Nashi: Russia's Version of Hitler Youth--UPDATED

Fascism is in fashion. A nice sum-up of the Russian mind:

For the east European countries with first-hand experience of Stalinist terror, the Kremlin's rewriting of history could hardly be more scary. Not only does Russia see no reason to apologise for their suffering under Kremlin rule, it now sees the collapse of communism not as a time of liberation, but as an era of pitiable weakness.

It ALWAYS saw the collapse of communism as weakness. This is not a new development. What is new is the economic strength to organize and retrench. Drunk on oil revenue, the Kremlin rises again.

And history is rewritten:

Russia barely commemorates even the damage it did to itself, let alone the appalling suffering inflicted on other people. Nashi is both a symptom of the way Russia is going - and a means of entrenching the drift to fascism.

Terrifyingly, the revived Soviet view of history is now widely held in Russia. A poll this week of Russian teenagers showed that a majority believe that Stalin did more good things than bad.

If tens of thousands of uniformed German youngsters were marching across Germany in support of an authoritarian Fuhrer, baiting foreigners and praising Hitler, alarm bells would be jangling all across Europe. So why aren't they ringing about Nashi?

Because the left engages in the same kind of moral equivalence as Vladamir Putin and his cronies. They have a crush on communism.

Britain banishes Churchill from history books. Russia brings Stalin back. Japan finds neonationalism. This bodes ill.

UPDATE: I missed this on Friday, but Gary Kasparov explains Putin perfectly:

The web of betrayals, the secrecy, the blurred lines between what is business, what is government, and what is criminal--it's all there in Mr. Puzo's books. A historian looks at the Kremlin today and sees elements of Mussolini's "corporate state," Latin American juntas and Mexico's pseudo-democratic PRI machine. A Puzo fan sees the Putin government more accurately: the strict hierarchy, the extortion, the intimidation, the code of secrecy and, above all, the mandate to keep the revenue flowing. In other words, a mafia.

The question Kasparov doesn't answer: Why does the populace submit and actually facilitate the mafia? One answer is fear. Yes, fear is a motivation. But this is Russia not Italy. The Russian ego is driven by pride and strength. They enjoy intimidation. The general population relates to and lives vicariously through Putin and his mafioso government's strength.

Perhaps the great majority of thinking Russians were expunged during Stalin. Perhaps the thinking man fled Russia during the ensuing communistic years. But Russia thrives on brute force. The average Russian respects it. Who wants choices when one can have power?

H/T Gina Cobb