De-Nazification and De-Communization in Russia

By: Cliff Kincaid

The Hitler-Stalin Pact, which started World War II, has been carefully “forgotten” by the Russian government in its war against Ukraine, a former Soviet republic. In a major on-going Russian propaganda operation, former KGB operative and Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that it is Ukraine which must be de-Nazified. This rationale for his war on Ukraine feeds two elements of Russian society, left over from the Soviet days, providing dramatic evidence of a very sick society that must go through the process of both de-Nazification and de-communization.

As discussed in the U.S. military monograph, “Psychological Operations: Principles and Case Studies,” they include the fact that “Virulent anti-Semitism was imbedded in Soviet society, along with fears of a Jewish conspiracy dating back to the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” In addition, “There was also the memory of Nazi fascism, which cost 20 million Soviet lives during World War II and the fear that German revanchism would once again rear its ugly head.”

“Soviet propagandists simply combined the two images,” noted authors Frank L. Goldstein and Benjamin F. Findley.

The Protocols is a document about a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world that was established to be a Russian forgery used by the Nazis as well as the Soviets to stoke anti-Jewish hatred. The Protocols is discussed in the new America’s Survival report, “The Big Lie Driving Russian Influence in the Conservative Movement and the Destruction of Ukraine.”

In their warped worldviews emphasizing the need for a scapegoat, the Russian communists and the Nazis had a common enemy, the Jews, leading to their truce, the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Eventually, of course, Hitler launched a full-scale war on Russia, breaking the bond that existed between these two vile philosophies. The totalitarian regimes fought over entire countries and Soviet republics such as Ukraine.

Some Ukrainians saw the Nazis as preferable to the Russian communists. But it was Soviet dictator Stalin who originally decided that the Nazis could be trusted and that communists and Nazis could unite to defeat the West. Vladimir Putin knows this, but carefully ignores the historical record when attempting to justify his war on Ukraine. The former KGB operative understands the need for “active measures,” a campaign of deliberate lies and distortions emanating from Moscow which attempts to control the narrative over what is happening on the ground and what is at stake in Europe. In this campaign, as our report shows, he has the complete support of the Russian Communist Party, which is not only legal but supports Putin’s foreign and domestic policies.

Today, it is Ukraine, not Russia, that has been de-Nazified, as evident in the fact that the former Soviet republic and Christian country has elected a Jewish president. Indeed, after Ukraine’s anti-communist revolution of 2013, Ukraine outlawed both communist and Nazi symbols and propaganda. It wanted a future based on Western values.

By contrast, as our report documents, Putin relies as a political strategist, Alexander Dugin, who combines elements of communism and Nazism and the occult to guide the Russian geopolitical strategy known as Eurasianism, a revival of the Russian empire that includes Communist China and Islamic Iran as key allies.

As someone who met President Ronald Reagan and witnessed the development of his “Reagan Doctrine” of support for anti-communist freedom fighters around the world, it is truly disheartening to see what passes for “modern” conservatism embracing the cause of Russia over Ukraine, based on lies that Russia has discarded its communist past and that Putin is a Christian.

But the “conservative” case against aid to Ukraine misses the mark in several ways.

First and foremost, these “conservatives” are conveniently forgetting the fact that Ukraine was disarmed under a series of Democratic Party politicians, starting with Barack Obama, who presided over the first Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some of this is discussed in the important book Disarmed, which looks back even further, to the time when then-Senator Barack Obama toured Ukraine for the purpose of destroying the country’s conventional weapons stockpiles. He did this in collaboration with Republican Senator Richard Lugar, a globalist who thought the Russians could be trusted not to invade the former republic.

In 1994, Democratic President Bill Clinton arranged the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, sending its Soviet-style nuclear weapons back to Moscow for safe-keeping. But like Senator Obama’s effort, the deal, known as the Budapest Memorandum, was a false hope. It provided an aggressive Russia another opportunity to seize its former republic.

In a real sense, the United States set Ukraine up for the kill. Obama, Clinton, and now Biden must accept responsibility for what Russian has done under Putin. It was Biden who indicated a minor Russian “incursion” in Ukraine could be tolerated.

But there is no reason for conservatives to fall for Putin’s propaganda.

What is needed is what the French did for the American revolution. Without the French support, as Mark W. Smith notes in his book Disarmed, the American revolution probably would have failed.

It would be laughable, were it not so tragic, for Putin to assume the mantel of anti-Nazi fighter, when it was the Soviet regime which he served in the KGB that made Hitler’s war in Europe possible. During the late 1980s Putin was a KGB colonel and spy in East Germany. Later, he became head of the FSB, the KGB’s main successor.

It is distressing to witness some in the “conservative” movement parrot his propaganda.

I worked for Reagan’s favorite newspaper, Human Events, when it was anti-communist. But like publications and outlets such as Breitbart, Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room” show and Tucker Carlson’s broadcasts, Human Events under editor Jack Posobiec and “Senior Content Contributor” Charlie Kirk has taken a dangerous turn, after being sold. Sadly, it has become an outlet for anti-Ukraine propaganda. We discuss all of this in our new report.

For those conservatives interested in how the Russians stage their propaganda campaigns, a 1984 video on “Soviet Active Measures” was produced by the U.S. Information Agency under President Reagan and is available on C-SPAN. It features a Soviet KGB defector, Stanislav Levchenko.

I interviewed John Barron, author of KGB Today: The Hidden Hand, back in 1983, for Human Events. He said the Soviet objective has been to drastically curtail U.S. defense spending. Which means that the current “conservative” push to slash the defense budget, including spending on Ukraine, serves Soviet propaganda purposes.

Today, however, the Russian government is so brazen that it pumps propaganda directly into America through Russia Today (RT), the Moscow-funded English-language channel. RT currently highlights Tucker Carlson’s desire to interview Putin and says he will soon have a show on another Russian television channel. Carlson denied the report.

When Tucker had a show on Fox News, he featured an “anti-war” voice by the name of Tara Reade, who has reportedly fled to Russia, where former NSA/CIA analyst Edward Snowden has defected and gained citizenship.

America has a lot of problems, including an open border, as a result of Biden’s failures as president, but sacrificing Ukraine in the face of this onslaught only works to the benefit of an emerging anti-American alliance capable of destroying America and our allies, including Israel and Taiwan.

We have it within our power to do something about the Biden presidency. But only Ukraine has the immediate capability and desire to do something about the Russian problem. It can win with our help, including more and better weapons.

Anything less is a betrayal of the Reagan Doctrine of supporting freedom-loving people.