Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I agree some of the language and Russian propaganda has echoes of the 30s.

Indeed, though like you say you can find that in a lot of cultures and especially autocratic ones. Hell, in the 50's the Americans were freaking out about the "other", "Reds under the bed" and cancelling people as suspected commies and their paranoia leaked into Hollywood with the spate of alien invasion and takeover by collective zombies stuff like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the like. The "other" and "fifth columns" are notions that seem to be quite close to the surface in the human psyche.

The thing about egotistical monsters is given half the chance they'll be quite clear in telling people what they want to do and will do if they get power. Hitler did. He was quite clear about "removing" Jewry and bolsheviks from Germany and the world from the start. He was also quite clear about expanding east and building a European empire. Anyone who had listened to his speeches of read Mein Kampf would not be exactly surprised.

The gowl in the Kremlin has also been quite clear too. He hankers for the USSR. He sees Ukraine as a "brother of Russia". First in a nice way when his puppet was in charge. Then in a threatening way when they weren't. He's also been quite clear about his anger and concern over Ukraine on his doorstep cozying up to NATO and the Americans(and the EU). Even went on about how a missile site in Ukraine would shorten the flight time to Moscow to ten or twenty minutes. The both sides breaking of the Minsk agreement and the shítshow that was and is the Donbas, where again both sides were murderous pricks.

Oh well Ukraine should be alllowed joined NATO!! Yep, they should indeed be, until that butts up against realpolitik. If Mexico voted in a Russian friendly government and started to bring in Russian military contractors and was boosting her army, after agreeing they wouldn't get into that sort of relationship back in the day. How do you think America would react? Christ they built a wall to keep out "Mexican rapists". Russian friendly fifth column Mexican rapists? That would give them an apoplexy. Look how they reacted to Cuba. Came close to nuclear war over it and failed to invade it and tried to starve it out and had all sorts of weird plots to kill Castro(and then quietly shoved nukes into Turkey). Hell America prosecuted numerous murderous proxy wars across South America for decades after WW2 and up until recently to hold back the "Commies". They backed and supplied materiel and "advisors" to murderous dictators who killed thousands of their own people, so long as they were on their side.

And before someone wheels out that tired old saw of whataboutry because it's a lot easier than coming up with a cogent argument: I do NOT condone putin's murderous invasion of the soveriegn nation of Ukraine. I think putin is a piratical thug that keeps his own people down while lining him and his minion's pockets. He is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Ukrainians, men women and children and his own troops. The day the headline reads "Putin is Dead!" will get a happy salute on his trip to hell from me. However and outside of his beyond stupid and murderous reaction to all this, all this did not magically come out of the sky on the wings of fairies. There are reasons and many of his people even today can see those reasons and the fears on the back of them. This is - and I'm sorry to tell the easy jingoists among us - not so black and white. The revulsion of the invasion and resistence of it is, the realities aren't. Any way forward when the again easy ranting dies down will have to take that into account or it will be a rinse and repeat, even if putin isn't in his throne in the Kremlin.