Let's unpack the bolshoi kisch-misch of Trumpster/Fox-RT style disinfo here. It's a perfect example of Russian nationalism's collective narcissistic victimhood and why the catastrophes of Russian history chronically repeat themselves, the latest brought on by Vlad the Crimean Loser 2.0. Listen to your fellow Russian-Brit, historian-philosopher, Vlad Vexler how this process works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWJjrXVkFBA&t=3s
1. Since he's Russian, you can't brand him as a Russophobe. And if I'm a Russophobe, I'm the strangest one you've ever met. I spent a year and hundreds of euros taking private Russian language lessons, studied Russian history since 1972, been to Russia four times, married a Russian-Latvian who speaks to me in Russian every day. If I'm Russophobic, your definition of Russophobia is broad enough to be meaningless.
2. Leftists as fascists: Fascism is a far right xenophobic, ultra nationalist ideology. There is certainly leftist authoritarianism--Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Castro, Mao. The Italian Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, Primo Levi, explained the difference: there is a theory of communism apart from its practice. There is no theory of Nazism apart from its genocidal practice. That's why reversing the sequence in which liberalism defeated the two totalitarian monsters of the 20th century was inconceivable. It's also why the Baltics could be saved from Generalplan Ost by the USSR, but not be saved from the mass deportations to the Gulag by a German victory. In a war between bad and worse, worse lost.
Putin and Trump tick 13 of Umberto Eco's 14 points defining eternal fascism, as I showed with specific evidence you have not refuted. Your erasure and denial of a separate Ukrainian national identity by turning Ukrainians into Mala Rossyski (Little Russians), is fascist. Franco did the same by calling Catalan and Basque "dialectos" and banning them.
3. You conflate condemnation of Russian state policy with Russophobia. Nobody sensible converts condemnation of a state's policies into hatred of and collective guilt ascribed to the people living there, except for Putin mouthpieces Sergeytsev, Solovyev and Medvedev in their genocidal rants against Ukrainians: https://www.memri.org/reports/russian-columnist-sergeytsev-ukranian-nazism-greater-threat-world-german-nazism
4. Latvia and Estonia poor and weak: Estonian 2020 GDP per capita at : $23312 nominal, $38k PPP (purchasing power parity). Latvia: $16406 nominal, $31688 PPP, Russia: $10219 nominal, $27969 PPP. So who's poor and who's not? The Russian figures predate sanctions that brought Russia a 15% economic contraction, deserted shopping malls, 1200 multinationals exiting Russia, took airbags out of Russian cars and safety and spare parts' certification out of Boeing and Airbus Russian airliners now being cannibalized for spare parts. Expect lots of pilots to refuse to fly those planes and Russian airlines to be denied landing rights worldwide. Reuters, the FT and Bloomberg aren't propaganda, since investors rely on them for credible data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC0Ho_nIa2c
Russia is a resource-cursed commodity exporter and tech importer impoverished by the war it started in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IPzww2IHzM US exports of LNG to Europe already exceed Russian oil and gas exports to Europe. Pity I can’t post the chart here since a picture is worth 1000 words.
The Russian economy can't survive tech sanctions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV_4M9R8Ggs&t=106s Since you claim to be a technologist, I'd be amazed if you didn't understand this.
Should you care to send an evidence-based refutation of my previous message instead of just accusing me of Russophobia, I’d be happy to read it. Since you claim to be a technologist and futurist, you must know that if you practiced the same contempt for evidence and empirical data with your tech clients as you've shown here, you’d have no clients.
