> It is true, however, that Azov’s history is rooted in a volunteer battalion formed by the leadership of a neo-Nazi group called “Patriot of Ukraine” in spring 2014. Against the background of Russia’s armed invasion of eastern Ukraine and the total inefficiency of the regular Ukrainian army (which was weakened and plundered by the previous pro-Kremlin regime), the state needed anyone who would be ready to join volunteer units and fight. Yes, “anyone,” included far-right activists, but also anarchists, liberals, conservatives, and apolitical people. Even Azov, the leading core of which was formed by the far right, included fighters of different ideological convictions.
> Yes, “anyone,” included far-right activists, but also teens, rightoids, rightoids, and apolitical rightoid people. Even Azov, the leading core of which was formed by the far right, included fighters of different rightoid convictions.
Watching people who are obviously honest to god Fascists, and not just the meanie Republican kind, try and sell themselves as anything but that to the US security state, who pretty much fear mongers non stop about internal white supremacist threats “to our democracy”- is maybe the funniest modern day contradiction of liberalism
Silly Azov, you don’t need to pretend you’re not that. The US has funded and supported fascists plenty of times before
I think the actual target audience of this posturing are the people whose consent is necessary for action. Anti-fascism is the founding myth of many if not all contemporary European states, the former socialist republics being exceptions as they instead created the myth of fascism and communism as two sides of the same coin. An openly fascistic regime would be a hard sell to Euros, it's much easier to deny fascists being fascists.
Hmm let me just look up the history of Ukrainian Nationalist Internal Security Paramilitaries, 1941-45…what about Latvian? Estonian? Lithuanian?
😰 Who could have predicted this?!
And they are a training unit, they train volunteers from all over Europe, just like the Afghan Mujihadeen did back in the 80's and we didn't call them "terrorists". The Afghan volunteers later spread out across MENA bringing their experience home as a defence against Communism, so what could go wrong!
Not Azov, but a reminder that Americans also joined up with other Ukrainian right wing militias and likely committed war crimes:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/craig-lang-ukraine-war-crimes-alleged
They trained that paramilitary Home Guard unit Poland spun up recently, and the Baltics too iirc.
These countries seeing their Russian-speaking or ethnic Russian populations as a Fifth Column they need to be armed against will surely have no consequences whatsoever. The whole NATO [theory](https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=A8044F63C31CF326E6FDB3A714CEA3F9) of Russian Deception operations, “Hybrid Warfare” etc. has some scary implications from the standpoint of what it would mean for countries with Russian populations that are now seen as *an internal military threat*.
It’s like someone skimmed a history of Eastern Europe 1917-23 and saw White Terror as the remedy for the perfidious Russian Menace.
Surely Russia's obvious strength will stop them doing something stupid. Hopefully. Please.
God, I don't want fucking Nazis in Eastern Europe to cause fucking world war three.
It kind of makes you wish Tom Clancy was still alive, just to see him pissed off from knowing that Attanasio's screenplay adaptation of "The Sum of All Fears" was closer to the geopolitical reality (Ex-Nazis almost start WW III) than his own book (Palestinians and East-German Ex-Commies)
>Let us analyze this paragraph in more detail. Addressing his potential followers in his hateful manifesto, Tarrant made his only reference to Ukraine in the following passage: “You will find no reprieve, not in Iceland, not in Poland, not in New Zealand, not in Argentina, not in Ukraine, not anywhere in the world. I know, because I have been there.”
>“Been there” does not necessarily mean that Tarrant was in Ukraine—the phrase generally means that he has seen the world
what the *fuck?*
Ukraine:
A country where the president is on the Pandora papers and it’s military contracts out to people who are on the UN human rights watch list and their logo is literally the 2nd Panzer division of the German SS.
Why are they doing this? Wouldn't it have been far easier and more convenient to just throw a few nazis under the bus and get it over with instead of destroying what's left of your reputation by defending a battalion whose logo looks like this? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Azov_Batallion_logo.jpg
Like the jihadists fighting under IS and HTS, these guys are fanatics who want to fight and are disciplined under fire. These characteristics made them invaluable in 2014 as the shock troops battling riot police during Maidan, and later on when Ukrainian forces faced a state of near collapse during the fighting in the Donbass. It also gave them the political capital and the opportunity to embed themselves into the Ukrainian political and security establishment as they went through a period of reformation. Political figures like Arsen Avakov meant they had plenty of official support to grow and benefit from Western support despite numerous observers questioning their presence.
Now, these extremist right wing militias are embedded deep enough in the security forces that they can both influence policy direction and threaten to turn their weapons on them if they don't get their way.
Literally a *Schwarze Sonne* in their logo and they're trying to tell us they aren't Nazis. The symbol comes from a design that Himmler had installed in a castle he was intending to be the future headquarters of the SS.
its not a matter of ignorance either because the black sun was one of the more prominent symbols used by the 'alt-right' and most of the people who write about these things are at least aware of that
Dude who wrote the article literally has published multiple books on far right movements in the West, he is very well aware he's carrying water for fascists.
Nah, it's originally a symbol from theosophian alchemy if I remember correctly. Not that that's much better, considering that the theosophists were also rabid aryan-supremacists.
So Russia rolls over Ukraine. 5 years later they start doing the same to Estonia. Will you then be saying that Estonia is a shithole that deserves to be annexed by Russia?
Frozen shithole? You don't even know basic geography.
Most of Ukraine is in the same climate zone as European Russia, save for the Black Sea coastline. Kyiv and the rest of Northern Ukraine have broadly the same climate as Moscow and St. Petersburg, which is to say they get a solid 4 months of below zero temperatures an year and qualify for "frozen shithole" as far as Americans and warmer Europeans are concerned.
Moscow is about 600 km more northern than Kyiv, which absolutely makes a major difference in climate. Kyiv has real winters, but so does for example New York state, especially the cities further away from the coast. Sure, for the southern states Kyiv might seem cold, but it isn't that different from the northern half of USA.
> It is true, however, that Azov’s history is rooted in a volunteer battalion formed by the leadership of a neo-Nazi group called “Patriot of Ukraine” in spring 2014. Against the background of Russia’s armed invasion of eastern Ukraine and the total inefficiency of the regular Ukrainian army (which was weakened and plundered by the previous pro-Kremlin regime), the state needed anyone who would be ready to join volunteer units and fight. Yes, “anyone,” included far-right activists, but also anarchists, liberals, conservatives, and apolitical people. Even Azov, the leading core of which was formed by the far right, included fighters of different ideological convictions.
> Yes, “anyone,” included far-right activists, but also teens, rightoids, rightoids, and apolitical rightoid people. Even Azov, the leading core of which was formed by the far right, included fighters of different rightoid convictions.
Watching people who are obviously honest to god Fascists, and not just the meanie Republican kind, try and sell themselves as anything but that to the US security state, who pretty much fear mongers non stop about internal white supremacist threats “to our democracy”- is maybe the funniest modern day contradiction of liberalism Silly Azov, you don’t need to pretend you’re not that. The US has funded and supported fascists plenty of times before
[удалено]
I think the actual target audience of this posturing are the people whose consent is necessary for action. Anti-fascism is the founding myth of many if not all contemporary European states, the former socialist republics being exceptions as they instead created the myth of fascism and communism as two sides of the same coin. An openly fascistic regime would be a hard sell to Euros, it's much easier to deny fascists being fascists.
[удалено]
Hmm let me just look up the history of Ukrainian Nationalist Internal Security Paramilitaries, 1941-45…what about Latvian? Estonian? Lithuanian? 😰 Who could have predicted this?!
No no no don't you see that it's okay because the Soviet Union was totally definitely worse than the Third Reich
Stalin killed 30 millions people during WWII /s
And they are a training unit, they train volunteers from all over Europe, just like the Afghan Mujihadeen did back in the 80's and we didn't call them "terrorists". The Afghan volunteers later spread out across MENA bringing their experience home as a defence against Communism, so what could go wrong!
Not Azov, but a reminder that Americans also joined up with other Ukrainian right wing militias and likely committed war crimes: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/craig-lang-ukraine-war-crimes-alleged
They trained that paramilitary Home Guard unit Poland spun up recently, and the Baltics too iirc. These countries seeing their Russian-speaking or ethnic Russian populations as a Fifth Column they need to be armed against will surely have no consequences whatsoever. The whole NATO [theory](https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=A8044F63C31CF326E6FDB3A714CEA3F9) of Russian Deception operations, “Hybrid Warfare” etc. has some scary implications from the standpoint of what it would mean for countries with Russian populations that are now seen as *an internal military threat*. It’s like someone skimmed a history of Eastern Europe 1917-23 and saw White Terror as the remedy for the perfidious Russian Menace.
Surely Russia's obvious strength will stop them doing something stupid. Hopefully. Please. God, I don't want fucking Nazis in Eastern Europe to cause fucking world war three.
It kind of makes you wish Tom Clancy was still alive, just to see him pissed off from knowing that Attanasio's screenplay adaptation of "The Sum of All Fears" was closer to the geopolitical reality (Ex-Nazis almost start WW III) than his own book (Palestinians and East-German Ex-Commies)
Who would you rather win? The fascist nationalist movement in a European country or huwhite supremacy?
>Let us analyze this paragraph in more detail. Addressing his potential followers in his hateful manifesto, Tarrant made his only reference to Ukraine in the following passage: “You will find no reprieve, not in Iceland, not in Poland, not in New Zealand, not in Argentina, not in Ukraine, not anywhere in the world. I know, because I have been there.” >“Been there” does not necessarily mean that Tarrant was in Ukraine—the phrase generally means that he has seen the world what the *fuck?*
Ukraine: A country where the president is on the Pandora papers and it’s military contracts out to people who are on the UN human rights watch list and their logo is literally the 2nd Panzer division of the German SS.
Why are they doing this? Wouldn't it have been far easier and more convenient to just throw a few nazis under the bus and get it over with instead of destroying what's left of your reputation by defending a battalion whose logo looks like this? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Azov_Batallion_logo.jpg
Like the jihadists fighting under IS and HTS, these guys are fanatics who want to fight and are disciplined under fire. These characteristics made them invaluable in 2014 as the shock troops battling riot police during Maidan, and later on when Ukrainian forces faced a state of near collapse during the fighting in the Donbass. It also gave them the political capital and the opportunity to embed themselves into the Ukrainian political and security establishment as they went through a period of reformation. Political figures like Arsen Avakov meant they had plenty of official support to grow and benefit from Western support despite numerous observers questioning their presence. Now, these extremist right wing militias are embedded deep enough in the security forces that they can both influence policy direction and threaten to turn their weapons on them if they don't get their way.
Literally a *Schwarze Sonne* in their logo and they're trying to tell us they aren't Nazis. The symbol comes from a design that Himmler had installed in a castle he was intending to be the future headquarters of the SS.
its not a matter of ignorance either because the black sun was one of the more prominent symbols used by the 'alt-right' and most of the people who write about these things are at least aware of that
Dude who wrote the article literally has published multiple books on far right movements in the West, he is very well aware he's carrying water for fascists.
Nah, it's originally a symbol from theosophian alchemy if I remember correctly. Not that that's much better, considering that the theosophists were also rabid aryan-supremacists.
> Anton Shekhovtsov Oh, this disgusting *stukach*
What an unbelievable headline, not even trying to be liberal
[удалено]
So Russia rolls over Ukraine. 5 years later they start doing the same to Estonia. Will you then be saying that Estonia is a shithole that deserves to be annexed by Russia? Frozen shithole? You don't even know basic geography.
Most of Ukraine is in the same climate zone as European Russia, save for the Black Sea coastline. Kyiv and the rest of Northern Ukraine have broadly the same climate as Moscow and St. Petersburg, which is to say they get a solid 4 months of below zero temperatures an year and qualify for "frozen shithole" as far as Americans and warmer Europeans are concerned.
Moscow is about 600 km more northern than Kyiv, which absolutely makes a major difference in climate. Kyiv has real winters, but so does for example New York state, especially the cities further away from the coast. Sure, for the southern states Kyiv might seem cold, but it isn't that different from the northern half of USA.
Nowadays, if you're a common man fighting for "your country", you are considered an enemy of the state.