While Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister appears to have links to the anti-Semitic far-right, Russians in Moscow celebrated May Day with a strange combination of protestors:
Overall, the procession was peaceful and occurred without any violent incidents. These kind of events make us worry about the future of Russian society and the safety of foreigners, but on the other hand these actions also demonstrate that there is still free speech in Russia. Russia proves again that it’s not as simple as many Westerners want it to be, with good (free speech, police exercising restraint) and evil (neo-fascism and Communist nostalgia) co-existing. Amazingly, many of the leading anti-Putin “experts” on Russia have very little to say about these kind of demonstrations, which advocate the end of Putin’s rule, but also the persecution of foreigners, Jews, people from the Caucuses, and blacks.