Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
www.thenation.com
Five years after the Maidan uprising, anti-Semitism and fascist-inflected ultranationalism are rampant.

Here's how Ukraine was being reported by the West before the war.

Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.

These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.

Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march. A neo-Nazi battalion in the heart of Europe

If you whitewash NAZI POGROMS just because you want to beat Russia, fuck you. Siding with far-right fascists to defeat far-right fascists doesn't make you the good guy. There is no lesser of two evils here.

If you dismiss any criticism of Ukraine as Russian propaganda, you might want to ask why the rest of the world, including the West, was concerned about Nazism in the area and then suddenly changed their tune only after the war started.

We should be getting both sides into peace negotiations, not prolonging the bloodshed and providing Nazis with illegal cluster bombs

        • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          We've got every photo of Ukrainian troops as evidence they're largely Nazis. We've even got public statements by Ukrainian senior leadership about exterminating Russians and sympathizers in any territory they recapture. What's your proof the same is true about Russian troops or leadership? As far as I'm aware, this "Wagner are Nazis" theory comes from one single picture of the shit bag who used to be in charge of Wagner but isn't any longer.

          edit: while I'm thinking about it - what is your obsession with Putin? Do you understand that the war is popular in Russia? That Putin is more popular now than he was before the war? That a very common sentiment in Russian elected government and the citizenry is that the war hasn't been prosecuted hard enough? If Putin were couped by Russians the war would almost certainly get kicked into high gear and the Russians would start honestly trying to capture all of Ukraine. This great man theory obsession with Putin himself is just off the mark.

          • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            You're right that the Ukrainian military is filled with Nazis (this doesn't mean all of them or a majority are consciously, but it does seem to be getting difficult to deny that now given the amount of evidence, at least when not of Ukrainian kids just pulled of the street).

            However the idea that there is not a far-right presence in the Russian military is also not very believable, not least because we are still talking about a military state of a quite right-wing, nationalist, capitalist country. This in no way makes it equivalent to Ukraine however, because in Ukraine it appears to be far more integrated at every level of the military and state to be point where it appears like ultra-nationalism, bleeding into fascism, are the status-quo ideology.

            • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Leaving aside the difference between "far right presence in the Russian military" and "explicit, patch-wearing, self-identifying neo nazis directly in leadership positions all over the Ukrainian state and military", this is the point I am making. Whether there are right wingers in militaries isn't even worth discussing - the answer is yes. Russia doesn't have nazi units, they don't have nazis in charge, they haven't been doing pogroms for eight years, and to try to equate that with Ukraine is just outright wrong.

        • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don't agree with your analysis, but to take your example for a moment I'd argue that sending nazis into a meat grinder of a war to fight other nazis is a pretty good way to kill two birds with one stone.

          • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            1 year ago

            I remember one comment about conclusion of battle for Artemyovsk (Bakhmut), especially the losses: "Ukraine emptied its universities, Russia emptied its prisons".

            By the way, my first comment on Hexbear, love from lemmygrad, comrades

            Show care

    • riley0
      ·
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

        • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          You should check out parenti he has a quote about this:

          During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

          You're just going to assume anything Putin or Russia says is wrong and bad. There's no logic or rationality in your worldview - you have decided Putin is a Bad Man and will for any new information into this preconceived notion.