May 9 | Fighters against "Eurofascism"

A US and a Russian bayonet stab EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Her hands and feet form a swastika, and blood drips from her fingers and toes. The press office of the Russian foreign intelligence service SWR used this cartoon to illustrate an article titled "Like 80 Years Ago, Eurofascism Is a Common Enemy of Moscow and Washington."

Almost every paragraph cites anonymous "specialists" who accuse Europe of a "tendency toward various forms of totalitarianism." The text is a remarkable attempt to combine Soviet nostalgia and Russian imperialist narratives with those of the US right. A pastiche of the ideologemes that have traditionally been set against each other.

A sample: France's history is characterized by brutal dictatorial regimes, the first of which was the Jacobin regime. The United States, however, was able to resist this regime. Napoleon's campaign against the Tsarist Empire also follows a totalitarian tradition. The fact that the Frenchman was an ally of the United States remains unmentioned for obvious reasons.

In Europe, according to the “specialists,” the ideology of “Eurofascism” emerged, coined and defended by the French writer and collaborator Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (1893–1945), who actually advocated a cross-front between Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini.

The anonymous experts consider Great Britain "the first evil empire in history," quoting Anthony R. Dolan, speechwriter for US President Ronald Reagan, who used this phrase for the Soviet Union in 1983. Of course, the crimes of the British Empire cannot be ignored. And the guilt of the British, especially Winston Churchill, in World War II and the Cold War. After all, the British Prime Minister did everything he could to tear the US and the Soviet Union apart.

The article won't have a large readership, but it is exemplary of the selective historical excursions prior to May 9. Unlike a few years ago, the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition, Great Britain and France, will be absent, but the heads of government of Hungary and Slovakia have announced their attendance.

And this requires some interpretive skill if all current conflicts are truly merely a continuation of historical disputes, as "geopoliticians" and "experts" in Russian state media claim. Hungary was Hitler's last ally in 1945, the first independent Slovak state through the cooperation of Nazi Germany with the nationalists there.

Why Ukraine should be "denazified" while Hungary and Slovakia are considered partners in the anti-fascist struggle remains unclear. Nevertheless, the Russian government is once again drawing comparisons between World War II and the war in Ukraine ahead of May 9.

"Once again, they have united against us under the banner of fascism. And they are doing so in the truest sense of the word, by supporting Zelensky's openly racist, anti-Russian regime, which holds torchlight marches and throws fighters with Nazi division insignia on their sleeves into the meat grinder," said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a wreath-laying ceremony. Just as 80 years ago, Lavrov continued, they are trying to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield.

President Vladimir Putin recently expressed similar sentiments. At an event in Volgograd, he cited the most important lesson of the Great Patriotic War, which is why Russia is fighting in Ukraine: preventing the resurgence of Nazism and the spread of destructive ideologies such as Russophobia and anti-Semitism. He had made similar remarks shortly before in a welcoming address to the Second International Anti-Fascist Forum, hosted by the Communist Party. Similar words will most likely be spoken on Red Square on May 9.