jake hanrahan downplays azov's influence in this one a bit, bit suspicious to me
like sure, azov might not be an influential political party but it's still pretty bad if you have an explicitly fascist regiment of your army
anyway, the takeaway for me from this video is just how horrifying the experience of being a refugee is. i feel fucking awful living in the US seeing how these peoples' lives are just completely upended, especially knowing that my government is doing the same shit or worse to dozens of nations
The juxtaposition of him saying that Russia has a bigger Nazi problem because their Nazis might have connections to the FSB while talking about Azov, an official battalion, is incredibly sus.
yeah lmao the fact that they just happened to find a recruiting poster for neofascists on the wall should prove that they're not a nonentity. the US has plenty of white nationalists and it's still pretty rare to see their propaganda
The march in the footage cut in was pretty big too. Also I saw the footage from Oliver Stone's documentary in 2016 and the fash torch marches looked pretty fucking big. It isn't every Ukrainian, obviously, but it seems like there are a fair number of sympathizers not just in azov, but in other groups like svoboda, right sector, and trident.
I think people tend to fixate on Azov since it's the most obvious example but the problem goes all the way back to OUN and Ukrainian nationalism being entwined with fascism for basically the country's entire history. Much like how US fascism is present culturally and institutionally, the problem is not one explicit battalion but an idea baked into modern Ukrainian society broadly.
Yeah I think a more on point Channel 5 video would've interrogated the Azov point a little more (and feature the anarchists for more than like 2 minutes), but I assume being in a foreign war zone limits how much they can look into things
In classic Andrew style I do appreciate that he just talked to people and didn’t offer any real commentary. This video defiantly spins a narrative though, but I’m not sure that could be avoided. I doubt there are many ethnic Russian among the refugees in that city and even if there are it possible he just didn’t meet any. I would be interested to see if in any further coverage if he ever manages to meet a separatist fighter/supporter to possible get a different perspective on the conflict, or even just some Ukrainians who don’t like Zelensky, but I guess the former is unlikely since it’d put him near the frontlines.
Edit: God dammit Andrew was trying to give some benefit of the doubt here but this is pretty undeniably a bad look.
In classic Andrew style I do appreciate that he just talked to people and didn’t offer any real commentary.
He didn't just interview people though, he interspersed clips of Western media peddling the Bucha propaganda.
Nobody really knows what happened there for sure yet, idk what he was really supposed to cut to when people brought it up.
I mean fans who aren’t online probably need some context for wtf people are talking about when they name drop the incident. Cutting to mainstream news is a good way to summarize what’s being talked about.
I agree he could have handled this better but it was better than I expected honestly.
I would be interested to see if in any further coverage if he ever manages to meet a separatist fighter/supporter to possible get a different perspective on the conflict, or even just some Ukrainians who don’t like Zelensky, but I guess the former is unlikely since it’d put him near the frontlines.
He could go to Russia and interview people there about it without presenting them as brainwashed like this video did.
I mean Ukraine is where the conflict is so it makes sense he’d want to go there, or at least go there first. Also I imagine it’s harder for journalists to get in there right now.
Radio Free Europe footage
come on andrew don't do me like this
Part of their aid efforts were to help the army too :shrek-pixel-despair:
what was wild was the anarchist saying russians were just gonna eradicate anyone politically active no matter their politics.
and how the anarchists/leftist needed to team up with n*zis to fight the Russians
:jokerfied:
remember u gotta team up with nazis to fight 'nazis' u cannot by any means let them fight it out
I mean, I doubt Russia is friendly to anarchist groups.
If they fight alongside Nazis then fuck em but I could see that getting really messy.
Very weak video, disappointed in you Andrew.
I don't think this stuff really works when he can't actually talk to a wide variety of people himself. No room to extract the right quotes or responses.
Also the Popular Front guy was generally full of shit.
Hmm, this has a different kind of glow to it, feels like Andrew is going for a sort of Robert Evans vibe
His podcast series on Amazon was produced by Sophie Lichterman who produces Evans shows.
This gave me fed posting vibes. I mean Russia is definitely committing war crimes and Ukrainian citizens are dying. But they just happen to walk across an Azov battalion poster in a major Ukrainian city? If a small fascist battalion is able to recruit in a city it isn’t even operating in, then it’s influence is outsized.
All the people interviewed including the anarchists gave run of the mill talking points. Yeah Zelenskyy won 72% of the vote, but Lviv is the only district he didn’t win in lol. The eastern regions of Ukraine voted for Zelenskyy more than the more Ukrainian side of the country.
Andrew isn’t a fed but the resources he uses are sus.
Andrew isn’t a fed but the resources he uses are sus.
I mean IDK what other resources he'd have access to, at least without not potentially getting him into deep shit with the State Dept., Ukrainian government or Russian government. I doubt anyone is letting him near Donbas, or really the front at all. Him mucking around refugee camps is probably the best he can manage and I imagine most of the people there are going to be pretty anti-Putin.
Jake Hanrahan (the Brit interviewed here repeatedly) has embedded on both sides of the Donbas conflict, the problem is that he's a monumental dickhead with just about every brainworm you can imagine. I'm like 50% on whether he's a british fed. Either way he's worked for Vice and ProPublica which should tell you a lot.
I think they just put him in a pig pen for journalists and kept him far away from the people who would have more controversial opinions.
did he go meet up with Patrick Lancaster and do frontline reporting, or did he wuss out and stay in the safe zones?
Edit: I just realized if he did anything cool, he'd probably be branded a terrorist. so, I guess :shrug-outta-hecks: hope the flight there and back again was worth it.
Now that would have been a hell of an interview. That was kind of what I was hoping for too but not surprised by the actual content.
