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Many mainstream observers and analysts in the West struggle to grasp how Russia – considered a key force in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany – now exhibits behaviors strikingly similar to the ideology it helped defeat. Even more perplexing to mainstream observers is Russia’s use of World War II’s legacy as a tool of militaristic pride. In the West, May 8th is marked as a solemn celebration of peace. In Russia, however, May 9th is triumphantly declared “Victory Day,” a highly choreographed show of strength and militarism.
This disconnect arises because Europeans (still) insist on viewing Russians solely from their own perspective and based on their own self-perception. For the West, World War II and everything associated with it – all the tensions, the whole confrontation between competing worldviews – was an integral part of its civilizational lifecycle. It was a natural, in a sense, internal family matter for the West. This applies also to the memory of WWII, and the lessons drawn from it.
For Russians, however, that war carries a different meaning entirely. It is remembered not just as a struggle against Nazi Germany, but as a war, a Holy Crusade, against the West itself. This is because Russians are civilizational outsiders, who seethe with hatred against the West and view it as their primary nemesis. Within their mindset and self-perception, the distinctions between Nazi Germany and Anglo-Saxons – with whom Russians became allies circumstantially – are therefore blurred.
That’s why, even as they celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany, Russians often denounce the “evil” Anglo-Saxons in the same breath. Their hatred isn’t reserved for one historical enemy; rather it’s indiscriminately directed at the entire Western world. This is also the root of Russia’s hostility toward NATO today. In Russian propaganda, NATO is routinely equated with Nazism – not because the two share any actual ideology, but because both serve as convenient symbols of the West, which Russians despise with near-religious fervor.
This is why Russians lump together wildly different Western ideas – Nazism, liberalism, feminism, LGBT rights – into a single, undifferentiated category of Western “corruption”. To Western minds, these are distinct and often contradictory worldviews, each tied to specific historical moments in the natural lifecycle of European Civilization. But for Russians, as civilizational outsiders, such nuance is irrelevant. For them, these are all features of the same nemesis: the West itself.
A common mistake among Western right-wingers is to interpret Russian criticism of liberalism, feminism or LGBT rights as a shared affinity for traditional European values. This is, however, a dangerous illusion. Russians aren’t defending European tradition, nor do they have any empathy for Europe. Rather, they are attacking anything and everything that comes from the West. Their contempt for liberalism is not rooted in moral concern over decadence, but in sheer civilizational hatred of the West. They hate these modern phenomena, not because of empathy with traditional Europe, but precisely because these phenomena are Western.
If Europe were more traditional, religious, and family-oriented, Russians would still sneer at it – just as they do at Eastern European nations like Ukraine, Poland, or the Baltic states. These countries remain largely conservative, but that doesn’t shield them from Russian scorn. Instead of accusing them of liberal decadence, Russia brands them as nationalists, fascists or Nazis. The label doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’re part of the West.
This pattern is nothing new. During the Soviet era, the civilizational confrontation was framed as communism versus capitalism. However, for Russians, that dichotomy was not really about between two different economic models. Claiming that would be superficial and misses the whole point. The nature of the discourse and the whole confrontation ran much deeper. For Russians, “capitalist” was a loaded word, a euphemism representing Westerners themselves and the whole Western Civilization. By counterposing “communism” against “capitalism”, they were, at a deeper level, counterposing Russia against the West. Today, Russians use new labels to insult the West. Instead of decrying “capitalists”, they now decry “globalists”, “gays”, “decadents”. But the core message remains the same.
For a Western observer all of this, including Russia’s current trajectory, might seem contradictory, but for keen experts on Russia, like yours faithfully, all of this makes perfect sense. The bottom-line is that Russians are not European, and regard Europe as their nemesis. It is the object of their deepest loathing. Russians doesn’t loathe Western “decadence” out of concern for the West’s moral state – they loathe it precisely because it is Western. If the West were more traditional, Russians would despise its traditionalism. The rhetoric changes over time, due to different circumstances, but the target of Russia’s loathing remains fixed.
Since the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia has cast off its artificial European mask and launched a relentless crusade against the West. It took on different forms in different periods, but the substance always remained the same: be it the war against Nazism, capitalism, liberalism, LGBT, feminism or trans rights – for Russians they all belong to a single category of Western-originated ills. Putin’s Russia is simply the continuation, and in a way the consummation, of this whole century-long process.
This is the perspective within which the Russian cult of “victory” should be understood. For Russians, WWII, which they call the “Great Patriotic War”, is in essence a religious war – part of the Crusade against the hated West that they have been waging for more than a century already. It is therefore not surprising that it had acquired mythical quasi-religious characteristics in Putin’s Russia with unique rituals that reflect the specific Russian psyche (e.g., Immortal Regiment) and symbolic staged performances like the one that represents the storming of the Reichstag. This also explains the veneration of Stalin within Russian society, which is especially increasing at an enormous speed in Putin’s Russia. For Russians, Stalin is not simply a political leader, but rather a mythical, quasi-religious figure. He is a perfect embodiment of the Russian soul and a truly Russian “hero”, who through his cruel (typically Russian) methods actualized their deepest revenge fantasies against the West. This, mind you, his actual ethnic origins notwithstanding; “Russian” itself in reality is not an ethnic designation, but a designation for a cultural realm.
All of this also ties with the role of religion in Russia. Western and Eastern Christians alike are often startled by the open militarism of the Russian Orthodox Church, which not only endorses the war but also goes so far as to bless soldiers and consecrate nuclear weapons. For many in Europe, such an attitude seems to contradict the spirit of Christianity itself – a faith widely associated with peace, humility, and compassion. But this reaction stems from a misunderstanding: it assumes that Christianity has always been a fixed doctrine, rather than what it truly is – a cultural vessel, shaped and reshaped by the societies it enters.
When viewed from a historical, cyclical perspective, the current trajectory of Russian Orthodoxy becomes less baffling and in fact makes perfect sense. Christianity has never been the force that shapes the soul of a people. It has always been shaped by it. Wherever it spread, it adapted to the prevailing innate character traits and psychological structure of the population. It has always submitted to the prevailing Zeitgeist of that realm.
Consider the Christianization of early medieval Europe. At the time, the Germanic peoples were fierce, honor-driven, and steeped in warrior culture. Had missionaries presented them with a meek, crucified savior, the faith would never have taken root. Instead, Christ was reimagined as a noble warrior. His suffering became an act of heroism, his resurrection a triumph of will and power. Christianity, which was the product of the dying Greco-Roman world and the perfect representation of its decadence and lost vigor, had to undergo a profound transformation to become palatable to the Germanic spirit. In essence, it became Germanized through and through.
The same principle applies to the schism between Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy – the Great Schism of 1054. Since the Germanic world and the Byzantine world differed substantially in their innate proclivities and sensibilities, it was only a matter of time that Christianity eventually split to Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Historians often point to theological disputes or liturgical differences as the cause of the split, but these are only symptoms, not causes. The true divide ran much deeper. The Germanic West and the Byzantine East were animated by different instincts, different psychological proclivities. Christianity split because it could not remain the same thing in two fundamentally different civilizational contexts.
Russia currently finds itself at a historical stage equivalent to the Early Middle Ages in Germanic Europe. And hence it is only logical that Russians interpret Christianity differently. Orthodox Christianity is being subordinated to and molded in accordance with the innate character traits and sensibilities of Russians. Just like in the Germanic Europe of the Early Middle Ages Christianity was thoroughly Germanized and made to exist congruently with the innate character traits and sensibilities of the Germanic people of the time, among other things serving as the justification for Crusades, now in Russia, Orthodox Christianity is in the process of “Russification”. It is being brought in line with innate character traits and sensibilities of the Russian people. It is therefore quite likely that this evolution of Russian Christianity will eventually trigger a schism within the broader Eastern Orthodox Christianity, comparable in its historical significance and intensity only to the Great Schism of 1054. The world will witness the emergence of a distinct “Russian Christianity” infused with the worldview and rituals that are congruent with the Russian psyche.
At this point, one might object: how can there be talk of a religious or quasi-religious fervor in Russia when church attendance is dismal and most Russians live secular lives? Superficially, this seems like a valid critique. But it rests on a narrow, more precisely, Abrahamic understanding of what religion is.
In this view, religion is defined by formal doctrine, a canon of beliefs, and a set of rituals practiced faithfully by devout adherents. Yet this definition is too rigid. Religion, in its deeper civilizational function, is not primarily about doctrine – it is about identity. It is a collective worldview, a metaphysical orientation, a sense of who we are and who we are not. In many societies, including Russia, what we call “religion” in the doctrinal sense is simply the outer shell – a vessel – through which a much more visceral group identity expresses itself. Oftentimes an official Abrahamic religion is simply subordinated to that visceral world-feeling of a group and is reshaped by it.
This easily explains the seeming paradox. Russians are in fact very religious, just not in the way Westerners expect. The animating force behind Russian society is not Orthodox Christianity per se, but the mythic idea of the “Russian World” (Russkiy Mir). This idea, rooted in a deep civilizational self-image, is what defines the Russian sense of purpose, belonging, and enmity. Orthodox Christianity merely serves as an auxiliary.
This isn’t unique to Russia. Consider the Islamic jihadists of the 2010s. When ISIS surged across the Middle East, Western analysts rushed to argue that the group did not represent “true Islam”. Many recruits from Europe, after all, were buying books such as Islam for Dummies before flying off to Syria and Iraq. Their behavior – drug use, casual violence, total ignorance of Islamic theology – seemed to contradict the very idea of religious devotion. But this line of reasoning missed the point entirely. For these individuals, Islam was not about mastering Islamic theology and jurisprudence or strictly following the prescribed rituals. For them it had a more visceral meaning; it represented their identity. It defined their self-perception, offered meaning, direction, and – most importantly – a stance against the much-hated West. The rituals and official theology are always secondary. The identity is primary.
The same was true of the Crusaders during the Early Middle Ages. Few of them had deep theological knowledge. Many lived lives that would scandalize any devout Christian. Yet that didn’t stop them from embarking on holy wars across continents, killing both Muslims and Eastern Christians alike. Their “faith” was not about Christian doctrine – it was a civilizational impulse cloaked in religion. It was a war of identity.
Russia today functions in the same way. The doctrine of the Orthodox Church is irrelevant to most Russians. What matters is that the Church, like everything else in Russian public life, is being reshaped to reflect and reinforce the civilizational myth of the “Russian World”. This myth defines who Russians believe they are – and who they believe their enemies are.
And this myth is religious in every meaningful sense. It sacralizes history. It sanctifies violence. It casts the West as a satanic and corrupting force. It turns political leaders into holy warriors and military invasions into sacred missions. Fervent celebration of the “Victory Day” with its own rituals, priestly blessings of soldiers, tanks and missiles, the veneration of Stalin – they all make sense within this framework. Stalin, by the way, is the quintessential saint for this uniquely Russian religion – the “Russian World”. Therefore, as Russian Orthodox Christianity inevitably splits from the larger Eastern Orthodoxy (see above), canonization of Stalin by the Russian Church will represent one of the next natural stages of this process.
So yes, Russians are religious. Not in the way Westerners today understand religion, but in the only way that truly matters. The “Russian World” is their faith. It defines their cosmos. And it defines the enemy.
And precisely within this framework one should understand Russia’s current war against Ukraine. It is not a coincidence and certainly not a contradiction, as many in the West assume, that Russians equate their invasion of Ukraine to their war against Nazi Germany. From their vantage point this makes perfect sense. Just like WWII, for Russians, their invasion of Ukraine is a Holy War against the West. This is evident in the proclamations of Russian official figures and Orthodox priests, who refer to this war as “holy” and habitually call to raze Kyiv to the ground. For Russians this war is not about territories, resources or geopolitics. For them the war against Ukraine is a religious war; it is a war against heretics. Russians view Ukrainians as heretics for having abandoned the “Russian World”.
War against heretics is the most brutal, the most unforgiving of all wars. When you designate someone as a heretic, you leave no place for mercy. This is why, and this cannot be emphasized enough, Russians will not, and cannot in principle, agree to any settlement in Ukraine. With heretics, there is no room for settlement – there is no room for peaceful coexistence. The heretics must be either physically eliminated or forcefully converted.
For Russians, unique Ukrainian identity is heretical. Russians therefore will not rest until they eradicate Ukrainians and root out their identity. Not until they physically eliminate all Ukrainians or convert them to Russians – i.e., make them belong to the “Russian World”. This is the basic logic of the war against heretics. You don’t tolerate the existence of those whom you view as heretics, even if they don’t threaten you and live far away.
Many in the West – even those firmly on Ukraine’s side – still fail to grasp the deeper engine driving Russian aggression. They continue to believe, wrongly, that Russia’s actions are grounded in negotiable interests. That, if the right concessions were offered – Ukraine’s neutrality, territorial compromises etc. – peace might be possible. But that logic does not apply when the war is not about interests, but identity. For Russia, Ukraine is not a neighbor to be bargained with. It is a heresy to be extinguished.
The very idea of Ukraine – a nation with its own identity, language, and will – is, to Russians, an affront. A defection. A betrayal of the “Russian World”. And in a war against heretics, compromise is impossible. Heretics are not tolerated. They are either converted or destroyed. This is why any vision of peace that involves Ukraine continuing to exist as a distinct nation – even a weakened one – is, from the Russian point of view, inherently unacceptable. The war, in their eyes, cannot end until Ukrainian identity itself is annihilated.
But Ukraine is only the frontline. The ultimate target is the West. And this is not about geopolitics in the narrow sense. It is about the Russian crusade. Even if Russia never fires a missile into Berlin or Paris, it will remain a civilizational enemy of Europe and will continue to wage its crusade by other means – by poisoning, destabilizing and unraveling Western society from within. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union didn’t always fight with tanks. It fought with manipulation, with subversion, with propaganda. It funded radicals and infiltrated Western institutions. Today’s Russia is simply picking up where the USSR left off – because Russia’s holy war, in truth, never ended.
As long as Russia exists in its current form, it will continue this crusade. It will go on exporting confusion, chaos, and corrosion into the West – not out of strategic necessity, but out of visceral compulsion. Russia does not seek parity with the West. It seeks the West’s destruction.
89 comments
Nice rant. It basically amounts to saying,”Putin, you big meany, you’re not letting us(NATO) win”.
That’s idiotic.
Actually what’s idiotic is the entire piece, which has absolutely no grounds in any reality.
And the comment was bang on.
No, you’re wrong. You idiots always insist on the frame “Russia vs. America/NATO” because, as per Russian official doctrine, there is no Ukrainian nation with its own identity, interests, and right to a homeland. At root, it is a warrant for genocide, as is the Jewish claim that there is no Palestinian people.
“as per Russian official doctrine, there is no Ukrainian nation with its own identity, interests, and right to a homeland.”
This isn’t the official doctrine, and not even the unofficial one. I could give you a TLRD of the official doctrine, but why bother if you are uninterested.
“At root, it is a warrant for genocide”
Thank you, And although it may be true that this is not part of the official Russian doctrine, there is the matter of a living, breathing, culture of Ukrainian people existing and wishing to continue existing in their homeland. Alternatively, I would also be-wary of believing that there is no greater outside forces or interests which have played a part in fueling this war. This manipulative type stage has played out too many times throughout history to be discarded. The devil wears many faces
Greg Johnson, responding to the first commenter: May 23, 2025 That’s idiotic.
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I agree. What a foolish statement by kerdasi amaq. I agree with much of what Cemil Kerimoglu has to say about Russia (as well as about Christianity), like this:
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[P]erplexing to mainstream observers is Russia’s use of World War II’s legacy as a tool of militaristic pride. In the West, May 8th is marked as a solemn celebration of peace. In Russia, however, May 9th is triumphantly declared “Victory Day,” a highly choreographed show of strength and militarism.
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May 8th, Victory in Europe (VE) Day, is barely celebrated in America except perhaps by the deluded, so-called “Greatest Generation” who believe vanquishing Germany 80 years ago for Jewry is something for which they should take pride.
May 9th, on the other hand, has been forced on the Russian people. Ethnic Russian nationalist Wolf Stoner provides the most sober explanation of Putin’s fabricated “Victory Day,” here: “Victory Frenzy” at nationalvanguard,org
[B]eing unable to deliver further tangible increases in living standards, the [neo-Bolshevik Kremlin] system shifted its priorities to ideology. It started to hastily create some kind of ad hoc “national idea” based on Stalinism and imperialism. This allowed them to divert public attention and at the same time to legitimize its crackdown on dissent. Now, the system’s critics were seen not as enemies of the ruling party but as “enemies of the people” and “foreign paid provocateurs.” This ideological trick has allowed the state system to redirect public anger into a safe channel. From now on, anyone criticizing the regime was proclaimed to be an enemy and the main cause of all internal problems.
The cornerstone of this neo-Stalinist ideology is the fairy-tale version of the Soviet war against Germany in 1941-45. Putin’s propaganda machine has transformed this historic event into a never-ending, ever-present ongoing affair that dominates all spheres of public activity.
All year round, from the Kuril Islands to Kaliningrad (occupied Konigsberg), from kindergartens to universities, from prisons to military garrisons, the garish “victory” paraphernalia dominates the landscape. From dawn to dusk, 365 days a year, all state media channels constantly stuff “victory” nonsense into people’s minds. The methods of brainwashing are even more crude and aggressive than they were back in Soviet times. The mainstream crowd feels itself obliged to participate in this theater of absurdity. Most of them do it willingly; but even those who don’t especially like this frenzy, participate all the same because of fear being socially ostracized.
In Putin’s Russia you are not simply nudged into being a part of this frenzy, but aggressively pushed into it. Some strata of society have no choice at all; for example, prison inmates, military and law enforcement personnel, state officials, schoolteachers, and workers at many other state-owned agencies. The state continues to be the main employer in Russia, therefore it can easily enforce its ideology through this channel. You are simply sacked if you do not want to be a part of this “victory” frenzy and other state-sponsored public activities. All in all, these measures have created ostensible “majority support” for the Kremlin’s overall policies. There is simply no other way for tens of millions of Russians. The passive majority — the lemmings — simply accept this as a given reality; they don’t like to question any authority; they are happy to bow before any dominant force. And they are happy to feel themselves a part of this seemingly almighty state. This whole crowd voluntarily repeats everything that emanates from the foul mouths of the state TV propagandists.
Since 2014, Russian society lives in a parallel reality. After starting its clandestine invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin ratcheted up its propaganda to a level where it has lost any connection to actual reality. After that was done, there was no way back. Russian society, like a drug-addict, needed ever greater doses of narcotic lies to be kept satisfied and calm. And the most potent narcotic is the Putin state’s foundational myth: “Our Great Victory in the Great Patriotic War.”….
I’ve learned to just avoid topics about Russia on Counter currents. It’s a massive sore spot for Greg for whatever reason. This article is absolute drivel. Even the deep state war propaganda machine would be embarrassed to publish something like this.
Psychologize, spin, pin it on the “Deep State”: all standard Russian talking points.
Yes, flagrant lies and leering, smirking evil are a “sore spot” with me. Russia shills are right up there with Jews in that department. Disgusting.
I’m Czech and we have a saying here: “An American is just a better dressed Russian” . And indeed these two nations are very similar. It is also true here that fanatical Russophobia is the refuge of the most obnoxious defenders of the liberal status quo. I have also been to Britain and much of what is said in the article is well known to me from the English tabloid press. The British never got over the fact that in the days of their empire, Tsarist Russia was the only power that competed with them. Ironically, the British press has been in the hands of native Russian Jews who hate their old country to death for generations. I am quite fond of Ukrainians, but to the author I say the following: I still like a Russian better than a Turk or a Kurd or whatever the hell else the author is.
Based on the name spelling I would guess Romanian?
I’m originally from Azerbaijan, but I grew up in Turkey. That’s why I know both Russians and Turks very well. And I can tell you that these two peoples are in fact very similar: in their mentality, behavior, self-perception and, most importantly, their attititudes towards the West:
https://radicaldose.com/turkey-as-mini-russsia/
Actually, among all nations on Earth Turks come one of the closest to Russians.
So, disliking Turks (justifiable), but liking Russians is a contradiction.
Well said! Turks (and likewise their junior partners, Azeris) have a ancestral and atavistic hatred of Russia rivaled only by the Jews. It’s not surprising that Azerbaijan is a foul playground of the Isrealis.
Odd that Russia’s former imperial territories dislike and distrust Russian imperialists. What could possibly explain that? I guess it is just like anti-Semitism: a wholly atavistic and irrational problem that has nothing to do with the behavior of the poor victims.
Post-Trianon countries generally hate Old Hungary — even though it was the most liberal state in the world. Their ideology goes like this: We had the glorious /insert name of fictious/ empire, then came the Magyar Mongols from the east, they opressed us for 1,000 years, kept us in semi-slavery, massacred us, etc. etc… Then one Tuesday morning in 1918 we woke up and all of a sudden became an advanced, modern European nation.
Hungarian ethnonationalists play the same game, but against the Habsburgs.
The new rulers always have to justify the overthrow of the old regime. It takes an awful lot of work, self-reflection, political maturity to acknowledge that you are where you are because for centuries you were governed fairly decently.
Hungarian historical consciousness is 80 percent truth, 20 percent fiction.
There are many countries in Eastern Europe where the ratio is reversed.
Very interesting piece, thank you.
I agree about the secondary nature of religion, that it conforms to the people who adopt it or else they often would not adopt it at all. I think all the time about that scene from Scorsese’s film Silence: the Catholic priest (played by Andrew Garfield) finally locates the old priest-gone-native (played by Liam Neeson) and tries to convince him to return to Portugal. But he is too late, and is told that even when the Japanese say the word “God” they mean something entirely different.
I thought the reason that Neeson, and Garfield did not return to Portugal is because the Japanese would not let them go. Garfield, and Neeson were forced into the role of censors. As to Neeson’s going native, he tried to let an image of Christ pass, which Garfield subsequently caught, and declared. Also, as Neeson was walking away, he said something to the effect of, “Our god would not allow us.” which Garfield caught. So you see Neeson was not completely broken. 🙃
Correct, they did not return to Portugal. The point was that evangelizing to an exotic people such as the Japanese is pointless as even if they intone the same words as you they mean something else. This is from the film’s Wikipedia Plot section: “Ferreira apostatized while being tortured to save his fellow Christians, and now believes that Christianity has no place in Japan.”
I never caught what their interpretation of God was, but they thought heaven was secular, and would actualize, upon their conversion to Christianity. Reminds one of the communists and their “working man’s paradise,” doesn’t it? 🙃
“Ferreira apostatized while being tortured to save his fellow Christians, and now believes that Christianity has no place in Japan.”
I guess the warmongering folks running Washington thought so, too, choosing to make an example of the heavily-Christian population of Nagasaki in 1945. Oh, they had the excuse that bad weather in Kokura (the supposed original target) caused them to pick Nagasaki instead, but they likely had Nagasaki in their crosshairs all along.
Japan had already lost the war, as you know – H & N was just some extra fun for our Allied cutthroats. Dresden apparently wasn’t entertaining enough.
What you’ve written about the second A-bomb’s wiping out a good portion of the never very large Japanese Christian community is both correct and not widely known, so I offer my kudos. This has been a prominent point for rightwing Christians of a conspiracist bent for many decades.
OTOH, the paleoconservative (and race-realist) historian of the American Old West (and American military history) Roger McGrath some decades ago in Chronicles exploded the myth of the alleged gratuitousness of Hiroshima (the atom bombing of Nagasaki really was unnecessary and therefore evil, if not altogether incomprehensible, given the extensive war crimes the Japs perpetrated against their Western [as well as – even more brutally, of course – East Asian] antagonists, including Americans). The WW2 Japanese had a kamikaze mentality, and were prepared to defend the home islands to the death. Reasonable estimates are that it would have taken several hundred thousand US troops to conquer Japan itself, and that this invasion would have led to more than a million casualties.
In that light, the bombing of Hiroshima seems justified (it also served as a warning to the Soviet vermin that we would not permit them to jointly invade/occupy Japan). The totally unnecessary bombing of Dresden, filled as it was with mostly refugee German women and children, was, however, one of the most disgusting episodes in the history of white intraracial conflict. “Bomber” Harris should have been tried at Nuremberg, perhaps even as the first defendant.
No, the war wasn’t anywhere close to ending, because the Japanese were not quitting.
The U.S. Army Air Force and the U.S. Navy had nearly completed a starvation blockade over and around Japan and this wasn’t going to end well for the Japanese, although they still were not quitting.
It is hard to say what American casualties would have been to mount an invasion, but they were not in so much hurry as is usually supposed, and mass starvation is a pretty good incentive for surrender.
What the atomic bombs did do is allow the Emperor to save face and order an immediate surrender. This was a break from Unconditional Surrender terms as the Emperor would not be deposed. Even still, the hardliners launched a coup but this was easily put down by loyal Japanese forces.
A third atomic bomb was being prepared and would have been dropped by early September if Truman had not called a halt after the first two atomic bombs to allow time to see what the Japanese would do. After that, an atomic bomb per month could have been easily doable, although the pristine target list would have run out quickly.
The Soviet declaration of war the day before Nagasaki is almost irrelevant to the Japanese surrender as they were primarily interested in grabbing Japanese holdings in Asia ─ which was not going to force a Japanese surrender either, if atomic bombings and impending starvation, and an eventual American invasion wasn’t going to do it so easily.
Basically the atomic program was in the hands of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. The conventional bombing raids on Japan were actually more destructive, but an atomic bomb is a single strike which is a huge tactical advantage.
Japanese cities Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki were spared from conventional bombing in order to evaluate the damage from atomic strikes. For personal reasons, Stimson removed Kyoto from the bombing list entirely.
Recently, Yale University put Stimson’s papers Online and they are quite fascinating. That Kyoto was struck off the target list by Stimson “to preserve Japanese culture” is not a myth, although he does not elaborate much about why in his daily journal.
President Truman rather cluelessly stated publicly after the first atomic bombing that Hiroshima was a military target ─ but this is somewhat misleading, as only about 10 percent could be construed as military, including personnel.
But the idea that Strategic Bombing was ever only about “military targets” is part of the mythology of the Good War.
In 1978, at the Airpower Symposium, retired Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay admitted that had the United States lost the war, he would have been tried as a war criminal for the devastating Japanese firebombings (LINK).
LeMay also wondered why everybody obsessed about the two atomic bombs given that they were actually less destructive. (And they were both detonated in the air to maximize the blast damage and to severely minimize any radioactive fallout.)
Of course, the answer to the question implied posed by the general is so because the notion of who has committed War Crimes is not very objective at all. History has pretty much approved of those who did what they had to do as long as they won.
“If you can’t do that, you are not a good soldier,” LeMay told the symposium. “All war is immoral,” so it is what it is.
But the question itself is very relative to who gets to be dubbed as the Good Guys and therefore writes the propaganda.
For example, the 1937 bombing of Guernica by the German Condor Legion in Spain, that killed a few hundred at best, was directly in support of Nationalist ground forces, and yet, the Communists and the Left had a fine propaganda circus with it.
Of course, the Liberal mythology is that the ultimately slain Camelot Brothers and “Dr. Strangebob” McNamara saved the world from global thermonuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. But in fact, it was LeMay’s Air Force that discovered the Soviet nuclear missile deployment threat in the first place ─ in time to do something about it.
🙂
*Roger McGrath some decades ago in Chronicles exploded the myth of the alleged gratuitousness of Hiroshima.
*What the atomic bombs did do is allow the Emperor to save face and order an immediate surrender.
To Scott & Lord Shang:
Thanks for replying to my comment. Yes, I read everything you had to say. They did not have to use atomic bombs. What they could have done is to dump a particularly large atomic bomb in the ocean or wilderness and tell the Japanese that a whole bunch of these will be dropped simultaneously on Tokyo if they don’t smarten up, i.e., do what Amerika, Chief Arbiter of Right & Wrong, tells you.
LeMay also wondered why everybody obsessed about the two atomic bombs given that they were actually less destructive.
You don’t say. Ever hear of radiation poisoning?
https://www.historyhit.com/what-were-the-long-term-effects-of-the-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
You do know, don’t you, that whether it’s Europe, Russia, ME or Asia or anywhere else, the fine folks who run Washington will not stop finding reasons for Perpetual War. Next time, though, it will probably land on our doorstep, the architects having hightailed it out to a safer spot.
In any case, your comments and quotes on war crimes make good reading.
If I recall accurately, the translator of the great Japanese Catholic novelist Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence (the basis for the Scorsese film), notes the “problem” of Japanese Christianity, which is analogous to Sherlock Holmes’s “dog that did not bark”: why did Christianity not take root in Japan? I don’t know if there’s any anthropologically widely accepted answer. But I think Endo thought the problem was not one of excessive racial distance, but rather, something peculiar in and particular to the collective Japanese psyche, which, for conversion, required that the faith be presented in a different way from how it is understood in the West.
I’ve been milling about YouTube and the channel “Let’s Ask Shogo!” offers an answer:
https://youtu.be/vJmWVWCdTYo?si=CKcYvPlEiwCjPDjZ
The important bit is the secteion “Suppresion of Buddhism and banning of Christianity.” The short story is: After Buddhism was introduced to Japan, monks began to arm themselves and threatened the nobility to meet their demands. The Monk Army was defeated, and ever since then Japanese people have developed a distrust of religion in general. From another video (“Why Do Japanese Insist on Calling Themselves Non-religious?”, same authour) Japanese will carry on with traditions without putting too much spiritualist stock in them in general. Today its considered very rude to talk about faith.
Christianity is the “running dog” of the New World Order. The Japanese would not have understood the term New World Order back then, but they certainly recognized something repugnant, strange, and alien to the human spirit, and resisted it with all their might, for long as they could. 🙃
NWO seems pretty divorced from Christianity to me
Patton understood the Russians perfectly, in the movie he would not even let his generals eat with them. American politicians should have listened to Patton, and invaded Russia when we had the chance. You can replace the words Russia, and Russians with the words Israel, and jews, and you will have a good analysis of the jews. 🙃
Whatever Russia wants, I think the following is important for us:
1. if Russia were to collapse in this war it would strengthen the western liberal elite immensely. They would go crazy with joy and then come at us full force.
2. If Russia had won, they would have been extremely angry and vindictive and would have tried to brutalize us as well.
3. Putin, whatever he may be, is, from Russia’s point of view, a once-in-300-years ruler. Of the current white statesmen, he is the only one who resembles the rulers of old – in the style of “and he defeated all his enemies and ruled wisely for 25 years”.
This is typical Russian “multipolar” slopuganda. I remain shocked and disgusted that it still has an audience on the nationalist Right. But it just goes to prove that a lot of nationalists really aren’t principled people.
1. The only thing that would be destroyed by Russia losing this war is Russian imperialism. We already live in a “multipolar” world, so that is not at stake.
2. Russia is dead wrong in this war from an ethnonationalist point of view. The libtards are on the right side for a change.
3. Putin from the point of view of the Russian people is the worst disaster since Stalin. He is imposing ethnic replacement on the Russian people, and he is making it impossible for Russian ethnonationalists to organize to oppose him. This is why so many Russian nationalists are fighting FOR Ukraine. Putin is objectively 10,000 time worse than the Western replacist regime, since we have much more freedom to organize to oppose it.
If Russia collapsed and Putin was replaced by a puppet regime like Yeltsin, Western liberals would declare it the Fukuyama end of history. All the political forces that have dared to fight the liberal oligarchy in recent years would lose momentum and many people would drop out of the opposition. We would find ourselves somewhere in the 1990s, but with a revived and predatory woke agenda. I also don’t think it’s as bad as you think with Putin’s anti white agenda. As far as I know, Putin is mainly sending Chechens, Dagestanis, Kalmyks, Balkhars, Udmurths, Meshchers, Buryats, Yakhuts, Youkhagirs, Tartars, Tourcomanns, Kazzakhs, Ouzbecks, Ossetians, Ynghushs, Khalkans, Ithelmens, Khamtchadals, Chuckhis, Chouwaschs, Koryaks, Orockhs, Ulckhs, Khamashians, Izzhorians, Evenkhs, Aghuls, Noghais, Berssermyans, Khwarshians, Nhenents, Tadjiks, Khandeyrans, Zhabholotniks, Lezghins, Akshvaks, Tzhers, Kharathans and various Arab, Turkish, Kurdish and African black mercenaries and North Korean “cannon fodder” to war. They save the Huwhite Russian boys for parades in Red Square.
Yeltsin was not anybody’s puppet. He was just a corrupt drunken weakling.
But let’s say that Russia ended up with a liberal democracy some day. That does not alter the fact that Russia has a nuclear arsenal of its own, as well as a unique civilization and interests of its own. Thus it would be a separate geopolitical entity.
Beyond that, even if Russia entirely disappeared tomorrow, we would still live in a multipolar world due to China and India.
It is the highest sort of hogwash for the likes of Dugin to claim that the multipolar world stands and falls with Russia. No, it doesn’t.
In fact, a multipolar world never stopped existing when the USSR fell apart. What fell apart was the Russian Empire, Soviet version.
The world is well rid of it. Nothing of any importance was lost.
Putin is replacing ethnic Russians in their own capital city. He was doing it before the war broke out. He will continue to do it after the war is over.
Maybe we should have a seperate name to distinguish ethnic Russians from Russianism?
As far as I know, Putin is mainly sending Chechens, Dagestanis, Kalmyks, Balkhars, Udmurths, Meshchers, Buryats, Yakhuts, Youkhagirs, Tartars, Tourcomanns, Kazzakhs, Ouzbecks, Ossetians, Ynghushs, Khalkans, Ithelmens, Khamtchadals, Chuckhis, Chouwaschs, Koryaks, Orockhs, Ulckhs, Khamashians, Izzhorians, Evenkhs, Aghuls, Noghais, Berssermyans, Khwarshians, Nhenents, Tadjiks, Khandeyrans, Zhabholotniks, Lezghins, Akshvaks, Tzhers, Kharathans and various Arab, Turkish, Kurdish and African black mercenaries and North Korean “cannon fodder” to war. My head hurts…have Whites sit this one out for a change and substitute the unpronounceables.
Since I was a young man I dreamt of the day where Russia and the West might reconcile. I gather here that this is an impossibility.
So I formally disavow any sympathy for Russia and her interests. Hail to the West, may we rise again.
(Greg: Sorry about calling him a nationalist, I thought I was being clever about something, somehow.)
I was incredibly disappointed that it never happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union. But instead we had plans to suck up to Red China with its billion consumers/workers.
🙂
Yes, integrating Western/white Russia into the European sphere should have been the West’s highest collective priority at the time, and I thought and said so then. I never liked American conservatives in the 80s who fumed about “the Rooskies”, and I always tried to make the point that the real Bolsheviks were Jews and other ethnic non-Russians, and that Great Russians were white and, per Solzhenitsyn, just as much victims of the Bolshie vermin as anyone.
I had hoped that Russia would get taken over by white nationalist elements, who would ideally proceed to liquidate all communist remnants, and dramatically reimpose traditional Russian identity and culture. Such a revivified Russia could then exert a powerful racial nationalist example for Eastern Europe to incentivize its own ideological and ethnic cleansings – and for the West, perhaps even covertly funding Western white nationalists. A re-Russified Russia could also be a powerful counterweight to China, which I never liked. My dad always thought Nixon/Kissinger were asses with their so-called “brilliant” China triangulation. Indeed, in Nixon’s The Real War – which I read during college in the summer of 1981 – the 37th President even opens one of his chapters, as I recall 40+ years later, with a famous quote from Napoleon, which has forever stuck in my memory: “China! There lies a sleeping giant. Let it sleep; for when it wakes, it will move worlds.” But Nixon, for all his vaunted intelligence, especially allegedly in foreign policy, didn’t understand the real implications of that quote.
And following the Cold War’s end, all greedy Western capitalists could think of was selling China’s ethno-communists the ropes with which they will hang us (I’m a militant free marketist, but I’m wise enough to recognize that capitalist energies must always be subordinated to racial, civilizational, and national survival).
Blaming the Jews and the outsiders for Bolshevism really doesn’t work. The underlying problem was the Russian empire. The empire always coopted the elites of subordinate peoples. It was always less Russian at the top than at the bottom. The Bolsheviks changed the personnel at the top, with a huge influx of subaltern groups. But the same imperial mentality and statecraft persisted. It persisted through the high tide of Judeo-bolshevism, when the Jews were pushed aside under Stalin and the upper ranks became more Russified, and under Putin, who is surrounded by non Russian oligarchs. It also doesn’t cut it to say that Russia today is not the USSR when Putin has rehabilitated Stalin, and the Red Army flies the hammer and sickle. Short of complete occupation and a German style process of de Bolshevization, complete with trials and hangings, there was no way of integrating such a society into the West.
Wasn’t that a key theme of The Dispossessed Majority‘s “biology of revolution” chapter (I don’t have the book in front of me)? And Revilo Oliver certainly blamed the Jews for the “international criminal conspiracy”. Communist movements around the world were often filled disproportionately with ethnic outsiders. Even Mao, being Hunanese, was considered a bit of an outsider.
But this was especially true in the West, where communism always had a huge Jewish component, from Bavaria’s “Red Republic” in the immediate aftermath of WW1 (I still recall being shocked at all the Jewish names referred to in Gordon Craig’s Oxford History of Modern Europe contribution, Germany 1866-1945, which I had to read in a college class), to America’s Jewish communist culture, which produced all those “atomic spies” (the Rosenbergs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass), and which was referred to by “red diaper” babies turned anticommunists like David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh, and old liberals like Philip Roth (I Married a Communist).
It’s not clear to me that Bolshevism ever would have successfully conquered Russia without it Jewish element.
“The Bolsheviks changed the personnel at the top, with a huge influx of subaltern groups. But the same imperial mentality and statecraft persisted.”
After the assasination of Czar Alexander II, thousands were prosecuted, 20 people were sentenced and 1 person was executed.
In the 1920s and 1930s in the Bolshevik infighting tens of millions were prosecuted, and millions died.
1 and millions, obviously the same thing!
I’ll defer to your expertise on Russia here, and in any case my instincts tell me that your argument may be right, at least mostly right. But I do wonder about your motivations for this article, especially in light of the comment you made responding to a (undoubtedly tragic and inhuman) death of a little Ukranian boy on April 5 on your Substack: “There is no valid reason why Russia should exist. There is no morally justifiable reason as to why Russians should be allowed to exist as a people. Actually, there is no valid reason to treat them as humans – not only Putin and his supporters, but every single Russian.” Your entire feed, taken as a whole, is full of this manner of dehumanizing rhetoric of the sort that most decent people on the Right wouldn’t even use against the worst sub-Saharan criminals. This doesn’t sound like reasoned civilizational critique of Russian imperialism to me. It sounds like deep-seated ethnic hatred of Russian people as Russians. Hmm….
Thank you for your comment. Firstly, to clarify, there is no “Russian ethnicity” as such. “Russian” is a term denoting a cultural/civilizational realm, first and foremost, in the minds of Russians themselves – that’s what the “Russian World” is about. So, one cannot speak of an ethnic hatred of Russians in principle.
Secondly, and most importantly, yes, sometimes such rhetoric is necessary to prod the West into action: to wake Westerners from their slumber. To make them aware of the Evil they are confronted with and the urgency to act. And given what kind of horrific crimes Russians commit against Ukrainians for more than three years already, oftentimes this rhetoric is simply unavoidable at an emotional level. I don’t hate Russians for what they are, I hate them for what they do and/or what they support (as every decent person should do). But still, my rhetoric is rather tactical than emotional.
Though, I support Ukraine, there are definitely ethnic Russians, as there are ethnic Ukrainians, which is how we’re able to distinguish these two groups who live within Ukraine despite the fact they often speak the same language.
Thank you for your response. You could make the same argument about White Americans, and you would again be half right. But should we, in rightly denouncing the imperialist, civic nationalist sham that is the American Empire, throw the baby out with the bathwater and declare White Americans nonexistent as a people and unworthy of Nationalist consideration, and even imply that they are worthy of extermination on grounds of their complicity and/or patriotic loyalty to the only power they have ever known? I can appreciate tactical rhetoric, but I do find the denial of Russian ethnic peoplehood (something the rotten “Russian” regime itself engages in) to be an odd choice for an ethnonationalist publication. I personally know (ethnic, not national) Russians and can assure you they are real! I understand this site has deep ties of friendship to Ukranian Nationalists, and rightly so, but I don’t feel this excuses a clear double standard, particularly when we could also be making ties with those Russian Nationalists persecuted by the Putin government.
…and even imply that they are worthy of extermination on grounds of their complicity and/or patriotic loyalty to the only power they have ever known?
Criticizing the Russia government = / = wanting to genocide the Russian masses.
The Russian State launched an unnecessary war against Ukraine and claimed one of the reasons for this was a need to “de-Nazify” it. They specifically targeted Ukrainian ethnic Nationalists in cities like Mariupol. They are replacing their own people and in 2015 rebuilt one of Europe’s largest mosques in their capital.
Whenever people point this out, they are accused of personally hating Russians, being Western liberals, or forgetting Russia’s WWII era fatalities (and I already posted official census data showing they inflated their population by 8 million for political reasons shortly before WWII – there is also evidence of other blatant statistical lies).
Russia is an enemy of Ukraine. But does it have to be our enemy as well? What about the middle East – are/were the Yemenis, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Palestinians, etc. our enemies? Amerika made them into enemies. Were Germans “our” enemies in the 1930s?
I don’t hate Russians for what they are, I hate them for what they do
LOL. What hairsplitting! People behave in certain ways precisely because of what they are, it’s all of a piece and you can’t separate the two. I’d have thought anyone writing articles for C-C knew that. Russians have demonstrated the same character since Day One, as have Ukrainians, that is, easily taken advantage of, e.g., talked into giving up their nuclear weapons by US & Russia (not to mention voting for Zelensky). A Jewish boss of mine (from Europe) said this to me, but he used the expression “a gentle people” instead.
Christians would remind you that feelings are just as wrong as overt actions even if you think it’s righteous hatred. However, you likely won’t be judged by the Christian god in the afterlife, so don’t worry.
Do all those who identify as Russian have some kind of separate ‘ethnicity’, like British/English?
That’s correct, Everyone living in the Russian Federation is a Rossiisky/ Russian citizen but there are many many ethnic groups of which the largest is of course the ethnic Russian/ Russky population as well as other eastern Slavs Inc Ukrainians Belarusians. There is some discrepancy over exact numbers but ethnic Russians are ~80% of the population.
I went to Russia for the 2018 FIFA world cup fantastic place and people shame about the leadership.
The author (if I understand him) claims there is no such thing as an ethnic Russian. Hence my question.
Your last name sounds Turkish to me, not Azeri. The comment dug up by Elefsina from your substack suggests a serious axe to grind with Russia. Your reply about wanting to wake up the West to Russian atrocities is ridiculous. The media in the West is consumed by anti Russian news out of Ukraine. You, being so low on the media totem pole, will hardly move that needle any more, if it needs moving at all. This article is animated by hatred for Russia and Russians full stop.
Thanks for pointing out this vile vitriol from the author. While reading his piece, I was thinking to myself “is he Jewish”? Now, my suspicion has been multiplied. For only they speak of genocide glibly like that
We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.
After this war the need for us to work together to achieve these goals won’t have diminished.
Excellent article! This same analogy applies to the, “ Greater Serbia” concept.. the blood-thirsty Serbian Chetniks (who aldo masquerade as Yugoslav Partisans, when it suits their imperialist ambitions!), their deep hatred of Roman Catholic Croatians/ Slovenians, and even lesser orthodox Christian neighbors, such as Montenegrins & Macedonians! They will never change their spots. In the end Russia or Ukraine ( Serbia or Croatia), will survive, not both!
And wasn’t one of the three prophecies of Fatima, that Russia would be converted…?
I think many Western men idolize Russia due to absorbing propaganda designed to encourage them to project their own ethnocentric impulses onto the Russian state. They cheer for Russia because they *falsely* view Russia as being on their side. It is blatantly obvious to me that sites like the Daily Stormer (whose admin, Weev, was based in the Russian puppet state of Transnistria) spent years taking narratives from Russia Today and repackaging them for the AltRight.
A few of my honest observations on the Russia:
1. They were far from innocent before WWI or WWII. The captured German leaders at Nuremberg shared information that the Russians had been pressuring them to accept the Russian annexation of numerous German allies. Before WWI, they had used pan-Slavist movements as a wedge to dissolve the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
2. Russia constantly retcons its own history as that of an unstoppable juggernaut. Westerners have begun to repeat this. I remember a few years ago when it was generally acknowledged that NS Germany’s immense air superiority would have eventually allowed them to win a limited war against Russia, and even many Russian leaders from that time admitted this, now you’ll see Westerners talk about Russia single-handedly winning that war and being the “Soviet Steamroller.” This is a sign of immense civilizational narcissism.
3. Russians (and some other groups of Slavs) have a very distinctive mindset. The psychologist Sam Vaknin wrote about the much greater degree of narcissism he had witnessed among Russian women, and the naivety of Western men about this issue. The Russians, and related people, do not think like Westerners. They like having an external enemy to project negative sentiments onto.
4. Many Russians are deeply wedded to multi-cult ideology due to having mixed backgrounds. There is a “Never Mix” meme going around TikTok right now and Russians are attacking those who spread it (calling them ugly, saying Russians are better than Westerners due to being more mixed, etc.). It is insane to watch Westerners begin to openly complain about race-mixing and get attacked by Russians, only to be told the Russians are “based” by internet based accounts who repeat propaganda by literal pedos like Scott Ritter (who is one of Russia’s favorite assets right now).
5. Blindly idolizing Russia will alienate other Eastern Europeans such as Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarian, Romanians, etc.
Objective commentary on Russian history from a Turk? LOL! Don’t you know that — the current truce between Putin and Erodogan notwithstanding — the Turks and the Russians have always been mortal enemies? That they battled for control over Ukraine and the Caucasus for centuries? Name *one* war where the Turks and Russians were on the same side. Just one!
“That’s why, even as they celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany, Russians often denounce the ‘evil’ Anglo-Saxons in the same breath. Their hatred isn’t reserved for one historical enemy; rather it’s indiscriminately directed at the entire Western world. This is also the root of Russia’s hostility toward NATO today. In Russian propaganda, NATO is routinely equated with Nazism – not because the two share any actual ideology, but because both serve as convenient symbols of the West, which Russians despise with near-religious fervor.” [Emphasis mine.]
Are you sure that Russia’s enmity towards NATO today has absolutely nothing to do with the alliance’s relentless eastward expansion over the past three decades? From the standpoint of an ordinary Russian, wouldn’t that make Washington’s stated desire to bring “democracy” to Ukraine (LOL!) and Georgia and Armenia seem just a wee bit like Hitler’s desire for Lebensraum in the East? And before Hitler, there was Napoleon, so Naziism, too, was just the reappearance of an older phenomenon.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those Putin-cultists who takes his half-hearted defense of morality seriously. In fact, Putin, the man, can rot for all I care. In reality, Putin, the man, is just another Zionist back-stabber like all the rulers of the West that he professes to be fighting. (You don’t believe me? Look at how he betrayed Syria. And why, oh why!, is Putin letting this horrific war in Ukraine drag on and on. It should have ended three years ago!)
But given their collective history, the mentality of the average Russian does make a certain amount of sense to me, even if I don’t completely share it myself. And besides, didn’t the USSR lose something on the order of 20 million in WW2? That’s more than all the Western countries lost together in both theaters. I therefore don’t find their attitudes toward the ‘great patriotic war’ all that surprising, even if they can be used for unfortunate purposes. And I definitely do not want any war with Russia, however bad Putin may be — and he’s certainly no worse than the utter vermin that rule over the contemporary West.
And besides, didn’t the USSR lose something on the order of 20 million in WW2?
The narrative that the USSR lost 20 to 27 million is less reliable than the 6 million figure. The 1937 Soviet Census showed a population of 162 million (8 to 10 million lower than the anticipated results):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Soviet_census
A 1939 Census was announced (after those who produced the 1937 one were arrested) which inflated the figure to the 170 million that Stalin wanted:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_census
Data from 1946 shows a population of 170.5 million:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1260605/soviet-population-changes-wwii-gender-age/#:~:text=Russian%20estimates%20suggest%20that%20the,of%20the%20Second%20World%20War.
Considering territory changes and assuming the suppressed 1937 census was accurate, then the Soviets suffered several million deaths. Which is terrible, but probably less than 1/3rd to 1/4th the number they claim (and possibly lower than the number of Germans who died if we include post WWII expulsion related deaths and all deaths by the Allies).
Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
„The 1937 census, for example, has never been released. Kraval, the director of the Statistical Central Office and the other top administrators responsible for the project were charged with treason. In the words of Pravda, they had been caught plotting „to diminish the population of the USSR”. They were shot.
Their successors apparently did not make the same mistake, for the 1939 census was judged fit for partial release. Its population total may have exceeded the earlier total by 20 million or more.” (Iosif G. Dyadkin: Unnatural Deaths in the USSR, 1928-1954, p. 6.)
Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
…Their successors apparently did not make the same mistake, for the 1939 census was judged fit for partial release. Its population total may have exceeded the earlier total by 20 million or more.” (Iosif G. Dyadkin: Unnatural Deaths in the USSR, 1928-1954, p. 6.)
Tbh, I’m completely willing to admit my figure could be too low. My core argument is that the Soviet Union’s leaders greatly inflated their population data and the difference between this falsified information and later estimates has been used to prop up an inaccurate narrative.
The Statistic link that I shared is guilty of this and so are nearly all modern fatality figures. Every time one delves into the data, the 20-27 million fatalities narrative starts to fall apart. It seems to me that:
The USSR inflated its population data and used this to claim the Germans killed a much larger number of people than they actually did (which is not to claim that millions of Soviets didn’t die – just that the pseudo-religious narrative is not true).
This is still being done for political reasons. A Russian historian recently came up with a new figure, based off “declassified data” of… 42 million deaths: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-10/a-message-to-putin-from-42-million-dead
The old figure during the USSR’s reign was 20 million, then it jumped to 26-27 million, now 15 to 22 million extra fatalities appear out of nowhere.
While I might seem “hard on the Russians,” all I’m trying to do is determine the objective truth. I fully believe that Russian disinformation and propaganda campaigns are real and, in my opinion, we need to push back against this.
Objective commentary on Russian history from a Turk? LOL! Don’t you know that — the current truce between Putin and Erodogan notwithstanding — the Turks and the Russians have always been mortal enemies?
And that’s why the Turk who wrote this crackpot piece calls for the murder of every Russian man, woman and child on his Substack: “There is no valid reason why Russia should exist. There is no morally justifiable reason as to why Russians should be allowed to exist as a people. Actually, there is no valid reason to treat them as humans – not only Putin and his supporters, but every single Russian.”
Are you sure that Russia’s enmity towards NATO today has absolutely nothing to do with the alliance’s relentless eastward expansion over the past three decades? From the standpoint of an ordinary Russian, wouldn’t that make Washington’s stated desire to bring “democracy” to Ukraine (LOL!) and Georgia and Armenia seem just a wee bit like Hitler’s desire for Lebensraum in the East?
Exactly. The author’s claim that Russia wants to conquer Europe falls apart when you remember Russia granted independence to the Warsaw Pact nations at the end of the Cold War and tried to have friendly relations with the US.
“Relentless expansion” is a nice example of word painting. Conjures up an invasion.
Russia was forced to relinquish a lot of conquests with the collapse of Communism. That wasn’t generosity. Putin says that the collapse of the USSR was a terrible disaster and has been working for 25 years to undo it. That is why its former imperial possessions clamored to get into NATO. If Ukraine had been in NATO, this war would not have happened.
Also, the blame for neutral Sweden and Finland joining NATO cannot be placed onto anyone other than the unintended results of Putin himself.
🙂
Sweden was de facto part of NATO, the Swedish military industrial complex being a major NATO supplier. Finland was also far from neutral. I don’t think Putin cares much about the number of flags in front of NATO HQ in Brussels. For a variety of objective and subjective reasons Ukraine falls into a different category.
“That is why its former imperial possessions clamored to get into NATO.”
I can’t speak for other countries, but this is how that clamoring happened in Hungary:
After dismantling communism, our elites needed a new ideology to facilitate their rule. They adopted the neoliberal Washington consensus (liberalization, deregulation, privatization) and the program of “Euro-Atlantic integration”, that is, EU and NATO membership — the later was to reassure foreign “investors” (buyers of markets and entire industries at discount prices).
A massive consent-manufacturing campaign followed. The radical right tried to start a public debate, but they were prosecuted even for leafleting.
Finally about 85% of the voters voted for EU & NATO, but turnout was less than 50%.
My entire right-wing family voted against NATO, including old men who were still alive at the time, who fought the Russians for 4 years in WW2.
“If Ukraine had been in NATO, this war would not have happened.”
Article 5 is a big nothingburger, but this is probably true. During the 2008 Bucharest conference, when Ukraine and Georgia asked for NATO admission, Orbán said they should either be taken in right there on the spot, or not at all. Leaving them hanging in mid-air just made them vulnerable to Russian attack.
I’ve been to quite a few countries, both white and coloured. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be cautious when it comes to big nations like the Roussians, Americans, Germans, British and French. Most of them have some kind of ugly trait. The same goes for smaller nations – pretty much every nation in Europe gets on my nerves in some way. But the reason to be a white nationalist is not because white nations are perfect. If they were, we would never have gotten to where we are now.
There is a book called Imperium (it has been about 30 years since I read it) by Francis Parker Yockey in which he posits that the future of the white race lies in Russia—I guess Putin shot that out of the water. 👀
Maybe it was one of his other books, but you can buy them here on Counter-Currents to find out. 📚
Peter Quint: May 24, 2025 There is a book called Imperium (it has been about 30 years since I read it) by Francis Parker Yockey in which he posits that the future of the white [sic] race lies in Russia—I guess Putin shot that out of the water.
—
Peter, you may remember Yockey’s dubious position on race from reading his book 30 years ago, but as a Jew-wise race-thinker you will likely find this essay interesting. “Francis Parker Yockey’s Philosophy as an Example of Culture Distortion” at nationalvanguard.org.
by Andrew Hamilton
EVEN BROADLY sympathetic authors of mixed-race background who are tarred as “haters” by Jewry and the government can introduce distortions into otherwise straightforward discussions of race, thereby leading unsuspecting people astray. Two American examples are the (evidently) part-Jewish Francis Parker Yockey (Imperium [1948]) and mulatto Lawrence Dennis (The Coming American Fascism [1936] and The Dynamics of War and Revolution [1940]).
The formulator of a vague neo-Spenglerian philosophy, Yockey wrote that race was primarily “spiritual” rather than biological. He also misrepresented the role of Jews in Western history and society.
Oswald Spengler, who was one-eighth Jewish, likewise rejected the biological foundations of race and minimized the harmful role Jews played in history and in modern times.
Ironically, Yockey probably enjoys his high reputation today because Willis Carto, a right-wing organizational mastermind who founded Liberty Lobby, The Spotlight newspaper, the Institute for Historical Review, and other successful organizations and publications, selected Imperium to be the hoped-for ideological “bible” of the National Youth Alliance (NYA), the predecessor organization of the National Alliance.
A recent National Vanguard article by an author [James Harting] who states that he personally knew James Madole, who once worked with Yockey “Collaboration Between Francis Parker Yockey and James Madole” at nationalvanguard.org … says that Yockey was likely one-quarter to one-half Jewish… The revelation that Yockey was 25%-50% Jewish is extremely enlightening, and quite likely the reason (as with Spengler) that he prevaricated about biological race, just as the author says….
Read more at the links. As soon as William Pierce managed to take the NYA away from Carto he never advertised Imperium as Carto had done as some sort of “bible” in the single issue of NYA’s tabloid that he published prior to Pierce’s takeover, for the reasons given here by Andrew Hamilton. Pierce never offered Imperium for sale through NA’s publishing arm National Vanguard Books.
Will,
Didn’t National Vanguard sell copies of Imperium, even if it didn’t publish it? I purchased my copy (1991 edition) over 30 years ago. It was published by Carto’s The Noontide Press (which distributes a lot of great stuff, and appears to be still going strong). But I’m almost positive that I got it in the same shipment that I also purchased Lawrence Brown’s The Might of the West, Revilo Oliver’s America’s Decline, Rockwell’s White Power!, and Pierce’s novel Hunter. And I’ve been sure all these years that I got all those titles through Vanguard Books. (But I could be wrong.)
I would be shocked if Yockey were Jewish. His writing is super-anti-semitic.
Will, Didn’t National Vanguard sell copies of Imperium, even if it didn’t publish it?… I’m almost positive that I got it in the same shipment that I also purchased Lawrence Brown’s The Might of the West, Revilo Oliver’s America’s Decline, Rockwell’s White Power!, and Pierce’s novel Hunter. And I’ve been sure all these years that I got all those titles through Vanguard Books….
You’ve got quite a memory, Lord, to recall a book order you had received from that far back. I handled orders for a while in the early 90s for National Vanguard Books and, though we did offer all of the other titles you list, Imperium was not among them, I can verify that when I return to NA’s National Office (I’m on the road presently).
Another title Pierce never offered was The Silent Brotherhood, the reasonably objective account of the group the Hollywood anti-White film that came out last year, The Order, claims to be based on. Pierce refused to have NVB carry TSB, though he was portrayed favorably in the book, because of what he called a false claim of his receiving ill-gotten funding from the group.
Thanks. I cannot recall from whom I got my copy of Imperium. It was early 90s, I know, because I read it then, and my edition, as I mentioned, was 1991 (I checked my copy before posting). The reason I’m so sure it was from Vanguard Books is that they threw in a copy of that “White Will” comic book – and I don’t think I would have gotten a free copy of White Will had my order been from Noontide Press.
I have The Silent Brotherhood, too! But I got it from a remainder table at a Barnes & Noble back in the 90s. I didn’t know a movie was recently made based on it. I’d like to see it. Was there a character based on Dr. Pierce in it?
That type of violence is always counterproductive. Ours is a battle for “hearts and minds”.
I’m keen to stop calling those Slavs within Russia as White kin, let alone Slavs altogether. Other commentors have described their celebration of race mixing aside from their disavowel of European origins. Anyone in Russia who is a White Nationalist should probably disavow the label of “Russian” and choose a new ethnic label.
“I’m keen to stop calling those Slavs within Russia as White kin, let alone Slavs altogether. Other commentors have described their celebration of race mixing aside from their disavowel of European origins. Anyone in Russia who is a White Nationalist should probably disavow the label of “Russian” and choose a new ethnic label.”
That is fundamental, along with this:
“There is no valid reason why Russia should exist. There is no morally justifiable reason as to why Russians should be allowed to exist as a people. Actually, there is no valid reason to treat them as humans – not only Putin and his supporters, but every single Russian.”
This too is fundamental, as befits a philosopher:
“Russia is dead wrong in this war from an ethnonationalist point of view. The libtards are on the right side for a change.”
These matters should be discussed at a less emotional time, at least a year after the war will have ended.
(We don’t yet need a view on how the war may end. Events will take their course without regard for our chattering. But I think it’s a reasonable guess that, one way or another, this war will end.)
Ethno-nationalism has its charms and it is not reducible to the simple racialism of “I am on the side of the Whites because I am White. I have no other reason but that is good enough.” Ethno-nationalism produces different recommendations on hot issues.
Who prefers which view and why? We don’t need to sort this out now but eventually we will have to think about these different perspectives.
Is a Russian as White as I am, and as good as I am, and my brother in our race? I have firm views on these things, and, as seen above, others have completely contrary and equally unalterable views.
Not now but in a calmer time, we will need to think carefully about why we are unable to agree on these things, and what levels and types of agreement may still be possible despite our disagreements. If we refuse to, if we put these issues in the “too hard basket” forever, this might hinder us in doing our best to work together to secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.
“According to the calculations of Fridtjof Nansen, beginning in 1500, every seven years Russia added as much territory to its empire as that occupied by the Kingdom of Norway. Imperialism is a traditional, basic, and integral trait of Russia – its chief trait in fact.”
(Solovyov – Klepikova: The map is the message in mother Russia, The Christian Science Monitor, August 11-17, 1986.)
Whenever I hear about Putin’s enterprises, I think of the old Soviet historical series about Peter the Great, which I saw on TV as a boy: there is a scene, set to grand music, where Russian peasants dressed in 18th-century military coats conquer a kind of Swedish fortress under ‘terrible losses’, by storming the walls of the fortress across a swamp which they have to wade through, carrying large ladders on their shoulders to scale the walls. The Swedish guns scatter death among them, shells explode, and the Russian soldiers are mercilessly mowed down, but the rest keep running forward with the ladders against the walls of the fortress. The comment is made that the Northern War lasted 25 years and led to Russia’s victory. And so the series ends.
What many Western debaters here fail to understand is that “Russian imperialism” is, from the Russian point of view, a project of “national unification” – in effect, liberation. In a very similar vein to the unification of Germany or Italy in the 19th century, but also quite similar to Lincoln’s war against secession of the southern states.
National unification with . . . Poland, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia? These are different nations. What you are describing just imperialism, pain and simple.
It is perfectly legitimate to ask where Russia’s claims should end and what are the just Ukrainian or Polish territorial claims, justified both factually and historically. As a white nationalist, I am very fond of all involved and wish this fratricidal war would end. But here we have two competing and not entirely compatible territorial national projects. We need to come up with some kind of compromise. I think the Ukrainians should get everything that was part of the old Polish-Lithuanian Union and from the so-called New Russia the lands west of the Dnieper. The Russians should resign any claims in the Baltics and perhaps return East Prussia, which would be divided between Poland and Lithuania. But Russia should perhaps be supported in its Central Asian interests, on the Caucasus, Asia Minor and Syria. It should be armed against China.
Did Phoo-tn ever say he wanted to conquer Poland, Lithuania, Estonia or Georgia? Ukraine is to the Roussians what the GDR was to the West Germans. But I don’t think they care about other countries with downright non-Russian populations. This is also evident from the way Roussians have in the past readily given up countries that were beyond the borders of their original national homeland (Kievan Rooss). This happened not only after 1990, but already under Lenin or once under Napoleon. In the 19th century, the Roussians were not at all interested in further penetration of Central or even Western Europe, if anything, they were more interested in the Balkans, where the Orthodox lived.
By the way, whenever I listen to Putin’s speeches on youtube, my impression of him is much more favorable than any of the western government politicians. While monsters like Blair, Clinton, Biden, Harriss, Starmer, Macron or Merkel arouse extreme disgust in me, Putin comes across as a fairly serious and decent person. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t done bad things.
If anyone is interested, this clip from East4You is worth a watch. In the video, Russians are asked what they think about invading Poland. Several (including an elderly woman) advocate genocide:
https://www.tiktok.com/@east4youofficial/video/7309173843581504801?lang=en
I don’t speak Russian, but there are Poles claiming it is accurate. If I was an Eastern European watching this, I’d be pretty irked at all the Westerners who repeat Russian propaganda and ignore things like this. Obviously not all Russians think like this and one of the guys in the video seemed pretty level-headed, but there is a severe issue going on.
Some misconceptions concerning Christianity have sullied an otherwise enjoyable article. Christianity is complex and multi-faceted. The various cultures who have adopted it may have emphasized certain aspects of the Faith more, or less, than other aspects. That’s perfectly valid. Christianity can be said to “have something for everyone”. That does not make it amorphous or lacking definition.
And it may seem strange to the author (who I’m guessing is an atheist or some other non-religious sort) but many of the Crusaders absolutely believed in the Faith and were not motivated by exclusively material concerns. Reading modern, cynical, or skeptical motivations into medieval society will not provide an accurate picture of their reality.
As for the core of the topic: I’m no expert on Russia and Ukraine, but I find little to admire about Russia and they absolutely started the war with Ukraine. I hope there is peace soon, but Russia seems to have little desire for it, presently. Russia looks like the same ugly, vulgar, barbaric entity it has been throughout history. Russia: ever malign, destructive, and incapable of civilization.
Lord Shang: May 27, 2025 Thanks… The reason I’m so sure it was from Vanguard Books is that they threw in a copy of that “White Will” comic book – and I don’t think I would have gotten a free copy of White Will had my order been from Noontide Press.
If yours was a large order of the right books, which yours was, we may have included the comic (1993) since that first run was of 35,000 copies and we wanted to get them into the “right” hands. However, other dissident book sellers like Noontide purchased them in bulk. It’s doubtful they would have included a free copy of the comic.
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I have The Silent Brotherhood, too! But I got it from a remainder table at a Barnes & Noble back in the 90s. I didn’t know a movie was recently made based on it. I’d like to see it. Was there a character based on Dr. Pierce in it?
Yes, but in the movie he was addressing a smoke-filled gathering at Pastor Butler’s Church of Jesus Christ Christian in Idaho, with a “National Alliance Convention” banner as a backdrop, replete with large swastikas — total fiction, recognized as such by anyone familiar with Pierce and NA.
The Order was released just six months ago. A box office failure but can be found and watched online. If you want to learn the truth about this Hollywood trash, read or listen to this 4-part series by the National Alliance’s American Dissident Voices: “The Order 2024” at nationalvanguard.org.
The Order, that sounds like an interesting film. Is it an attempt by Hollywood to define White Nationalism on their terms?
You can read a very good review of The Order here on Counter-Currents by Ondrej Mann. The movie is definitely worth watching but is chock full of factual inaccuracies and ultimately amounts to little more than propaganda. And yes, this movie is Hollywood’s attempt to discredit White Nationalism and paint it in as lurid terms as they can.
“The same was true of the Crusaders during the Early Middle Ages. Few of them had deep theological knowledge. Many lived lives that would scandalize any devout Christian. Yet that didn’t stop them from embarking on holy wars across continents, killing both Muslims and Eastern Christians alike. Their “faith” was not about Christian doctrine – it was a civilizational impulse cloaked in religion. It was a war of identity.”
I may differ slightly. Yes, Crusaders were not about deep theology, and no, not so much about civilization or identity. They were about securing and expanding trade routes and economic spaces for the western banking and trade houses like Lombardy, Venice, Florence, compromised Vatican, etc. Some observers use the terms Phoenicians, jews/crypto-jews to describe their origin or identity.
Now, is that different from the 20th and 21st centuries ? Not much. The West,
and EU in particular, are faced with existential crisis: banking, trade, and sovereign defaults. Like in 1930s and WW2, the only option they believe to have is to conquer Central/Eastern Europe (largely done) and then Russia with its huge natural resources, and that means WW3.
The world is not so complicated after all. Middle Age crusaders or modern crusaders – there is nothing new under the sun.
And as we all know, the Islamists (Turkey, etc) are in the shadow hoping for
resurrection of Ottoman empire too.
I did not mention the US in this context, But everybody knows that WW1 and WW2 allowed America to mostly stay aside, supply worrying nations with military and natural resources, let them bleed to almost death, and after that offer to them recovery plans, liberal democracy and NATO-dependence on the US, thus leaving agricultural economy behind and becoming industrial and global trade and econommic power.
What makes you think the US is playing a different game now ? But it is a much more risky game due to destructive globally-present military power of various players. That’s why Trump, who recognize it, switches to self-sufficient 19th century economic model for the US, while trying to limit exposure to WW3 (pulling part of US troops from NATO Europe) and letting Europe and Euroasia destroy themselves. Who knows, it may work the third time as well …
Do you want to blame Russia for their attitude towards West ? They mobilize their society (religion is part of it; btw, the West can not do it !) to defend their vital intersts.
Take it from a man with some Russian blood in his veins: The attitude of the Russians towards the West is a bit more complex than is presented in this article. Yes, there is hatred and bitterness; but there is also low self-esteem and envy (and maybe even a bit of love) towards an older, bigger and more sophisticated civilization. Russians have always been happy to emigrate to Europe. Russia would not amount to anything without her European ties and roots. Russians don´t have a thing in common with the central Asians or the Chinese — except maybe the despotic form of government.
Based on my consumption of their literature and films the Russians are Europeans who colonised East overland. Interesting movies about how they fought bow and arrow armed Siberian Mongol Khanates with firearms. Americans are Europeans who colonised overseas West. Taking on bow and arrow injuns after getting off boats. Wild Wild East really. Both have a certain contempt for core Europeans. Longing, Jealously and bitterness too. The main difference is that Russians do not consume Superhero movies while Americans specialised in the genre of caped crusaders.
This article is rather amusingly amiss considering that Russians are to the core Western, with all the usual suspects – feminist death rate, gay ethnic Jewish elites, legalised and canonised self-hatred with the worship of diversity mutts… Literally no difference. I wish so hard the Russians were 10% as “anti-Western” as depicted here. But you’re woefully misdirected. Maybe the Iranians are 10% anti-Western because they have the Basij. Meanwhile, the paltry Russian nationalists get ritually sodomised by Chechens on Putin’s behalf.
This piece evokes a twofold feeling. On the one hand, I have never sympathized with the Kremlin regime, even at a time when support for Putin was quite common in conservative circles. From the other side, I wonder what motivated the author in writing this article. There are too many indications that he does indeed hold a poorly concealed hatred for the Russians as an ethnicity.
After reading some of the comments, and the responses to them given by the author himself, this impression was only reinforced.
kerdasi amaq: July 12, 2025 The Order, that sounds like an interesting film. Is it an attempt by Hollywood to define White Nationalism on their terms?
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You must be new to White nationalism to ask such a lame question, kerdasi.
Ondrej Mann reviewed The Order movie here recently: “The Order” at counter-currents.com. Dr. Robert Griffin, William Pierce’s biographer, also reviewed The Order more recently but I don’t see that review here at C-C. However, you can find that excellent review here: “A Commentary on the Movie “The Order” – The Occidental Observer” at occidentalobserver.net
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