The Nation: Skinhead Violence Rising in Russia

[marmar]

Skinhead Violence Rising in Russia
Alexander Zaitchik & Mark Ames


Moscow

Beheadings posted on the Internet used to be a trademark of Chechen separatists in this part of the world. But on August 12 a video surfaced on several neo-Nazi Russian websites showing the brutal execution of two men from ethnic groups frequently targeted by Russia's ultranationalists--one of whom had his head sawn off with what appeared to be a Russian army knife.

Both victims came from southern Muslim regions: one from Tajikistan, the other from the Russian republic of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya.

The video marks the first time that neo-Nazis--in this case, a previously unknown group calling itself the National-Socialist Party of Russia--have turned to copying the sorts of radical-Islamist beheading videos that have come out of Chechnya, Pakistan and Iraq in recent years.

The three-minute clip, accompanied by a heavy metal soundtrack, was a grisly late-summer addition to what has been a banner year for skinhead violence in Russia. According to Sova, a Moscow-based organization that tracks hate crimes in Russia, the recent executions push the number of race murders to more than forty. This is twice the number of race murders at this point last year.

To give another example of how racial violence has grown, as late as November 2001, the Moscow branch of the Anti-Defamation League estimated that there had been a total of twenty killings by skinheads in recent years. ......(more)

The complete piece and the link to the video are at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/zaitchik_ames

[David__77]

1. Shameful that fascism could bloom on Russian soil.

After the millions were slaughtered by German fascism, it is incredible that there is a real home-grown fascist movement there. I'll bet most of these proto-Nazis have relatives who died fighting fascism.