I point out a review of an very important new book which can easily be read by simply clicking on the link below.

The key concept to take away from this is “a hitherto obscure Russian fascist, Ivan Ilyin”. You can learn more about Ilyin here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Ilyin

This article is part of the Wiki Portal on “Conservatism”. That’s right, modern Conservatives attempt to conflate Marxism and Fascism, but it simply ain’t so. There may be superficial similarities in their practical implementation, but their ideological origins are distinct and opposed. What’s happening in Russia, Europe, and the USA today, is the latter, not the former.

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What follows are excerpts from the NYT review of T.Snyder’s book located here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/books/review/road-to-unfreedom-timothy-snyder.html(paywall)

By Margaret MacMillan
May 9, 2018

THE ROAD TO UNFREEDOM
Russia, Europe, America
By Timothy Snyder
359 pp. Tim Duggan Books. $27.
….
The road to unfreedom, as Snyder sees it, is one that runs right over the Enlightenment faith in reason and the reasonableness of others — the very underpinning, that is, of our institutions and values. Recent examples, found around the world, demonstrate both how important conventions and mutual respect are as a way of maintaining order and civility — and how easily and carelessly they can be smashed. Just think of President Trump’s regular impugning of the loyalty of those who work for the American government, in the F.B.I., for example.

So many of us no longer care, as we should, about understanding ourselves and our pasts as complex and ambiguous. Rather we look for comforting stories that claim to explain where we came from and where we are going. Such stories relieve us of the need to think and serve to create powerful identities. They also serve the authoritarian leader who rides them to power.

Snyder makes a valuable distinction between the narratives of inevitability and those of eternity. The former are like Marxism or faith in the triumph of the free market: They say that history is moving inexorably toward a clear end. The latter do not see progress but an endless cycle of humiliation, death and rebirth that repeats itself. Not surprisingly these often draw on powerful religious iconography. Both, as Snyder points out, produce intolerance of those who disagree. By questioning the narrative’s supposed truth, you are removing yourself from the community of true believers.
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As Snyder says in one of his incisive comments, Putin’s dominance is based on “lies so enormous that they could not be doubted, because doubting them would mean doubting everything.”
….
One of the key thinkers venerated by Putin and his circle is a hitherto obscure Russian fascist, Ivan Ilyin, whose views are absurd but terrifying in their implications. God, Ilyin says, made a mess of the world but fortunately there was one pure and innocent being — the Russian nation. Whatever Russia did, and does, to defend itself is legitimate. One day it will find its redeemer — inevitably a strong and virile man — and triumph. (As Snyder points out, there is an insuperable dilemma: What happens when the redeemer dies?) Wearing the mantle of the redeemer, Putin will wage war on Russia’s enemies: namely, his own citizens who want democratic rights; Ukrainians and other neighbors who want independent states; or the European Union and the United States because they offer the temptations of another way of life. Fortunately (this theory goes) both the great rivals are decadent and worn out and doomed to vanish, with some help from Russia, into the dustbin of history.

In 2013 Russia’s foreign minister unveiled an official “foreign policy concept,” which foretold a bitter competition for resources and space across the world. Eurasia would emerge as a “unified humanitarian space” from the Atlantic to the Pacific and at its core would be the great power of Russia. In the words of another of Putin’s favorite thinkers, Lev Gumilev, Russia possesses a vital energy, “passionarity.” Here we get into L. Ron Hubbard territory. Each nation in the world, as defined in the discredited 19th-century racial sense, is the product of cosmic rays. Since the Russian ray came late in time, Russians are young and brimming with energy.
….
Snyder set out to write a book about Russia and its relations with Ukraine and Europe, but he found the trail led to Western Europe and the United States as well. Russia spreads false information, like the story — that never took place — of a German schoolgirl’s gang-rape by Muslims, or Obama’s supposed birth in Africa. It gives financial and other support to right-wing parties or, in the case of Britain, to those supporting the Brexit campaign. Putin no doubt sees it as payback, since the West promoted dangerous ideas about democracy and human rights in his own country. Russia has honed its cyberwar skills, shutting down communications and financial networks in Ukraine and Estonia and, now, as recent reports say, penetrating the systems that control American power stations. Surely, though, the reader wants to say, Snyder must be exaggerating and jumping to conclusions when he calls Trump “Russia’s candidate”? Yet it is unsettling that so many people near the president or his campaign have links to Russia and that the president himself has been so reluctant to comment publicly on Russia’s more egregious moves.

(This article was revised by ER at my request. I added a few ellipses to ER’s revised version for clarity, to indicate where he’d cut the too-large excerpt from the NYT article; and formatted the article link and added “(paywall)”.
–Robert)