Fascism and the Ukraine Crisis

Abstract

Fascism is a convenient existential threat signifier for the post-Soviet space. With the larger role of the Great Patriotic War in Russian identity, it is an effective way to stir up a sense of ‘otherness’ in a variety of constructions. It is not surprising that a successful enemy image reappeared out of the media representations of the Ukrainian crisis: fascism has a very solid grounding in collective memory and received widespread attention both by high-ranking politicians and by state mass media that reverberated on social networks. Personification of the threat was also relatively easy as it relied on the picture memory of fascism and accessibility of conspiratorial, enemy image-based discourse. Thus, the enemy image of the ‘Ukrainian fascist’ dominated not only the official discourse, but also the social media, that is, the audience level. The conflict in Ukraine was largely framed in the Russian social media as a next reinstalment of the Great Patriotic War: the Russians are yet again fighting fascism, but this time its reincarnation is in Ukraine. Fascism as a narrative is deeply embedded in Russian collective memory as an existential threat discourse, so it is rather easy to manipulate public opinion into the necessity of taking extraordinary measures that effectively led to the breakdown of the post-Cold War security system.