As crazy as it may sound it’s like Putin is trying to replicate Hitler in several ways - so many similarities.
From an article by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Ukraine and Putin:
‘Putin’s intellectual lodestar is Ivan Ilyin, whose
works are back in print and given to state apparatchiks and military conscripts. After being expelled from the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, Ilyin
advocated a Russian version of fascism: the state as an organic community led by a paternal monarch, in which freedom is knowing one’s place. The purpose of voting for Ilyin (and for Putin) is to
express collective support for the leader, not to legitimate or choose him.
Aleksandr Dugin, Putin’s court-philosopher, closely follows in Ilyin’s steps,
adding a postmodern garnish of historicist relativism:
“[E]very so-called truth is a matter of believing. So we believe in what we do, we believe in what we say. And that is the only way to define the truth. So we have our special Russian truth that you need to accept. If the United States does not want to start a war, you should recognize that [the] United States is not any more a unique master. And [with] the situation in Syria and Ukraine, Russia says, ‘No you are not any more the boss.’ That is the question of who rules the world. Only war could decide really.”
But what about the people of Syria and Ukraine? Can they also choose their truth or are they just a battlefield for would-be world rulers?
The idea that each “way of life” has its own truth is what endears Putin to right-wing populists like former US President Donald Trump, who praised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the act of a “
genius.” And the feeling is mutual: When Putin talks about “denazification” in Ukraine, we should bear in mind his support for Marine le Pen’s National Rally in France, Matteo Salvini’s Lega in Italy, and other actual neo-fascist movements.’
Slavoj Žižek argues that the welcome given to Ukrainian refugees has once again exposed an ugly truth.
www.project-syndicate.org