Everyone Is Hitler
4th March 2022
According to Vladimir Putin, there are Nazis lurking in the Ukrainian government. This, says Putin, is why Russia must invade: to “strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” It is an outlandish claim, intended to justify Putin’s raw aggression. Anyone who attempts to frustrate his designs is, in Putin’s twisted account, a Nazi.
Watching this effrontery from Europe and America, observers are astonished that a rapacious autocrat would lie openly while enacting territorial conquest. Westerners think Putin is acting just like—guess who?—Hitler. And so images of the Russian president with the trademark moustache have been all over Twitter. So has the hashtag #putinhilter. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky encouraged the comparison when a Russian strike hit the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial in Kyiv: “what is the point of saying «never again» for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating…”