Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 8 – Fascism is one of
the most negative terms in any language and it is often employed as the
ultimate expression of one’s hatred or disapproval of something, but fascism has some real
characteristics. Consequently, it is possible to list them and the evaluate whether this
or that leader or this or that country can justifiably be labelled “fascist.”
One blogger has identified
seven such characteristics of fascism and then considered whether Germany under
Hitler, the Soviet Union under Stalin and Brezhnev, the Russian Federation
under Vladimir Putin, or Ukraine share them.
The results will not be comforting to Russians: their country today has
more fascist characteristics than does Ukraine (oleg-leusenko.livejournal.com/1407877.html).
In
his post, Oleg Leusenko lists seven characteristics of fascism: a leader cult,
a one-party system, militarism, the dominance of the security services, the
official promotion of anti-semitism and xenophobia, state control of the media
and a state propaganda system, and aggression abroad based on territorial
claims on neighboring states.
Germany
under Hitler, the USSR under Stalin and Brezhnev, and the Russian Federation
under Vladimir Putin manifest all these characteristics, he says. Ukraine on
the other hand features none of them. And that suggests, Leusenko says, that
the term “fascist” should not be applied to Ukraine but can be applied
appropriately to Putin’s Russia.
This
finding is unlikely to end Russian media claims that “fascism” is on the rise
in Ukraine or to lead many to describe Putin’s Russia as the fascist state it
is becoming. But it is a useful
corrective to the former and a valuable means of measuring the dangerous
directions Putin is taking his country.
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