Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 22 – Speaking at a
conference in Berlin earlier this month, Russian commentator Aleksandr Skobov
argued that it is critically important to understand the threats that the Putin
regime presents to the world and that Russians living under it and Russians who
have fled have a key role to play in promoting that understanding.
Skobov argues that many remain
confused in their assessment of Putin and his regime because up to now, while arrangements
for totalitarian repression are in place, so far the Kremlin has limited itself
to what might be called totalitarianism “’lite’” and allowed some to mistakenly
claim that it will never take the next steps (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5DD83A2725FA3).
But
there are compelling reasons to think that it will become ever more totalitarian,
including the Anschluss of Crimea and its imposition of real totalitarianism
there and its ever more passionate defense of Stalin’s crimes, Skobov argues. There
is thus every reason to think that Putin is becoming a threat to the world in
ways that recall Hitler’s.
And
Skobov argues that there are three reasons why those in the opposition who
argue that it is inappropriate and wrong to “call the Putin regime fascist and
Putin himself the new Hitler.”
The
first of these is the nature of the ideology of the Putin regime. Many
have suggested that the Putin regime doesn’t have an ideology, but in fact the
ruling elites of all systems have one, however much they may leave it
unarticulated in public or even hidden from the view of others, Skobov says.
“Putin
and his minions,” the commentator says, may present themselves as technocrats;
but in fact they have a clear vision of the world as “an eternal battlefield of
all against all for dominance, a struggle in which no legal or moral
limitations operate. Only selfish interests and force have any significance.”
Such
views fit perfectly within the framework of fascist ideology, Skobov says.
Moreover,
for Putin and his entourage, “the people are politically without any self-standing
ability to act. It always is only something plastic in the hands of the ruling
elite. Liberal democracy of the Western type is for his regime no more than a
system of deceptions and manipulations which serve the ruling elite to control ‘the
suckers.’”
In
its place, “the Putinists propose a simpler and more effective system (from
their point of view): a ‘long’ (that is unchanged] state operating on a ‘deep’
people which expresses its true and long-term ‘deep’ interests and not fleeting,
superficial or force desires via elections but rather through a mystical unity
with the leader.”
“All
this,” Skobov says, “also corresponds with fascist theories about the nation as
a collective ‘superpersonality,’ about the state as the only living organism to
which are subordinate all its organs and cells. ‘The long state’ of Mr. Surkov
is a fascist state.”
The
second reason why those who deny the fascist nature of Putin and his regime is
this, Skobov says. Like Hitler’s, the Putin
regime has begun the thorough-going destruction of the system of international relations
created after World War II. It hasn’t just violated the keystone principle
against annexations.”
Instead,
“it is intentionally attacking all its principles: the supremacy of law, the
equality of peoples, and collective responsibility for the support of common
rules for all.” Instead, Putin like Hitler “is consciously trying to return the
world to one of unlimited struggle or all against all for domination” and to
restore “’spheres of imperial control.’”
Also
like Hitler in the 1930s, “Putin is consistently destroying the legal and moral
limitations on force and cruelty which had been developed by humanity. Like
Hitler in the 1930s too, he is seeking to overturn the achievements based on the
values of the Renaissance and Enlightenment regarding humanism and human
rights.”
And
the third reason is this: “in this act of destruction of the present-day global
liberal world order, Putin could really succeed.” To do so, he does not need to
have “a big share of the world’s GDP; “for this it is enough to have a critical
mass of nuclear weapons and to value human life much less than his potential
opponents do.”
That
means that “at a minimum,” the Putin regime represents “no less a global
threate to civilization and its achievements than did the Hitlerite regime.” Unfortunately,
far too few people in Russia and the West recognize that reality: It is the job
of the Russian opposition to help them, Skobov concludes.
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