It started by targeting Putin for the mass killing of Ukrainian civilians, which certainly justifies our full condemnation.

It moved on to an attempt “to destroy an entire country's economy” (Joe Biden’s words) in a collective punishment by enforcing hunger and poverty on 144 million citizens whose only sin is that they are of Russian nationality.

It stepped up to the totalitarian censorship of every government and private media channel, every journalist, every blogger, every tweeter, every YouTuber, every Facebook user, who dared to suggest an alternative point of view or to balance the reports with the other side of the argument.

It escalated with group consensus for pogroms and confiscation of the legitimate property of wealthy Russian citizens.  Russians who immigrated to Western countries because the regime in their country was not to their liking, and whose only sin is that someone who was at most their friend and more likely just their acquaintance, of the same Russian nationality - Putin - has done something unforgivably bad.

(An act by the way, that creates a new “legal” norm, according to which the property of every rich person in the world is in danger of confiscation not because he has done something bad, but because someone they know and may be friends with has done something bad. A norm that for some reason has not yet caused foreign investors from Arab countries and China to immediately sell all the property they have in the West, when it is abundantly clear that they are the next victims in line).

Now injury is being inflicted at an international level, when all citizens of the world are being force to pay out of their shrinking private pockets for a crazy jump in essential fuel and food prices. And if that is not enough, then insult is being added to injury for these hapless citizens when they're treated like idiots and told it's "Putin's price hike" instead of "Biden & Johnson's economic suicide".

And now we hear on German television, the frightening words and the Goebbels-style presentation so familiar to us from the history books, in the same sophisticated German language and elegant delivery of course. We are treated to a blood-chilling explanation of what is flawed and wrong in the whole way of thinking of the "Russian race", one which has dared to believe in an alternative post-modern path, different to the ultra-liberal way  “we” - the Aryan supreme race - has decided is the one and only legitimate way.

Is it only me whose blood chills and feels shivers down my spine when I'm confronted with  this nightmarish deja vu? Or is it just like the Germany of old, where everyone sees something is seriously wrong, but no one dares to say it out loud?

I cannot listen to this video without remembering the “First they came” Nobel poem by the 1946 German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller:

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

And so I must state the following here, loud and clear, to ensure that “never again” will not become "same again”:

* Not all Russians are guilty of the terrible things Putin is doing in Ukraine.

* Not every Russian hates Ukrainians or wants to kill them.

* Not all the assets of anyone Putin has ever met and had friendly conversations with should be confiscated.

* Property rights are still a central clause of the UN Human Rights Charter. (In fact, it is the only clause that distinguishes the Western world from the Communist world.)

When we confiscate property just because of race and proximity, it's just a  Kristallnacht 2.0.

We must be careful not to degenerate into collective blind hatred and mob-driven "legitimacy" to boycott and persecute millions of people just because of their race. If this was not the ultimate and absolute lesson to be learned from Germany's sins in World War II, then we cannot claim that we defeated Hitler. Because in fact we’ve only replaced him with more of the same.

Where the West stands with Russia is already a dangerous and disturbing escalation. Today we are boycotting 144 million innocent people. Tomorrow, will we encourage NATO to attack them? And the next day will we allow the USA and UK to use nuclear bombs to eliminate them? To carry out genocide against the whole race?

Let us not give up our human duty to differentiate between good and evil. Do not let our collective and blind hatred drag humanity into another Holocaust.

We must fight without compromise against the terrible things that are being done to the innocent civilians of Ukraine. Just as we must not think to harm the entire Russian public because of their race, or their ruler.

We cannot claim on the one hand that for twenty years Russia has been a fake democracy and that Putin is a ruthless dictator who rules the public against their will; then on the other hand set out to punish all the Russian people just because they are controlled by a dictator against their will. Either Russia is a democracy or it is not. 

Double standards such as these do not in any way differentiate between Nazism, colonialism and imperialism; in fact they are commonalities between the three. These three dangerous geo-political mindsets, based on incorrect and immoral notions of racial supremacy,  must be eradicated from the world's thinking, so that all human beings finally have the right to live in peace.

And if you think anything written here is because I love Russians more than Ukrainians, or because I am not entirely loyal to the West, without any direct or indirect connection to Russia, then you should go shave that tiny mustache you have under your nose. You are brainwashed.