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Comment by gdy | Hacker News Reader

I agree that Finland is a good example, but you claim somehow that its existence makes Russia "fascist by assimilation". So what about other countries that don't meet Finland's standard for treatment of minority languages? Are they "fascist by assimilation" too or "it's different, you don't understand"?

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That's not what I claim. I claim that there is a history of fascism in russia that has been so common place that people stopped noticing it. This can be exemplified by a number of things:

- Treatment of minority cultures (Finland as a counter example, which I give) - Popular media (movies -i.e. Brat 2-, and especially now the outright genocidal state media) - Popular culture (a cursory scroll through VK on the topic of Ukrainians should be enough) - I don't even mention the systemic antisemitism during the soviet times.

If you are russian, you have a choice. You can nitpick and misinterpret my arguments, which -personally- I don't care about. Or you can think about how your own society has failed to uphold humanist values both towards your neighbours and your own compatriots. You can point fingers at the USA, but it won't make your country better and honestly, I bet the majority of people would feel safer having USA on their side, rather than russia. Armenia is a case in point. Nobody says the Americans or EU are holy, but russia is worse, china is worse, iran is worse.

At this point, it is safer for the rest of the world to not engage with russia and contain it until, at the very least, it starts upholding the international treaties and agreements it signed.

"Treatment of minority cultures (Finland as a counter example, which I give)"

If you use the comparison with Finland as indication of Russia being 'fascist', then whole lot of countries including Ukraine are 'fascist' too. Which devoids the word 'fascist' of its meaning.

"Popular media (movies -i.e. Brat 2-)"

And what is fascist about it? Main hero is negative about fascism. [0]

"the systemic antisemitism during the soviet times"

Which is not the case in today's Russia.

As for the past, Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which are treated as heroes in modern Ukraine, was quite busy butchering Jews [1] and Poles [2].

"you can think about how your own society has failed to uphold humanist values"

I don't think that vast majority of Russians believed that Putin was going to start the war.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2G1tL235aM

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army#Holoc...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army#Massa...

It's different. This poster seethes with anger, hate and bigotry towards Russians in his posts.

How dare I seethe! Majority of russians support the ethnic cleansing of my homeland, but seething - that's going too far.

Look, I get it. My daughter has Ukrainian blood pulsing through her veins (Zhitomir). But Russian blood (higher percentage), too. American blood (hello chattel slavery and native people genocide). And even some Nazi blood from another grandfather.

Is my 9 month old little girl collectively guilty?

Does your girl identify culturally with putinist russia and its values? Did she actively support the russian government since 2014?

Of course not, nor do all Russians. Thank you for making my point.

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