Ukraine 16: We love you Vald! We really, really do!

[Free Northman Reborn]

Alarich

Agreed on the myriad definitions of left vs right and how each one needs to be seen in its historical and geographical context. However, I was pointing out that historical Nazism has no more similarity to right wing politics in the US today than it does to left wing politics today.

If anything, its centralization of power agrees more with the left's ideology than with the right today.

Of course, right wing in Europe means something quite different to right wing in America, I grant that too.

[Dicer]

Is this constant claim that the Pro-Western government in Kiev is Nazi run actual working anywhere but Russia and Serbia? And by claiming the US installed this government deliberately aren't they implying Pres. Obama is a Nazi or Nazi sympathiser?

Well we really can't blame them when things like this happen:

http://www.alternet.org/world/how-israel-lobby-protected-ukrainian-neo-nazis

AlterNet has learned that an amendment to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have forbidden US assistance, training and weapons to neo-Nazis and other extremists in Ukraine was kept out of the final bill by the Republican-led House Rules Committee. Introduced by Democratic Representative John Conyers, the amendment was intended to help tamp down on violent confrontations between Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists.

If passed, Conyers' amendment would have explicitly barred those found to have offered “praise or glorification of Nazism or its collaborators, including through the use of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or other similar symbols” from receiving any form of support from the US Department of Defense.

Besides Parubiy, the People’s Front included Andriy Biletsky, leader of the Azov militia, an overtly neo-Nazi fighting force that has been on the front lines of the battle against Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Azov deputy commander Vadym Troyan joined him on the party’s electoral list, rounding out a peculiar mix of khaki shirt clad fascists and buttoned-down neo-liberals.

Unlike Svoboda, these figures do not even feign moderation. “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival,” Biletsky recently wrote. “A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

Azov fighters are united by their nostalgia for Nazi Germany and embrace of open fascism. Sporting swastika tattoos, the battalion “flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag,” the New York Times’ Andrew Kramer recently reported.

With the government in a state of flux, Azov is filling the void in the East.

As Ukrainian parliamentarian Gregory Nemira complained to reporter Anna Nemtsova in September, “The president still has not appointed a chief of staff for the armed forces. He has not admitted we are in a state of war, preferring to throw the battalions like Azov into the most dangerous combat zones, where authorities would not have the courage to send regular troops.”

Azov is precisely the sort of neo-Nazi organization that Conyers’ NDAA amendment would have deprived of US assistance. The amendment died a quiet death and Azov’s American supply line remains intact.

So the Russian separatists are actually fighting against white supremacist neo-nazis sporting swastikas in eastern Ukraine who are being supported by the government in Kiev and the west.

[Mr Fixit]

The US lead by a Black left of center President is actual a Nazi front?

:shocked:

No really.

:shocked:

Well, if you think that (and I agree), a good place to start would also to be stop accusing the country that suffered the most from Nazism of following Nazi policies. You can't have it both ways.

[Shryke]

Well, if you think that (and I agree), a good place to start would also to be stop accusing the country that suffered the most from Nazism of following Nazi policies. You can't have it both ways.

Actually you can. Because your argument here makes no sense and is not at all the same type of argument Ser Scot is making.

One can have been invaded by the Nazis and still decades later enact policies one could very much call Nazi-esque.

[Mr Fixit]

One can have been invaded by the Nazis and still decades later enact policies one could very much call Nazi-esque.

Oh, but I don't disagree. I, for example, I think that Israel follows Nazi policies, although we all know what Jews suffered through in WWII. I was just mocking Scot's argument that US can't support any Nazi policies and/or governments just because it has a black left-leaning president. After all, forget Ukraine. Isn't the US the prime supporter of Israel in all its apartheid glory, a country whose government I'd accuse of implementing something very similar to Nazi ideology and policy?

[Alarich]

Well, if you think that (and I agree), a good place to start would also to be stop accusing the country that suffered the most from Nazism of following Nazi policies. You can't have it both ways.

Actually, I believe that being a historical victim of Nazi atrocities doesn't make you immune to racism, nationalism and a authoritarian policies. And I believe that's a fallacy a lot of people fall for: We were victims in the past, it is therefore impossible for us to be perpetrators now. One doesn't follow from the other, though.

What makes comparisons to the Nazis problematic is the uniqueness of the Holocaust: they instuted a system genocide like the professional running of a factory and made it their raison d'état; if we take that element of professional and industrialized extermination away, although the Nazi state as we know it ceases to exist, we still do find many policies and methods that are not at all unique to the Nazis but rather a common occurrence in dictatorial / authoritarian regimes.

What is problematic is the implicit conclusion: if this and that method is used, mass genocide will follow. But, if we can manage the mental abstraction to not draw this conclusion, I believe that we can draw many interesting lessons on how authoritarian regimes in Europe work, under which circumstances they come to power, how their foreign policies affect other European states etc. That's why I drew for example a comparison between the annexation of Crimea and the annexation of the Sudeten in Czechoslowakia.

[JoeyBanana]

So the Russian separatists are actually fighting against white supremacist neo-nazis sporting swastikas in eastern Ukraine who are being supported by the government in Kiev and the west.

Yes, and Chechen rebels and volunteers from Croatia, while Serbs have joined the separatist's fight against the right sector militias. There's also a rather...unique story about a ukrainian-german kid that enlisted for Ukraine because his father fights for the other side. Not to mention that theres probably some more, less publicized weird shit going on. It's the nature of militias, very few tend to be democratic, secular, liberal, egalitarian, progressive pioneers of human rights.

Azov mobilizes the neo-nazi scene, we know this. A big portion of collaborators with the Russians are thugs and criminals, we also know this. Both factions are desperate for manpower and willing to accept pretty much everyone that is fit for combat.

Doesn't mean supporting Ukraine equals supporting neo-nazis or Chechen terrorists or patricide.

[Dicer]

Yes, and Chechen rebels and volunteers from Croatia, while Serbs have joined the separatist's fight against the right sector militias. There's also a rather...unique story about a ukrainian-german kid that enlisted for Ukraine because his father fights for the other side. Not to mention that theres probably some more, less publicized weird shit going on. It's the nature of militias, very few tend to be democratic, secular, liberal, egalitarian, progressive pioneers of human rights.

Azov mobilizes the neo-nazi scene, we know this. A big portion of collaborators with the Russians are thugs and criminals, we also know this. Both factions are desperate for manpower and willing to accept pretty much everyone that is fit for combat.

Yes, but the government in Kiev is supporting Azov. Azov is fighting the Russian separatists on behalf of the government of Kiev. The current President has admitted that only Azov is willing to fight there. And the US government is passing bills that allows for these neo nazis to get weapons.

The Russian contention is that they are fighting Neo-Nazis. And they are not wrong.

No one is excusing the Russian separatists who are involved in their own kind of human rights violations. But the claim that the Kiev government and the west don't have anything to do with the neo-nazis is false.

Doesn't mean supporting Ukraine equals supporting neo-nazis or Chechen terrorists or patricide.

This is the equivalent of saying "Yeah we send in ISIS to do our dirty work and we give them the weapons and money to go kill people, but we really don't support what they stand for so it's no big deal!"

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Dicer,

The Russian contention, in the lovely piece of propeganda they broadcast this weekend, is that the Ukrainian Government is a pack of Nazi's and that they were put in place deliberately by the US because they were Nazi's. That a tad more extreme claim than your very carefully phrased claim that "the Russians are fighting the Ukrainians who are represented by Neo-nazi's at the front."

[Dicer]

Dicer,

The Russian contention, in the lovely piece of propeganda they broadcast this weekend, is that the Ukrainian Government is a pack of Nazi's and that they were put in place deliberately by the US because they were Nazi's. That a tad more extreme claim than your very carefully phrased claim that "the Russians are fighting the Ukrainians who are represented by Neo-nazi's at the front."

Well of course they are going to extrapolate and use a lot of hyperbole. Its propaganda. What else would you expect? Americans and Canadians have also accused the Russians of being Nazis. Did not Canada's PM call Putin Hitler or something like that? There's propaganda on both sides.

But what I am saying is that there is a kernel of truth to what the Russians are saying. Neo-Nazis are fighting on behalf of the Ukrainian govt that is being propped up by the West. The American govt. is passing bills that could see weapons ending up in the hands of people who want to 'lead white people on a crusade' or some such shit. Frankly I am not surprised, considering all the nasty, head chopping folks, the American govt. has funded and trained. So, far all your bewilderment that Obama is being accused of being a Nazi front, his administration could actually be arming people like Biletsky who the Russian separatists are fighting. In which case, their accusation stands true.

[Horza]

HE LIVES: https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/577422630023667712

[ElizabethB.]

Well of course they are going to extrapolate and use a lot of hyperbole. Its propaganda. What else would you expect? Americans and Canadians have also accused the Russians of being Nazis. Did not Canada's PM call Putin Hitler or something like that? There's propaganda on both sides.But what I am saying is that there is a kernel of truth to what the Russians are saying. Neo-Nazis are fighting on behalf of the Ukrainian govt that is being propped up by the West. The American govt. is passing bills that could see weapons ending up in the hands of people who want to 'lead white people on a crusade' or some such shit. Frankly, I am not surprised, considering all the nasty, head chopping folks, the American govt. has funded and trained. So, far all your bewilderment that Obama is being accused of being a Nazi front, his administration could actually be arming people like Biletsky who the Russian separatists are fighting. In which case, their accusation stands true.

I was counting the seconds for someone to go "but the US..." in defense of Russia

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Horza,

Is there a date stamp on that photo

Dicer,

But you are offering apology for a film that is, by your self-admission, a hyperbolic piece of propaganda that accuses the US of deliberately starting a new Nazi State. Really? And people in Russia and Serbia are buying into this giant stinking fly cover pile of bullshit.

Why is Russia engaging in this kind of blatent fearmongering propaganda?

[Horza]

Horza,

Is there a date stamp on that photo

It's from his scheduled press conference with the Kyrgyz president, happening right now. That was a fun week.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Horza,

I wonder where he got to? Is the baby born in Switzerland theory accurate? Could the moral paragon of Russia have become the father of an out of wedlock child. The Russian Orthodox Patriarch would just love that.

[ElizabethB.]

Horza,

I wonder where he got to? Is the baby born in Switzerland theory accurate? Could the moral paragon of Russia have become the father of an out of wedlock child. The Russian Orthodox Patriarch would just love that.

The rumours have it, it would be his third actually. What a potent and a healthy man!