Firstly, thank you for accepting me into the community. Within the last few weeks I came to the realisation that there is no such thing as a healthy, stable, capitalist society. I want to learn more about communism because it could be a real alternative to the frankly poor conditions of working class life in the UK (and any other capitalist country).
There is one thing that stands out to me here that I’d like to understand because it’s a little jarring. In a few places (e.g. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9012898/6943775) on the topic of Russia, specifically the war, people seem to believe the invasion was justified and that the Ukraine government is Nazi? Why? From my point of view, which I do admit is going to have inherent Western/NATO bias because I live in the UK, is that this is an example of Russian imperialism. If the US invaded Canada, or the UK invaded France, it would rightly be considered a travesty. Why is Russia not given the same treatment? After all, it is not communist any more and it is working class people being sent to die in this war.
Shouldn’t the modern Russian government receive the same scrutiny as any other capitalist government?
Things are more complicated than most people realize, and many people here would probably have slightly different opinions on the specifics. I think it’s false to say people here all are of the opinion that Russia is justified in it’s war against Ukraine, but I’m not going to bother rehashing everything here, and will instead link you to some reading you should do related to the topic. After going through these you should come back to this post, and ask any new questions you have. It’s tough to discuss something so detailed if you don’t have the background info.
Some useful background: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:The_Maidan_Massacre_Trial_and_Investigation_Revelations:_Implications_for_the_Ukraine-Russia_War_and_Relations#2_Evidence_of_a_Cover-Up
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Donbass
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_coup_d'etat
On Nazi’s in Ukraine: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Assault_Brigade_“Azov”
Thank you! I had no idea about the Azov movement or its brigade. The links to Naziism are undeniable, I don’t know why this isn’t a bigger deal to the West. I tried seeing if Starmer had ever commented on Azov, but I can’t find anything.
To be honest that really threw me, I don’t know how the Ukraine government can defend not only allowing Nazi groups to exist, but to actually bring them into the military? I think I understand where people come from now - it reminds me of the old saying about “if four people are sat at a table and a Nazi joins them, there are five Nazis at the table”. If the Ukrainian government oppose Naziism, and any decent person should, then they need to take a hard stance on these groups instead of allying with them.
I’m going to need more time to think and read, but I appreciate your response. The issue certainly isn’t a simple one.
It’s not a bigger deal to the west because the west have always supported Naziism so long as it didn’t harm their own interests. The US supplied Nazi Germany with weapons and didn’t want to get involved in the war until Germany declared war on them. They recruited Nazi scientists into their government after WW2, put Nazi officials in charge of west Germany. Brought on Hitlers Chief of staff to help run NATO. etc. The US also sent military advisers to train Azov, and armed them. They are the allies of the west. Just as the Israeli Fascist Colonial Project is. For the west supporting Nazis is not an exception, but the rule. The exception to the rule was WW2, and only because the German fascists directly threatened the interests of the US, and UK. Prior to Germany attacking them they were singing Hitlers praises.
Just look at the current American government. They aren’t even pretending anymore to not be fascists.
Prior to 2022 some western media still reported on Azov and the widespread Nazi problem in Ukraine:
Afterwards, they memoryholed all of that and acted as if there were never any Nazis there, or they somehow all became moderates overnight. They then proceeded to lie to the Western public and tell us that the Russians invented the whole Nazi story to justify the invasion. The western media began a co-ordinated campaign to whitewash the most heinous and violent Nazi groups in Ukraine, groups which by 2022 were already notorious in Ukraine for war crimes and atrocities against civilians and which have only gotten more brutal since, so that they could send weapons and money to these groups to fight the Russians.
Now the Kiev regime not only tolerates these Nazis but elevates them to the status of national heroes. They have adopted the slogans and symbols of these Nazis, as well as their worship and celebration as national heroes of WW2 Nazi collaborators, war criminals and mass murderers who participated in the Holocaust. We are talking about groups which massacred hundreds of thousands of Poles, Jews and Ukrainians alike, and yet the current Kiev regime chooses to name streets and Ukrainian army units after them (they also name units after actual German Nazi Wehrmacht and SS units).
The cult of Bandera is the foundation of modern Ukrainian nationalism. This is one of the reasons why large parts of predominantly ethnic Russian eastern Ukraine rebelled against this regime in 2014.
You can find extensive research on the history and present day outsize influence of this cult on Ukrainian politics here: https://banderalobby.substack.com/
If you want something more concise and conversational on the topic of this cult you can read this polemic: Denazification - Bandera Cult (content warning for some ableist language).
Did you know the USA and Israel are siding with Al-Qaïda in Syria? Not just as a pragmatic reaction to them winning, I mean from the start. The western media reports on it, but without all that much spin manages to rehabilitate them even after spending years hyping them up as their primary adversary.
The Nazi elements in the Ukrainian military and leadership is similar. You’ll hear lots about Nazis in Ukraine from western media in the future, when they need to justify why they abandoned their economic commitments after the war.
I don’t know about Starmer, but Johnson called them heroes. Here’s a photo of him holding up a Azov flag with a wolfsangel on it. The men next to him are POWs that were released by Russia. One of them is currently working for the IDF.
But it’s not limited to Azov. There are other Nazi-exclusive army sections. For example 67th Mechanized Brigade is staffed by former Right Sector militias. These were Nazis who were waging racial war without the government’s (explicit) consent using artillery and besieging ethnic-Russia-majority cities. Extremely high-profile terrorists. But all is forgiven as their experience is needed. They received tank-training in the UK.
The Nazi rehabilitation is very advanced in Ukraine. Normal everyday people who aren’t super political or “online” view Stephan Bandera as a heroic figure, or at least as someone who’s okay for the government to celebrate.
I didn’t know about Syria, but it doesn’t surprise me. It’s not the first time the US or UK armed al Qaeda!
In fact there are a lot of similarities between the US and UK arming the Afghan Mujahedeen and these Ukrainian paramilitary groups. After the Ukraine war is over, I wonder what these armed and trained Nazis will do…
On Syria: there was a famous email exchange leaked by Wikileaks in which a US state department official and later Biden regime national security advisor tells Hillary Clinton verbatim “Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria”.
So do we. Many people have been pointing this out since the conflict escalated in 2022 when the West began supporting these groups wholesale.
What happens when you have tens of thousands of well armed, radicalized extremists with extensive military experience, who have severe PTSD and are used to killing without remorse, and who will be searching for someone to blame for their defeat? Who will they point to as having “betrayed” them and robbed them of their victory, in a similar way to what the German WWI veterans did who formed the first fascist and Nazi paramilitary organizations?
Many of them also have drone warfare experience and drones are extremely easy to smuggle across borders and very hard to detect and shoot down at short notice. Where will they go and who will they target for mass casualty terrorist attacks? Russia has learned how to take appropriate precautions for the most part. Also these people will be wanted as war criminals by Russia so they will have a hard time getting in. Europe on the other hand is already welcoming many of these people with open arms…