Andrey Kolesnikov: The fight against fascism as a ritual

On June 28, 2006, RIA Novosti published Andrey Kolesnikov's article "The struggle of Nanai boys against 'fascism'", dedicated to the intensification of the official "fight against fascism". He once again draws attention to the fact that political PR carried out under the slogans of this very struggle has nothing to do with countering fascism. Moreover, it blurs the very content of the term, confuses concepts, while "real, applied Russian fascism is growing stronger, becoming less and less marginal," registered "on legal political platforms, receiving massive political support close to electoral values" .

It is much easier for the authorities to declare a political opponent a "fascist" than to pay attention to the activity of, for example, DPNI. And the legally vague concept of "extremism" provides the broadest opportunities for judicial arbitrariness: "If the court wants, it will record anyone as "extremists", if it does not want to, then with no less confidence in the motivational part of the court decision will prove that Adolf Schicklgruber did not incite interethnic strife, but only expressed his personal point of view .

The mass state anti-fascist campaign puts people who are really concerned about the growth of xenophobia in the country into a stalemate: "It is impossible not to fight fascism. You can also fight, because they will immediately explain to you that you are a fascist and you are just speculating on a fashionable topic. "

According to A. Kolesnikov, the criteria for "fascism" are themselves very simple.

Firstly, this is "a direct attribute of fascism - symbolic and verbal. If you do not bury fascist content in a kind of legal rhetoric about zeal for the fate of the fatherland, there will be no problems with the identification of fascism. " The author cites the slogan "Russia for Russians" as the most obvious example. The fact that 40% of Russians support him does not mean that these people are fascists. It means that real right-wing radicals have a resource of support if they camouflage their fascist aspirations with this very slogan. “All mantra-like arguments that the Soviet people defeated fascism in 1945 and therefore it is impossible in Russia are absolutely speculative in form and meaningless in content. There is a base in Russia for fascism, and it is very significant - this is a wounded sense of national self-consciousness, and the loss of a great empire, and the need to put up with a massive influx of migrants, and unemployment, and social unrest. And many other phenomena that turn, if not fascism, then radical nationalism into a political phenomenon with electoral potential" .

The second criterion is the mass nature and impunity of crimes on ethnic grounds. And what is important here is not so much the racist violence that is growing all over the world, but the lack of awareness of the inevitability of punishment: "If law enforcement agencies and courts stubbornly refuse to recognize the national motive in murders and other serious crimes, it is impossible to stop the epidemic of racial offenses," the author is convinced.

In order to "blow the 'struggle'", real experts are not needed" and, conversely, "in order to really fight, you need to resort to the help of specialists, and not pop showmen from politics. In order to truly to punish manifestations of fascism, one must be able to apply the current legislation, and not "improve" it to infinity , - writes A. Kolesnikov - Otherwise, carried away by the vivid spectacle of the struggle of Nanai boys with "fascism", one can overlook real threats and real fascists " .

Sources

• Kolesnikov Andrei. The struggle of Nanai boys against "fascism" // RIA News". 2006. June 28.