Which elements of fascism are available in modern Armenia?
American political scientist Laurence Britt identifies 14 signs of fascism: (1) Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism, (2) Disdain for the importance of human rights. (3) Identification of enemies as a unifying cause, (4) The supremacy of the military/avid militarism, (5) Rampant sexism, (6) A controlled mass media, (7) Obsession with national security, (8) Religion and ruling elite tied together, (9) Power of corporations protected, (10) Power of labor suppressed or eliminated, (11) Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts, (12) Obsession with crime and punishment, (13) Rampant cronyism and corruption, (14) Fraudulent elections.
Nowadays, these signs are constantly repeated on social networks, and, of course, the remarks are directed primarily against Russia. Although it is clear that the listed sign are more or less typical to all countries, including the United States. Armenia is not an exception in this respect. It’s not hard to notice that the 9th, 13th and 14th signs are entirely consistent with our situation. The remaining signs are partly true or completely irrelevant for Armenia because no such policy is conducted at the “state level”.
However, all of these dangerous sign are available in the public discourse, and in the last one year, they are intensively injected into the consciousness of the Armenian people, I suppose, not without the influence of the Kremlin propaganda. Since the moment when Russia decided that the European Union is its enemy, which is trying to “steal away from its hands” the former Soviet republics through the “Eastern Partnership”, Russia started conducting an excessively active propaganda both in these states and around the world.
Read also
Armenians were not considering let’s say, for example, the abstract notion of “human rights” a priority, “Give me a good job to earn more money, what human rights?” But now, due to the aforementioned propaganda, “human rights” are primarily presented as a protection of homosexuals. Or, let’s take Identification of enemies as a unifying cause. Traditional enemy, it is clear, is the Turks, but now, the “know-it-alls” have become very lively, and they are persuading that the Armenian Genocide was organized not by the Young Turk government, but the Jews, Zionists, Freemasons and the Europeans. In fact, these people are so “know-it-all” that they think that all four “categories” are almost the same thing.
Well, of course, there is nothing to say about sexual discrimination. Russia’s official propaganda has induced into the head of many of our fellow-citizens that exclusively homosexual are living in the Europe and exclusively transvestites are sitting in the parliaments of European countries. Regretfully, the opposite side, few-numbered pro-European public figures and organizations, also fall into the extremes, and any good word about Russia or any negative word about transvestites is commented as “intrigues by the agents of the Kremlin.” Surprisingly, the pro-Europeans are thinking as dogmatic as “Kiselyov” victims are.
In summary, I would like to quote a paragraph from Andrey Sakharov’s article, entitled “Thoughts on Peace, Progress and Intellectual Freedom” (1968 ). The name itself already suggests the importance of the last component, “Intellectual freedom is essential to human society to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship.”
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
