The logic of antisemitism, far from being banished with the Nazis, became completely naturalized in the West. From Lord of the Rings to The Dark Knight Rises we hear the same story again and again and again: swarthy hordes are surreptitiously manipulated behind-the-scenes by crooked wizards and deceptive illusionists — often hiding in plain sight, in our midst! — and lay siege to everything that is balanced and well-rounded and pure and good and holy and white and which by rights should be eternal. The manipulators do so for no discernible reason other than greed and ressentiment.

This is how it came to be that in 2022 the U.S.-Russia proxy war in Ukraine is primarily depicted in Western media as hordes of sub-human Russian orcs under the commanding grip of a tiny, crooked, and often hook-nosed Vladimir Putin attacking Aryan-European knights and damsels. Russia’s actions are discussed of course not in terms of their explicitly declared national security concerns, but in terms of speculation about the depths of their envy, resentment, greed, inferiority, ugliness, jealousy, and depravity. Meanwhile, Andriy Biletsky, an avowed Nazi from Ukraine’s National Guard who openly declared that “the historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen,” [26] is glowingly cited in The Economist as one of many “defiant” “outnumbered defenders” blemished only abstractly by “far-right sympathies.” [27]