Putin Gave his Reichstag Speech

 

     "The most widely known quotation from Hitler's public orations is taken from his speech in the German Reichstag on 30 January 1939. Referring to the Jewish question, it contains the macabre prophecy: 'Today I will be once more a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!'" -Hans Mommsen, Passing into History.

 

"Pay attention to politicians in the US who talk like this, who call every critic a traitor, who invoke images of dissenters as insects, who use the word or synonyms for 'cleansing' 'purity'. The erosion of democracy comes steadily until it collapses all at once." -Nadine Smith, civil rights and LGBT activist. 

     On January 30, 1939, Adolf Hitler's speech to the Reichstag was also meant for the Jewish people of Nazi Germany and, at its black heart, it essentially said, "We blame you for everything, so you have to go." That hardly came as a surprise to Germany's Jews. After all, Kristallnacht, the urban nightmare on November 9-10, 1938 in which Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized, looted and burned to the ground, occurred just a few months before his Reichstag speech and was still fresh in their memories.

     What was notable in Hitler's speech was that for the first time, he unambiguously states that he would use a war to justify his rationale for his answer to "the Jewish question" which was, of course, extermination and "annihilation". History writes the rest.

     On, fittingly, the Ides of March, Vladimir Putin delivered a message to Russia that was written along similar lines. Foreign policy expert Rula Jebreal said, "This is the textbook definition of genocide." So what was it about his speech that alarmed so many experts? Well, just about all of it.

     Hitler was quite specific who would inherit his venom. Putin wasn't in his. Obviously alarmed by the protests against the Ukraine war in upwards of three score Russian cities, Putin essentially sprayed out his particular venom at anyone and everyone else who didn't agree with his needless and highly illegal war in Ukraine. Russia's already detained, arrested and charged upwards of 15,000 of her own people. To deliver such a speech, he must know there are many, many more.

     He resorted, in typical totalitarian dictator fashion, to dehumanizing terms. He said,

     "The collective West is attempting to splinter our society, speculating on military losses, on socioeconomic effects of sanctions, in order to provoke a people's rebellion in Russia. But any people, the Russian people, especially, are able to distinguish true patriots from bastards and traitors and will spit them out like flies on the pavement."

     As if that wasn't bad enough, he added.

     "I am certain that this necessary and natural self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, togetherness, and our readiness to answer any calls to action."

     "Self cleansing"?

     Yes, Jebreal is right. That's "the textbook definition of genocide." Except we're not even talking about ethnic cleansing here but ideological cleansing, which puts Putin squarely in Stalinist territory. And Stalin lived in a very dark, unhappy place.

     And it wasn't just the average man on the street. He also took pot shots at the oligarchs that he's been bossing around for 22 years. He told them.

     "I do not judge those with villas in Miami or the French Riviera. Or who can't get by without oysters or foie gras or so-called 'gender freedoms.' The problem is they mentally exist there, and not here, with our people, with Russia."

     It only got worse from that point on.

     He mentioned 5th columns.

     Yes, he thinks that there are western spies embedded in his government.

     It was a new low for Putin and a new level of insanity for him. There are no two ways about it. He's swatting at flies that literally do not exist. He sees spies behind every vase and potted plant in the Kremlin. The last time Russia had a leader like that, generals and NKVD chiefs were getting executed wholesale. People disappeared from their homes in the dead of night in droves and neighbors, eager to get in on the paranoia to save themselves, informed on their neighbors and families.

     This time around, young Russians are smarter and won't be fooled so easily this time around. They're protesting by the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. And it's driving Putin crazy.

     Or crazier than he already is.