Article by: Paul GobleMany in the West believe, as Putin intends them to that his talk about fighting imperialism precludes the possibility that he is behaving like a fascist, Slavoj Zizek says. But in fact, what he is doing is exactly what the Nazis did during World War II. After conquering Europe, they insisted they were fighting German and French imperialism.
The recrudescence of that idea, the Slovene leftist philosopher says, risks becoming the basis of “a new neo-fascist ‘axis,’” in which people of the left around the world will form “an anti-liberal union” that could supplement the anti-liberal union of the right that has already taken shape.
In the course of a wide-ranging interview with the Meduza news agency, Zizek says that he is apprehensive about the fragmentation of power in Russia, something that may weaken Putin but that will lead to disaster and the rise of an ugly ideology that will likely continue to inform the actions of Moscow even as it loses ground, just as was the case with the Nazis.