Medvedev: EU split between fascists and idiots, says Russian ex-president

Medvedev against Europe: fascists, idiots and a diagnosis that stings

Should we take him seriously? When the Russian deputy chair of the Security Council calls European leaders "direct descendants of fascism" or "simple idiots", the temptation is to shrug it off. Yet the rant condenses the narrative Moscow wants to lock in before every standoff with Brussels: the adversary is not a negotiating partner, but a political anomaly.

A false dilemma that backfires

The sharpest rebuttal comes not from the EU but from analysis of the board itself: Medvedev poses an exclusive dichotomy when the European reality allows for at least a third way. They are not fascists, the argument goes, but bureaucrats of a different stripe: a hybrid of regulatory socialism, soft authoritarian drift and strategic paralysis. That nuance, which some readers point out with irony, defuses the provocation far better than official statements do.

Another line of thinking goes further: calling your adversaries "idiots" may be the only recognizable part of the diagnosis. For years the EU has been making decisions that erode its industrial competitiveness, deepen its energy dependence and feed its own demographic decline. If the goal was not to look foolish, the statistics do not cooperate.

Propaganda without a mandate

Some prefer not to attribute bad faith, just plain incompetence: a figure whose place in the real hierarchy depends on marching to the right beat. The comparison with a chorus leader of the Russian leadership appears as a warning, and the reference to Gorbachev as a mirror: the man who believed he was saving the empire while dismantling it. Medvedev's provocations are not foreign policy, but choreography for domestic consumption.

The matter, like almost everything in this confrontation, ends in a dead end. While the EU prepares rounds of sanctions and Moscow responds with slogans, the real economy keeps invoicing. Perhaps that is why Europe laughs so as not to cry: the harshest diagnosis comes not from a Brussels technocrat, but from the man who never had the power to carry it out.

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