Let’s “de-Nazify” Russia.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

These days, Russia is divided into people who support fascism and people who don’t.

People who support fascism are the ones who put “Z” stickers on their car bumpers, proclaim that Ukraine is not an independent nation, and (still) think of the ongoing war as a “special military operation” with noble goals. Ignorance is not an excuse. You can’t say, “Well, the average Russians are brainwashed by the state-TV propaganda.” Enough of that. If you don’t have the brains to figure out the truth, you're as guilty as the soldiers fighting in Ukraine. If you allow the government to shit in your brains, you’re a fascist. If you support fascism — even out of sheer ignorance — you’re a fascist. Simple as that.

Every day, I log on to the top-tier international media outlets — The New York Times, The Guardian, Atlantic, New Yorker, and, of course, Twitter — telling myself, “Well, it can’t get any worse than it already is.” But every day, it turns out that it can.

Today I went to The Guardian to discover this article about the changing narrative of the Russian state news providers. RIA Novosti, the largest government news outlet, recently concocted a concept — that only they understand — “Ukrainianism.” In the minds of RIA Novosti journalists, if a Ukrainian person wants to be called Ukrainian, speak the Ukrainian language, read Ukrainian books, oppose the brutal…