Oh dear...

it's 50/50 on that video being pro putin

About as fascist as any other capitalist nation. Which is to say if there was any threat to the Russian bourgeois by their working class it would be. Probably the only reason the US isn't full fascist yet is because leftism is so dead in this country that the capitalist class doesn't need to worry about such things.

The USA is fascist. Do not kid yourself. Remember that the Third Reich emulated the USA and the USA absorbed the Third Reich. The USA is the torchbearer for fascism. The idea that it's not is almost entirely from a white perspective. The USA has continuously had racial ghettos, massive prison labor, criminalization of poverty and racial deviance, mass murder, fanatical Christianity, secret police, domestic surveillance, control of media, lack of democratic accountability, concentration camps, callous murder of racialized groups, constant war footing against engineered enemies, domestic and global terror projects, political prisoners, and protection of the minority bourgeoisie.
The only things the USA doesn't have right at this moment that the Third Reich had are the following: industrial mass murder, industrial mass displacement, violent purges.
It is unlikely to develop these things because they understand that the reaction to these things will be counter to their continuous hold on power.
The USA has, in essence, been fascist since beforeb it's founding, because the European colonists essentially had all the components of European fascism during the colonial era. Mass murder was made easier by stuffing hundreds of black rebels into ships and gassing them. Haiti worked their slaves to death so fast they needed to import 50k a year to keep up. The USA's relationship to the native peoples is nearly identical to what fascism showed us. We still have race science built into our culture through our media narratives and our particular use of statistics in social sciences.
Don't wait around for the USA to become fascist.
- All great points. And remember the US all but put gay people in camps in the 80’s as AIDS ravaged them and Regan (may Satan torture his soul forever) just sat there and smiled as it happened.
  Still, how should we describe a potential turn into those few things Nazi Germany had that the US has lacked? Like, I say I fear a fascist takeover of the US but really, that’s what I mean by saying that.
- They already do industrial murder and displacement too, they just perfected it so it's less overt and they can't easily be criticized for it. Poverty killing us all, then of course mental health/suicide, plastic food, brain rot water, the slow death of intense stress put on workers trying to chase the Dream, multiple avenues of drug abuse, catastrophic destruction of community in a foundational sense, ecocide, obliteration of the mind the create a perfect obedient slave class...
- Yeah but if I call the US fascist in my political science classes I’ll be laughed at… and get a bad grade.
- Most of those are quite business as usual for capitalism though. Calling it fascist while good for drawing a parallel isn't entirely true. Its peak capitalist settler colonialism which is pretty close but not entirely fascist. Communist parties are still legal, people still have some civil protections (not many, but far more than you'd have in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy). The US is basically diet fascist. Not quite fully there, but doing as much as it can to get close to it.
  Like I said, if the left actually got its shit together then the US would happily fully implement fascism but really that is the only reason it hasn't fully done so.
- I don't disagree with what you have said (for obvious reasons), but out of curiosity - why did USA fight other fascists in that case? Imperial Japan was likely due to wanting control of Pacific region. What about the Nazis?
  I'd imagine this kind of questions arise sooner or later in discussion with USians in regards to their country's behaviour and state
I think calling every capitalist country fascist dilutes the meaning of the word; as far as I know, the state isn't completely controlled by the bourgeoisie in Russia (despite the West calling them oligarchs, they seem to have significantly less power than their imperial core counterparts), and while there are anti-LGBTQ+ laws which should obviously be condemned, I'm not aware of any mass imprisonment of minorities
- I remember hearing about prisons for gay people in Russia. I’m not saying it true, by the way, just that it’s something that was making the rounds.

fascist is when you kill europeans or usa "allies"

But when you have an actual SS veteran address parliament, well, that's just a mistake.
- he isn't a nazi right? they only killed russians right?

Kings and Generals literally has a guy from the NED writing their scripts.

Really used to enjoy roman documentaries on this channel before they went apeshit with Ukraine stuff. It's not even like they're giving any historical context for the conflict, they're just regurgitating whatever Ukrainian propaganda says.

Stable Diffusion does not know how to generate Soviet uniforms

"Why do videos on Russia always have terrible AI-generated art for their thumbnails" is perhaps the more pressing question.

It's because any actual real footage coming out of Russia is obviously Russian propaganda and can't be trusted.

He follows shaun and contrapoints btw.

Isn't Shaun pretty good for the most part?
- Shaun was just re-tweeting HBomber spouting pro-ukraine shit

I wanted to like this channel so badly. Their sophomoric modern takes cause me to question their historical accounts.

Virtually all of these YouTube history channels engage in liberal-imperialist propaganda when it comes to modern and early modern historical topics starting with the US war of independence, the French revolution, going through both world wars and the cold war, and now the Ukraine conflict. This is obvious to see, but what is not as obvious to people who may not be particularly well versed in history is that even their medieval/ancient era history videos are incredibly biased with a eurocentric and in particular for the medieval era anglo-centric view of historical events and figures.
They also have the tendency to be incredibly favorable toward certain asian cultures over others, in particular frequently adopting japanophile positions. The most insidious of these channels is K&G since unlike most of the others they do not adopt openly reactionary positions of the kind that other "history channels" do but rather they present as "leftist" and progressive (similar to Extra History) in the way that social democrats usually do. They use this pseudo-leftism to give credibility to anti-communist propaganda.
- I would like to watch some YT videos that give good general and detailed history for different countries. Mostly ancient and medieval, specifically of East Asian, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern and African places. Not Eurocentric. Do you have any recommendations for any of these?
you can sort of trust when they're directly quoting a source. just the text of the source tho, not their interpretation or dramatization. occasionally they've been known to consult specialists but just look up 'kings and generals' on r/badhistory for a virtually endless supply of dunks. it's really bad.

Putin should install a giant gold Z on the kremlin that would be sick

If I remember correctly Russia was described as a Modern Authoritarian regime in my Political Science class, but I’ll have to look back at my notes.

Modern Authoritarian regime
If Russia is this, so is every "Liberal Democracy" on Earth. All states are authoritarian and "regime" is just a buzzword that means "evil administration" that Liberals use to code their enemies.
- I re-read my notes and it says Russia is an electoral authoritarian regime under Putin.

AI Generated thumbnail?

How could you tell? The multiple weird star badge things all over his coat?

Is Russia Fascist?

No.

One of the dumbest bits of reddit analysis I ever saw was in one of those self-professed "contrarian" subs, under a picture of Azov delagates in Washington: "We should be really worried about Russia, because the RF is objectively much closer to fascism than Ukrainian nationalists cosplaying their favorite 20th century anti-Semites are."
This might have been funny if it was satire, but I assure you the poster was completely in earnest.

I mean, Russia is fashy, but they are way less fashy than their enemies (The West).

edit: Also, this guy (Kings and Generals) is probably fash as well and is trying to make the West seem less fashy by exagerating Putin's fashyness.

Care to explain to me how russia is right extremist?
Modern day Russia is the successor of UdSSR, which was a left extremist government. Putin is reminiscing big russia - getting back the former territories of UdSSR...
- Do you even know what you are talking about?
  The USSR was a state controlled by the workers, while the Russian Federation is a state controlled by the russian capitalists.
  Putin distorts the history of the USSR every time he speaks about it. He wants russians to think that Russia was "a glorious empire that almost beat the West", not a country led by the working class that gave hope to billions of people worldwide.
- The UdSSR is the successor of Imperial Russia, which was a monarchy. That means the UdSSR was right extremist and a monarchy

Ok, I'm gonna need all the kings and generals to evacuate this building until you can get some health and safety inspectors on your channel, because that is a lot of smoke.

I am crying when I see those titles. Did people not visit any hostory classes? Fascism is right extremism. Russia comes from left extremism.

Left and right extremism have a lot in common, but they cannot be named interchangably!

I wouldn't say the current regime is really left wing, unlike the USSR. Yeltsin really leaned into the "free market" stuff (with disastrous consequences), and while Putin may have added more elements of planning and protectionism compared to that, he isn't and doesn't claim to be any kind of socialist.
- while Putin may have added more elements of planning and protectionism
  And that was as a concession to reality, basically -- free market doctrine simply doesn't work, for anybody except Wall Street and US arms dealers, and Putin was smart enough to see this. ("Reality," said Kim Jong-Il about the future path of Russia, "is a harsh judge," and time has proved him right).