Hasbrudal writes: Isn’t fascism just a kind of ultra-nationalism, the most important thing is what defines the nation, if it’s a multi-ethnic nation, the fascism will reflect that. If the nation is defined in very narrow terms, e.g. how the Croatian fascists during WW2 viewed Serbs, despite having much more in common on the surface than a Tartar and a Slav from St Petersburg, then it can get very granular. I don’t think Mussolini or Franco gave too much thought to the “Jewish Question” without prompting from Berlin.
There is no such thing as multi-ethnic fascism as far as I can tell. There has never been one single case of multi-ethnic fascism recorded in history. This is probably because the phrase is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. If it’s fascism, it’s not multi-ethnic. If it’s multi-ethnic, it’s not fascism. Period.
In a fascist state, when there are multiple ethnicities, religions or languages spoken, the fascists always, always, always, try to wipe out all of the ethnicities and turn them into a single ethnicity and wipe out all the religions and get everyone to speak one national language. For instance, Franco tried to turn everyone in Spain into a Spaniard who spoke Spanish. Hence he waged war on all of the other ethnicities and their languages. Mussolini waged war on all of the other languages in Italy (falsely called Italian dialects), not to mention the non-Italian languages in Italy. I think he went easy on the Germans in the north so as not to anger Hitler.
Fascism is a sort of nation-building run wild, or you can think like I do and say that all nation-building in the modern era is basically fascist, which it is. This is because all nation-building projects try to dissolve all of the ethnicities in the country and turn them all into one ethnicity and try to wipe out all of the languages in the country and make everyone speak one language.
In the case of religion, fascists would probably try to wipe out all of the other religions and force everyone to be a particular religion. The Croatian Ustashe actually ordered Serbs to convert to Catholicism or die in a similar way that Islam was converted by the sword (convert to Islam or die). ISIS is practicing this sort of convert or die Islam right now. This convert or die method of spreading Islam is very much in the Muslim historical tradition no matter how much Muslims lie and say it isn’t.
As you can probably tell, I do not think too much of nation-building projects. However, I have met people from the 3rd World who justified nation-building projects in strong terms. One man I know was an Iranian Azeri who spoke Azerbaijani but justified the Iranian government’s attempt to wipe out the Azeri language as a necessary step that Iran would have to go through in order to build a nation.
Nation-building projects are also often accompanied by mass killings. The emergence of the state of Israel, birthed in blood like so many new nations, is a good contemporary example of bloody nation-building.
Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Abkhazia, Kurdistan, Lithuania and Latvia are all modern examples of it. The first four were all quite bloody. One of the disgusting things about nationalism and nationalists is that when the nationalists are a minority in state dominated by another ethnic group, they are all about minority rights, decentralization, regionalism, federalism, autonomy, etc.
Then as soon as these nationalist punks get their independence, what’s the first thing they try to do? The first thing they do is persecute all of the new minorities in the land where they are now a majority. Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kurdistan are excellent examples of this. Kurdistan is a particularly awful example, as in Southern Kurdistan only Sunni Muslim Kurds have full rights. Non-Kurds? Of course not. Kurdish Yezidis? Nope. Kurdish Christians? No. Kurdish Shabakis? No. Kurdish Shia Muslims? Nope. Assyrian Christians? Are you kidding? They are not even Kurds. Sunni Muslim Arabs? Not at all. Shia Muslims Arabs? Even worse.
In the first elections in Southern Kurdistan, everyone except for Sunni Muslim Kurds was seriously disenfranchised. I mean in a lot of places they were actually denied the right to vote. Non-Kurdish Sunni Muslims were also driven out of many villages in order that they could be populated by Sunni Muslim Kurds.
With independence, Georgia immediately said that everyone in Georgia was a Georgian and revoked the ethnic and linguistic rights of everyone else. This was the cause of the Ossetian and Abkhazian rebellions. Russia had nothing to do with either of them, especially as they started back in 1991 when Gorbachev was President.
With the new fascist Nazi coup in the Ukraine, the rights of Russian speakers were revoked, and their supporters and politicians were murdered. Keep in mind that the CIA was up their knees in all of this. Everyone was a Ukrainian. No one else had any rights. Hence the declarations of independence in Crimea and the Donbass. Russia had nothing to do with those declarations of independence. Those are Russian speakers in those areas, and they despise Ukrainian nationalists who they call Nazis (because they are).
Keep in mind that Crimea never agreed to become a part of an independent Ukraine. As soon as Ukraine declared its independence, the Crimeans said they were not a part of this new country. Several referenda were held in Crimea early on, and the votes were 80-90% for independence.
The new Ukrainian state subsequently calmed them down, and for the next 20-some years the Ukraine was in a stalemate with maybe half the population supporting radical Ukrainian Nazi nationalists and the other half more pro-Russian or wanting a federal state, including all of the non-Russian minorities in Ukraine, of which there are quite a few. So Crimean independence has nothing at all do with Putin, as it started way back in 1991 under Gorbachev as with the Georgian separatist splits.
