My pseudonymous Russian-Brit respondent "Alex Stone" thinks Zelenskiy is a Jewish Nazi and that the Baltics are authoritarian states acting like Nazis. This bit of personal Baltic history will show how the current edition of Russian nationalism is a collective version of narcissistic personality disorder in which its sufferers live in a parallel reality of "alternative facts". It's the Russian version of QAnonified Infowars, OAN, Newsmax and Fox viewers who believe in Trump's hydroxichloroquine COVID cure, Pizzagate, Rothschild space lasers and Hugo Chavez and Italian satellites altering voting machines.
I carry the 1st amendment everywhere I go and have never felt threatened by anyone since I moved to Latvia in 2005. It's now safer to be Jewish in Riga than SF, Pittsburgh, London and NY.
I taught history, investments and entrepreneurship in Riga Business School for four years with absolute academic freedom.
In 2016 I and three students recorded videos at the March 16 Latvian SS Legionnaire veterans' demo in Riga held annually by draftees and volunteers who fought on the German side. We showed people printouts of Germans' genocidal Generalplan Ost to hear their views (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost).
A couple of people said it was fake. The majority knew about it. When I said why not celebrate May 8 instead of May 9 as victory day, most agreed that would be a practical compromise.
There were also Germans protesting against the Latvian SS Legionnaires. There wasn't so much as a shove in anger, much less abuse of anyone's right to free expression.
If Latvia is authoritarian or Nazi, it's the tamest version I've ever seen; and I visited Spain when Franco was still in power.
My half Russian, half Polish Latvian wife born in Dobele and brought up in Ventspils, never has either. My sister in law born in Volgagrad and a schoolteacher in a high school in Ventspils doesn't want to be liberated by Russia. Neither do her two sons and teenage grandchildren. My part Latvian, Russian, Belarussian, Polish stepchildren feel the same way.
If by "harassment" you're referring to Latvian state language policy, it's less authoritarian than Quebec's policy enforcing the commercial use of French. I've written about that here: https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/polyglot-meets-linguistic-political-football-in-latvia-90a41e8a7ced
When I asked my RBS students "what's the official language of the USA?", they all answered wrong. Guess why? There isn't one. Language isn't a federal question.
I've lived here since 2005 with no fear of state power or censorship.
Freedom House gives Latvia a democracy score of 88/100, Ukraine 61/100, Mexico 60/100 and Russia 19/100, Estonia 94/100. The USA is a backsliding democracy that gets 83/100. Sweden's International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance downgraded the US, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia for backsliding, but not Latvia (https://www.idea.int/gsod/sites/default/files/2021-11/state-of-democracy-in-europe-2021.pdf).
Seeing Nazism in the Baltics is like the John Birch Society seeing communism in fluoridated water or Trumpsters seeing Bill Gates' chips in vaccines.
