As an intelligent, sane reader, you may have noticed recently some rhetorical similarities between a former U.S. president and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The repeated lies. The threats. The encouragement of violence. The inversion of reality. The wild fabrications. Throw into the mix Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. They spent hours serving up red meat for their QAnon followers about pedophiles during the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Let’s go now to Ukraine (Washington Post):
LOTSKYNE, Ukraine — When the Russian soldiers came to town, they went door to door confiscating residents’ guns, cellphones and sometimes even their homes. They asked everyone to identify the “Nazis” in the neighborhood, also referring to them as “Banderites” — a group of Ukrainian nationalists formed during World War II.
The Nazis would be dressed in back, the Russians told villagers, and asked where they were in the neighborhood. Putin had told his country and is troops, many conscripts, that they were in Ukraine to denazify the country.
“They said they wanted to liberate the town from the Nazis and where were they, and I told them in my 30 years in this town I’ve never seen a single Nazi,” said Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of the Ukrainian town of Melitopol. Russian troops kidnapped and questioned him for five days in March.
The cant against imaginary Nazis has become so fixed in Russian public consciousness that guests on a state TV show, The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev invoked term Nazis on Friday to the point of meaninglessness. Anyone who opposes Putin is a Nazi (Daily Beast):
On Soloviev’s show, political scientist and professor of history Elena Ponomareva asserted: “We’re fighting not only against NATO, but also against the Nazi European Union.”
Two days earlier, on a state TV show 60 Minutes, journalist Andrei Sidorchik rode the concept all the way down the hill when he exclaimed: “Joe Biden is a Nazi. The U.S. congressmen—Democrat and Republican—are Nazis… German chancellor is a Nazi… EU leaders are Nazis… because their sanctions are attempting to preserve neo-Nazism in Ukraine.”
Such rhetoric has consequences (New York Times):
BUCHA, Ukraine — When a column of Russian tanks drove into the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in the first days of the war, Tetiana Pomazanko thought they held Ukrainian soldiers and went out to her front gate to see.
But the troops opened fire on Ms. Pomazanko, 56. Bullets ripped through the wooden gate and fence around her house, killing her instantly. Her body still lay in the garden on Sunday, where her 76-year-old mother had covered her as best she could with plastic sheeting and wooden boards.
“They were driving up the street,” said her mother, Antonina Pomazanko. “She thought they were ours.”
Ms. Pomazanko’s killing is just one of scores being uncovered days after Russian troops withdrew from the outlying suburbs of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, after weeks of fierce fighting. On Sunday, Ukrainians were still finding the dead in yards and on the roads amid mounting evidence that civilians had been killed purposely and indiscriminately.
Russia denies the allegations its troops committed mass murder. The bodies strewn across the town and dumped into mass graves must have been planted there by the Ukrainians after the Russians retreated. The New York Times debunked those claims using video and satellite imagery.
Let’s go back a few days to Olya from Mykolaiv’s Russian aunt:
“The Nazis torture people,” the aunt says. “They show on TV how they abuse girls and youngsters. They rape and abuse them,” Svetlana says. “Olya, they just hide that from you.”
For anyone who’s heard right-wing and QAnon propaganda spread in the U.S., the effect is chilling. Svetlana supports Putin. He’s liberating Ukraine from the Nazis.
And to this from March 31:
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” Voltaire wrote (roughly) in 1765. Rep. Jamie Raskin quoted that at the close of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial one year ago. Trump convinced millions to believe his absurdities. Countless thousands from his separate reality died believing them before his presidency culminated in atrocity.
Russia simply has more practice at convincing its populace to commit them.
Now, strike Nazi. Insert pedophile. People who will believe anything can be convinced to commit atrocities. Don’t think it can’t happen here.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip.
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