15/04/2022
The homophobic, authoritarian and macho Russian state is certainly unpleasant, but is not fascist, in the classical sense. That is the conclusion of a lengthy analytical report aired on the famous dissident broadcaster Radio Free Europe, which transmits on shortwave and satellite to countries like Russia where democratic norms are tenuous at best. Speaking with experts around the globe including political analyist Roger Griffin at Oxford Brookes University, Robert Coalson at the Prague based broadcasting network concluded that classical fascism is a revolutionary modernist current that seeks to reforge the nation, whereas Putin’s Russia is a beleagured country best described as a “mafia state” or a kleptocracy. Rather than resembling Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy or Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Russia resembles Imperialist Japan in the 1930’s. Although Japan was an ally of the two European fascist powers, it used feudal traditions and Imperial ambitions to govern. Stanley Payne from the University of Wisconsin remarked “The Putin regime is a centralized, right-wing, authoritarian dictatorship, but is much more reactionary than revolutionary," adding that Russia's "weak economic and demographic base" seem like "more a declining than a rising power."
