The documentary “From Russia with Hate” is about the rise of the Neo-Nazi movement in Russia after the end of the Soviet Union. In the movie it documents the anger these Neo-Nazis have towards the influx of foreign workers into the country. They believe that these immigrants are the cause of the country’s problems, both socially and economically.

With the decline of living standards and opportunity, these people have blamed the immigrants. In response these individuals conduct physical attacks on immigrants. Usually several young men attacking a single person in a display of their cowardice.

The Nazis themselves say that they are inspired by the teachings of Adolf Hitler. This to me it is the single most vexing aspect of the entire phenomena. Seriously? Hitler? The guys who ravaged your country and bombed it back to the Stone Age because he loved your “whiteness”? Russians, and by that I mean ethnic Russians aren’t even Aryan. These white supremacists are not even Aryan, they are Slavic.

These people are a product of their environment. They are living with no opportunities, a weak economy and seemingly no idea why this is so. So in their confusion as to why things are the way they are, they lash out at the only thing different than them. In their minds, if things changed to something different, then logically it must be the thing that is different that caused it.

I find this very strange coming from a people why were educated in anti-capitalism. Their ignorance can also be explained by the fact that these young men were mostly born after the Soviet Union was over. The arguments that these Russians make are all capitalist driven problems. For example:

One Nazi said, “These people are taking our jobs. If I can hire this immigrant for 1$, then why should I hire a Russian for $10? ”

This is a problem purely caused by capitalism. Businessmen always seek the maximum rate of exploitation by driving wages down as low as they can. What is it these Russians Nazis expect? For a capitalist to choose a Russian worker and pay a great deal more for labour simply because they are the same race? Are they seriously expecting a profit driven person to take an altruistic stance that goes against his personal monetary interests? The thought of it is simply laughable.

The reason these Neo-Nazis have so much power is because they have allies in the government. One such person in the Duma (or Russian parliament) is Nicolai Kory-yon-novitch, an outspoken ultra right wing politician. The idiocy behind this man is astounding. In his office he has a picture that contains his head photoshoped onto Stalin’s body. He claims that Russians are slaves in their own country. When asked about the violence directed toward immigrants he merely says:

“Since the government can’t deal with the problem of the immigration process, people begin to showing initiative, which can result in various forms of violence.”

When asked if he personally advocates this kind of violence, he simply answers:

“It’s justified because the government is not taking action. I spoke about this here in Duma. If the government is not going to deal systemically with what’s happening in Russia, then our society will be on the edge of civil war.”

Near the end of the video, the man doing the documentary, Christof Putzel, was taken several hours outside of Moscow to a neo-Nazi training camp. He had been invited by the leader of the Russian National Socialist movement. While he was there he witnessed the actual training that was given to young men in order to fight and bully immigrants.

Large obstacle courses were made out of wood and other material found in the woods where the camp was. To be honest it looked like a low budget basic infantry training ground. They even go as far as to set much of the obstacles on fire. In the typical training scene where you see a soldier crawling in the prone position under barbed wire, these men instead choose to set the wire on fire. I was instantly reminded of the old footage of men jumping through flaming hoops in what were falsely claimed to be Al Qaeda training videos.

While there Putzel was introduced to a man named “du-sock” which means hachet in Russian. The man claims to be behind many of the videos that can be found of Neo-Nazis attacking ethnic minorities.

He himself advocates the use of violence and encourages everyone to do the same. “Du-sock” admits these videos are propaganda, and admits they are intended to provoke violence. His goal is for people in other countries to see these videos and then choose not to move to Russia. As he shows the videos to Putzel, one cannot help but notice the psychotic glee in his eyes watching an immigrant getting beaten.

The documentary ends with Putzel telling us that studies suggest almost half of the world’s neo Nazis live in Russia, as many as fifty to seventy thousand. And that this racially motivated violence will be a problem in Russia for many years to come.

Speaking as a Canadian, the same situation with immigration began here about twenty years ago. Just so you know society didn’t collapse. Oh and Shari’a law never took over the country. In fact all our problems stem from economic policies that have nothing to do with immigrants, only profit motive.

Sure, the same thing happened here with businesses using immigrants as cheap labour. But please keep some things in mind, immigrants didn’t send jobs overseas and immigrants didn’t make employers pay less. (If they were really paying that much less, than would they still have sent jobs overseas?)

And finally, immigrants didn’t underfund the healthcare system. A bunch of profit motive worshipping sociopaths did. So stop blaming immigrants for the crimes your own precious capitalist system creates.