The West and the Rise of Next-Generation Neo-Nazism
OPINION - Oleg Nesterenko argues that Western political and financial elites are leading the resurgence of a thriving neo-Nazism, with the Baltic states as its trailblazers.
Oleg Nesterenko serves as president of the European Trade and Industry Center (CCIE) in Paris. Formerly an MBA director and professor for master’s degree programs, he is a recognized expert on Russia and sub-Saharan Africa. His writings, pro-Russian and thus often viewed with skepticism—as though alternative perspectives on global events are somehow taboo—merit consideration for their insights into how the West is perceived.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of L’Eclaireur. Our choise to provide a platform stems from our commitment to pluralism and a deeper understanding of the world.
A new strain of neo-Nazism is emerging in the Orwellian West, distinct from the traditional image etched in the collective psyche. It diverges from classical Nazism as starkly as neoliberalism does from classical liberal theory.
The most perilous form of this neo-Nazism is not embodied by crude individuals who tattoo Adolf Hitler’s likeness on their chests and parade online with swastika flags, nor by the easily recognizable extremists marching in lockstep at dusk, torches aloft, chanting self-glorifying slogans—a phenomenon increasingly visible in Ukraine since 2014. These intellectually limited extremists represent merely the least threatening fringe of neo-Nazism.
The true menace stems from a new breed of neo-Nazis: not societal outcasts, but Western political-financial elites. These elites are convinced of the exceptional nature of their lifestyle and idealized societal model, which they liken—privately or publicly—to a “blooming garden,” while deeming other societies near-genetically inferior, relegated to “jungles” to be managed accordingly.
Lacking historical awareness, most of these elites would be shocked to realize they are the torchbearers of a neo-Nazi ideology. To dispel their disbelief, they need only consult history books, examine the rhetoric of 1920s ideologues, and recognize their own modernized reflection in those ideas.
Echoing Third Reich ideologues like Alfred Rosenberg (executed in 1946), today’s Western powerbrokers subtly champion the supremacy of the Western model—and, by extension, Westerners—over the rest of the globe.
Phrases like “Europe is a garden, the rest of the world a jungle that could overrun it,” articulated by Josep Borrell, former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and European Commission Vice-President, mirror the propaganda once broadcast from Nazi platforms.
Kaja Kallas, former Prime Minister of a chauvinist-leaning Estonian government and now elevated by pan-European ideologues to succeed Borrell, has advanced the creation of a “New European Order.” In August 2022, she declared on Twitter that “visiting Europe [even as a tourist] is a privilege, not a human right.”
What is the relationship of the three EU Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—with the Nazi regime of the Third Reich? It is succinctly summarized: despite official “condemnations” of Nazism, these countries regularly hold authorized, state-supported demonstrations and parades glorifying Waffen-SS divisions and other Baltic units that collaborated with Nazi forces during World War II. These include the 15th and 19th Latvian Waffen-SS volunteer divisions, the 20th Estonian Waffen-SS volunteer division, the Arajs Kommando—a Latvian auxiliary police unit responsible for at least 30,000 deaths—and Lithuanian auxiliary police battalions implicated in the murder of nearly 100,000 Jews, including 9,200 in a single day on October 29, 1941. (The Jewish victims of that era should not be conflated with the actors of contemporary Israeli state policies.)
Concurrently, a systematic campaign has eradicated nearly all monuments to Soviet soldiers who died fighting Nazism in the Baltic states, including those over graves. Baltic authorities have also banned Victory Day (May 9) commemorations and the laying of flowers at destroyed monument sites, with legal repercussions for violators.
Are the EU’s current ideologues aware of these grave Baltic deviations? Unequivocally, they are fully informed. Their response? Utter silence.
Beyond the flourishing neo-Nazism in the Baltic states, the European Union is witnessing a legal rehabilitation of Nazism. In 2020, Leon Rupnik, a war criminal and head of Slovenia’s pro-Nazi collaborationist government during World War II, executed in 1946 after a Yugoslav tribunal conviction, was officially rehabilitated. His conviction was overturned for alleged “procedural violations” in 1946. Today, this perpetrator of Jewish deportations and resistance fighter murders would likely be acquitted or, at worst, fitted with an electronic monitor.
Just as Arthur Moeller van den Bruck’s 1923 The Third Reich, initially non-extremist and unrelated to Nazi ideology, was twisted by German National Socialists—becoming, reportedly, Adolf Hitler’s bedside reading (an open, dedicated copy was found on his desk when he died by suicide on April 30, 1945)—the European Union’s once-noble founding ideals have been corrupted by successive political generations, each marked by deepening moral decay.
The European Union now stands at a crossroads: it faces either disintegration or transformation into a neo-totalitarian regime. Its vast propaganda machine, an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth,” promotes a hollow democracy and a superficial political opposition, maintained as a veneer of “democratic diversity.”