Putin and Netanyahu deploy all rhetorical excesses to try to make their victimhood shine through. Not all Ukrainians or defenseless Moscow protesters beaten by the police can be Nazis.

Neither can all Palestinians be anti-Semitic nor those who oppose the Government of Israel. It is the politics of eternity of leaders who “place their country at the center of cyclical victimhood,” says historian Timothy Snyder. The field is already fertilized for the true and most monstrous totalitarian and racist plants to grow stealthily.