The Russian attack and the abuse of the accusation of Nazism as a propaganda weapon

This is a dangerous revival of World War II rhetoric to mobilize the population and justify the war.

That's according to Raanan Rein, professor of Spanish and Latin American history at Tel Aviv University, one of the participants in a recent international symposium in Vienna on the flight of many Nazi leaders to America. Latin after the war.

At the conference, organized by the Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI), Rein warned against the “use and abuse of the past” by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelensky to achieve “goals”. “. national and current politicians.

This is evidenced by Putin's speech on February 24, in which he claimed that the attack on Ukraine sought to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, as well as to protect “people who were victims of 'abuse and genocide on the part of the Kiev regime'. for eight years.

STAIN THE IMAGE

“Putin knows very well that the Second World War, during which millions of Russians lost their lives, can still provoke very strong feelings. This is why, to mobilize the support of the Russian population, he uses a perfect pretext by associating Zelensky with neo-Nazism. “, explains Rein.

For him, the best way “to tarnish the image of a government or a leader is to associate it in one way or another with Nazism”, particularly in Eastern Europe, the most bloody Second World War (1939-1945).

The Soviet Union (USSR) recorded the worst death toll in the fighting against the Nazis, with more than eight million casualties on the fronts alone.

Today, the Kremlin is taking advantage of this trauma and the memory of its victory to unify Russian society and justify the war against Ukraine, as if it were a continuation of the fight against the Nazis.

A speech similar to that adopted by Zelensky, comparing Putin to Adolf Hitler.

“PUTIN IS NOT HITLER”

“Putin is not Hitler, Russians do not commit genocides,” said historian and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem (Israel), Efraim Zuroff.

Zuroff, who played a key role in the trial of Nazi war criminals, expressed his rejection of accusations used by Ukraine and Russia that include “Holocaust terminology and imagery.”

This terminology has been at the heart of Zelensky's latest speeches, who, in addition to comparing Russia to Nazi Germany, compared Western leaders to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who in 1938 gave up the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia. , to the Nazi regime.

“Chamberlain did not understand in time the danger that Hitler posed,” said Rein, who asserts that “when it comes to Putin and the invasion of Ukraine, the leaders of the European Union and the The United States must understand this well and not repeat it.” same error.”

And for the political scientist, the war between Ukraine and Russia is a clear example of “how to undermine a democracy simply by saying that it is associated or influenced by the Nazis.”

In this sense, experts agree on abandoning “simplistic statements” and speeches from the past in the face of the war between Ukrainians and Russians.

In this way, according to Zuroff, the world will be able to understand that “the only way to live in harmony is to end this hatred.” EFE