To the Editor:
It has long been an essential part of the Marxist playbook to declare that anyone who is not a Marxist is a fascist. (And this might bring to mind the tactics of a certain contemporary political party in this country that declares that everyone who opposes its political agenda is a Nazi, a Taliban supporter, a bigot, a white supremacist, etc., etc.)

A fact that seems to be getting buried in all of the news coming out of Russia’s monstrous attack on Ukraine is that Russia’s president — Vladimir Putin — is a former member of the murderous Communist KGB who not long ago declared the fall of the Soviet Union to be the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the Twentieth Century — and stated his intention to regain Russia’s lost empire.

And apparently very few in the West believed him.

The fact remains that, if the last century has taught us anything, it is that when a deranged dictator announces his intention to do something — the world had better take his words at face value.

Putin insists that the purpose of his “special military operation” is to halt the “Nazification” of a former Russian territory. Seriously? A country with a Jewish president that is struggling to cast off decades of communist oppression and bring freedom and affluence to its people is “Nazifying” itself?

But there is the communist mindset that dominates Putin’s worldview. Ukraine opposes him, therefore —.  The conclusion writes itself.

And perhaps the ultimate irony in this tragic situation is that, while claiming to be subverting Nazism, Putin is employing tactics right out of Hitler’s playbook in conducting this barbaric war against the citizens of Ukraine.

I do not know who the pundit was who originally wrote “Scratch a communist and you will find a fascist” but it surely represents a sardonic twist to one of communism’s most elemental lies.

Michael Nardacci

Albany