Putin’s Insistence that Nationalism is ‘the First Stage to Nazism’ is Simply Wrong, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 30 –Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that nationalism is “the first stage to Nazism” is not only wrong but dangerous because he has the power to mistreat those who espouse nationalism within the current borders of the Russian Federation, according to Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid.

    Moreover, many in both Russia and elsewhere are likely to agree with him and his suggestion in this way that patriotism is good and nationalism is bad, although such a simplified definition of each is wrong as well, the blogger continues (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/24822 reposted at  kasparov.ru/material.php?id=681270D9740C3).

    Nationalism, El Murid says, is “an ideology calling for the construction of a nation state. It is nothing more than that,” while “patriotism is not an ideology at all.” It is simply “love for the fatherland,” a concept “very broad in nature and one which has different meanings for different people … it is an ethnical category but definitely not an ideology.”

    In Russia, of course, “the concept of the fatherland has been replaced by the concept of the state and as a result patriotism is understood” by the leader of that state “as an extremely primitive form of loyalty to the current government. That has nothing to do with patriotism … comparing a very narrow ideology with an ethical category is like comparing cold and salty.”

    Dragging Nazism into all this, El Murid argues, is something that defies logic. “Nationalism has nothing to do with Nazism since the ideology of nationalism itself does not presuppose an existence outside the process of building a nation state.” Once one comes into existence, all kinds of thing may happen, including Nazism which “always leads to its collapse.”

    “In general,” the Russian commentator concludes, “the Russian president’s primitive discussion of these very complex categories reflects either his very primitive intellect or his deliberate manipulation of these incompatible concepts” for purposes of his own.