Hiding Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Reality
By William Blum
Ever since serious protest broke out in Ukraine in February the Western mainstream media, particularly in the United States, has seriously downplayed the fact that the usual suspects – the US/European Union/NATO triumvirate – have been on the same side as the neo-Nazis.
In the U.S. it’s been virtually unmentionable. I’m sure that a poll taken in the United States on this issue would reveal near universal ignorance of the numerous neo-Nazi actions, including publicly calling for death to “Russians, Communists and Jews.” But in the past week the dirty little secret has somehow poked its head out from behind the curtain a bit.
On Sept. 9, NBCnews.com reported that “German TV shows Nazi symbols on helmets of Ukraine soldiers.” The German station showed pictures of a soldier wearing a combat helmet with the “SS runes” of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps. (Runes are the letters of an alphabet used by ancient Germanic peoples.) A second soldier was shown with a swastika on his helmet.On Sept. 13, the Washington Post showed a photo of the sleeping quarter of a member of the Azov Battalion, one of the Ukrainian paramilitary units fighting the pro-Russian separatists. On the wall above the bed is a large swastika. Not to worry, the Post quoted the platoon leader stating that the soldiers embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of “romantic” idea.
Yet, it is Russian president Vladimir Putin who is compared to Adolf Hitler by everyone from Prince Charles to Princess Hillary because of the incorporation of Crimea as part of Russia. On this question Putin has stated:
“The Crimean authorities have relied on the well-known Kosovo precedent, a precedent our Western partners created themselves, with their own hands, so to speak. In a situation absolutely similar to the Crimean one, they deemed Kosovo’s secession from Serbia to be legitimate, arguing everywhere that no permission from the country’s central authorities was required for the unilateral declaration of independence.
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http://consortiumnews.com/2014/09/16/hiding-ukraines-neo-nazi-reality/
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Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)I'd fight back. And resist rejoining the country that sent them.
It's a mystery to me why *John Kerry* is lining up on the side of Svoboda and Right Sector and the Azov battalion. I had such high expectations for SOS Kerry.
Igel
(35,337 posts)The inference, if we follow this same logic in the same way, is that you are a Nazi. Not because of what you do personally, but because you share geographic proximity.
Lots of the people in the Azov Battalion aren't Nazis, either. In their case, it's guilt by association.
Even worse is sorting out what it means to be a "Nazi." It's easy to get hung up on a word, but in Russia Nazis are anti-German and pro-Russian and Putin likes some of them. Some of the Nazis are Nazis because they don't like Communism and Russian imperialism. Some are Nazis because they want an ethnically pure Ukraine free of Jews and Russians and Poles and Hungarians. These are rather different sorts of people, and their common cause when fighting an insurgency that's led by Russians and a minority of Russian speakers who have driven out Ukrainians, Jews, bashed gays and blacks and outsiders in general, is to crush the insurgency and fight Communism. Not because Communism itself is bad, but because Communism is inexorably linked because of the history of the ideology in that part of the world with Russian supremacy and Stalinism.
Which explains why the Russian Nazis and Communists can be allies: They're united by an inflated sense of militarism and ethnic supremacy. That gives you the natsbols, the "national bolsheviks" (aka limonovtsy, since Limonov is their party leader) who have no trouble working with a very nationalistic anti-Communist party and the Communist Party in supporting the DPR and LPR.
The level of moral purity expected of combatants is absurd. It's like saying the US should have lost against the Germans and Japanese in WWII because some KKK members fought for America--and then to infer that everybody in America must have therefore supported the KKK, including the African-Americans. People get caught up on words and moral absolutism. The numbers are clear: Right Sector and Svoboda get less than 2% of the vote most of the time. Only when they have a single issue that attracts support--not being a Russian satrapy, for instance--does their support increase. As soon as another party is also pro-independence then Right Sector and Svoboda drops back to nearly nothing. Their support minimal even then is clustered in areas where the OUN and Banderites had some support at the time, with the Banderites (and not others) allying themselve with Hitler simply because both were against the Russians. Rather like what would happen if the US and Iran teamed up against the IS--mutual support on other issues should not be assumed. This isn't justifying some of their members' hate; it is trying to understand instead of sitting in blind judgment because of a label. Labels are convenient, as are stereotypes, but are no substitute for understanding the reality behind them or implications.
Not all politics in other countries can or should be viewed through the rather narrow and sclerotic eyes of American politics afficionados. In fact, most can't. It continues to screw up people that the liberals in Russia want human rights and for a long time pushed for increased levels of competition and capitalism while the conservatives tend to be communists and socialists and want a controlled economy.
newthinking
(3,982 posts)the fascist groups, which really explodes the narrative that they are somehow not empowered.
Ukraine's former President &Prime Minister to formalize and strengthen alliance with Neo-Nazi groups
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025546464
