Moni meistä on varmaan ihmetellyt, miten natsivaltion presidentti voi olla juutalainen. No, tässäpä selitys:
Many have heard of Godwin’s Law,
or the rule of Nazi analogies: an Internet adage asserting that as an
online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the
probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches.
However, an important corollary is that whenever someone compares
someone or something to Nazism – that person has lost the argument
and/or the argument is summarily over.
Essentially, the world is to accept that all discussions of
Western politics cannot discuss the anti-Western Liberalism ideology
which was German Nazism.”
Yes, Russia should have accepted that in February. Practically nobody
west of the Oder River understood what Moscow meant by
“denazification”, and they still don’t after a month of Russian
explanations.
Russia’s military operation has made much harder by failing to
recognise the iron Western cultural reality of Godwin’s Law, and the
reality that the West only associates Nazis with anti-Semitism and – not
at all! – with Russophobia, despite the 20+ million Russian deaths at
the hands of the Germanic Nazis.
This is how iron that law is: Political science PhD holders have
responded to me with, “But… Ukraine’s president is Jewish – how can
there be Nazis?” If you cannot even get Western political science PhD holders to see where you are coming from – even remotely – you have zero chance to get the average Westerner to understand you.
Thus it’s a total, ongoing public relations catastrophe.
It’s not an easy problem to fix
It’s such a huge problem I actually have to discuss it in detail in my new book on the Yellow Vests, in a chapter titled: “Where the West is stuck: The fascism of the 1930s and the ‘fascism’ of the 2020s”. The
West is stuck in misunderstanding what fascism is, and in 2022 Russia
has not solved this problem; they have maybe even made it worse?!
It’s not an easy problem to fix, but in April 2014 I must say that I
was farther along than Russia is in 2022 – well, at least I tried to
propose some solution in a column for PressTV titled, “Ukraine: The Rise of the ‘Nalis’”.
I can’t find a link for it anywhere – I’d complain about how Iran’s
PressTV has been so deplatformed but – thanks in part to the awful
Russian public relations campaign – Russia has now become even more
deplatformed than us, wow! If someone finds a link, great, but these
highlights show the idea still holds up: the combination of rabid Nationalism and far-right Liberalism (in economics, politics and in anti-socialism) is still the problem in Ukraine. The column began:
“The combination of ultra-nationalists and ultra-liberals who
have overthrown the Ukrainian government is indicative of a new type of
political party in the region: National Liberals, or ‘Nalis’. They are
to be differentiated from ‘Nazis’ – National Socialists – only by the
economic ideology of liberalism (otherwise known as free-market
capitalism).
…
But it is a mistake to call the protesters in Ukraine “Nazis”.
Yes, at Maidan Square there was plenty of footage taken of neo-Nazis,
fascists, violent anarchists and other types who showed up to a
political protest in camouflage and armed with a firearm. But they are
actually “Nalis” – National Liberals.
---
Did “Nali” catch on? No, but did Russia come up with anything better?
Are they even strenuously pushing the term “Ukrainian Civil War”, which is no longer just a “possibility” but today’s reality, in my estimation?
I understand how Russians would use “Nazism” synonymously with
“Russophobia”, just I understand how Jews would use “Nazism”
interchangeably with “anti-Semitism”, but clearly most Westerners do not
understand the former and only the latter. Given that the “Nalis” have
been around since 2014, and given that the US has used shameless
Russophobia to distract from the political failures of the two
mainstream parties in their 2016 election, I’m surprised that Russia
couldn’t come up with a better way to express “pathological and
murderous hatred towards Russia”?
BTW, Ukrainan presidentin äidinkieli on venäjä.
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