Today, the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied forces will be celebrated in Russia as a major historical punctuation. This epochal event marked the end of the diabolical Hitler era and the ideology of fascism, which together threatened the normative principles of freedom and liberty.
In the eight decades since, the world has transformed with many ironic twists on the road. Today, some of the old allies are pitted against each other and the biggest concern for a number of nations isn’t fascism, but jihadi terrorism. It’s instructive to look at how world powers came together in different eras to mobilise against the biggest scourges of the time to examine how the new fight against terrorism can be spearheaded.
Today’s military parade in Moscow offers a snapshot of the present. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the list of world leaders who will be present will signal an endorsement of his leadership—and by extension, the war that he has initiated against Ukraine, one that is still festering. Among the major powers, presidents Xi Jinping of China and Lula da Silva of Brazil will be in Moscow along with leaders from 27 other nations. Predictably, the US and the EU will not be present.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is considered to have a special personal relationship with President Putin, will not be there, for he is leading his nation in the fight against terrorism under the banner of Operation Sindoor and the India-Pakistan military tension is simmering.
The parade unfolds against a complex set of anomalies, ironies and open-ended questions about ideology and politics around the world. May 1945 defined the end of the war where the US, USSR, UK and France collectively resisted the Fascist ideology and territorial annexation that had been brutally pursued by Germany, Italy and Japan. The mass killings of those defeated or annexed by Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia are tragic testimonies. Ironically, the world is currently a silent witness to another genocide, in Palestine, with the 1945 victims as perpetrators.
Fascism is broadly defined as an ideology that espouses a range of characteristics including extreme right-wing political orientation, authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism, dictatorial leadership and suppression of domestic dissent. In states where right-wing groups are socio-politically ascendant, governance is often accompanied by an intense prioritisation of majority rule and vigilantism over individual rights, and the ‘othering’ of vulnerable minorities and foreign immigrants.
Currently, while there is no pure Fascist-led nation in the Hitlerian mould, many countries that are not authoritarian or communist—such as Russia, China, Vietnam and North Korea—are exhibiting some of these traits. Paradoxically, Russia with an authoritarian leader at the helm, is projecting itself as the lone defender standing up against fascism, while Putin is perceived in the US-led West as a malignant force that threatens stability in Europe. The war in Ukraine is held up as irrefutable evidence of such territorial violation and the trampling of laws and treaties.
Among the anomalies that abound, Russia is now ranged against its 1945 allies—the US, UK and France and their allies, with only China unambiguously in its camp. Germany, Japan and Italy have distanced themselves from Moscow and are formal military allies of their erstwhile enemy, the US, though this is tenuous given the current Trump-led uncertainty about NATO.
Furthermore, in an ironic turn of events, post-war Germany, that had resolutely denounced its Nazi past, has recently seen the rise of a right-wing constituency in its domestic politics. Anti-immigrant sentiment with a visible anti-Muslim bias has been the trigger for support to right-wing parties—a pattern discernible in other parts of Europe, too—and the AfD (Alternative for Germany), that was formed in 2013, has emerged as a major opposition party. Apart from Germany, Italy, France and now the UK are witnessing similar trends in Europe.
The 80-year trajectory from 1945 to 2025 has seen two major geopolitical punctuations. The Cold War began soon after the end of the Second World War and the West identified the containment of the Soviet Union as the new strategic challenge to the ‘free world’ and fascism was replaced by communism.
This reorientation saw the US and NATO pitted against the former USSR and a fledgling communist China. In the latter phase of the Cold War, with the Nixon-Mao rapprochement, China was co-opted by the US, and the Soviet Union partnered with India. Clearly, communism was neither the adhesive nor the abhorrent ideology it was projected to be.
The Cold War ended in December 1991 with the USSR disintegrating and a liberal democratic ethos underpinned by free trade and globalisation was the flavour of the decade. This was short-lived as 9/11 ushered in the ill-fated US-led ‘global war on terror’ and an anti-Muslim anxiety began to spread.
It is instructive that jihadi terrorism and fascism share some traits, but aren’t identical. The former is supranational in scope, while the latter is state-centric. However, both can involve authoritarianism, ideological extremism, rabid intolerance of the ‘other’ and a willingness to use violence to impose their vision.
The arrival of Donald Trump and his ideology in US politics and the enormity of January 6, 2021—the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters—sowed the seeds of what some critics have labelled the American variant of fascism.
Will the growth of right-wing political parties weaken the normative principles of freedom and democracy that were so zealously and triumphantly defended in May 1945? This is an open-ended question with no easy binary answer. The antidote will have to come from active and discerning citizen partnership.
Can the fight against jihadi terrorism currently being spearheaded by India become the new ideological factor that will compel the major powers to arrive at a tentative consensus on quarantining this scourge? The US, Russia, major EU nations and India have all been differently scarred by this virus.
China is a key to finding this consensus. Hopefully, the next Xi-Putin-Modi meeting would allow for a preliminary assessment of the emerging global ideological threats and the contours of the collective response.
Commodore Chitrapu Uday Bhaskar (Retd)
Director, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi
(Views are personal)