There is nothing quite like the experience of living through history. Our generation has witnessed our fair share of the sorts of events whose significance can only be grasped through the drawing of often-clumsy historical parallels. The COVID-19 pandemic was initially framed as another SARS, and once it’s true mortality and transmissibility was understood, it was another Black Death. Trump’s transparently racist insistence on referring to it by its country of origin brought to mind the strange history behind the naming of the Spanish Flu. The Jan. 6 coup attempt scared us with its similarities to the Munich Beer Hall Putsch and the knowledge of what loomed close after.

Thus it should come as no surprise that our current history, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, comes with endless comparisons as well. Putin, often the boogeyman of western liberals, has been cast in an almost machiavellian light, a conspirator behind all the world’s woes. This fixation, made no less pathological by his actual malice, has been the primary focus of these comparisons. His imperial ambitions westward, obsession with lost Soviet glory, and nuclear saber rattling against NATO does seem to echo the Soviet despots of old. Comparisons also abound to a certain Austrian fascist, be it his strongman persona, ultranationalist expansion as the world sits on its hands, or widespread appeal among rightists even in the West (looking at you Tucker Carlson).

Despite their seeming accuracy, these approximations are reductionist and counterproductive. History is not cyclical, nor is it a crafted story, each figure and each event ought not be reduced to an echo of something else, or we risk missing an accurate picture of what lies before us. When we rush to cast the real people around us as aspects of some larger narrative we abandon the skepticism that we need to react appropriately.

Nonetheless, we must understand the desire for, and utility of, historical comparison. Without a point of reference, our observations are adrift. For this purpose, then, I argue that we have missed the most accurate and useful reference. It lies not afield, centuries back, but historically speaking under our feet.
If a comparison must be drawn, Putin is historically most similar to our very own George Bush. A bumbling fool atop a crumbling empire, beholden only to a small cadre of wealthy benefactors, a butcher who sought invasion under false pretenses to shore up domestic discontent, a war criminal, a user of chemical weapons, a bomber of civilians. With regards to utility, the comparisons to leaders long dead does little for the world, history has already judged them.

Thus I entreat you, just as you weep and pray with the people of Ukraine, weep and pray for those left starving and dead in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and Libya. Just as you seek the deposition and of Putin as his lackeys, seek justice against our own criminals of war.