Make no mistake: Putin’s authoritarian neo-fascism has rooted itself in America.
Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine, starting 24 February, 2022 and the attack by followers of Donald Trump on the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021 are different, of course, "but they resemble one another in their contempt for democratic institutions and their attempts to justify violence" by asserting a threat to a dominant racial or ethnic group. - says Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, also professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley
The world has debated Thatherism, 'Indira in India' and Moditva, now it's to debate Putinism !
"Again in the 2020 election, according to a recently unclassified report by the US office of the Director of National Intelligence, Putin authorized “influence operations” aimed at “supporting Trump” and “denigrating President Biden’s candidacy”.
Presumably Putin supported Trump in 2016 and in 2020 in part because of Trump’s disdain for Nato. As president, Trump did all he could to undermine the organization, even suggesting the US should withdraw from it. Is it pure coincidence that once Trump was out of office and Nato remained intact, Putin attacked Ukraine?," Reich writes in his article for 'The Guardian' under the headline - 'Putinism is breeding in the heart of the Republican party'.
The article further says -
In 2019, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, refused Trump’s demand for help in rigging the 2020 election in the United States, even after Trump threatened to withhold money Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine resist Russian expansion.
Today, Zelenskiy won’t be bullied by Putin. He turned down America’s offer to evacuate him, saying: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Zelenskiy’s courage in the face of overwhelming brute force has fortified Ukrainians now defending their country against invaders.
Contrast this with the toadies at the Republican National Committee who in February censured Republican representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for participating in Congress’s select committee investigating the events of 6 January, and who called the attack on the Capitol “legitimate political discourse”.
Also contrast Zelenskiy’s courage with most elected Republicans who still refuse to stand up to Trump. On Sunday, on national television, Senator Tom Cotton refused four times to condemn Trump for calling Putin “smart” and “savvy” and Nato and the US “dumb”.
"Make no mistake: Putin’s authoritarian neo-fascism has rooted itself in America," says Reich.
Will Putinism end soon ? Some say - 'yes' !
When sanctions bite and hard times hit the country, people will lose their fear. Then Putin will be finished --- says Sergey Faldin, a writer and podcaster based in Tbilisi, Georgia
He wrote in his piece 'The solace for young Russians like me is that Putin is also digging his own grave in Ukraine' --- that
- "People are saying they feel guilty about being Russian. People are burning their passports on camera. Hell, I posted: “I am Russian but Putin is not my president.”
But there are far fewer people actually out protesting. You have to understand that ordinary people in Russia are scared out of their minds. On the first day of the conflict, almost 1,000 protesters were jailed across Russia for walking outside with as little as a piece of paper that said: “I don’t want war.”
According to the independent media source OVD-info, in the first four days of the war more than 5,200 people were arrested."
"It doesn’t matter whether you’re an 18-year-old kid or a pregnant middle-aged woman, they’ll beat you up, put you in a wagon and take you in for questioning. When you have a former KGB agent in charge, you have a country that functions as an enormous jail."
- says the piece, but it also reads more like an American propaganda piece against Russia and its President.
"It is painfully clear to us that this war is absolutely pointless. Putin is using false history lessons, lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union, and making claims about Nato advancing its forces simply to justify his own madness. I believe that the true answer to the question people ask on social media – “how did we get to this?” – is that Putin is insane."- runs the piece.
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