Always interesting to hear about what's going on in the political fringes of other countries. The way you start of describing the Russian right makes it very clear that most of it's problems had to do with not having a clear positive identity. If you use opposition to something to define your political clique then you will inevitably attract a broad swathe of people but with very diverging and contradictory goals. I agree with libertarians that gun control is stupid but they rally around a bizarre kind of "free market" purity where they think that large corporations monopolizing resources and scamming everybody is "freedom". Libertarianism itself has very bizarre and contradictory factions within it, but they're basically all drug addicted pedophiles anyway.
No matter what country you're in, the Right needs a positive identity of some kind that is internally consistent and encompasses almost every important issue, probably a sort of conservative, Christian-ish nationalism.
P.S. I don't know how you could kill yourself with a badass last name like "Pogrom" lol
Pogrom was his own nickname from when he was a pseudononymous blogger.
As for positive self-identity, holy shit do the Russians have it easy, how could they fuck it up so colossally lol.
I mean imagine having the history, legends and myths that Russia has and actually entertaining lolbert nonsense in the right or pretending to be liberals and democrats or even Nazis ffs.
"We need to stop borrowing our thinking from the West and trying to graft it onto our own society."
You could start by abandoning the divisive categories of "Left" and "Right" and realize that the real division in society is between the common people and the elites, who assume the mantle previously worn by royalty, and who maintain their position by pitting one faction of the common people against another.
I would start with a position that emphasizes Reason, backed by authentic scientific inquiry, and see what kind of support you attract. Probably not much, given the extreme polarization of the current body politic, but it's the only party I'd ever join. As I see it, it matters very little which of the current ideologies prevails, because in either case they'll be co-opted by an elite, and turned into a caricature of their original intent, if not an actual tool of oppression.
This piece has been published on Unz. Among others there is an interesting comment by an anonymous, on how Russia does not really need any nationalists, having been an Empire since the times of the Muscovite Grand-Princedom. I don't buy his geopolitical predictions but these are just peripheral points to his main one.
And what about Bashkirs, Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Jakuts, Buryats, Chukchis, Tuvans, Volga Bulgars, Dagestanis...? It's the Russian Federation for a reason. These populations may be numerically small, but some are prevalent in great swathes of land, or strategic ones in case of the Caucasus.
Obviously I agree the State should be Russian in character, but the nationalism of such a State should be peculiar to Russia. Russia does not resemble a monolithic European nation.. say all French, or Dutch, or German.
The United States is in a similar position. They host many races, and many ethnicities inside the races, from American of pioneer stock, to Italian- or Vietnamese-American. The trend over there seems to be to try and push all the more granular ethnic differences into lumping categories as White, Black, Brown, Asian.
But even after creating all these lumped identities the US are still an empire, where the main ethnicity sees its rights curtailed in favour of the minor ones, as in every empire in the course of history.
By the way just to clear things the anon commenting on Unz is not me.
I can't see that happening in the Caucasus (remember the Circassians?) but I do see Russia eventually expanding back into the Caucasus without assimilating the locals. So the imperial nature of Russia is unavoidable.
Other ethnicities instead can be absorbed in time. IIRC in Soviet times they tried to force a Belarussian language in existence, imposing it in schools in place of Russian, but the population rebelled because they felt cheated out of career possibilities as public servants all over the Soviet Union.
Then there is Jakutia, but who wants to live there? The engine of your car breaks down you are dead from frostbite in an hour.
Always interesting to hear about what's going on in the political fringes of other countries. The way you start of describing the Russian right makes it very clear that most of it's problems had to do with not having a clear positive identity. If you use opposition to something to define your political clique then you will inevitably attract a broad swathe of people but with very diverging and contradictory goals. I agree with libertarians that gun control is stupid but they rally around a bizarre kind of "free market" purity where they think that large corporations monopolizing resources and scamming everybody is "freedom". Libertarianism itself has very bizarre and contradictory factions within it, but they're basically all drug addicted pedophiles anyway.
No matter what country you're in, the Right needs a positive identity of some kind that is internally consistent and encompasses almost every important issue, probably a sort of conservative, Christian-ish nationalism.
P.S. I don't know how you could kill yourself with a badass last name like "Pogrom" lol
Pogrom was his own nickname from when he was a pseudononymous blogger.
As for positive self-identity, holy shit do the Russians have it easy, how could they fuck it up so colossally lol.
I mean imagine having the history, legends and myths that Russia has and actually entertaining lolbert nonsense in the right or pretending to be liberals and democrats or even Nazis ffs.
"We need to stop borrowing our thinking from the West and trying to graft it onto our own society."
You could start by abandoning the divisive categories of "Left" and "Right" and realize that the real division in society is between the common people and the elites, who assume the mantle previously worn by royalty, and who maintain their position by pitting one faction of the common people against another.
I would start with a position that emphasizes Reason, backed by authentic scientific inquiry, and see what kind of support you attract. Probably not much, given the extreme polarization of the current body politic, but it's the only party I'd ever join. As I see it, it matters very little which of the current ideologies prevails, because in either case they'll be co-opted by an elite, and turned into a caricature of their original intent, if not an actual tool of oppression.
This piece has been published on Unz. Among others there is an interesting comment by an anonymous, on how Russia does not really need any nationalists, having been an Empire since the times of the Muscovite Grand-Princedom. I don't buy his geopolitical predictions but these are just peripheral points to his main one.
Russia is literally more Russian than Israel is Jewish.
And what about Bashkirs, Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Jakuts, Buryats, Chukchis, Tuvans, Volga Bulgars, Dagestanis...? It's the Russian Federation for a reason. These populations may be numerically small, but some are prevalent in great swathes of land, or strategic ones in case of the Caucasus.
Obviously I agree the State should be Russian in character, but the nationalism of such a State should be peculiar to Russia. Russia does not resemble a monolithic European nation.. say all French, or Dutch, or German.
The United States is in a similar position. They host many races, and many ethnicities inside the races, from American of pioneer stock, to Italian- or Vietnamese-American. The trend over there seems to be to try and push all the more granular ethnic differences into lumping categories as White, Black, Brown, Asian.
But even after creating all these lumped identities the US are still an empire, where the main ethnicity sees its rights curtailed in favour of the minor ones, as in every empire in the course of history.
By the way just to clear things the anon commenting on Unz is not me.
The goal ought to be to grow the majority population relative to the others and either eliminate, eject or assimilate them over time.
I can't see that happening in the Caucasus (remember the Circassians?) but I do see Russia eventually expanding back into the Caucasus without assimilating the locals. So the imperial nature of Russia is unavoidable.
Other ethnicities instead can be absorbed in time. IIRC in Soviet times they tried to force a Belarussian language in existence, imposing it in schools in place of Russian, but the population rebelled because they felt cheated out of career possibilities as public servants all over the Soviet Union.
Then there is Jakutia, but who wants to live there? The engine of your car breaks down you are dead from frostbite in an hour.