--- Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
> Chris, how prevalent are the fascist skins in
> Moscow? I've seen several news
> reports about them, and yes, they do appear as
> crazed savages. And there's
> concern that some in the police sympathize with
> their xenophobia. The one
> thing that shocks me is how they can wave swastikas
> in a country that the
> Nazis invaded and killed some 20 million of their
> citizens. Or is that old
> news?
According to statistics, there are a lot of them and they are very aggressive. There is a lot of street violence, up to and including murder, associated with them. I personally have only encountered them once, when I was in a metro wagon and a bunch of shaved-headed thugs in boots clambered on demanding to know who there wasn't a Russian. Presumably they were looking for victims. I kept my mouth shut and my eyes on my newspaper. I think you would find a rare African in Moscow who hasn't been assaulted at least once.
As to how they reconcile this with the Nazi ideology that Slavs are Untermenschen, I could not tell you. I don't think they are big on theory. I did see a show on Nazi skinheads in I think Voronezh (which is the skinhead violence capital of Russia -- if I had dark skin I wouldn't go within a mile of Voronezh), and the skin girl they interviewed in a squat was adamant that the Swastiki was not a Nazi symbol at all, bur rather indicated Slavic Pride. Go figure.
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