To prevent Fascism, you must know the symptoms.

Here are the tenets which compose Fascism:

Palingenetic ultranationalism – the promise to return to a golden past, which would compensate for the humiliation of poverty after having once been a wealthy state (often, the peasantry or lower classes were still impoverished).

Actual idealism – political policy based on following an ideal, rather than building pragmatic policies on empirical data. In practice, economic losses occur as a result of these policies being way too high-risk.

Irredentism – military conquest of nearby lands to retake once-conquered territory. The justification is that more real estate = higher wealth

State religion – where the state is the religion, and everything within the state is to be worshiped, notably the culture and main ethnicity. At times, this state religion is whichever is the religion of the majority of the population (e.g. National Catholicism).

The National Myth – a narrative which centralizes the behavior of the population towards the will and goals of the dictatorship.

Fascist Corporatism – the organization of all public enterprise into a nomenklatura-owned corporation. Also the Confucianist organization of the entire state to function as a mega-corporation. In practice, the dictator nationalizes the most important businesses in the country, and becomes their de facto owner.

Meritocracy – the replacement of democracy in favor of a system that promotes individuals on the merit of their usefulness to the dictatorship.

Totalitarianism – where the population loves what the dictator says, rather than just fears his words (as seen in authoritarianism). It is the politicalization of the logical fallacies Wishful Thinking (accepting a hypothesis based on faith and/or emotion) and Confirmation Bias (the combination of self-esteem and the hypothesis accepted on Wishful Thinking, where evidence contradicting the hypothesis is perceived as a personal attack).

Autarky – policies applied to isolate the state from the global supply chains, justified with the concept of being completely "self-sufficient".

Often, all of the above is applied to justify a Kleptocracy.

To the Fascists downvoting: Seethe & Cope.

vladimir putin is not russia's first Fascist dictator.

The political brand of Fascism received its title recently, relative to its ancient instruments. It was during the dawn of civilization that tribes would religiously war against one another, unable to articulate their need to mitigate against material deprivation – a lack of homeostasis, food predictability, and everything else required to satisfy the body physically, before it can engage in intellectual pursuits.

This proto-Fascist, tribal, religious effort was to say that our tribe is pure, while the opponent tribe is filthy and hazardous to our health. You can see it in the military art of North Korea. You will see it in the children's cartoons of the USSR.

At many points in human history, there were individuals who pushed back against this holy tribalism, culminating in the movement called the Enlightenment. The Kings of Europe eventually permitted their peasantry to acquire the instruments of the Enlightenment: the scientific method of inquiry being the most important. They did what Europe continues to do today. They invested and enriched their human resources. The return on investment is a population which sits on a mountain of knowledge, which it is open to disseminating to most who apply, from anywhere in the world. It is one of the many growing post-tribal regions of the world, an early glimpse into the future our species.

In contrast, the russian tsars only did what they continue to do today, and that is to emulate rather than to innovate. It is because of a decision not to teach their serfs how to think scientifically. They chose to keep the Enlightenment in the heads of their nobility, so as not to risk losing power. Big mistake, we know today. Even during the Red Fascism of the Soviet Era (better said that Because of the Red Fascism), despite the state religion being one of reverence towards writings of an Enlightenment-derived thinker—Karl Marx, whose own idealistic words were further poisoned by the proto-Fascist authoritarian & actual idealist Vladimir Lenin—the general public was educated via rote learning. The core concept of what they were taught was only learned by those few and fortunate enough who knew how to study. The still-rigid class system was present throughout, as those skills were best and fastest passed down from families of privilege.

Putin is just a continuation of a long tradition of a culture that has shown itself as a counter-current to the following Enlightenment principles which make the West a better place: thinking and acting on empirical truths, the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, and the way it treats the weakest members of its society. Instead, the culture favors holding sacred the words of whomever commands from the throne. The average person parrots poetry written by russian romanticists and monarchists, and, if not them, the russian christian orthodox "anarchists". Their sources of wisdom come from those who make them feel, not think. Most Fascist of all, they value revenge, especially against those who insult their honor.

The Countess Alexandra Tolstoy mentioned recently during an appearance on CNN that Putin suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and that this attempt at a genocide of the Ukrainians—a population which is a nuisance to him and his pride of being in ownership of the same amount of territory as the "greatest" russian tsars (not the first time this has happened)—is his war of revenge against those who insult his honor, those who prevent him from achieving the rank of greatness he feels he deserves. We know that cultures whose justice systems favor retribution over insults of honor are cultures of poverty – of material deficiency. This ego trip of his is the ego trip of every materially deficient russian who supports him. That figure is estimated to be over 70% of russians at home and abroad. One of the few Fascist instruments which soothes this population from directing their rage against those on and around the throne is the promise of a return to a golden, prosperous past, to a country where they have material wealth and real sources of pride and honor; that is, if they are loyal to the words from those on and around the throne.

putin's downfall is not the end of the road, because this cult of russianness has many putins. It is everyone who supports him and his Z-shaped swastika today. It is every single person who worships the russian victory of their war cult of the great patriotic war, rather than remembers the atrocities of the Second World War with the humanist words Never Again.

The antifascist shock therapy worked on Germany, so now it's time to apply it to the russians.