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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   23726 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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I have to agree with Dean, there aren't any real Nazis in Ukraine. You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

Far rightists? Ultranationalists? People who love sonnenrads and take every opportunity to get edgy tattoos? People who threaten anyone who opposes maximalist war aims? Sure. If we use the liberal definition of Nazism, then Ukraine is full of Nazis. The same people who were hysterical about Trump's fascist rhetoric could hardly ignore the Waffen SS LARPing.

The real trouble is all the weapons that have been pumped into such a corrupt country. They'll presumably find their way to third parties after the war, if not during it.

I have to agree with Dean, there aren't any real Nazis in Ukraine. You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

There were jews and half Jews in the Wehrmacht, and to a lesser degree the SS and also the Waffen-SS..

Hitler could make anyone an Aryan by fiat. He did just that with the Mischlinges Field Marshal Erhard Milch, General der Flieger Helmuth Wilberg, and others who had proved their military value. One photograph of Wilberg shows him resplendent in uniform with no fewer than 12 medals pinned to his proud Aryan, formerly half-Jewish, chest. Nonetheless, despite Wilberg’s altered religious status, he insisted that he fought not for the Fuehrer, but for Fatherland and Volk. The distinction was a common refrain among Hitler’s Jewish military men, and some Aryans as well.

Sure but being Jewish is a ethnically rooted property, not an ideological property like Nazism. You could be French and hate the French nation, seek its destruction and yet still be French. It would be impossible to be a French nationalist, however.

Is it? Except for the most extreme Jews, conversion happen and are recognized now. They're merely difficult, which serves to preserve quality.

You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

This gets at an interesting difference between the western and Russian (or at least Putin's) definitions of Nazi. In the west, the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to exterminate Jews, and any feelings they have about Russians are orthogonal to their Naziness, whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs (and Russians in particular as the leading Slavic people), and it's their feelings about Jews that are orthogonal to their Naziness.

Now, I would say that the former definition is closer to historical reality than the latter, but this misunderstanding is why we in the west have been bemused by speeches about the "denazification" of a country with a Jewish president. Moreover, your typical Ukrainian Neo-Nazi probably ended up that way because he has heard all his life from the Russians that Nazis are people who hate Russians, and since he does in fact hate Russians he figures he might as well put on the uniform and become more intimidating to his enemies.

whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs (and Russians in particular as the leading Slavic people),

As it happens, the Slavs were categorised by the Nazis as an Aryan race until 1939, after the conquest of Poland.

whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs

Which makes the Azov's "Ukrainians are the real Slavs, Russians are Finno-Turkic mongrels" ideology even harder to square with neo-Nazism.

The defining feature of neo-Nazis in Russian discourse is being a Russophobic nationalist while being white. Since there are no countries that draw a meaningful distinction between Russians as an ethnic group and Russia as a state, Russian propaganda doesn't have to distinguish between instances of both either. With one exception: if you're a Russian ethnic nationalist living in Russia that hates the multiculturalist message of the Russian state, you're definitely a neo-Nazi.

You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

I think that Real Life is often much more nuanced than this – people are often happy to team up with someone they hate to fight someone else they hate more, and military exigencies in particular makes for strange bedfellows. Random examples: the Free Arabian Legion, qualified Nazi "support" for (or at least limited facilitation of) early Zionism, support during the Civil War on the Confederate side for mass freeings of slaves to serve as soldiers.

I get the vague impression that a feature among far-right Ukrainian ethnonationalists is that the RUSSIANS are the inferior racial types, but that doesn't prevent them from thinking the same thing is true of Jews. Possibly e.g. Andriy Biletsky has moderated his views over time, but it seems quite possible to me he thinks fighting for a country run by a Jew is politically expedient for an anti-Jewish agenda over the long run. Of course I think one could, ah, question whether Ukrainian ethnonationalists are really "Nazis" even if they self-identify as Nazis for much the same reason and in the same sense that one could question if Lenin was really a Marxist/Communist.

I tend to agree with the commenters on here that corruption resulting in weapons getting trafficked is probably more likely than "a few hundred neo-Nazis topple the Ukrainian government" (although I doubt that's a problem unique to Azov) but in potentially unstable countries like, possibly, a future Ukraine I think there's a lot of potential for a few hundred guys with military experience and hardline political views to do Stuff up to and including Regime change. I'm not really sure that they need US weapons to do that, but of course it will look awkward if they end up using them.

They do seem to adhere to at least some Nazi racial doctrines, like ‘Russians are subhuman mongoloids’. Yes they draw the aryan/inter mensch line farther East than Hitler did, but it’s a similar idea.

What was incredibly amusing to me on several levels was that Hitler apparently felt that, in his "tier list" of races so to speak, the British were not the top but they were pretty high up the list. So for that reason he was reluctant to bring them into the war and even apparently didn't think it was very likely they would side against him, because race reasons.

Not surprising, given they're a Germanic people.

I won't deny that they could be far-right, fascist, white supremacists (for a certain definition of white)... But the distinguishing feature of Nazism from those ideologies is anti-Semitism.

I reckon you could be really excited about authoritarianism, militarism and eugenics but lukewarm on anti-Semitism and still be a Nazi. But you can't be pro-Jewish. You can't take money from Israeli billionaires!

https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/06/24/ukraine-jewish-billionaires-batallion-sent-to-fight-pro-russian-militias/

Sure, but this misunderstands the reason for the Azov nazi LARP, which is that they hate Russians and Nazis fought Russians. Finnish neonazis are likewise primarily motivated by anti-Russian and anti-Communist sentiment. Again, almost all are actually antisemitic, but antisemitism isn’t incompatible with serving under a Jewish President provided you agree with his war aims. The Azov position is that Zelensky wavered on Russia but was strong-armed into his current position by (ethnic) Ukrainian patriots. Plus, it’s not as if Putin isn’t also very close to many powerful Jewish oligarchs and friends (and Russia to Israel), so the war can’t really be described as some kind of antisemitic struggle in any case. If Ukraine wins, Zelensky can always be replaced; if it loses, no Ukrainian is going to be in charge.

They fight for that Jew because he toes their line and gives them what they want. Should that ever change, they'll turn on him instantly.

All few hundred (or at the most couple thousand) of them? Azov is so small I don't think the rest of the Ukrainian military and government is concerned.

I suspect they wouldn't be alone in their move.

That would mean a significant portion of Ukrainians are Nazis so dedicated they are willing to coup attempt. I'm not very well informed here, but I don't suppose that is the case.

I think a couple hundred hardcore guys with combat experience and a clear vision are plenty enough people to topple a government under the right circumstances.

The Seychelles coup attempt only had 53 mercenaries, and by all accounts could have likely succeeded if airport security hadn't detected their weapons.

I can totally buy that, given Sirsky and Zelensky’s popularity problems with the troops, Azov could have enough of the armed forces behind them to credibly threaten a coup if they decide to do that and pick the right moment, sort of like how seal team six could probably cause a lot more problems than you’d think.

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