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The Specter of Russian Nationalism
A specter is
haunting Europe — the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe have
entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Tsar, Metternich
and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
The LA Times did its bit, with a photo op-ed
piece titled “All
too familiar” juxtaposing photos from Czechoslovakia in 1968 with photos
from Georgia, 2008.
But there’s a
huge difference. As I pointed out in “Neocons
versus Russia,” Russia under Putin is committed to Russian nationalism.
There is no evidence whatever that Russia is committed to Communist
internationalism and its ideology of world revolution. Those days are over
(thankfully).
Russia
stands out among the white-majority societies of the world because it is not
dominated by elites bent on managing the dissolution of the peoples and culture
that created them.
Russian
nationalism is on display in a variety of ways. The LA Times reports on “a
patriotic concert”
in Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia: “In front of a badly damaged government
building, a Russian orchestra performed pieces by Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich
as 1,000 or so residents held up candles and the flags of Russia and South
Ossetia, the catalyst in this month's conflict between Russia and Georgia.”
Nationalism
in a white country—a frightening prospect indeed for Western elites. For the
neocons, not surprisingly, it conjures up images of National Socialist Germany:
Neocon Robert Kagan lost no time in comparing
the Russian invasion of Georgia to the German occupation of the Sudentenland in
1938. Neoconservative rhetoric on the Georgian crisis is steeped
in the language of Munich, Neville Chamberlain, and the “lessons of
appeasement.”
The
good news is that Russian nationalism is real. Consider Putin’s appointment of
Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian nationalist politician, as Ambassador to NATO. Rogozin
is
described as “one of the founders of the
Congress of Russian Communities, a political movement dedicated to voicing the
concerns of ethnic Russians and pushing nationalist causes.” In 2003 he became
head of the nationalist Rodina [Motherland] coalition. After being forced out of
that position, he became involved with the Movement Against Illegal Immigration,
"championing the rights of ethnic Russians and organizing nationalist
demonstrations.” While head of Rodina, the party put on a television
ad starring
Rogozin:
The
video shows three surly Azerbaijanis eating watermelon and throwing the peels on
the ground; to make their nationality clear, Azerbaijani music is playing in the
background. A dignified Russian mother is walking by pushing her child in a
pram, stepping on the peels. One of the Azerbaijanis insults the Russian lady.
All this is witnessed by Rogozin and his vice president; this time Terminator
music starts playing in the background. They ask the Azerbaijanis to “clean the
space”, but the Azerbaijanis ignore them. Then Rogozin puts a firm hand on one
of the Azerbaijanis, and demands of him: “Do you understand Russian?” That’s
when the logo of Rodina appears, and the words below the logo say “We will
clear Moscow of the dirt”.
[Emphasis in
text; See
the video.]
The imagery of defending a Russian woman and her baby against
foreign men is particularly striking. Imagine a similar ad aired by a US
political party directed against immigrants being aired on the major television
networks.
It goes without saying that if an American or European
politician were associated with such a video, he or she would be condemned to
the extremist fringe of political life, with no chance whatever of obtaining
power or influence. The powers that be would make it difficult for him even to
find employment. But in Russia, Rogozin has been elevated to an important,
high-profile foreign policy position where he can express his nationalist views
to NATO whose actions have been a sore point with Russian nationalists for
years.
This
point has not been lost on observers. Rogozin’s appointment “was
seen as
an extension of President Vladimir Putin's combative tone with the West and
NATO, specifically. As a strong voice for Russian interests and nationalism, his
tenure has been marked by little shift in tone but a continuation of Putin's
rhetoric in principle.
Maybe,
just maybe, Russia under Putin and Medvedev gets it. The Russian elite seem to
understand that ethnic nationalism is healthy
and natural,
even for white people. They
acted
decisively against
the Jewish oligarchs whose loyalties lay elsewhere and whose behavior threatened
to produce a Russia subservient to the West. They have also failed to
welcome
non-Russian
immigration—much
to the chagrin of Jeff
Mankoff, a
Zionist
writing
in the international edition of the New
York Times.
Their
own experience of being a victimized ethnic majority dominated by a hostile
Jewish elite in the early decades of the Soviet Union (see Yuri Slezkine’s
The
Jewish Century)
may
well have reinforced their own sense of ethnicity and made them immune to the
ideologies of victimhood—and especially Jewish
victimhood—that
permeate the West.
Indeed,
it is interesting that one of the first Russian responses in the wake of the
invasion of Georgia has been to
initiate
talks with
Syria about providing advanced anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. The Russians
obviously have a grasp of the reality of American foreign policy as centered
around the interests of Israel, and they seem bent on punishing Israel for its
military and political ties to Georgia. Russia continues to provide Iran with nuclear material as well as
weaponry designed to protect its nuclear installations.
Neoconservatives and other elements of Western elites will do
all they can to destroy Russian nationalism. As noted above, we have already
seen that neocons have compared the Russian actions in Georgia to the actions of
Germany in the 1930s.
Such a comparison warrants the most extreme and violent
response because National Socialism is the epitome of evil in the current
Western lexicon. A nationalist, ethnically conscious white nation is the worst
nightmare of these elites because it represents a shining counterexample to
their managed destruction of white racial identity and the traditional culture
of the West. We can expect that these elites will respond with all of the power
they can muster.
A white, racially conscious Russia is dangerous to these elites
because it may well become a shining city on the hill while other Western
nations sink into multiculturalism and whites become minorities victimized by
affirmative action, anti-white crime, and ever more hostile coalitions of the
non-white majority.
Imagine a world in 20 years when whites in the US are on the verge of becoming a minority. (The Census Bureau recently moved the year of whites becoming a minority to 2042, and this landmark event will doubtless be ratcheted down as the pro-immigration forces gain yet more steam). But imagine also at this time a Russia that is prosperous and proud, technologically advanced, and energy independent; with a birthrate that has rebounded from its horrendous decline; that has remained ethnically Russian and has resisted the many pressures to open the floodgates to other peoples; and that has retained its culture and its sense of peoplehood.
No doubt the chattering classes in the West will continue to
condemn it and continue to complain about its lack of democracy. But the glaring
differences between the fate of whites in Russia and in the enlightened,
multicultural West will become too obvious to ignore. This would indeed produce
a crisis of epic proportions.
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