Citation please? Snyder has acknowledged that Putin exploits racial unrest and divisions in the U.S. for his own ends (as the Soviets were fond of doing back in the days when he was one of their thugs --see the title of this topic). However, Snyder doesn’t claim he’s funding either the police or BLM.
Everything I’ve read by him places the actions of strongman leaders within broader ideological and philosophical frameworks. He’s pointed out numerous times that Putin actually reads and internalises the work of people like Dugin and Illyn.
In the end, though, autocrats are autocrats, which means that it’s not bad historiography to also focus on them as individuals with an extreme amount of influence over collective groups of humans.
If it was supposed to be an example of that, then why did you put it next to two extremely well-evidenced claims about their campaign to undermine democracy, and act as if all three were one and the same thing?
You sure seem to be downplaying the still ongoing propaganda campaign by Putin… It’s a thing that is a real thing. Putin did this and we know he did this. If Snyder is putting too much emphasis on Putin’s role vs. more homegrown anti-democratic actors, that doesn’t mean that we should not focus on Putin and what he’s done on this.
I think you can acknowledge Russian meddling in those events without making the same evidentiary leaps as Snyder, that because there may be evidence that Putin interfered in elections (for instance) that this is proof that Moscow is masterminding the rise of the far-Right globally or maintains this as an important geopolitical objective. Snyder seems pretty intent on putting forth a vision of Russia as a fascist state (which in itself has been questioned) intent on spreading fascism globally, but many of his arguments for doing so don’t hold up to deeper scrutiny, including the historical link between Hitler and Stalin he attempts to establish in his book.
I think it’s clear that, in certain ways, Russia benefits from the rise of the far-Right in certain European regimes or the weakening of the EU, sure, but it’s a bit much to attribute to Putin the ability or desire to have manufactured those outcomes. Despite the supposed monumental evidence of that, Snyder himself seems to struggle to strongly support those assertions.
Ah yes, people are saying that, right? All those people, whover they are, saying that here, saying it there. Saying it everywhere really, if only the liberal, Trump- Putin-hating media would listen.
I’m kind of reminded how the far-right is never truly the problem back in North America either. They march and attack buildings and kill and chant about how they need to get rid of Jews and immigrants and trans people, and there’s always someone saying to ignore all that stuff, it’s not the real problem and what did we do to make all this happen.
Putin’s armies are invading another country and deliberately shelling civilians as we speak. It is something he has been doing for a long time, along with oppressing minorities and helping anti-democratic movements the world over. He can go to hell, and I will let the management there quibble over what circle.
He funds and supports the far right in the West as a geopolitical objective because a disunified and divided U.S. and NATO and EU gives him more room for his expansionist aims. Didn’t quite work out as he hoped with Ukraine, but that’s what jumping the gun gets you.
In any case, Snyder hasn’t claimed this is the equivalent of “masterminding” things. Snyder sees what most of us do: Putin just opportunistically exploiting existing divisions in those countries by throwing money and disinfo campaigns at leverage points. Far-right organisations and politicians happen to be the wedges in those cracks at the moment but I’ve never seen Snyder claim Putin created them.
Putin’s Russia checks off a lot of (I’d argue all) the boxes on Umberto Eco’s famous list. As with any ideology, the praxis and intensity changes with time and place but core tenets remain consistent.
I somehow doubt that this was “a false flag operation” and that Ukraine does not have a large Nazi presence as it, (together with the United States), was the only country to vote against the recent UN resolution on “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism” [resolution A/76/460 DR 1]
If you think that an authoritarian state that is the leader of the modern white power movement is putting this forward in good faith, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Does the US, Australia, Ukraine, and every other European or settler colonial nation have a problem with white supremacy? Hell yes. Is Russia somehow the good guy here, who cares about eliminating ACTUAL nazis? Fuck no.
The more we play this whataboutism game and take sides between powers that are imperial rather than calling them BOTH out, the further away we’re moving from an actual solution to these problems.
I wonder how many people outside of the German speaking world know that in 2018 the then foreign secretary of Austria invited Putin to her wedding and danced with him.
And yes, she’s FPÖ, the far right party that was in the government coalition (!) then.
There are some number of neo-Nazis in Ukraine just as there are some number of neo-Nazis in the United States. Agents of the Russian state have been riling up white supremacists in both countries as doing so promotes internal social and political divisions that weaken Russia’s adversaries.
If Russia invaded the United States on the pretext that they were fighting Nazis I’d call bullshit on that too.
