the current ruling coalition: LSNS is not that, they’re a lot worse.) Their leader was just fined a bunch of money by a Slovak court for making a charity payment in the amount of $1,488 euros.
The news from Austria might even get even better. I’ve seen speculation that the Social Democrats are going to dismiss Kern and have an election to replace him. If that happens, the most likely new leader of the party would be Doskozil the defence minister, who is an anti-migration “conservative” SD, since he is the most popular figure in the party right now. We could end up seeing the specter of all three major parties taking a tough line on immigration, and liberals/multiculturalists having to resort to minor parties like NEOS or the ludicrous Greens.
Makes sense.
There was less time to indoctrinate them and the Tyrolese knew how pro-German the Nazies were by looking at South Tyrol.
Simone Weil thought so, for one. She was an ethnically Jewish convert first to Bolshevism and then to a sort of radical Christian communism. In spite of or because of her background she extremely loathed Judaism (espoused to some extent the Marcionite point of view which drew a sharp distinction between the OT and NT gods) and she thought that Hitler borrowed his idea of the (German) chosen people from the Old Testament.
I really like Simone Weil but I don’t think she was correct there and I think it was simply her hatred for her own roots influencing her conclusion.
Why get hung up on details? Racism was its integral part. It could very well be philo-semitic and – I dunno – latino- or celtic-phobic.
Why get hung up on details?
Because details are facts and people who are interested in “The Truth” want to know the facts?
Your comment has been asked and answered ad infinitum which means that your comment is not meant to enlighten but is intended to spin or misdirect.
Zionism is a form of nationalism.
Anti-Semitism is a form of racism.
Yes, I think showing overt or covert nostalgia for the 1933-1945 German regime, even if you don’t explicitly agree that e.g. Jews should be killed, is a pretty good definition of “Nazi”.
What do you say about reiner Tor’s comment:
Had Hitler stopped in 1939, and avoided Kristallnacht, it wouldn’t have been that bad,
I think that it is worthwhile to make a distinction between “the Nazi regime” and the German people, included those Germans who merely served, for example, in the Wehrmacht.
I don’t think so tbh, while there has been quite a lot of attention in the German media towards the history of German colonialism in recent years (the genocide of the Herero especially, less so to German possessions in the Pacific or China), it plays very little role in German public consciousness. It was a relatively brief episode of 30 years, there simply is no comparison to Britain and France which were imperial powers for centuries and based much of their own self-conception on that role. And German historical memory is dominated by 1933-1945 to an extent you may not entirely appreciate, everything else is dwarfed by that (even WW1 and the Weimar republic).
But reiner tor is basically right about this, before early 1939 (the annexation of Czechia) the Nazis had maybe killed a few thousand people, and not committed any external aggressions that couldn’t be justified by the principle of self-determination of peoples. The Nazi regime was more brutal than the authoritarian dictatorships in Eastern Europe like in Poland or the Baltic states, but its body count was small compared to what was going on in the Soviet Union, and its conduct of foreign affairs hadn’t yet been marked by open wars of aggression like Italy’s against Ethiopia.
The key argument against seeing the 1930s as the “good” phase of Nazism is of course that Hitler always wanted war and that the policies of his regime were geared towards that goal.
Correct. Germany prior to 1939 was roughly comparable to the Jim Crow-era American South. Not in the same league as the mass-murdering USSR. This is why western appeasers of this time, who favored Germany in the context of it keeping the Soviets at bay, should not be regarded as harshly as they generally are, because we now know the Nazis were even worse than Stalin.
I don’t mean to spin or misdirect. And obviously you’re not obliged to reply to me, but if you have the answer, why not just give it here.
It’s true that details are facts. But I don’t think a mere collection of facts constitutes “The Truth”.
From wikipedia:
I don’t mean to spin or misdirect.
I will take you at your word for now.
But I don’t think a mere collection of facts constitutes “The Truth”.
Neither do I.
If I tell you that I saw the Vietnamese boat people on American TV, but later learned that there were important details concerning many of the Vietnamese with regards to ethnicity, religion, etc. Would you agree that my “facts” are on better grounds that just watching the rescues at sea on TV?
Correct. Germany prior to 1939 was roughly comparable to the Jim Crow-era American South.
There are some major differences. Redemption crippled the political power of blacks. Legislation reducing citizenship rights were gradually enacted. Except for isolated incidents, blacks did not actually have their property seized or taken. There was little removal from occupations, but rather it was the enactment of barriers to entry. Also, the controlling political parties did not have the official dogma that implied further harm to blacks.
Blacks could migrate to other states as they were citizens of the US. The Jews were dependent upon acceptance by another country if they wished to emigrate. There was no place of safety within Germany.
No idea what you’re talking about.
And Arminius, Barbarossa, Frederick the Great – all these figures in our days covered in shadow?
If so, it is surprising how changed the consciousness of the Germans.
Yes, unfortunately Hitler was role-playing as a real-life opera protagonist. That’s the most important weakness of a totalitarian National Socialist Führerstaat: it all depends how good the Führer is. If he wants to start a world war and genocide, there’s very little to stop him.
it all depends how good the Führer is.
If the Fuhrer is “good” then the most important weakness becomes the greatest strength.
I think the situations are not quite comparable (a high-IQ market dominant minority is quite different from a low-IQ underclass minority in any event, and opposition to them will also be quite different), but I also happen to think the American South was better for the blacks.
But it’s difficult to compare the two political systems. National Socialism quickly brought ruin and destruction on Europe, especially on its foremost targets (Jews and to a lesser extent Slavs) and also on its preferred people (Germans), but had it not started the war (e.g. had Hitler died in October 1938), it might have proved much more dynamic and workable than for example communism did. In other words, it might go on existing for a long time.
On the other hand, liberal democracy is now in the process of replacing its populations (including African Americans), which will prove disastrous for those populations (including African Americans) in the long run. So much so, that they might actually cease to exist in any recognizable form. That’s something Nazi Germany would never have done to any population (except the tiny Jewish community of Germany), had it not started the world war.
(I don’t think any sane person could praise Nazi Germany as it actually was: starting a stupid and highly destructive war while going on a genocidal rampage is not quite defensible in my opinion. But what I wrote was about the hypothetical case of Germany not starting war and genocide anywhere, and being content of its August 1939 borders plus Danzig minus Bohemia and Moravia. I’m sure they couldn’t get Danzig because they also wanted the “corridor” and also because the Poles could see what benefit the Czechs reaped from giving in to Hitler’s demands.)
But then again, he could die. A political system which depends on one person is not a very strong one. It’s a similar situation with China and Russia: the latter’s political system is too dependent on one person only. We’ll see how good his successor will be…
However, I think that in the case of Nazi Germany, no Nazi leader would’ve started a world war. Most of these guys were pretty boring with limited ambitions (which is why they could faithfully serve their master), and so they probably would’ve been content with a German greater power with a lot of influence in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
A lot of people commented on the obvious similarities. I think even the Nazis themselves occasionally used the argument, at least I read Hungarian far right newspapers from the late 30s and early 40s explicitly defending the racial exclusion laws on that basis. (“We are only doing what the Jews have always been doing.”)
I disagree, at least if the person in question doesn’t agree with mass murder or conquering Lebensraum in the East. Because in that case the person rejects what makes us think that the Nazis were comparable to the Devil.
So the problem with “he’s a Nazi except for the world war and genocide parts” is that it’s like saying “he’s a murderer except for the killing people part”.
In China? I don’t think so. Belarus, yes. Also, Merkel in Germany.
I meant the contrast between the two: China’s system is so much better because it’s not dependent on one person only.
There’s a good alt history book on this called Fatherland by Robert Harris.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51FN1RSR4NL.jpg
It portrays the Nazi regime as having liberalized after WW2 into a run of the mill authoritarian regime in a Cold War with the US. Internally, it is portrayed as succumbing to creeping corruption, with many of the Nazi bigwigs sporting offshore caches in Switzerland.
I suspect this is a more or less realistic assessment, especially if someone like Göring who was more into enjoying life’s luxuries than hardcore ideology had taken over after Hitler. Though I doubt it would have declined to quite the same sort of corrupt stasis portrayed in Harris’ book – after all, the Germans are a within-Hajnal people, and the Nazis weren’t going to repress markets like the Soviets had anytime after 1934.
Oh yeah. Sorry. I need to read more carefully.
85% Great Russians, about the same as “English” in Great Britain compared to the various Celts.
I have never found a resource to explain Russian capitalization. Even in English I tend to capitalize like a German.
The Ukrainians I know in Russia are becoming more Ukrainian. A 3rd generation woman with no remaining Ukrainian relatives is now committed to her Ukrainian identity.
What surprised me in conversations in Moscow was the 100% support for Sakashvilli, a Georgian, to be the next Ukrainian President! This was several different conversations. Globalist liberals all.
The vast majority of Ukrainians in Russia, cease to be Ukrainians (but turn into Russian) in 1 generation.
What surprised me in conversations in Moscow was the 100% support for Sakashvilli
Maybe this is one of the problems with Ukrainian nationalism.
Over to you, Mr. Hack.
Brilliant!
What does it even mean: “support for Sakashvilli [sic]”? Saakashvili is just a stateless guy running around the Kiev-occupied territories and denouncing Poroshenko.
Nazi ideology corresponded more closely to reality than communism, though it did have some blind spots and distortions of reality. But in general it’s difficult to see how they could’ve become so dysfunctional as communism. I read that in the 1970s and 1980s at Politburo meetings the economic dysfunction of the country often came up, but they couldn’t openly discuss what was wrong, in part because they didn’t have the language for it. They all spoke a kind of Marxist-Leninese language, and formulated everything according to the ideology, even when among themselves (or, probably, when thinking alone), so although they were talking about “lack of incentives” occasionally, they couldn’t quite manage to speak about a need for free enterprise and capital accumulation for individuals or private enterprises. They couldn’t even think about the possibility that the system had to be dismantled totally (or if they could, they were frightened of the consequences), and the economic reforms proposed by their Marxist-Leninist economists were at best window dressing and at worst led to further breakdown. For example when Gorbachev implemented the economic reforms (which he intended to reform without much political reform around 1987), giving larger autonomy to company directors didn’t incentivize the directors to increase profits for the companies, instead it led to covert and later overt looting.
On the other hand, National Socialism didn’t really have an economic ideology beyond some social Darwinist musings about how rich people got rich because they were more fit to rule and how poor people of good blood needed to be helped socially. In effect this looked a lot like Soziale Marktwirtschaft, social market economy, something which got so successful in the 1950s and 60s. Himmler himself hated Speer’s centrally planned war economy (denounced it as “totally Bolshevik”), and promoted a secret group of economic planners including Ludwig Erhard (was later economic minister of the Bundesrepublik and hailed as the father of the German economic miracle) and Otto Ohlendorf (an SS general and commander of one of the Einsatzgruppen in the East, also a PhD in economics and an advocate of free entrepreneurship and a determined opponent of central planning).
Except for the Grossraumwirtschaft, which was the ideology of conquest. It postulated that since Germany was much smaller than the US, there were only two ways to achieve the economies of scale (and wealth) seen in America: through export and through controlling a large area. The export as a possibility was dangerous (other countries could close their markets) and not even possible (during the Depression all countries closed their markets), so the latter option (i.e. conquest) was the only remaining possibility. However, in the 1930s the Germans made bilateral trade agreements with almost all countries between Germany and the USSR, which meant that Germany had relatively secure export markets.
On the other hand, it kept importing more than it exported to these countries, because rearmament used up all resources and exports were difficult to sustain while simultaneously building up reserves of raw materials and rapidly arming the military. However, whenever foreign currency reserves fell to dangerous lows, exports were always given temporary priority.
I think it’s quite likely that a more risk-averse German leader would simply have accepted Grossraumwirtschaft as an area where Germany was economically and politically dominant, like the system of bilater clearing agreements. The risk-averse German leader could probably be any of the Nazi leadership except Hitler: most of them expressed concern in 1939 when war broke out, including Göring and Goebbels. Especially Göring is significant as the designated successor of Hitler.
You take one small episode: 1980s Politburo – and you generalize it into the whole of ‘communism’. What about Chinese reformers? And what about Lenin and his NEP, as implemented in 1922; somehow the ‘Marxist-Leninist language’ didn’t prevent that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
Everyone had experience of normal capitalism just 5 years ago, and the economy was primarily composed of peasant agriculturalists and craftsmen.
In contrast, the USSR by the 1970s-80s had two generations without experience of capitalism, and the economy was dominated by factories, many of them obsolete, sub-optimally located, and sustained by subsidies; a rustbelt in the making should central planning break down, as it eventually did.
One generation removed from capitalism, and a much higher peasant to rustbelt ratio. All they had to do was babysit the heavy industrial SEO’s to avoid excessive social trouble, while unleashing the entrepreneurial energies of the Chinese village. (The region of China most like the USSR was Manchuria, where heavy industrialization had started in the 1930s and progressed farther. Consequently, it also suffered the most from rustbelt symptoms during the 1980-90s reforms).
Not sure what to make of all this. Like I said: suppose the 1970s/1980s period was indeed a period of stagnation in the USSR (and it’s often called that). Suppose the Politburo (and its secretary general specifically) during that period was indeed inadequate for introducing radical reforms. This still isn’t a good reason to generalize about all ‘communisms’, other than to say that such problems appear to be possible.
Not the ones I met when I lived in Moscow. But probably true for those scattered individually around Russia. I doubt the 2 million or so self-identified Ukrainian official residents in Russia from the 2010 census were of the 1st generation.
Here’s a website for Ukrainians in Russia:
http://www.kobza.com.ua/
Yes. Even at the 2012 Election when anti-foreigner was a theme that played well, the Ukrainians I had in mind were happy to identify as Russian first. Not so now.
In this case, maybe a little shadow wouldn’t do all that much harm.