russia meets most of criteria of fascist regime – Snyder

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The idea of fascism was never defeated, and now it’s back, writes Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University, for nytimes.com.

People often disagree what exactly constitutes fascism, but today’s russia meets most of the criteria with its cult around World War II, a single leader, and a myth of imperial greatness, Snyder argues.

According to him, even though many hesitate to see russia as fascist because the USSR defined itself as antifascist, its opposition to fascism was inconsistent. And when the Soviet Union joined Germany as an ally to invade Poland, speeches of Nazis leaders were reprinted in the Soviet press, Snyder writes, but russians don’t talk about this today.

According to Snyder, soviet anti-fascism was nothing more than a politics “of us and them,” it just meant defining an enemy, and it is exactly what offered fascism a backdoor to return to russia.

Snyder argues that in the war against Ukraine the russians just use “Nazi” to describe “subhuman enemy,” someone you can kill and all the hate speeches only make it easier to murder Ukrainians.

Ukraine was the object of fascist war before, and the similarities between Hitler’s war with the USSR and putin’s with Ukraine are hard to disregard.

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