Ukraine: US condemns Odessa violence as dozens die

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48. “Orthodox Fascism in Russia”

A video titled “Orthodox Fascism in Russia” posted last week by an anonymous pro-Ukrainian blogger among others has been widely circulated on Russian and Ukrainian social media and news sites. With thumping rock music and scary footage of saluting marchers, the video takes its name from a comment made by an activist at an ultranationalist rally, “Orthodox fascism will save Russia.” The video contains alarming scenes seeming to indicate support for ultranationalist extremists by at least some Russian Orthodox clergy.
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What we don’t get from the sinister video is any sense of the size of the movements, the degree to which the broader public supports them, and the sources of their funding. Last year, the Russian March, staged 4 November for Unity Day, a holiday introduced by Putin to commemorate the expulsion of Poles from Moscow in 1612, attracted about 8,000 people — more than the few thousand who showed up every year since 2005 (see The Interpreter‘s translation of Russian media coverage.) That’s not so many — a march to protest the forcible annexation of the Crimea drew some 50,000 with only a few thousand in a counter-rally organized by Russian Orthodox activists; a rally against suppression of media freedom drew 10,000.

What we also can’t tell is how much these groups and their events enjoy official support — they are given parade or rally permits, and some of them are related to national movements sponsored by the Kremlin, but the extent to which they are avidly sustained — as distinct from tolerated or manipulated for political purposes — is not clear. At the end of “Orthodox Fascism,” one speaker says that when he confronted an extreme Russian Orthodox priest about a violent attack, he was told that he could “do nothing” because the group “had the backing of Vladimir Putin.”

The provenance of the film circulating now appears to be in part a film titled “Russian March 2012: Orthodoxy, Fascism, Paganism,” produced and uploaded in 2012 by Portal-Credo.ru, a Russian news and research site run by advocates of religious freedom who are critical of the increasing interference of the Russian Orthodox Church in civil society. The older video contains some of the same scenes and slogans as the video currently circulated — juxtaposed with scenes from Hitler’s orations. The videos show similar concerns but appear to have different producers, and the newer video is more stark, even without the Hitler montage.
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-this-week-new-us-sanctions-hit-closer-to-putin/

What's often not stated is that some elements self-defined left have kept the anachronistic view that Putinist Russia has anything "left" remaining in it. Opposition to the EU seems to be sufficient for their support, which is counter-intuitive given that the EU and a few US states are the primary remaining strongholds of progressive government, anywhere.