Putin is insane

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Putin has been telling the world for months that he was demanding NATO and USA security assurances and NATO backing off to 1991 membership. But all of a sudden Putin’s flips the pretext for invasion to “denazify” the Ukraine. That means Putin thinks Ukraine’s Jewish president is a Nazi and Russian Christians are the true victims of the Holocaust.

Guardian 2/26/2022

When Putin announced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at dawn on Thursday, he justified the “special military operation” as having the goal to “denazify” Ukraine. The justification is not tenable, but it would be a mistake simply to dismiss it.

Putin is himself a fascist autocrat, one who imprisons democratic opposition leaders and critics. He is the acknowledged leader of the global far right, which looks increasingly like a global fascist movement.

Ukraine does have a far-right movement, and its armed defenders include the Azov battalion, a far-right nationalist militia group. But no democratic country is free of far-right nationalist groups, including the United States (January 6th insurrection). In the 2019 election, the Ukrainian far right was humiliated, receiving only 2% of the vote. This is far less support than far-right parties receive across western Europe, including inarguably democratic countries such as France and Germany.

Ukraine is a democratic country, whose popular president was elected, in a free and fair election, with over 70% of the vote. That president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is Jewish, and comes from a family partially wiped out in the Nazi Holocaust.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/vladimir-putin…

Jaak

P.S. - Putin, the leader of Russian Christian nationalism, has come to view himself as the global leader of Christian nationalism, and is increasingly regarded as such by Christian nationalists around the world, including in the United States.

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It doesn’t matter how you say it, Putin isn’t a Christian.

When the Russians (Soviets) took over Ukraine about 100 years ago they closed and/or destroyed many churches but (somehow) were convinced to save others. Reportedly, St Andrews in Kyev was saved because it is on a steep hill and the locals convinced the Soviets its destruction would destroy all the downhill structures and create an even bigger mess to clean up. Other, less ornate churches, were turned into things like roofing materials warehouses. Many of these churches were restored based on old photographs after the USSR collapsed…

Of course Putin wasn’t responsible for any of these things in the past century. But, no doubt he’ll be using the same playbook.

Mike

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Putin…no doubt he’ll be using the same playbook.

Nope.

Putin’s playbook has been the opposite of the Bolsheviks. He shams devout piety and worked hard to take over the Russian Orthodox Church (mostly accomplished about a decade ago with the upper clergy of Russian Orthodoxy now overwhelmingly his toadies or deeply fearful of Putin) and use it for his own “purposes of state”, including in attempting to use Orthodxy to control Ukraine. Putin has been building new churches and resanctifying old ones, and uses Russian Orthodoxy as a pillar of his regieme.

When the Greek Orthodox Patriarch (the senior Orthodox leader and with somewhat greater traditional powers than the other Orthodox Patriarchs) recognized the long time subordinated Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its Kiyvean Patriarch as independent of and equal in dignity to the Russian Church a couple years or so ago, Putin was enraged. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church had escaped and was helping the Ukrainian people to do so as well.

david fb

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Putin’s flips the pretext for invasion to “denazify” the Ukraine.

“Nazis” must be the hot button word that gets Russians riled up. How many millions did they lose at the hands of Nazis? Other countries have other hot button terms. Here in Shinland, we are told all Muslims are terrorists.

Putin has also declared the Ukrainian leadership to be “drug addicts”. Drug dealers have been a universal bad guy in the US, for decades. Every cop show on TV does multiple drug dealer episodes every year. Here in Shinyland, Hispanic immigrants are spun as “rapists and drug dealers”.

Steve

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Putin’s playbook has been the opposite of the Bolsheviks. He shams devout piety and worked hard to take over the Russian Orthodox Church (mostly accomplished about a decade ago with the upper clergy of Russian Orthodoxy now overwhelmingly his toadies or deeply fearful of Putin) and use it for his own “purposes of state”, including in attempting to use Orthodxy to control Ukraine. Putin has been building new churches and resanctifying old ones, and uses Russian Orthodoxy as a pillar of his regieme.

Maybe not ‘the opposite of the Bolsheviks!’ Christofer Hitchens was asked why Stalin had not abolished the Russian Orthodox Church. His replay was that the power of the church was a tool that any Dictator would love to use. Communism was atheist in name only but not in practice.

The Captain

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Maybe not ‘the opposite of the Bolsheviks!’ Christofer Hitchens was asked why Stalin had not abolished the Russian Orthodox Church. His replay was that the power of the church was a tool that any Dictator would love to use. Communism was atheist in name only but not in practice.

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Well not exactly! Those who were members of the Russian Communist Party had to renounce religion and not attend and church services. That means that the Soviet politicians and leaders (including their families) were all outwardly atheists with some being closet believers.

Jaak

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Christofer Hitchens was asked why Stalin had not abolished the Russian Orthodox Church. His replay was that the power of the church was a tool that any Dictator would love to use. Communism was atheist in name only but not in practice.

Stalin (& company) abolished the church in the late 1920s and sent thousands of priests to the gulag. He relented after Germany’s successful invasion in WWII and appealed to the population by using the historic term “mother Russia” and allowing the churches to reopen to help the citizenry come together in “their great struggle.”

He would have preferred to leave them closed and keep religion out of it, but once he found religion to be a useful tool he was content to let them have some power, so long as they did’t use it to oppose him or the party. The Vatican took note and the church never opposed the “commies” during the life of the USSR. Of course the church is, by philosophy, more communist than capitalist, so there’s that.

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