For an example of the hollowness of Russia's purported 'denazification' goal in Ukraine look no further than this.
Israel has summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology over remarks by the Kremlin foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, that Adolf Hitler "had Jewish blood" and that the "most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews".
The remarks were part of Lavrov's defence of Russia's policy of "denazification" in Ukraine, the Kremlin's term for a sweeping purge that Ukraine says is a pretext for "mass murder."
It went on.
In an interview with Italian TV, Lavrov was asked to address how Russia could say it needed to "denazify" the country when its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is Jewish.
"As to [Zelenskiy's] argument of what kind of nazification can we have if I'm Jewish, if I remember correctly, and I may be wrong, Hitler also had Jewish blood," Lavrov said during an interview with Italian television channel Mediaset. "It doesn't mean anything at all."
He continued:
"We have for a long time listened to the wise Jewish people who say that the most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews," Lavrov continued. "There is no family without a monster."
I can only imagine that fascists and neo-nazi's around the globe raised a glass to Lavrov on haring that. Having hollowed out the very concept of anti-semitism until it is meaningless they must be delighted. Hitler was Jewish? Jews have the most rabid antisemites amongst their number? Nazi's are Jews, Jews are Nazi's in this formulation. And who was responsible for the Holocaust does Lavrov think? Nothing means anything, there is no truth. Anything can be said. It doesn't matter. None of this means anything any more than the purported denazification goal meant anything. Though of course it does. All this is power and the pursuit and maintenance of power. There's no ideology at work. Those who trade in this sort of stuff don't need ideology.
Lavrov has had a stellar career as a diplomat, though one that is far from uncontentious. Check out his CV here. It tells us much about the situation that the Russian government is in that he can offer this sort of rhetoric without an hint of... I don't know, shame, self-awareness, regret.
Then again this is a state whose rhetoric about nuclear weaponry and the threatened deployment and use of same has reached fever pitch as evidenced last night - the point isn't whether the threat is real, it is the fact that this is normative in the context of the Russian public/state discourse.
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