https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/yeptpp/what_is_the_blackred_ukraine_mean_ive_seen_it_at/
Yeah, the whole "Ukranians are Nazis" thing is really dumb, Russia is the one acting like Nazis in this war.
Luckily this comment is getting ratio'd by a bunch of other comments saying 'actually this is the Blood and Soil Banderite ultra right aka literal Ukranian Nazi's flag'
acting like Nazis
gosh I sure hope this person doesn't look too closely at US history
Yeah. Part of me wants to go Doomer-Third Worldist mode but there will always be a certain portion of Western liberals who actually take their ideals seriously and get disillusioned at how much they actually matter in the eyes of the capitalist state. For me, it was the US's stance towards "dictatorships" while supporting Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Keep your expectations low, but don't keep them at zero. We can't force anyone to join the left, they have to make the decision on their own.
In fairness, those aren't the only Ukrainian flags.
Hell, even the Blue and Yellow was based at one point.
(On a sidenote, we need a Ukrainian SSR flag emoji titled :ukraine-actually-cool:)
In the liberal brain communists are Nazis and Nazis are communists
Good is bad
Bad is good
Back is white
This is why I recommend The Jakarta Method | (Arrr!) to libs at every opportunity. It does a great job of showing that all those "evil communists" were basically just workers (largely indigenous peoples) trying not to be treated like slaves and being slaughtered for it.
Liberalism is just the nice suit and tie fascism wears when it has to visit its grandma.
Praviy Sector flag is not the same as ancom flag being flown on some Russian tanks. Sometimes the Right Sector flag comes without the white text which makes it extra ambiguous. Ukrainian insurgent army also uses that flag. But if you ask anyone flying it they'll say it's "Blood and Soil."
Other Ukrainian groups that are explicitly fascist (as opposed to implicitly, which is practically every non-banned party at this point) include:
- Svoboda party (they used the notorious "wolfsangel" symbol before Azov battalion was even formed but switched to the 3-fingered blue and yellow flag to represent the trident of Ukraine when they realized the wolfsangel made them look bad internationally. They love to do marches in public honoring WW2 fascists like Bandera, and other OUN figures, and SS Galicia.
- C14 (or S14) a paramilitary gang that used to be beholden to Svoboda but switched their allegiance to right sector. They're known for anti-Roma violence. They clear nomad encampents and burn them down. They carry out pogroms. The guy who runs this group, Yehven Karas, had a mask off interview where he admits that the neo-nazis in Ukraine, despite being only a small percentage of the population, were highly armed and trained vanguardists and therefore instrumental in the US-backed coup that put Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko into power in 2014. Yatsenyuk plunged the country into poverty by taking out huge IMF loans, naturally.
- Azov battalion (of course), the one everyone has heard about and the one that, at this point, I think gets so much attention precisely because the Western media likes to dismiss them as the only fascist group when that's clearly not the case. One thing people forget about them though, is that the Guardian covered their child soldier camps back in 2018.
- The Social National Assembly
- Patriot of Ukraine
- The Social National Party
- Ukrainian National Assembly - the guy who runs this, Dmitro Korchynsky, had a total mask-off interview where he admitted the reason the fascists in Ukraine tolerant a Jew as president is because they know it makes them look less bigoted to the 1st world liberals sending them money and weapons.
- Ukrainian Insurgent Army
- National Corps
Reminder also that most of these groups are concentrated in the West around Lviv. It was these areas that voted heavily against Zelensky and hoped for the re-election of Poroshenko (the US-backed coup leader from 2014).. It was these groups that most strongly militarized against the Russian-speaking separatist regions in the East (who ironically voted for Zelensky more than any other part of the country).
One question people have is, why so many groups? Why is there no United Front for this type of thing? Well, these guys split into so many groups because they disagree on a lot of stuff. Some are Orthodox Christian. Others are Pagan. Some are secular. Some are Pan-Slavic. Others identify more heavily with the West. Some hate Roma more than Jews. Some hate Jews more than Roma. They disagree on economics sometimes. They disagree on which countries to accept aid from, etc.
Ukrainian National Assembly - the guy who runs this, Dmitro Korchynsky, had a total mask-off interview where he admitted the reason the fascists in Ukraine tolerant a Jew as president is because they know it makes them look less bigoted to the 1st world liberals sending them money and weapons.
"They tolerate Jews
for entirely cynical purposestherefore they aren't Nazis" from the same people who brought you "Stalin and Hitler signed the MR Pact and invaded Poland so they must have been best buddies".Nuance is hard.
yeah this whole year has felt like god is tripping on some research chemicals. I find myself :heartbreaking: agreeing :heartbreaking: with freaks like Kissinger and Sachs about how the West has gone too far with this war while people like :wtyp-gang: have totally standard lib takes on this shit. And the media is doing a propaganda push that feels like it dwarfs the Iraq war in terms of its one-sidedness.
Social National Party
When you're trying to be discreet but not really
Russian-speaking separatist regions in the East (who ironically voted for Zelensky more than any other part of the country).
This was because Zelensky ran as a peace candidate who would end the war in Donbas. Also, the separatist regions couldn't vote, it was the Russian speaking areas that had stayed in Ukraine that voted for an end to the war.
You should also add National Corps to the list. They're what Patriot of Ukraine turned into and were also founded by Andriy Biletsky (founder of Azov), I've seen their symbol used in Ukraine. C14 is also known as Sich battalion and is always reported as such in the west to avoid awkward question about what the 14 stands for.
Also, the separatist regions couldn’t vote, it was the Russian speaking areas that had stayed in Ukraine that voted for an end to the war.
I thought Donetsk and Luhansk could vote? Crimea couldn't. When I say "separatist regions" I mean regions with heavy separatist presence, not Crimea, which had already separated. The election map I linked showed that Donetsk and Luhansk voted overwhelmingly for Zelensky.
You should also add National Corps to the list. They’re what Patriot of Ukraine turned into and were also founded by Andriy Biletsky (founder of Azov), I’ve seen their symbol used in Ukraine. C14 is also known as Sich battalion and is always reported as such in the west to avoid awkward question about what the 14 stands for.
Thanks.
The parts of Donbas that didn't (successfully) separate from Ukraine could vote, the parts that did successfully separate and become the Donbas republics could not vote for Zelensky. I may have misunderstood you as there are a lot of ways to draw a political map of Ukraine. We have the actual separatist regions that turned into the Donbas republics, the regions where there was a separatist uprising that was crushed (Mariupol and Lysychansk most famously), regions with significant separatist sentiment but without large uprisings, separatist and Russia sympathetic regions , Russian speaking regions , and finally Crimea.
No BRo please bro you don<t understand bro bro the flag is not nazi flag bro please the red is blood bro and the black symbolise the soil bro, plaes is a other strain of apolitical nazi, bro is ultranationalism bro please bro
Doesn't like Svoboda or pravy sektor have a red and black flag?
the organization also fought against the Germans starting from February 1943, with many cases of collaboration with the German forces in the fight against the Soviets.[12] From late spring 1944, the UPA and Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B (OUN-B)—faced with Soviet advances—also cooperated with German forces
So they fought against the nazis while also collaborating with the nazis and then went back to fighting for and collaborating with the nazis
Okay
That just makes it sound like they pissed off the Nazis and started a turf war while working for them, then made up later and became besties again.
Nothing like a Ukrainian saying, "Being a Nazi is actually pretty normal in Ukraine now".
Ukranian here, look our view of Bandera is really complex and controversial in Ukraine, but a lot still see him as just a freedom fighter, same way Taliban predecessor organisations are seen freedom fighters in Afghanistan. My personal opinion is that I don't know what do I think of him, he was a freedom fighter but also a terrorist, fascist piece of shit. That flag isn't seen also as Banderite by majority of Ukranians, all they know is that it is used by Azov, and Azov are those guys who fight Russians with no retreat and fantasticism. If you bring Azov being fascist to a lot of Ukranians there won't be much of reaction because Azov isn't viewed as evil.
Edit:And also usage of that flag is kinda normal by now, pretty sure saw it flown in Kharkiv before I fled to Europe .