Those Nashi kids really, really want to go to Estonia. So bad that they’re protests are beginning to sound more and more deranged. Leave it Nashi to push a campaign to the brink of absurdity. Is Estonia bashing all they have left? I guess they “10=5” campaign just doesn’t provide that populist umph. If this is Nashi’s future, then the greatest threat to Nashi is not a fed up Russian government, Garry Kasparov, or their imagined fascists. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that Nashi’s greatest enemy might just be themselves.
Take for example Nashi’s new virtual campaign chernymspiskam.net. That’s right you too can “be active” in Nashi’s quest for victimhood. Perhaps the most egregious aspect to this site is not so much the 30 minute film which makes a pathetic attempt to paint the Estonians and the West as fascists. It’s that in order to do so Nashi portrays itself as victims of the fascism of WWII. “These people were killed by fascists in 1942,” begins the film with ominous music playing the background. “Dmitrii Ganin was also killed by fascists, not in the 1940s, but in April 2007. The war is not over. It has been going on all these years. A war is going on today and we all must participate in it.” That’s laying things on thick. Poor Ganin this is what he was stabbed to death for? To have his corpse become the symbol of Nashi’s imagined victimhood?
The real sad thing is that this farce seems to be working on some level. Over 10,000 people have joined Nashi’s “black list” campaign since it was announced on February 2.
