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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27265 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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It’s denialism about the role of nazism in Ukrainian nationalism. Like it or not Ukrainian nationalism involves lionizing figures who supported the nazis and often as not lionizing actual neo nazis themselves, and I mean actually literally nazis not just politically incorrect. A general policy of denial had the side effect of bringing in an actual literal SS trooper. This man is viewed as a hero by lots of Ukrainians for the same reason lots of southerners view Lee and stonewall Jackson as heros. But pro-Ukraine western posturing denies that and then gets caught with its pants down. Simple as.

This seems to be fair to me for the people between Russia and Germany. They didn’t have a choice to pick the good side. I would have chosen Franco or Pinochet when those countries had their communists moment. Eastern front you had no good choice. And Russia isn’t just communists - they have a military based authoritarian form that did brutal oppress their neighbors for centuries. It’s not Cuban Marxism which is poverty but hasn’t been very deadly (they’ve allowed mass emigration any time it gets hot which was an immigrant group the US was fine with).

A lot of wars don’t have the obviously good side to be on. And that applies to modern wars.

I think at least we can say, Nazism doesn't mean what it means to us to people who lived in Eastern Europe.

One of the more surreal things I've experienced lately was when I asked on the Motte Telegram back around the start of the war (which has a couple of actual Ukranian residents), basically, so what's the deal with Jewish Zelensky having an apparently-actual-Nazi unit (Azov battalion) serving in his army? Taking Western views at least sort of seriously, surely an actual Nazi unit would refuse to take orders from a Jewish President, and a Jewish President would surely boot an actual Nazi unit out of the army he was Commander-In-Chief of. But all the Ukrainian residents were like, yeah, so what, why do you think this is weird? Even for English-speakers who presumably have at least some exposure to the Anglosphere, the idea that Nazis and Jews might not like each other much just seemed incomprehensible to them.

The way I understand it, the Azov aren't that Nazi and Zelensky is really not that Jewish. And even Hitler had a Jew or two he liked.

They are about as Nazi as the IRA were terrorists.

In the abstract there's room for nuance in this discussion, but in the context of the year of our lord 2023, it will never not be funny that an actual member of the Waffen-SS got a standing ovation from the very people who claim "honk honk" is code for "heil Hitler".

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