Let's Make 2024 the Year We Denazify Russia
Russia is a nation in moral, cultural, and economic decline, it's up to us to help all Russians accept this fact
Baba Vanga, the Nostradamus of the Balkans, died 26 years ago, but it is said that she left a whole notebook full of predictions. It is said that she saw 9/11 and even predicted the war in Ukraine. Baba, which means both grandma and woman in many Slavic languages, is predicting that someone in Russia will assassinate Putin.
It doesn’t hurt to dream, right? Maybe he will die in 2024, but then again, perhaps he won’t. Regrettably, I think we will be ringing in 2025 with him. Nonetheless, we all still have an opportunity to get involved in the denazification of Russia in 2024, and it doesn’t require much action from us. You ask, “How can you, a mild-mannered (insert profession) from Anytown USA, help weed out the Nazis from the Kremlin?” Simple.
First, in 2024, many of us will go to the polls to vote. We must elect only politicians who unequivocally say these words: “Vladimir Putin and his supporters are Nazis, and there can be no compromise made with them.”
I am not suggesting “unconditional surrender.” Historians suspect that because those words were used during World War II, Germany fought longer and harder. Knowing that their country would be cut up and ended should they lose, Germany held out longer than they might otherwise have. There are a lot of possibilities in that theory. Words are powerful, and words during war are made much more multidimensional because they are often backed up by sheer violence. Missiles launched against sleeping towns and cities make the most wishy-washy threats resound in eloquence.
Suppose most of the citizens, the politicians, and the media of the coalition currently supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia openly, loudly, constantly, and with strong confidence declare that Putin and all Russians who support Putin are Nazis with whom no compromises can be made. In that case, we will begin to win this war on both the linguistic and emotional front.
Russians are like Pavlov’s dog when they hear the word “Nazi.” Without even understanding that it is they who are the Nazis and not Ukrainians when they hear Putin and Dimachka “Thumbelina” Medvedev say that Ukraine needs to be freed of the Nazis when they begin to learn that the whole world regards them as the real Nazis, it will have an effect — I know it will. It will also give the good Russians, and many of them do oppose Putin but have no means to act out, a language around which they will be able to unite during these dark times in Russia — and then when Putin has been overthrown, it will give the reformists the mandate they will need to punish Russia’s Nazis.
“We avoid any dealings with so-and-so. He’s a Nazi.” By calling someone a Putinist, you open yourself to trouble in Russia. By calling that person a Nazi, you are creating a divide and an entire lexicon that backs you up in your opposition to that person. If a few billion of us, along with 20 or 30 million Russians, accept that Putin and his supporters are Nazis, it will begin to change minds in Russia.
It seems like nonsense, I am sure. Language, especially propaganda, is something that Putin and the Kremlin never underestimate. Hitler didn’t underestimate it. Trump understands the power of language. Democrats and civilized people will never beat the likes of Trump because they are too timid. I have called Trump a fascist the moment he descended the escalator in 2015 in Trump Tower. I have been reprimanded countless times by historically clueless people, mostly Republicans but even many Democrats, who challenged my characterization. I never swayed. Look now where we are with Trump and his fascist movement.
Putin and his followers are Nazis. Russia must be denazified. To do that, we all must agree with this language, embrace it, own it, and let every Russian in the world know that if they are not against Putin, then they are for Nazis. By labeling Putin and Russia a Nazified nation, it is then up to us and the good Russians inside the country to denazify it.
Let’s get started in two days, shall we?