The Russians are Coming: But Aren’t They Already Here?

Document Type

Editorial

Publication Date

5-10-2022

Abstract

"But the oligarchs are worried. They have what appears to be their own participatory anxiety over the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy that they borrowed from paranoid Western White people featured on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News specials (Russians love Tucker): that Europe is populating Russia – not physically but ideologically – with citizens longing for democracy and a voice in their own affairs. Just look at those protesters on the streets of Moscow! Let’s triple their sentences! And they are getting the idea that they can think for themselves through the example of Ukraine (do they fear an unrestrained Ukraine might go ‘woke’?). But, the oligarchs bleat, it’s a democracy that has merged with what they call ‘Ukronazism,’ or Ukrainian Nazism, which apparently is a greater threat to the world than Hitler’s Nazism. An op-ed published on RIA Novosti by Russian state media (one of the three largest news agencies in Russia that have a mass circulation) by journalist and Kremlin-aligned political operative Timofey Sergeytsev claimed that ‘Ukronazism’ is a greater threat to the world than Hitler’s Nazi Party and called for a complete Russian takeover of the entire country of Ukraine, including its culture. And for a brutal retribution against the people of Ukraine for those who refuse to kiss Putin’s ring. Sergeytsev also remarked ‘that in peacetime it would be necessary to “achieve irreversible changes” and that forced labour, the death penalty and imprisonment would be used as punishment against the “accomplices of the Nazi regime.”’"

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This article was originally published in PESA Agora in spring 2022.

Copyright

PESA Agora

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