Source: Jan Fleischhauer in Der Spiegel Online, May 8
A search for the right historical analogy should focus on the events of Rome in 1919 rather than Sarajevo in 1914. It won’t take long for those who step inside the world of echo chambers and metaphors that color Putin’s thinking to identify traits that were also present at the birth of fascism. There’s Putin’s cult of the body, the lofty rhetoric of self-assertion, the denigration of his opponents as degenerates, his contempt for democracy and Western parliamentarianism, his exaggerated nationalism.
Enemies of freedom on the far right in Europe sensed the changing political climate early on. They immediately understood that, in Putin, someone is speaking who shares their obsessions and aversions. Putin reciprocates by acknowledging these like-minded individuals. “As for the rethinking of values in European countries, yes, I agree that we are witnessing this process,” he told his television interviewer last Thursday, pointing to Victor Orban’s victory in Hungary and the success of Marine Le Pen in France. It was the only positive thing he had to say in the entirety of a four-hour interview.
When they were first introduced one year ago, people also failed to recognize the true meaning of Russia’s new anti-gay laws. But today it is clear that it marked the emergence of the new Russia. What began with an anti-gay law is now continuing at another level: the logical progression of the belief that certain groups are inferior is the belief in the superiority of one’s own people.
And when Putin evokes the myth of Moscow as a “Third Rome,” it is clear he is assigning the Russian people with an historic mission. Responsibility is falling to Russia not only to stop Western decadence at its borders, but also to provide a last bastion for those who had already given up hope in this struggle. But he is also saying that Russia can never yield.
“Death is horrible, isn’t it?” Putin asked viewers at the end of his television appearance. “But no, it appears it may be beautiful if it serves the people: death for one’s friends, one’s people or for the homeland, to use the modern word.”
That’s as fascist as it gets.
Good article. It sketches a repeatable process that develops into fascism. I’ve come to think it’d be useful to try to identify objectively what, socially and neurologically, is correlated with the generation of fascism. What are the “congeners” of fascism, to use an evolutionary term?
Interesting support for this observation is the revival of the the Leib Guard and the Semenovsky Regiment. Both are symbols of a time when Russia lived in a so called golden age. Fascists love to justify their actions as a proper correction of history.
The “death is beautiful” bit also echos Wagner’s glorification of death in Tristan and Isolde, and Götterdämmerung as the transcendent step of commitment, in one case, and purification, in the other.