Rashism
Rashism or Ruscism (, ; a portmanteau of "Russia" and "fascism"; ), also known as Russism (), is a claim that Russia has been transformed into a fascist country. It is also used for referring to the ideology of Russian military expansionism. That transformation was described as based on the ideas of the "special civilizational mission" of the Russians, such as Moscow as the third Rome and expansionism. This is also a claim widely used to identify supporters of Russian military aggression. History of the term. Dzhokhar Dudayev. The term was popularized, described and extensively used in 1995 as " (Russism or Ruscism) by  the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Dzhokhar Dudayev, who saw the military action by Russia in Chechnya as a manifestation of the rising far-right ideology. According to Dudayev, '' "is a variety of hate ideology which is based on Great Russian chauvinism, spiritlessness and immorality. It differs from other forms of fascism, racism, and nationalism by a more extreme cruelty, both to man and to nature. It is based on the destruction of everything and everyone, the tactics of scorched earth." Russia under Putin. Timothy D. Snyder believes that the ideology of Putin and his regime was influenced  by philosopher Ivan Ilyin. Vladislav L. Inozemtsev, Russian academician, considers that Russia is an early-stage fascist state, thus claiming the current Russian political regime as fascist. Tomasz Kamusella, Polish scholar researching nationalism and ethnicity, and Allister Heath, journalist at "The Daily Telegraph", describe the current authoritarian Russian political regime as Putin's fascism. Maria Snegovaya believes that Russia as led by Putin is a fascist regime. The term became more common in informal circles in 2008, during the Russo-Georgian War. The term " (English: "Ruscism" or "Rashism") became more common in the mass media after the annexation of Ukrainian  peninsula Crimea by the Russian Federation, the downing of a Boeing 777 near Donetsk on 17 July 2014, and the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014. 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The terms "rashism" and "rashist" are in common usage among military and political elites of Ukraine, as well as by journalists, influencers, bloggers, et al. For example, Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, advocates the use of the word in the meaning of Putin's fascism to describe Russia's aggression against Ukraine. He also stated that rashism is much worse than fascism ."Today, I would like to appeal to all journalists to use the word "rashism", because this is a new phenomenon in world history that Mr. Putin has made with his country - modern rashists who are not much different from fascists. I will explain why: because before there was no such opportunity to destroy cities with so many air bombs, such equipment, there was no such force. Now absolutely other capacities and they use them as inhuman." — Oleksiy Danilov. On 23 April 2022, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that "what Russia is doing is not "nazism" but "rashism", this new  concept will be in history books":"This country will have a word in our history textbooks that no one has invented, which everyone is repeating in Ukraine and in Europe - 'Ruscism'. It's not just random that everyone is saying that this is Ruscism. The word is new, but the actions are the same as they were 80 years ago in Europe. Because for all of these 80 years, if you analyse our continent, there has been no barbarism like this. So Ruscism is a concept that will go into the history books, it will be in Wikipedia, it will be  [studied] in classes. And small children around the world will stand up and answer their teachers when they ask when Ruscism began, in what land, and who won the fight for freedom against this terrible concept." — Volodymyr Zelenskyy.On 24 April 2022, Timothy D. Snyder published an article in "The New York Times Magazine" where he described the history, premises and linguistic peculiarities of the term "Ruscism" (Ukrainian: Рашизм). According to Snyder, the term "is a useful conceptualization of Putin's worldview", writing that "we have tended to overlook the central example of fascism’s revival, which is the Putin  regime in the Russian Federation". On the wider regime, Snyder writes that "[p]rominent Russian fascists are given access to mass media during wars, including this one. Members of the Russian elite, above all Putin himself, rely increasingly on fascist concepts", and states that "Putin’s very justification of the war in Ukraine [...] represents a Christian form of fascism." Proponents. In 1997, Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin in his book "The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia", which had a significant impact on Russia's military, police and foreign policy elites, argued that Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because  Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics. Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible. The book may have been influential in Vladimir Putin's foreign policy, which eventually led to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Also in 1997, Dugin hailed what he saw as the arrival of  a "genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism" in Russia, in an article titled "Fascism – Borderless and Red"; previously in 1992, he had in another article defended "fascism" as not having anything to do with "the racist and chauvinist aspects of National Socialism", stating in contrast that "Russian fascism is a combination of natural national conservatism with a passionate desire for true changes." Another of Dugin's books, "The Fourth Political Theory", published in 2009, has been cited as an inspiration for Russian policy in events such as the war in Donbas, and for the contemporary European far-right  in general. In 2017, Yulia Strebkova (Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute) indicated that "Rashism" in combination with "Ukrainophobia" constitutes the ethno-national vector of the more broad Russian neo-imperial ideological doctrine of "Russian world". In 2018, Borys Demyanenko (Pereyaslav National University) in his paper ""Ruscism as a quasi-ideology of the Post-Soviet imperial revenge"" defined "ruscism" as a misanthropic ideology and an eclectic mixture of imperial neocolonialism, great-power chauvinism, nostalgia for the Soviet past, and religious traditionalism. Demyanenko considers that in internal domestic policy, Ruscism manifests itself in a violation of human rights alongside with a freedom  of thought, persecution of dissidents, propaganda, ignoring of democratic procedures. While in foreign policy, Ruscism demonstrates itself in a violation of international law, imposing its own version of historical truth, the justification of occupation and annexation of the territories of other states. During the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the victims of the massacres in Kyiv Oblast became known, the website of the Russian state news agency "RIA Novosti" published an article ""What Russia should do with Ukraine"" by Russian political operative Timofey Sergeitsev, which was perceived to justify a Ukrainian genocide. It calls for repression, de-Ukrainization , de-Europeanization, and ethnocide of the Ukrainian people. According to Oxford expert on Russian affairs Samuel Ramani, the article "represents mainstream Kremlin thinking". According to Euractiv, Sergeitsev is "one of the ideologists of modern Russian fascism". The head of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Edgars Rinkēvičs called the article "ordinary fascism". In March 2022, Yale historian Odd Arne Westad said that Putin's words about Ukraine resembled, which Harvard journalist James F. Smith summarized, "some of the colonial racial arguments of imperial powers of the past, ideas from the late 19th and early 20th century." In April 2022, Larysa  Yakubova (Institute of History of Ukraine) in her article: ""The Anatomy of Ruscism"" stated that Russia has never reflected on the tragedies of totalitarianism and did not decommunize its Soviet totalitarian heritage (unlike Ukraine). That was the major reason for the formation and rapid development of Ruscism in modern Russia both among political and intellectual/cultural elites. She also noted that the Ruscism, in the form of a threat to the world order and peace, will remain until there is a global condemnation of Soviet communist ideology and its heir Ruscism. Features. Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky argues that Rashism is  disguised as anti-fascism, but has a fascist face and essence. Political scientist Ruslan Kliuchnyk notes that the Russian elite considers itself entitled to build its own "sovereign democracy" without reference to Western standards, but taking into account Russia's traditions of state-building. Administrative resources in Russia are one of the means of preserving the democratic facade, which hides the mechanism of absolute manipulation of the will of citizens. Russian political scientist Andrey Piontkovsky argues that the ideology of Rashism is in many ways similar to Nazism, with the speeches of President Vladimir Putin reflecting similar ideas to those  of Adolf Hitler. According to Alexander J. Motyl, an American historian and political scientist, Russian fascism has the following characteristics: According to Professor Oleksandr Kostenko, Rashism is an ideology that is "based on illusions and justifies the admissibility of any arbitrariness for the sake of misinterpreted interests of Russian society. In foreign policy, rashism manifests itself, in particular, in violation of the principles of international law, imposing its version of historical truth on the world solely in favor of Russia, abusing the right of veto in the UN Security Council, and so on. In domestic politics, rashism is a violation  of human rights to freedom of thought, persecution of members of the "dissent movement", the use of the media to misinform their people, and so on." Oleksandr Kostenko also considers Rashism a manifestation of sociopathy. Criticism of the term. Russian television presenter Tina Kandelaki, who supported Russia's war against Ukraine, criticized Wikipedia's use of the term "rashism" on her Telegram channel, accusing Wikipedia of "digital fascism" targeting Russian people and calling Russians to stop using it.