JC Denton wrote on Aug 23
rd, 2023 at 4:57pm:
Quote:The bottom line is that Putin is creating a Fascist state, and none of us, even the most contrary, would want to live under those conditions.
hyperbolic bullsh1t
there's nothing remotely fascistic or even particularly ideological about the kremlins
they're boomer ijustwanttogrillists (probably like you), more than anything resembling hitler or mussolini
and speak for your f_ckin self huh
Exactly. What's wrong with Fascism? The Volkswagen, the autobahn, great industrialists like IG. They certainly make the trains run on time, no?
You're right, JC. The whole white-nationalist Kremlin shtick is just a front for a kleptocracy with its hands on the skim. Pretending to be the autocratic social conservative alternative to Western liberal democracy is just a bit of fun.
After all, Vlad's also seeking to prise away the
tinted races of the BRIC from their former colonial European masters. Sure, Adolf pioneered such pragmatic alliances by going in with the Japs and deploying the Muselman against the Jew, but he stayed true to Nazi ideology by tearing up his friendship pact with the USSR and invading the communist Slavs.
In some ways, Vlad has done the same, but in the opposite direction. However, he has isolated and weakened Russia in the process. By invading Western-leaning Ukraine, Vlad's cut Russia off from Europe and America, and in so doing, he's placed the Ruski Mir under the thumb of Xi. Russia no longer controls the toll gate between East and West. Vlad's stuck hawking cheap oil to India and Chi-na and watching the Soviet satelites along the old Silk Road fold into Xi's belt and road. Vlad is left bowing down before Xi as Russia's only means of survival.
Just think, it all could have been so beautiful. Russia in charge of BRIC, Wagner deployed in whatever whatever far-flung African or Middle Eastern country you want to skim and the IT/propaganda capability to hack, skew and influence elections all over the planet.
There was a time when Vlad had kompromat on a US president for God's sake. If he didn't like a foreign political candidate, he just had to hack and leak her emails. But no, Vlad had to go off, invade Ukraine and bring the whole thing crashing down.
It's hubris like this that fu
cks with your entire vision of an authoritarian utopia, JC, but it's a flaw built into the model itself. Like Hitler and Mussolini before him, Vlad's nationalist authoritarianism has brought his empire down. This is the problem with autocratic regimes. The very thing you give them credit for - hierarchy, strong leadership, a chain of command, order and control - inevitably weighs them down and, like Icarus, leads to their fall when they fly too close to the sun.
Western democracy has survived as long as it has because it's flexible enough to yield to just enough popular consent. This is why Vlad can't possibly defeat Ukraine: he would need to subdue an entire population, a population that's already staged a revolution, ousted a Russian puppet government and experienced a rush of popular nationalism.
Vlad has succeeded in Russia, on the other hand, because he exercised control gradually, in increments, and took the mass media with him. He also provided economic carrots and sticks to the right economic players and social/political classes.
But he stopped listening, and this has led to his downfall. He came to believe in his own PR, his infallibility, but also Russia's. A resource economy can't survive without export markets. Russia relies on foreign powers for its own economic survival. This is the one thing your own isolationist white nationalist instinct always ignores: the global economy is integrated. This is not an ideological construct, but an economic reality.
The authoritarian nationalist instinct inevitably results in the kind of destiny Vlad has invoked for Russia. Fascism can only lead, as Hitler and Mussolini found, to counter invasion and suicide, or as Franco found, to a form of social/economic paralysis. The USSR suffered the latter fate. Vlad's regime is yet to collapse, but we all know it will.
You?
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