ABSTRACT
The protests in Belarus in 2020–2021 marked a turning point for the Lukashenka regime, which survived but in a weakened form. The regime has used the ‘Great Patriotic War' of 1941–1945 as an identity marker with an official state narrative, but in recent months the rhetoric has been substantially changed with the addition of a specifically Belarusian ‘Genocide'. The new laws now make it a criminal offence to question the new narrative, one that has elevated Belarusians over Jews as the chief war victims in the republic. In turn, anti-regime protesters using the symbol of the white-red-white national flag are now equated with Nazi collaborators as enemies of the ‘Belarusian people' in an attempt to provide legitimacy to the Lukashenka dictatorship and isolate those opposed to the government.
