Polar Bear: I’d bet Russian Antifa has fewer Globohomos and Black gangbangers than Western Antifa.
There was a large group of people who called themselves antifascists in Ukraine. They suffered a massive crackdown by the Nazi government who of course hates them as its a fascist state. Many of them were jailed or killed. The rest fled the country. Those who fled said there are none left. They’re all in jail, dead, or out of the country.
What’s interesting is that they fled to Russia, which according to the West is a “fascist” country. It so happens that Putin welcomed the Ukrainian antifascists with welcome arms. Tell me how antifascists seek refuge from persecution in a fascist country?
There is a significant group of Russian antifascists of course. In fact, the politics of the average Russia might be described as antifascist though not antifa in the Western sense. I believe fascist is an insult in Russia. Nazi certainly is. Russians tend to use both terms somewhat interchangeably.
The Russian nationalist far Right in Zhirinovsky’s party is very weird, but it’s probably not fascist, as it is multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural. On that basis right there, it is probably impossible for Russia to be a classical fascist country.
The Russian state is a rather authoritarian regime, but the resemblance is probably more to a communist country than a fascist one. Putin is a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a fascist. Maybe a bit of a communist! Putin has repeatedly celebrated the many ethnic groups and languages in Russia. No fascist would ever do such a thing. Multicultural fascist is an oxymoron.
There are rumors that there is a Western-style Globohomo Antifa in Ukraine that actually supports the Nazis, which actually makes sense to me. I believe that Antifa in the West has taken the position of a pox on both of your houses whereby they condemn both Ukraine and Russia and urge neutrality.
In fact, quite a bit of the Western Hard Left has taken this useless position which is similar to Trotsky’s abhorrent line of neutrality in WW2 where he refused to take sides between the Axis and the Allies because he hated Stalin so much. He said both sides were capitalists, and one was as bad as the other. He really screwed up on that position. Not that he deserved the icepick though.