Like anti-Zionists, the Putinistas call their enemies Nazis in order to pose as heroic
By Melanie Phillips May 6
“Stop your cruel oppression of the Jews”: Theodore Roosevelt admonishes the Russian Czar; Emil Flohri, 1904
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, caused outrage earlier this week after he was asked on Italian TV how Russia could claim to be “de-Nazifying” Ukraine when its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish.
Lavrov replied: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. That [Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most rabid antisemites are usually Jews.”
After Israeli politicians reacted with fury to the suggestion that the Jews were responsible for their own victimisation in the Holocaust, Russia’s foreign ministry doubled down by asserting that the uproar explained “to a large extent why the current Israeli government supports the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.” In a phone conversation days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for Lavrov’s remarks.
Lavrov’s preposterous attempt to make Jews and Nazis interchangeable was prompted by the fact that Zelensky’s Jewish identity exposes as a lie Russia’s claim to be de-Nazifying Ukraine.
However, the foreign minister’s comments contributed to fears that Russia is reviving Soviet-era antisemitism as a response to the crisis provoked by its aggression.
Israel was shocked by Lavrov’s remarks because it believed Putin to be well-disposed towards the Jewish people.
Jewish communities in Russia have been allowed to flourish. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement has hosted special Hanukkah concerts at the Kremlin and menorah-lightings throughout Moscow, and Putin has met, talked, toured and posed with Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar on Jewish holidays and at other times.
But Israel ignored the fact that Putin has also frequently cited antisemitic Russian thinkers in his speeches, and in his attacks on Crimea and Ukraine has teamed up with antisemitic thugs such as the Night Wolves and the Wagner Group.
Ksenia Svetlova, director of the Israel-Middle East programme at Mitvim: The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policy, has observed that antisemitism in Russia always simmers just below the surface, particularly around the Russian Orthodox Church, and erupts in times of crisis.
After a horrific 2018 fire in a Kemerovo trade centre, for example, various Christian circles argued that the Jews were behind the tragedy as it coincided with a Jewish holiday.
Professor Michal Bilewicz, director of the Centre for Research on Prejudice at the University of Warsaw, has noted that Putin’s recent references to a “fifth column” and “traitors to the nation” have sinister echoes. They almost exactly replicate language used by the Soviets in the 1940s and 1950s preceding anti-Jewish purges, and by Polish Communist leader W?adyslaw Gomu?ka in a 1967 speech that preceded his own regime’s purge of Jews.
Bilewicz writes: “The paradox of Putin’s rhetoric is that he accuses Ukraine of ‘Nazism’ while simultaneously using antisemitic tropes to stigmatise Russians who oppose his war and support Ukraine.”
This, he said, was reminiscent of the slur Zhidobanderovtsy, or “Kike-Banderites,” used by pro-Russian activists during Moscow’s 2014 war in the Donbas to link Jews and followers of Stepan Bandera.
This linkage was absurd because Bandera led a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist organisation that collaborated with the Nazis and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews. “Yet it made sense to the followers of conspiracy theories,” observes Bilewicz. “There is no logic in their thinking.”
In similarly nonsensical vein, Russia has also accused the Swedes of being Nazis — in response to Sweden preparing to join NATO because of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Ads have been appearing at Russian bus stops depicting various Swedish national heroes as Nazis with the slogan: “We are against Nazism, they are not.”
The word “we” is in the colour of the Russian flag and “they” in the colours of Sweden’s flag. Selective quotes appear next to each picture purporting to paint the figure as a Nazi. These include Astrid Lindgren, the children’s author who created the character Pippi Longstocking; Ingvar Kamprad who founded Ikea; and Sweden’s King Gustaf V.
In claiming to be fighting Nazis, Russia is trying to channel the Soviet Union’s undoubtedly heroic resistance to Nazi Germany. Ignoring the inconvenient fact that the Soviet Union had first allied with Nazi Germany and thus started World War II, its stand against Nazism is a key element in Russia’s mythic sense of itself.
As a result, it thinks that claiming to be standing once more against Nazism casts it again in a heroic light. For these purposes, it has turned Nazism into a synonym for unspecific evil.
Exactly the same perverse rationale fuels the anti-Zionist claim that Israelis are Nazis. For just as Russia seeks to rewrite its aggression against “Nazi” Ukraine as heroism, so anti-Zionists rewrite their exterminatory antisemitism as a heroic stand against “genocidal” Israel.
Crucial to this infernal inversion of victim and aggressor is the belief by both anti-Zionists and Putinistas that they embody virtue, and so by definition all who oppose them are evil. This mindset is a hallmark of totalitarian movements and has led to the oppression, persecution and mass murder of millions.
It was why Stalinism was supported by people in the west, who believed that they were thus supporting the creation of a more just world.
It was why so many “progressives” supported eugenics, the theory of manipulated breeding and racial improvement that derived from social Darwinism. Even though this ideology fuelled Hitler’s programme to eliminate those he deemed sub-human, it was promoted until the Holocaust by those who thought of themselves as working for the betterment of humanity.
It’s why those Muslims who hold that everything outside Islam is evil believe that when they blow Israelis or westerners to kingdom come they are doing holy work.
And it’s why the Palestinian Arabs tell themselves — in a demonstrably ludicrous denial of both history and reason — that they were the indigenous people of the land of Israel, that Jesus was a Palestinian, and that their murderous attempt to drive the Jewish people from its ancestral homeland is in fact an attempt to protect themselves from attack by the Jews.
This reversal of truth and lies, victim and aggressor, right and wrong is the hallmark of Soviet and Russian propaganda. It was no accident that the Arabs intent on destroying Israel developed modern anti-Zionism in cahoots with the Soviet Union.
The big anti-Zionist lie about Israel was created in the 1960s when the terrorist leader Yasser Arafat made common cause with the Soviet Union to rewrite history, demonise the Jewish state and thus subvert the west by twisting its collective mind and destroying its moral compass.
Israel’s difficulties with Russia are growing. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu recently cancelled a scheduled phone call with his Israeli counterpart Benny Gantz, which was intended to discuss the co-operation and security co-ordination essential for Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets in Syria.
Without that co-operation, Israel’s defence against Iran on its Syrian border will be undermined. More ominously still, Russia is further cosying up to Iran. And meanwhile, it is ratcheting up its verbal aggression against Israel.
A spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry claimed earlier this week that Israeli mercenaries were fighting alongside the neo-fascist Ukrainian Azov regiment. In fact, Israel has sent no mercenaries nor supplied arms to Ukraine — a cause of bitter complaint by Zelensky.
But last week, a group thought to have close links with the Kremlin posted a list of 20 Israelis claiming that they were fighting as mercenaries in Ukraine.
Most of those names belonged to Israeli security guards, consular officials and employees of the Jewish Agency for Israel. They had merely been sent to bolster Israeli embassy staff who had been evacuated to Poland in order to aid the return of Israelis stuck in Ukraine.
“He who sups with the devil,” it is said, “should have a long spoon”. Israel is only now realising that, in supping with Russia, its own spoon has been far too short.
@FelixQuigley
I am not sure what you meant here.
There were a lot more children in that pit than the 3 who survived.
Reader…it takes real sensitivity and knowledge to tell the story. The little girl escaped the pit thanks to two boys of 7 or so. Know that the Nazis did not shoot the children to save a bullet. These children as orphans may have had then a new mama… Ukrainian and you see she might not want to leave Ukraine. You put it very well. We are just beginning to understand.
@FelixQuigley
One of the American newspapers (I saw the info recently but I don’t remember which newspaper it was) attempted to describe the alleged methods of the Russian propaganda (the article which quoted it mentioned that the description was made without noticing the irony).
The newspaper said “It is simple – you remove the context and create a lot of white noise.”
This is EXACTLY what the BBC is doing in this article about the Holocaust survivors.
The link is
https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61361827.amp?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16521800554103&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-europe-61361827
I feel for them with pity too.
But it’s a universal problem and the essence of it is historical narrative is not easy
We cannot fool around with history and we have to be absolutely livid when the BBC lies.
I believe the BBC is over again abusing these Jews
@FelixQuigley
It could have been edited out if they were mentioned at all.
Do you have a link to the article?
The BBC fact checking Putin Speech
The word is BRAZEN. The BBC are liars complete and total.
They use a particular method
Quote the person
It is obviously true
The BBC denies it’s true
It is really the end of rationality
https://www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/61379405.amp?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM%3D#aoh=16521513888119&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s
Reader…I understand
There’s a BBC article Interview with 3 Holocaust survivors in Ukraine. One actually was in the pit.
The article continually referred to the Nazis but not the slightest reference to Ukrainian Collaborators
I kept wondering how did this come about?
But then I understood. That is what Phillips did in this article.
So it is all a question of leadership
Discussion of this with you brings vital clarity on so much and especially on the sweep of history.
So much I can say on this…
Anyway July 1 1941 must urgently be raised. It’s the centre of everything.
@FelixQuigley
When Moshiach comes.
Really. Then let us know when the great people are going to be independent.
@FelixQuigley
That’s because the fascists are trying to destroy Russia and take its land for themselves.
Russia has been trying to “join the family of nations” for at least 400 years, and all she got in response is a boot in the face because all “the family of nations” is interested in is the territory, i.e., Eurasia.
I think the reason the EU won’t let Ukraine join it is because Ukraine is considered as dispensable as Russia.
There are two countries in the world that “the family of nations” wishes to destroy – Russia and Israel – for different reasons and with different “justifications”.
At this point I am starting to think that the US really fought in WWII on the side of Nazi Germany.
Jews and Israel are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
Israel is dependent on the US and can’t afford to spite it, and most Jews are just like everybody else – they get their info from the highly regulated mass media, and they don’t bother with anything else – like learning history and the context of the events, plus they are always in denial, otherwise all of them would have left the Diaspora by now.
As they say this Miss Phillips is full of it. But ask yourself imagine you are a soldier would you feel a confident soldier if she was leading you. Shows how unreal these mouthy types are
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/ukraines-forces-are-told-to-hold-the-line-where-russian-artillery-is-pulverizing-them.html
Reader about Lapid keeping his mouth shut. I think it’s more.
The Russians are the only ones fighting the Fascists
And they alone will not let it rest where these Bandera Fascists of the present have come from.
From most precisely the Pogrom of July 1 1941. More of course but I pinpoint for effect.
And there is a corresponding deep shame. I include all parts of the Israeli elite in this left right and centre.
So they uniformly lash out against the principled Russians.
That too explains Phillips and she too carries a deep shame and she is projecting her own shame. So she tries to discover some solace. She attacks Russia with the antisemitic label.
Reader this article by Phillips one of the present elites is very questionable
As in
“
And Lavrov does not say that in any way.
People like Phillips and the whole Israeli elite are using Zelensky to cover for Bandera.
In this strange world Russians are the only ones who are not forgetting what Ukraine did to the Jews on July 1 1941
And that’s weird considering Jews set up Israel to represent them!
Seems slick and smart but it is just stupid
You are praising Phillips but I see nothing but the opposite.
One of the main points I have raised is that there’s a cover-up of the role of Ukrainians in the Lviv pogrom of July 1 1941. And later in the Holocaust.
And that’s what Phillips does (cover up) so how is she touching on our discussion?
Zelensky is giving a cover for Nazis whom by the way Russia fought and lost 30 million fighting. And Lavrov is centrally raising that.
It simmers always and everywhere just below the surface, what else is new?
And Lapid should have kept his mouth shut.
Essentially Lavrov is right. Israel to its shame supports Fascists in Ukraine. Go and study what Ukrainian Fascists did to Jews in Lviv in 1941 see picture which shows the Lviv Ukrainian crowds going into murderous action without waiting on the Nazis!
Note the fiesta type crowd.
https://mobile.twitter.com/FelixQuigley/status/1523368338067685376
The current Israeli government supports the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.” claimed Lavrov
This raises two absolutely vital questions and they must urgently be debated
Is present Ukraine under present leaders neo-fascist?
Is Israel supporting it? That government of Ukraine led by Zelensky we hear SO much of!
Is this true?
If it’s true what does it say about Israel?
@Skeezix* From Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale”, 1390.
Only long spoons I know are Korean spoons which are 8.5 inches long which I got from Amazon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sujeo
Typical late 14th century anti-Korean British racism.
KLM!
* By the way, Gesund heit.
Phillips touches on all the points we have been debating back and forth over the last couple of days. Does she read Israpundit, d’ya suppose? Well, almost all, anyway. She forgot Trotsky. Dropped the ball on that one.
@Honeybee Actually, that’s on Lavrov. Putin apologized to Bennett.
Nazis ! What a terrible excuse for the death and destruction Putin has rained down on the Ukrainian population. And now accusing Jews of being a party to this outrage, disgraceful.
He could have mentioned this clown and that would have been amusing.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/06/does-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-have-jewish-roots/
@levinedatz
Not in him, just all over him. Unlike:
“…Hearing news of the sheriff’s arrival, Steve resorts to a trick to protect himself and his wife from being prosecuted: he uses a pocket knife to cut Julie’s hand and swallows some of the blood he has sucked from the wound. Later, when the sheriff arrives and confronts them, Steve can claim that he has “negro blood” in him, and Cap’n Andy and his pilot Windy can truthfully attest to that fact since they saw his desperate maneuver a few minutes earlier…”
http://www.savisingingactor.com/course-materials/show-boat/race-in-show-boat/
“I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. That [Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most rabid antisemites are usually Jews.”
well… the statement is true regardless of the origins… I heard about the Hitler Jewish ancestry about fifty years ago among our Jewish group back in Europe… so what? were we antisemites? also Zelensky is an useful idiot in the hands of ukrainian natzis. also look at all jewish progressives… GODless… and yes! there are jews who are antisemites… like it or not!
“He who sups with the devil,” it is said, “should have a long spoon”.
I have never heard this Quote before..
It is so appropriate for today’s world…
Isreal should Put it on banners…