Putin: Holocaust is Cornerstone of Russian Self-Image

At the recent Victory Day Parade in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin implicitly demonstrated to the world how important the Holocaust ideology is to the present Russian government and Russian society in general. In regard to the Soviet Union's victory over National Socialist Germany during WWII, he stated: "The iron will of the Soviet people, their fearlessness and stamina saved Europe from slavery. It was our country which chased the Nazis to their lair, achieved their full and final destruction, won at the cost of millions of victims and terrible hardships.” Putin and his Russian regime are no fools; they are well aware of the mass murder and oppression that Stalinist Communism brought to both Russia and Europe. Putin's outlandish and grotesque views can only be sustained by claiming: "Well you see, the Nazis mass murdered six million Jews and enslaved and murdered many other non-German ethnic groups. So, in the end, the Soviet government and people did save Europe and the world from Nazism." One can now plainly see why Putin would outlaw Holocaust revisionism: it is a direct threat to the ideology that "justifies" and "legitimizes" his regime and political agenda. Indeed, a Revisionist repudiation of the Holocaust ideology would allow another reappraisal of the crimes, atrocities, genocide and oppression committed by the Stalinist regime. The end result of such historical revisionism would be the demolition of a pillar of Russian patriotic ideology, and the world-wide realization that Stalinist Communism was more oppressive and evil than National Socialism. Even the bitter intellectual opponent of Holocaust revisionism, Deborah Lipstadt, admits that Stalin killed more people than Hitler ever did. Furthermore, the Putin government needs to use the Holocaust as an ideological weapon against those non-Russian ethnic groups (such as the Ukrainians) that backed the Germans during WWII and are presently in conflict with Russia. For sure, we saw this in the recent conflict in the Ukraine. Russia's Ukrainian opponents were depicted by Russian propagandists as "rampaging neo-Nazis" who wanted to "create a new Auschwitz." In summation, Holocaust Revisionism could end up demolishing the very ideology that the Putin government promotes and depends upon. It is for this reason that Putin outlawed it. More generally, we can now see why the Holocaust ideology will most likely survive and thrive for many more years to come. Although it can be disproven by reason and science, the Holocaust ideology continues to service the political, economic, social, and psychological needs of very powerful Jewish and non-Jewish power elites worldwide. In all likelihood, Holocaust nonsense has a very bright future. Source: Reuters, "Putin: Soviets saved Europe from slavery," JOL News, May 9 2014 at 11:28am, http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/putin-soviets-saved-europe-from-slavery-1.1685739