Russia’s new bill brings it in line with U.K. legislators, though there is a distinction between the approach of the FCA and the State Duma.
Not unlike many other jurisdictions around the world, Russia has come to recognize the potential benefits and risks flowing from cryptocurrencies by taking its first step to define and codify digital assets.
The new Russian legislation dubbed “On Digital Financial Assets” sets a clear direction for the treatment of cryptocurrencies by authorities and how both individuals and businesses can handle them in everyday practice.
Nevertheless, the new legislation may give pause to payments companies and fintech companies keen on expanding into the Russian market. While the approach of the Russian legislature toward cryptocurrencies — or digital assets, as they are defined under the new law — bears many similarities to the approach taken by United Kingdom regulators toward crypto assets, the clear prohibition of the use of digital assets as a means of payment draws a strong distinction between the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, or FCA, and the Russian Duma.
What is the new bill?
First and foremost, the long-awaited new bill on digital financial assets, or DFAs, defines the term “digital assets” and their use. According to a translation by TASS, a major Russian news agency, the bill defines them as: digital rights, an aggregate of electronic data comprising money claims, negotiable securities, and rights to participate in the equity of a non-public company with shares.
The bill also provides a non-exhaustive list of permissible use cases for DFAs, clarifying that they can be bought and sold, inherited, or exchanged for other digital rights. But the possibilities are not endless; it has been made very clear that digital currency cannot be used or advertised as a means of payment for goods or services, nor does it constitute any form of Russian currency or any other foreign currency.
Even though limited, the new legislation legitimizes digital asset trading and exchange and sets out a skeleton of a regulatory framework for digital asset issuers and exchanges, both included in the bill under the umbrella term of “digital asset operators,” while traders and holders fall into a separate category of “investors.”
Regardless of the scope of permitted use for DFAs, the new law represents a giant leap toward crypto adoption in Russia, as the State Duma, in previous iterations of the bill, had contemplated a much less crypto-friendly tone and even criminalization of crypto activity.
Crypto taxation
The new legislation brings Russia in line with the position of U.K. tax authorities on crypto taxation matters, taking the view that digital assets are considered property in the eyes of the law and are thus taxable on an individual and commercial level.
A similar approach was taken by the English courts in the case of AA v. Persons Unknown, where it was held that crypto assets, such as Bitcoin (BTC), are categorized as property for the purposes of the law. Additionally, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs collects capital gains taxes on personal crypto investments and income tax in the case of crypto trading in a commercial context.
For the time being, it is unclear whether the Russian legislature will follow the same model.
What is the difference between the Russian and U.K. approach?
While the two regulators agree on the approach to taxation and treatment of digital assets as property, when taking a closer look at the FCA’s definition of crypto assets, the two perspectives begin to diverge.
“Cryptographically secured digital representations of value or contractual rights that use some type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and can be transferred, stored or traded electronically.”
This definition is further narrowed down to a threefold classification of e-money tokens, security tokens and unregulated tokens.
The last category, unregulated tokens, encompasses all cryptocurrencies used as a medium of exchange, something that Russia has now expressly prohibited. The FCA refers to this category as unregulated, and it remains true to this terminology, as it does not lay down a regulatory framework, licensing scheme or other regime of compliance for a business or individual to engage in the exchange of cryptocurrency for goods or services. Even though the FCA previously issued warnings about notorious unregulated token OneCoin, it has since removed its warning, citing a lack of authority to regulate crypto assets as influencing the decision to remove it.
That said, the Bank of England, the U.K.’s central bank, makes it abundantly clear that crypto assets (unregulated exchange tokens) are not currency. This is also evident by the departure in the FCA’s terminology from “cryptocurrency” to the now commonly used “cryptoassets.”
This approach calls for a clear distinction between the classification of digital assets as currency and allowing their circulation as a means of exchange for goods and services. While payment is a function traditionally reserved for, and associated with, national traditional currencies, such as the Russian ruble or British pound, it should not be assumed that allowing cryptocurrency to fulfill such a function automatically equates it to a traditional currency, nor does it automatically endanger traditional currency.
This is a crucial distinction, as traditional currency has many other characteristics and performs macroeconomic functions reaching far beyond a means of exchange. Traditional currencies impact the ebb and flow of our entire economic system, with any change or addition to the system sure to cause unpredictable disruption. The FCA and other U.K. institutions carefully navigate this line. While they do not limit the use of cryptocurrencies as a means of exchange and payment, they refrain from equating crypto to traditional currency.
Why is recognizing digital assets as currency a point of contention?
Consequently, it is worth examining why regulators are so reluctant to consider digital assets a currency. Aside from the ideological and cultural aspects against such a classification, the economics behind defining cryptocurrencies as legal currency leaves much to be desired.
The current design of most cryptocurrencies accounts for a fixed eventual total supply, which in the macroeconomic sense carries a danger of deflation in wages and in goods and services. In turn, the lack of ability to manipulate money supply in response to market demand could lead to price volatility more problematic than that of an unregulated currency itself.
The role of the central bank in adjusting monetary policy has proven especially important in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, with direct government financing to fund stimulus packages and government expenditure in response to the health crisis. Great examples are seen with direct monetary injections, such as in the case of the United States Federal Reserve, or through quantitative easing, such as in the case of the Bank of England.
However, the printing of money has often been criticized for its potential to result in inflation or hyperinflation. In simple terms, this means the devaluation of money in response to an increased monetary supply. However, in the case of COVID-19, it seems that in combination with relevant safeguards, it has proven to be a very valuable tool in times of crisis, even if the long-term repercussions are still unclear.
The distinction between traditional currencies and crypto also lies in the fundamental concepts they represent. In contrast to traditional currencies, cryptocurrencies do not function on the basis of a liability of the state toward the individual, but their meaning can be boiled down to a consensus between participants more akin to a barter system.
The economics of crypto as a currency are definitely far from “figured out,” which in itself justifies caution before declaring it a type of currency and equating it to traditional money. Nevertheless, economic analysis does not suggest complete elimination of the circulation of cryptocurrencies as a means of exchange.
Still a long way from DeFi and laissez faire
Despite the (much more than expected) crypto-friendly tone, the new Russian crypto bill remains very cautious toward many of the original ideals behind cryptocurrency. One of the key features of cryptocurrency is the removal of a central monetary authority, replacing it with a distributed ledger to achieve the system’s own checks and balances. Since the emergence of cryptocurrency, this concept has culminated in the decentralized finance movement.
DeFi is a movement aimed at creating financial networks and providing traditional financial instruments without the involvement of a central authority. It achieves this by using a decentralized, open-source network to account for the functions traditionally ensured by a central bank. While many DeFi protocols have emerged since the popularization of cryptocurrencies, they have a universal aim of removing intermediaries from everyday banking and financial instruments while ensuring trust and security on the network.
While the new Russian bill takes a big step toward crypto adoption, it makes it clear that those engaging in digital asset investments will be subject to close control and scrutiny by the Central Bank of Russia as the central authority. Digital asset operators, as defined in the bill, will be approved and registered by the Bank of Russia and all DFA transactions within their control will be carried out on a framework of “special information systems” that are also subject to central bank approval and verification.
Both the operators and investors will only be allowed to handle crypto operations subject to declaring their possession, acquisition and transfer. The Bank of Russia will also reserve the right to qualify central DFAs as accessible only to certain qualified categories of investors.
Looking ahead
The key distinction between the Russian and U.K. approaches does not lie in whether cryptocurrencies can or will become a replacement for traditional currencies but in the fact that the U.K. recognizes their potential function as a complementary, improved feature of our monetary systems. As reported by the U.K.’s Cryptoassets Taskforce in its 2018 final report, small scale FCA testing proved that as a means of exchange, cryptocurrencies can offer improvements in speed and cost of monetary transfers, especially in the cross-border context. The Russian legislature fails to recognize such potential and entirely rejects one of cryptocurrencies’ key and original functions.
For U.K.-based crypto businesses, or crypto operators, seeking to provide services on the Russian market, this means significant expenditure on legal opinion to navigate what is shaping up to be a complex regulatory framework, as well as uncertainty on acquiring requisite approvals from the Bank of Russia.
Further, they will face the task of tailoring their services to ensure they remain within the definition of legalized crypto activity, whether this means disabling certain features or more creative technical solutions to ensure the limited use in line with the new Russian legislation. The more evolved businesses could even consider the development of liability protections from investors who use their platforms and fail to conform to the new limitations.
As far as the regulatory framework goes, the current bill merely serves as an indication of what is to come in terms of practical regulatory challenges. In its autumn session, the State Duma is due to release another piece of legislation, dubbed “On Digital Currency,” with more details regarding the regulation of DFA operators, investors and systems, and their relationship with the central bank, providing further clarity for crypto enthusiasts in Russia.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Martyna Dudek is a paralegal at Wirex, a digital payments platform. She is a law graduate who is passionate about the fintech payments industry and its interplay with intellectual property. Aspiring to qualify as a solicitor into the financial services space, she closely tracks the developments revolutionizing the global payments industry and tokenization of property.
Greenback Surges after BOJ Hikes and Ends YCC and RBA Delivers a Dovish Hold
Overview: The US dollar is surging today against
most of the G10 currencies, and although the intraday momentum is stretched
ahead of start of the North…
Overview: The US dollar is surging today against
most of the G10 currencies, and although the intraday momentum is stretched
ahead of start of the North American session, there may be little incentive to
resist before the end of the FOMC meeting tomorrow. The Bank of Japan's rate
hike and the end of Yield Curve Control were not seen as the start of the
tightening cycle. The two-year JGB yield slipped to a two-week low and settled
below its 20-day moving average for the first time since mid-January. The Reserve
Bank of Australia delivered a dovish hold by dropping the reference the future
tightening. The yen (~-0.95%) and Australian dollar (~-0.85%) are the weakest
of the G10 currencies. Emerging market currencies are lower, led by the
Philippine peso (~-0.65%). The offshore yuan is weaker for the sixth
consecutive session.
Japanese, Australian, and New
Zealand equities bucked the regional trend to advance today. Stoxx 600 in
Europe is slightly lower, and if sustained, it would be the fourth consecutive
losing session. That would be the long losing streak since last October. US
index futures are nursing small losses. Ten-year JGB and Australian bond yield
fell almost three basis points today. European benchmark yields are mostly
slightly softer, though the periphery is lagging the core today. The US 10-year
yield is little changed near 4.32%. The high for the year is near 4.35%. The US
two-year yield did set a new high for the year yesterday near 4.75%. It is near
4.72% now. The greenback's strength is capping gold, which is trading inside
yesterday's range and straddling the $2150 area. May WTI soared to $82.50
yesterday as its recent rally was extended amid Ukrainian strikes on Russian
refiners. Diesel futures rose for the fourth consecutive session yesterday and
gasoline futures extend its rally for a sixth session. May WTI is consolidating
in a narrow range around $82.
Asia Pacific
The Japanese press reports
turned out to be fairly accurate: the Bank of Japan hiked its overnight target
rate to 0%-0.1%. It
scrapped the Yield Curve Control and confirmed it would stop buying ETFs. The
one surprise was that the central bank indicated it would continue to purchase
long-term bonds as needed. Governor Ueda, on one hand, said that the sustained
2% inflation target is not in hand, which sounded dovish. He also recognized
that if the positive trends for wages and prices lift inflation expectations,
and higher prices results, rate hikes may be necessary. The 10-year yield
softened by almost three basis points (to ~0.73%). The Nikkei rallied 1%, and
the yen was sold. The US dollar reached about JPY150.50.
As widely expected, the
Reserve Bank of Australia left its cash target rate at 4.35%, where it has been
since it was lifted by 25 bp last November. Economic activity has slowed, and price pressures are
moderating, but the RBA seems to be in no hurry to unwind the November hike.
Still, it dropped the reference to possible future hikes. The dovish hold sent
the Australian dollar to a nine-day low near $0.6510. The futures market is not
100% confident the RBA will do so before September. However, the odds of an
August cut have been marked up to around 97% from about 78% yesterday.
The dollar is rising against
the Japanese yen for the sixth consecutive session. It matches the longest advancing streak
since last August and lifted the greenback to two-week highs near JPY150.70.
The greenback approached JPY151 in mid-February through early March. The high
from 2022 and 2023 was closer to JPY152. The intraday momentum indicators are
stretched ahead of the North American open, but there may be little incentive
to resist before tomorrow's FOMC meeting. What is being seen as a dovish
hold by the RBA has sent the Australian dollar to nearly $0.6500. The
trendline off the mid-February and early March lows comes in today a little
below there. The low earlier this month was set slightly below $0.6480. The
intraday momentum indicators are stretched. Initial resistance now is seen int
he $0.6520-25 area. The greenback's gains, especially against the yen, have
weighed on the Chinese yuan. The dollar is challenged the CNY7.20 cap that
has not been violated this year. The PBOC set the dollar's reference rate at
CNY7.0985 (CNY7.0943 yesterday). The Bloomberg average was CNY7.2020 (CNY7.1993
yesterday). The dollar is rising against the offshore yuan for the sixth
consecutive session. It has reached CNH7.2130, its highest level in two weeks. The
high for the year was set on February 14 near CNH7.2335.
Europe
The focus will not shift to
Europe until Thursday. Three
central banks meet then, Norway's Norges Bank, the Swiss National Bank, and the
Bank of England. It is true the UK sees February CPI tomorrow. The
year-over-year rate is expected to fall toward 3.5% from 4.0% and the core rate
is seen falling to 4.6% from 5.1%. The UK's three-month annualized rate may
near 2% and the six-month annualized increase maybe around 1.6%. Still, the
market does not expect the BOE or the other west European central banks to
change policy. Still, we suspect the risk is for a SNB move to get ahead of the
ECB. The macro backdrop is conducive for a move with softer growth and low
inflation.
The March ZEW survey in
Germany showed a little improvement. The
assessment of the current situation remains poor. It edged up to -80.5 from -81.7. At its worst, during the pandemic, it fell to
-93.5 in May 2020. It had recovered and peaked at 21.6 in October 2021, and had
already begun weakening again before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was at
-10.2 in January 2022. The expectations component is a different story. It rose for the eighth consecutive month to 31.7, which is the highest reading since February 2022. The high last year was set in February at 28.1.
The euro met sellers in the
US morning yesterday as it pushed above $1.09. The selling knocked it down to new
session lows near $1.0865 It has been sold to $1.0835 today, around where the
(50%) retracement of the rally from the February 14 lows and the 200-day moving
average are found. A break of this area targets $1.08. Note that in the futures
market, the non-commercial (speculative) net long euro position has risen by
50% since the mid-February low through March 12 that is covered by the most
recent CFTC report. Meanwhile, the non-commercial net long sterling position
has risen every week this year but one, and at nearly 70.5k contracts (GBP62.5k
per contract or almost $5.6 bln position), it is the largest net long position
since 2007. Sterling extended its losses yesterday to nearly $1.2715, and has been sold to almost $1.2665 today, the lowest level since March 4. The
$1.2670 area corresponds to the (61.8%) retracement of the recovery off the
year's low set on February 14 near $1.2535. The intraday momentum indicators
are stretched, but there is little chart support ahead of $1.2600.
America
The focus, of course, is on
tomorrow's Fed meeting. No
one expects the Fed to do anything. It is more about what the Fed says, and
here, the dot plot is important. Keen interest is in the number of rates cuts
the median dot signals. Three cuts were signaled in December. While CPI and PPI
were slightly above market expectations, we do not think that they deviated
much from what the Fed anticipated. To us, a key consideration is Fed Chair
Powell's acknowledgement that officials did not need to see better data to
boost their confidence that inflation was headed back to target. It just needed
to see good data. Other macro forecasts may be tweaked. The 4.1% unemployment
rate anticipated for this year looks low. It was at 3.9% in February. The
median dot was for the headline and core PCE deflator to be at 2.4% at the end
of the year. They stood at 2.4% and 2.8%, respectively in January and are
expected to be unchanged when the February series is reported next week. The
median dot in December was for the economy to grow 1.4% this year. The median
forecast in Bloomberg's monthly survey was for 2.1% growth, which is the same
as the IMF's projection. On tap today, February housing starts and permits,
which are expected to tick up after weather-related weakness in January.
Canada reports February CPI
today. Given the base
effect, the 0.6% median forecast in Bloomberg's survey translates into a 3.1%
year-over-year rate. It was at 2.9% in January. The low print in 2023 was in
June at 2.8%. The underlying core measures are expected to be flat. The swaps
market has about a 50% chance of a cut in June. It nearly fully discounted on
March 5, the day before the Bank of Canada met. The summary of its
deliberations will be published tomorrow. The market has about 60 bp of cuts
discounted for this year, which is two quarter-point moves and around a 40%
chance of a third. A 100 bp of cuts was fully discounted as recently as
February 20.
The US dollar hovered around
little changed levels against the Canadian dollar yesterday. Neither rising US equities (risk-on) nor
an extension of oil's rally did much for the Canadian dollar. Resistance near
CAD1.3550 has been overcome today and it the greenback looks poised to re-test
the CAD1.36 area that capped the greenback in late February and earlier this
month. A band of resistance extends toward CAD1.3620-25. Yesterday,
the US dollar rose for the third consecutive session against the Mexican
peso, which matches the longest advance in six months. The nearly 0.9%
rally was the most since mid-January. Mexico was on holiday yesterday and the
thin markets may have exacerbated the move. The US dollar rose to a six-day
high of almost MXN16.87. This effectively recouped nearly half of the
greenback's losses this month. Today, the dollar is approaching the next
retracement (61.8%) and the 20-day moving average are near MXN16.93. Brazil was
not closed and fell for the third consecutive session. In fact, the dollar
poked above BRL5.03, its highest level since last November 1. Nearly all
emerging market currencies fell yesterday. The South African rand (~-0.95%) was
the weakest followed by the Mexican peso (~0.75%). Emerging market currencies
are no match for the dollar's surge today. The MSCI Emerging Market Currency
Index is off for the fifth consecutive session.
In a new book, experts in a variety of fields explore nocebo effects – how negative expectations concerning health can make a person sick. It is the first time a book has been written on this subject.
“I think it’s the idea that words really matter. It’s fascinating that how we communicate can affect the outcome. Communication in health care is perhaps more important than the patient recognises,” says Charlotte Blease, who is a researcher at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health at Uppsala University.
Along with colleagues at Brown University in the United States and the University of Zurich in Switzerland she has written the book “The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick”. Nocebo is sometimes called the placebo’s evil twin. A placebo effect occurs when a patient thinks they feel better because of receiving medicine and part of that perception is due not to the drug but to positive expectations. The concept of the nocebo effect means that harmful things can happen because a person expects it – unconsciously or consciously. This is the first time the phenomenon has been addressed in a scholarly book. Researchers in medicine, history, culture, psychology and philosophy have examined it, each in their own particular area.
Credit: Catherine Blease
In a new book, experts in a variety of fields explore nocebo effects – how negative expectations concerning health can make a person sick. It is the first time a book has been written on this subject.
“I think it’s the idea that words really matter. It’s fascinating that how we communicate can affect the outcome. Communication in health care is perhaps more important than the patient recognises,” says Charlotte Blease, who is a researcher at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health at Uppsala University.
Along with colleagues at Brown University in the United States and the University of Zurich in Switzerland she has written the book “The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick”. Nocebo is sometimes called the placebo’s evil twin. A placebo effect occurs when a patient thinks they feel better because of receiving medicine and part of that perception is due not to the drug but to positive expectations. The concept of the nocebo effect means that harmful things can happen because a person expects it – unconsciously or consciously. This is the first time the phenomenon has been addressed in a scholarly book. Researchers in medicine, history, culture, psychology and philosophy have examined it, each in their own particular area.
“It’s a very new field, an emerging discipline. Even if the nocebo effect is documented far back in history, it perhaps became especially obvious during the coronavirus pandemic,” Blease says.
A previous study of patients during the pandemic (see below) shows that as many as three quarters of the reported side-effects of the coronavirus vaccine may be due to the nocebo effect. The study involved more than 45,000 participants, approximately half of whom were injected with a saline solution instead of the vaccine but despite this still experienced many side-effects such as nausea and headache. In the book, the authors highlight that one issue that disappeared in the discussion of side-effects during the coronavirus pandemic was that many of these were actually due to the nocebo effect.
“Whether this is due to expectations – the nocebo effect – remains to be understood. However, it is curious that so many participants reported side-effects after receiving no vaccine. Regardless, some people may have been put off by what they heard about side-effects,” Blease comments.
On the off chance you hadn’t noticed, the world appears to be at an especially precarious moment presently. Obviously, war continues to rage in Ukraine and Gaza, with no end in sight to either conflict. Great Britain and Japan are currently in recession. Canada’s economy is an absolute disaster, with almost no hope of near-term recovery. Much of continental Europe and China are struggling economically, if not officially contracting. Some experts believe that the global economy more generally is sliding, slowly but surely, into recession. The only economic bright spot in the world is the United States, and even here we have our problems with consumer spending and sentiment, massive credit concerns, and inarguably sticky inflation.
Everywhere one looks, chaos reigns—or, at the very least, bubbles just below the surface.
Perhaps most telling among the signs of disarray is the unnerving rise of antisemitism in the United States, Europe, and throughout the world. Antisemitism, in general, has been intensifying, slowly but surely, over the last decade or so. Over the last few months, however, it has emerged fully into the open, undaunted and unembarrassed. What was once considered shameful and disconcerting is now warmly welcomed as a “rational” response to American foreign policy, Israeli war practices, “colonialism,” and “white privilege.”
All of this is troubling, to put it mildly, both in and of itself and as a harbinger of greater and more deadly global unrest.
Hatred of and anger toward Jews is not the same as other forms of bigotry.
In many ways, the history of Western anti-Jewish hatred mirrors the history of Western political chaos and collapse. Or, to put it another way, historically, Jews are not only the perennial scapegoats during periods of social upheaval and displacement, but resurgent anti-Semitism serves as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the rise of revolutionary movements.
In his classic, The Pursuit of the Millennium, the British historian Norman Cohn argues that the Jewish diaspora generally fit comfortably, if tentatively into European society for most of the first thousand years or so A.D., and only became a hated and perpetually persecuted minority with the rise of utopian Millenarianism that accompanied and then outlived the Crusades. Beginning then and continuing for the next nearly a thousand years, Europeans came to associate Jews with the antichrist and thus to associate hatred and persecution of Jews with preparing the battlespace for the Second Coming. Many historians, including Hannah Arendt, believed that the anti-Semitism that was such an integral part of the West’s 20th-century collapse into totalitarianism was relatively new and, in any case, distinct from medieval anti-Semitism. Cohn’s history suggests otherwise, connecting the religious eschatology of medieval Europe to the quasi-religious eschatology of post-Enlightenment Europe, thereby connecting the persistence of Western anti-Semitism as well.
Cohn tells us that millenarian moments and the millenarian movements that capitalize on those moments all share a common group of characteristics. They all appear under certain social and economic conditions. They all appeal to a certain segment of the population at large, who then present themselves as economic, spiritual, and political leaders. They all utilize scapegoats, meaning that they all identify a different, usually much smaller segment of the population on whom they can blame all the world’s ills and then set about to cure those ills through the elimination of the scapegoat. And more often than not, that scapegoat tends to be Jewish.
In the conclusion to the second edition of Pursuit of the Millennium, Cohn notes that the millenarian fervor of the middle ages may have changed, but it never really died, and it maintained its common characteristics even as it became secular or “quasi-religious.” He wrote:
The story told in Pursuit of the Millennium ended some four centuries ago but is not without relevance to our own times. [I have] shown in another work [Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion] how closely the Nazi phantasy of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy of destruction is related to the phantasies that inspired Emico of Leningrad and the Master of Hungary; and how mass disorientation and insecurity have fostered the demonization of the Jew in this as in much earlier centuries. The parallels and indeed the continuity are incontestable.
The parallels between the rise of Nazism and the current global unrest and demonization of the Jewish people are also largely incontestable. The election that brought Hitler to power didn’t happen in a vacuum, after all. It happened in the midst of global chaos, namely the Great Depression. It also followed the decadence and distortion of the Weimer Era. As the New York Fed has shown, even a global pandemic—the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak—contributed to the sense of discomfort and disconnect among the German population, prompting increased support for Hitler and his Nazis.
The present global chaos doesn’t have to end the same way the chaos of a century ago did. It doesn’t have to result in the ascension of millenarian ideologies and their totalitarian defenders. History has shown that extremism can be short-circuited and radical ideologies undone. The first step in doing so, however, must be to bring an end to the rationalization of the persecution of the world’s Jews. The second step is to end the persecution itself.
Antisemitism is ugly and shameful, and it must be treated as such. For their sake and ours.
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