this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
100 points (87.3% liked)

Europe

6919 readers
1164 users here now

News and information from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
  10. Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.

(This list may get expanded as necessary.)

Posts that link to the following sources will be removed

Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media. Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com

(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)

Ban lengths, etc.

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @EuroMod@feddit.org

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
federalreverse@feddit.org
poVoq@slrpnk.net
anzo@programming.dev
EuroMod@feddit.org
100
Why modern Russia is more dangerous than 1930s Germany -- [Opinion] (www.ukrainianworldcongress.org)
submitted 4 days ago by Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org to c/europe@feddit.org
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

crosspostato da: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/39764949

Op-ed by Kate Turska, Co-chair of the Ukrainian Association of New Zealand (North) and the head of Mahi for Ukraine, a volunteer group based in New Zealand, supporting Ukraine and its People through advocacy.

Archived

[...]

Germany in the 1930s descended into darkness after a failed democracy, humiliation in WWI, and a modernising but fractured society. Hitler built his regime on the wreckage of a democratic experiment. It was brutal, it was rapid, and the world was still learning what modern war and fascism looked like.

But Russia never needed to fall — it never rose. There was no functioning democracy to collapse. No civil society to co-opt. No free press to destroy — only moments of it, never sustained. From Tsarism to Bolshevism to Putinism, repression has been continuous. Genocide as a method of control (Chechens, Ukrainians, deportations of entire peoples) is well-documented. From the Holodomor famine in Ukraine, to mass deportations of Chechens and Crimean Tatars, to Human Rights Watch’s classification of Second Chechen War atrocities as crimes against humanity. Colonial expansionism, and totalitarianism are not deviations — they are the foundation of the Russian state.

Since the fall of the USSR, Russia hasn’t reformed, it has metastasised. It has tested, incrementally, the limits of the rules-based world: Moldova. Chechnya. Georgia. Syria. Ukraine. The poisoning of opponents abroad. The buying of politicians. The undermining of democratic elections. Each time, the world responded with handwringing and half-measures. So, it learned: there are no consequences.

[...]

What makes it more dangerous than Hitler’s Germany isn’t the scale, but the context: The world today is connected, interdependent, distracted. The West has lived in an illusion of stability for 80 years. We struggle to grasp that a country can wage imperial war in the 21st century and get away with it — and that it’s happening right now.

This illusion is our biggest vulnerability.

[...]

Part of the danger is that many in the West still don’t recognise Russia for what it is. Decades of propaganda have built powerful myths about “Russian cultural depth,” “natural spheres of influence,” and “security concerns” that supposedly justify its actions. Western narratives too often frame russia as a reactive power — a victim of geopolitics rather than a consistent imperial aggressor. This myth of russian imperial innocence, rooted in Soviet-era disinformation and reinforced by Western intellectuals who romanticised the USSR, still shapes public perception. That makes it easier for russia to present its colonial wars as defensive, and far harder for democracies to mobilise against it. The result is a warped debate, where the aggressor’s narrative is given equal weight to documented reality — and that distortion makes russia more dangerous than ever.

[...]

We must stop operating under the logic that the world will eventually “go back to normal”, because it won’t. Not unless Russia is stopped completely. Russian war on Ukraine (which did not begin in 2022, but in 2014) is not just about Ukraine. It is about the rules of the world we live in, and Russia is rewriting them.

Whataboutism will try to distract you. “What about this country? What about that war?” But not all conflicts shape the global order. Russia’s war does.

This is why Russia must be defeated, not negotiated with, not accommodated. There’s no “solution” that preserves this regime and protects the future at the same time. The system it represents is incompatible with any stable or free international order.

This is the fight that defines whether democracy, sovereignty, human rights, the entire post-WWII system, survives, or becomes a footnote in history books no one will be allowed to read.

top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Can't really decide if this article is dangerous or just stupid. Claiming today's Russia is worse than 1930's Germany is a strong statement when Nazi Germany had perfected industrial mass murder to kill millions of Jews, Poles, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, political enemies, handicapped people. I get it, Russia is evil, and maybe it is the most evil right now, but this is a historical comparison is both wrong and unnecessary.

People often draw comparisons between Nazi Germany and Russia today

Yeah, maybe they should not concentrate on comparisons too much, I mean why? Who benefits from that?

Because when Germany launched its campaigns in the 1930s, war for territory was still part of the global logic. That’s what empires did.

Just wow. So Germany's expansionism was Germany being a victory of the Zeitgeist?

[–] undergroundoverground@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Germany hadn't done those things in the 1930s. They didn't start that until the 1940s.

The problem here is that many people are unaware that the CIA formed and funded many ultra far right militant groups all across Russia, what is now the former soviet block and Europe. They did this since the end of WW2 and it was funded by the CIA selling heroine out of Myanmar and having the sicilian and caucasian mob sell it for them, under operation gladio. This crime is the actual, real reason for the rise of the far right in Europe. Securing a route to the opium fields in northern laos was the real reason for the Vietnam war and why they dripped more bombs on Laos than Vietnam, during the war. Myanmar used to be the world's largest supplier of illegal opium from the 1950s right up until it was replaced by Afghanistan in the early 00s. I wish I was lying.

The Russian mafia, the KGB and these ultra far right groups formed the basis of putins government. They're like his version of blackshirts but much better armed.

Not that I'm saying you agree or disagree to any of those individually. But, I hope I can help better demonstrate some of the parallels that the article did.

But yeah, once again the American CIA created a monster and the rest of the world has to deal with it. America is a rouge intelligence agency, with a country attached to it.

Edit: sorry for the rant. I just kept going. Thought it might interest someone.

[–] Melchior@feddit.org 10 points 4 days ago

That is honestly giving the CIA way too much credit. The NGVD one of the predecessors of the the KGB was responsible for massive ethnic cleansing operation within the Soviet Union. They stayed around and always were very close to power. Under Putin they took over. Organized crime was always going to happen, when you have a collapse of central authority combined with a huge economic crisis. The 90s in Russia were worse then the Great Depression was for the US. Far right groups are mostly powerful in Russia, because they have no ideological problem with a strong leader like Putin, so Putin did not actively fight them.

[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

Germany hadn't done those things in the 1930s. They didn't start that until the 1940s.

This is true, but the way was clearly paved. This war was not "classic 20th century imperialiasm", relativizing the German crimes is still wrong in my opinion.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I think the article is heavily misinformed.

The article ignores one obvious difference that requires a different approach. Nazi Germany was not nuclearly armed. Russia is. Unlike the Soviet tanks rolling unto Berlin from the East and American tanks rolling through large parts of Western Germany, such a scenario for Moscow will not happen.

Furthermore the claim that others wars would be irrelevant for the "global order" and therefore should not be considered or compared is extremely stupid. What the author believes to be a "free world order" and its wars are as much shaped by Western imperialism, like Russias invasion of Ukraine is by Russian imperialism.

We see a reemergence of two blocs, with Russia getting unlikely allies with Iran, North Korea and China, who are less concerned about a common ideology and more about what they perceive as a common enemy. Ukraine, West Asia and South East Asia are all linked. It is in the best interest of Ukraine to delink them, which wont happen as the US made it clear that Ukraine has to play to their tune if it doesnt want to be abandoned alltogether.

To get back to the claim that Russia would be more dangerous than Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany steamrolled Poland, the Benelux countries and half of France. The population was much younger and much more militarised. Germany allied with Finland, Italy and Spain, giving it much better geographic conditions.

Meanwhile Russia seems to slowly win in Ukraine, but it seems rather unlikely that it will shurn out 20 million soldiers, tens of thousands of modern tanks, fighter jets and other equipment it currently lacks in Ukraine to invade western Europe all of a sudden.

Finally the claim of the author that the military threat by Russia would be underestimated is just wrong as the EU countries pledged to spent a trillion on upgrading their military capeabilities in the next years.

The EU and US need to expand sanctions and properly enforce them. Ukraine needs further military aid, but the only scenario in which Russia becomes more dangerous than the Nazisz is if it decides to use its nuclear arsenal. And to prevent that, it is crucial that Russia can end this war without its cities in ruins and territory occupied.

[–] hitwright@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

14:1 buddy. Unless they start gattling cannoning babbies, Russia ain't winning

[–] bungalowtill@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Downplaying fascism and Nazism is what we’re doing now?

Is what you’re doing now @Hotznplotzn

[–] Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No, it isn't.

As two examples among many: First, Putin Doesn’t Combat Nazism, He Cultivates It

An essential element of the Kremlin’s crusade to manipulate cracks in the West is exploiting transnational white supremacist movements to endorse racially and ethnically inspired violent extremism. Russia serves as a sanctuary and networking hub for far-right extremists, with one of America’s most infamous neo-Nazis finding refuge there. Rinaldo Nazzaro, leader of The Base, an American neo-Nazi, white supremacist paramilitary organisation, lives in Russia and guides the group from St. Petersburg [...]

Putin’s weaponisation of neo-Nazis was always a dicey tactic, but it was not illogical. Unlike mainstream nationalists, who often support the concept of free elections, neo-Nazis repudiate democratic institutions and the very idea of egalitarianism. For a dictator disassembling democracy and engineering an authoritarian regime, they were perfect accessories. In Ukraine, Putin is not combating neo-Nazism. The country most in need of “de-Nazification” is Putin’s Russia.

And, second, there is a revealing analysis on The Nazi Inspiring China’s Communists

[...] China has in recent years witnessed a surge of interest in the work of the German legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Known as Hitler’s “Crown Jurist,” Schmitt joined the National Socialist Party in 1933, and, though he was only officially a Nazi Party member for three years, his anti-liberal jurisprudence had a lasting impact—at the time, by helping to justify Hitler’s extrajudicial killings of Jews and political opponents [...]

China’s fascination with Schmitt took off in the early 2000s when the philosopher Liu Xiaofeng translated the German thinker’s major works into Chinese. Dubbed “Schmitt fever,” his ideas energized the political science, philosophy, and law departments of China’s universities. Chen Duanhong, a law professor at Peking University, called Schmitt “the most successful theorist” to have brought political concepts into his discipline [...] An alum of Peking University’s philosophy program, who asked not to be identified speaking on sensitive issues, told me that Schmitt’s work was among “the common language, a part of the academic establishment” at the university [...]

Schmitt’s influence is most evident when it comes to Beijing’s policy toward Hong Kong. Since its handover to China from Britain in 1997 [...] freedoms have been eroded as the CCP has sought greater control, and more recently have been undermined completely with the national-security law.

There is a lot of good research on the matter, just read it.