Putin’s Having Jewish Friends Doesn’t Mean He isn’t an Anti-Semite, Nevzlin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 15 – “The fact that Putin has Jews among his friends does not mean that he isn’t an anti-Semitie, Leonid Nevzlin says. “Stalin had Kaganovich as a friend, but the two of them exterminated Jews.” At the very least, Putin is prepared to use anti-Semitism for his own purposes just like any other anti-Semitic leader.

            The co-owner of YUKOS, himself a Jew by nationality, says he draws these conclusions on the basis of several recent events, including the threats Jews have received after the downing of the Russian aircraft in Syria and the attacks on Russian nationalists whom he knows to be anything but anti-Semitic (t.me/nevzlin/31, reposted at echo.msk.ru/blog/nevzlin/2296416-echo/).

            The first, he says, as an obvious provocation, a direct continuation of the tactics of Stalin and the NKVD who viewed threatening Jews as a good way to divert anger at themselves and thus remain in power.  The second reflects a widespread misunderstanding that all Russian nationalists are by definition anti-Semites. This simply isn’t true.

            Nevzlin says that he knows several of those nationalists whom the Putin regime has gone after; and “among them, there are no anti-Semites.  A Russian nationalist isn’t necessarily an anti-Semite. He is a nationalist in the same way a Jew is a Jewish nationalist: He puts the interests of his people at a high place after the interests of his family and has a clear national self-identification.”

            That allows him, the businessman says, “to respect other peoples while loving his own people and being concerned about it.”  He adds that he is “a Jewish nationalist and a Russophile. I grew up in Russia; I am part of Russian culture.” Just as all Russian nationalists are not anti-Semites, so too not all Jews are Russophobes.

            “We nationalists have our disagreements, but they are as nothing in comparison with our problems with the common enemy which wants to destroy all of us and which in fact has established in Russia a regime which we can call Nazi-like.” Consequently, it is irrelevant and wrong to claim that Putin is not an anti-Semite.

            Jewish nationalists like genuine Russian nationalists know a provocation when they see one, and both groups are prepared to complain very loudly in order to prevent the situation from getting worse, Nevzlin says. Indeed, they expect such provocations and want to expose the perpetrators.

            Those propagandists who represent the criminal regime and call themselves Jews are “traitors to both the Jewish and Russian people.” The Kremlin may hope that Russians will accept what such “scum” say, “but I think that the Russian people is sufficiently wise not to fall for provocations and not to go along the path proposed by the powers that be.”

                “Citizens, comrades, friends,” the YUKOS co-owner concludes, “be vigilant.”