Contra Cold War Redux: 2. Name the Nazi
How 'punch a Nazi’ (to fight Donald Trump) became ‘arm a Nazi’ (to fight Vladimir Putin)
‘We are not resigning ourselves to the boundaries of thinking in terms of a single region. We defend not only the Ukrainian nation, national identity, but also the Slavic element, the European element, and in the end, the white race…
‘Our movement is growing, but it’s still too small to compare it to a real movement of the kind Germany had in between wars. But we’re moving towards this goal…
‘It’s a special concept. It concerns expansion, even geographical. We say that we want to return something, reconquer it. We talk about Eastern Europe. Ukraine is now undergoing revolution and can become the vanguard of this Reconquista. From this space it will expand to the Western Europe, and then of course to the whole world…
‘Before we tended to counterpose Russia and the West, and tried to find allies in the West. Now we understand that they work hand-in-hand. There are demands to turn Ukraine into an object of international relations and processes (as opposed to an active subject), they come from both the West and the East and we have to combat them.’
—Olena Semanyaka, International Secretary of the National Corps of the Azov Battalion (‘First Lady of Ukrainian Nationalism’)
I am not—I repeat, not—doing what American journos and pols do and calling anyone to my right a ‘Nazi.’ That trivialises an accusation which should be deadly serious. I would not even necessarily call someone whom is a Fascist a Nazi, because Nazism is a very specific theory and praxis of Fascism, if it can even be called Fascism. Mussolini (dictator of Italy 1922-43), Franco (dictator of Spain 1939-75), Salazar (dictator of Portugal 1932-68), were Fascists, but not Nazis.1 Pinochet (dictator of Chile 1973-90) and Videla (dictator of Argentina 1976-81) were para-Fascists/Fascist-adjacent, but not Nazis.
Yet when readings from the works of Stepan Bandera are held at the Maidan Museum in Kiev, at an event titled ‘The World of Stepan Bandera: Ideas and Modern Challenges,’ I will name them as Nazi.
Who was Stepan Bandera? He was the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. ‘The Jews in the USSR,’ declared a OUN manifesto that could have been copied-and-pasted from Mein Kampf, ‘constitute the most faithful support of the ruling Bolshevik Regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in Ukraine.’ According to the OUN, the Jews were ‘the prop of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime’ but the Russians were ‘the principal foe.’
In Bandera's hometown of Lvov (or ‘Lwow’ in Polish, because that part of Ukraine was historically Polish), the OUN carried out an infamous anti-Semitic pogrom. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler's feet,’ read an OUN pamphlet circulated in the Jewish ghetto after the Nazis had captured the city. In a few days, the OUN and other Ukrainian sympathisers had wiped out Lvov’s 4,000 Jews, using methods brutal even by Nazi standards. For example, crowds of Ukrainians gathered to watch OUN members publicly mortify and torture captured Jews (especially women, who were stripped, beaten, and even raped) and execute them with makeshift weapons such as farm tools. The ‘Wehrmacht Propaganda Company,’ a division of the Waffen-SS, took footage of the Lvov pogrom, which is available from the United States Holocaust Museum.
Bandera himself was later imprisoned by the Nazis for going rogue and declaring an independent Ukraine, whereas what the Nazis had planned was for a Banderist regime to rule Ukraine on their behalf after they had conquered the Soviet Union. (Today, when Banderite Ukrainians have to explain their hero to their Western patrons, they present him as someone who was ‘imprisoned by the Nazis,’ as if he were Martin Niemöller or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and not a Nazi collaborator who merely outlived his usefulness.) After Nazi defeat and Soviet victory, Bandera lived in Munich, Germany, as a Western asset whose nationalist contacts in Ukraine were used to surveil and sabotage the Soviet Union, until he was assassinated by the KGB in 1959. ‘Bandera,’ according to a CIA report from 1948, ‘is by nature a political intransigent of great personal ambition who has opposed all political organizations in the emigration which favor a representative form of government in Ukraine, as opposed to a mono-party, OUN/Bandera regime.’
Bandera has been proclaimed an official ‘Hero of Ukraine’ and monuments of him are going up in western Ukraine, which was historically non-Russian/non-Orthodox and the deep core of Ukrainian nationalism.
When the Azov Battalion is merged into the Ukrainian National Guard, I will name them as Nazi, and when a founder of the Azov Battalion (Arsen Akakov) is made Minister of the Interior, I will name him as Nazi.
What is the Azov Battalion? It is a neo-Nazi nationalist paramilitary force formed out of the old ‘Patriot of Ukraine’ militia which the so-called ‘Social Nationalists’ deployed to commit pogroms against ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities in post-Soviet and pre-Euromaidan Ukraine. Its official symbol is a combination of the Nazi wolfsangel and sonnenrad (both of which were occultic appropriations of ancient Germanic runes) with the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
The Anti-Defamation League’s description of the wolfsangel, adopted by the Azov Battalion, is as follows:
The Wolfsangel is an ancient runic symbol that was believed to be able to ward off wolves. Historically, it appeared in Germany in many places, ranging from guidestones on the sides of roads to heraldic use in the coats of arms of various towns; there is even a German city called Wolfsangel. Along with many other runic symbols, Nazi Germany appropriated the Wolfsangel. It appeared as part of the divisional insignia of several Waffen-SS units, including the notorious 2nd SS "Das Reich" Panzer Division. As a result, it became a symbol of choice for neo-Nazis in Europe and the United States. In the United States, the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations incorporated the Wolfsangel into their logo.
The mission of the Azov Battalion, according to Olena Semanyaka (the international secretary of its political ‘National Corps’), is ‘The Pan-European Reconquista,’ which would create in Ukraine and ultimately in all of Europe a dictatorship modeled after the Reichskommissariat dictatorship that ruled Ukraine with the support of the aforementioned Banderite OUN during the Second World War, now with the roles reversed.
At a black-metal/skinhead festival in Kiev called ‘Pact of Steel’ (a reference to the Stahlpakt and Patto d’Acciaio between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy from 1939 to 1943), Ms. Semanyaka outlined this pan-European nationalist strategy. ‘For the first time in a long period, the success of the Right in Western Europe—the rise of the Right because of refugee influx and terror—gives the chance for the realization of our “pact of steel” between East and West, between Western and Eastern European nationalists,’ she declared. ‘Our main task today is to show to Western nationalists, to inform them that Putin’s Russia is no alternative to the EU of the West and that the only ally for them is an alternative axis of European integration which is being formed now in Kiev, Central and Eastern Europe, as a springboard for the all-European reconquest, for the new Europe between the EU and neo-Soviet, neo-Bolshevik Putin’s Russia.’ American journos and pols, nota bene, Azov members like Ms. Semanyaka are against ‘Putin’s Russia’ from the far-right, not the center-left, and because it is too much of a liberal democracy, not because it is not enough of one.
Ms. Semanyaka refers to Ukraine and Eastern Europe, which will be the epicenter of the Pan-European Reconquista, as the ‘Intermarium.’ Latin for ‘between the seas’ (the Baltic and the Black), the concept of the Intermarium originated after the First World War and was originally conceived by Polish leaders as a confederation of Eastern-European nation-states as a counterweight to Germany and Russia. Today, NATO (which has incorporated Poland and other Baltic states with their historic enemy of Germany) fulfills that role, but for Ms. Semanyaka and other white nationalists in Eastern Europe, the Intermarium refers not just to collective security but to the purity of race and nation.
Prior to joining the Azov National Corps, Ms. Semanyaka was affiliated with the Russian neo-Eurasianist Alexander Dugin, but her experience in the Euromaidan narrowed her into a Ukrainian ethno-nationalist in the Banderite tradition. ‘Although it was an overthrow rather than the accomplished National Revolution,’ she said of the Euromaidan (which she meant was a mere transfer of power rather than a totalitarian transvaluation of all values), ‘the spirit of the latter has been awoken, and the massive patriotic consolidation in our country, not mentioning ascension of the Ukrainian Right, surprises us even more than this miraculous victory.’ She became the press secretary of Right Sector (an umbrella group of Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias which was decisive in the street-fighting of the Euromaidan) and disavowed her past ties with Duginism (whose namesake defined Ukraine as a ‘non-existent nation’ which existed only as an ‘accident of history,’ opposed the Euromaidan as Western-backed, and supported Russia’s re-annexation of Crimea).
All of the above are the reasons why far-right, white-nationalist, and crypto-fascist extremists from across the West have accepted Ms. Semanyaka’s invitation to events in Ukraine, such as when Greg Johnson spoke to the ‘Paneuropa Conference’ at the Azov National Corps’ ‘Reconquista Club.’ Introduced by his neo-Nazi hosts as ‘the intellectual engine behind the American Alt-Right, theorist of White Nationalism, Editor-in-Chief of Counter-Currents, a highly productive author whose books are also being translated into Ukrainian,’ Mr. Johnson spoke about his new book, The White Nationalist Manifesto. ‘I think that what’s happening in Ukraine is a model and an inspiration for nationalists of all white nations and I wanted to learn as much as possible about what you’re doing here and see as much as possible,’ Mr. Johnson said to his audience. ‘I’m enormously impressed and am taking notes.’ Later, he added, ‘I’m already planning to come back. I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen here. I want to come back and learn more.’ Mr. Johnson has given a platform to the Azov Battalion, including Ms. Semanyaka herself, introducing his American readers to Ukrainian neo-Nazism.
Despite YouTube’s strict policy of removing anything that can be construed as ‘hate speech,’ Mr. Johnson’s white-nationalist speech and many of Ms. Semanyaka’s own white-nationalist speeches can still be viewed on YouTube channels such as ‘Reconquista Club’ and ‘Intermarium Support Group.’ Indeed, Jared Taylor, the founder of the white-nationalist ‘American Renaissance’ website who has been de facto banned from all social media, has nevertheless found a platform through the Azov National Corps, where his speech on racial differences in ‘intelligence’ and ‘temperament’ at the ‘Ethnofutur VI’ conference of 2022 can still be seen on YouTube. (Mr. Taylor also appeared alongside Ms. Semanyaka in 2019 at another far-right conference in Finland.)
Promoting Ukrainian neo-Nazism at home and abroad is what the Azov Battalion’s political wing does. Its military wing recruits misanthropic male youth not just from Ukraine, but from across the wider Western world, for an opportunity to kill Jews, Roma, and of course Russians (including Russian Ukrainians). Indeed, as we speak, wannabe white supremacists and white nationalists are flocking to Ukraine to heed the Azov Battalion’s call to arms.
The following report is worth quoting in full:
White nationalist and neo-Nazi militants are flocking to Ukraine to help repel a Russian invasion following a plea for foreign volunteers from President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a report in the Washington Post. Thousands of fighters have already arrived, many said to hold a ‘shared vision for an ultranationalist ethno-state.’
Many of those hoping to join the fight in Ukraine are being recruited by the Mariupol-based Azov Battalion and other ethnic-supremacist factions, who’ve used their social media presence to bolster their ranks with foreign nationals.
‘[Azov's] official Telegram chat group has been packed with messages from people in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and other Western countries expressing interest in joining,’ extremism monitor Rita Katz wrote in the Post on Monday, adding that she hasn’t seen ‘this level of movement-wide recruitment activity since the Islamic State declared its so-called caliphate in 2014 and sought sympathizers globally to join its fold.’
Though some foreign fighters state they are enlisting out of a genuine desire to defend Ukraine from invading Russian soldiers, a number of online recruitment chats indicate different motives, as many voice hopes to ‘act out their violent fantasies’ and implement ‘a shared vision for an ultranationalist ethno-state.’ One prospective volunteer, a British military veteran identified only as ‘D,’ said traveling to Ukraine would allow him to ‘kill extra Jews.’ He later noted he had formed a group of other UK nationals to join him.
While the Azov Battalion is often at odds with President Zelensky–who is Jewish–it was formally integrated into Ukraine’s national guard and security forces not long after the Maidan coup of 2014. Despite attempts by some governments to stop their arms shipments from going to such groups, Azov was recently photographed toting Western weapons, as the US, UK and a long list of allies flood the Ukrainian warzone with rocket launchers, missiles and other lethal military aid.
It is unclear if the Biden administration is taking any measures to prevent violent white supremacists from traveling to Ukraine or stop American weapons from falling into the hands of groups that openly voice praise for Adolf Hitler. Though the State Department has urged all citizens from traveling to Ukraine, it recently noted it would not attempt to track any Americans who head there to join the fight.
Since Russia's invasion in late February, Facebook and Twitter have relaxed their rules against Azov and other Ukrainian groups espousing neo-Nazi ideologies, allowing users to express support in the context of the war. Twitter has allowed the Azov Battalion and the official National Guard handle to spread outright racist calls to violence, while chat platforms like Telegram continue to be heavily used for recruitment efforts.
[Western Neo-Nazis Respond to Azov's Call to Arms, by Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter, The Libertarian Institute, March 14 2022]
Are these the Ukrainian freedom-fighters with which we in ‘the West’ must stand against Russia’s evil Eastern hordes?
In Lvov, the site of the infamous anti-Semitic pogrom committed by the Banderist OUN during the Second World War, the Azov Battalion held a torchlit march through the city in honor of its perpetrator, General Roman Shukhevych, and on the anniversary of the pogrom threw Molotov cocktails into a synagogue and vandalized it with the threat, ‘Yids, remember July 1 [the date of the pogrom].’ The city of Lvov also celebrated the anniversary of the pogrom with a festival in honor of its perpetrator, ‘Shukhevychfest’ (who was not just a war criminal, according to the city-organisers, but ‘a successful musician, an athlete, a businessman’). The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was the first to report on this story, ‘Ukraine City to Hold Festival in Honor of a Nazi Collaborator Whose Troops Killed Jews,’ which was widely syndicated throughout Jewish media.
Want to have your stomach turned and your heart sunk? In a textbook case of ‘blowback,’ the Azov Battalion has, through its political and military wings, radicalised far-right Americans into neo-Nazism and trained American neo-Nazis who have plotted domestic terror attacks here in this country.
Want to have your stomach turned and your heart sunk even more? The USA and its allies such as Israel—et tu, Jews?—have provided armaments and advisors to the Azov Battalion!
Fortunately, thanks to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), the US Congress banned the direct arming of the Azov Battalion, but as these paramilitary neo-Nazis have been merged with the regular Ukrainian military, it is impossible to know whom it is we are arming. If anything, the incorporation of the Azov Battalion into the Ukrainian National Guard has not de-radicalised the former but rather radicalised the latter. The Ukrainian National Guard tweeted out a video of Azov-Battalion soldiers preparing to fight Chechen Muslims (or ‘orcs,’ as they put it) by dipping their bullets in lard. ‘This might normally outrage polite society in the US,’ tweeted the reporter who noticed it, ‘but these Nazis are waging holy war against Russians, so media will ignore it.’
This year, the Ukrainian foreign ministry and NATO both celebrated International Women’s Day—all hail the Woke Imperium!—by tweeting out pictures of female Ukrainian soldiers.2 ‘This International Women's Day we think of the remarkable women of Ukraine,’ stated NATO. ‘Their strength, bravery, and resilience are symbolic of the spirit of their nation.’
Oh, one other thing: These Ukrainian heroines were both wearing Nazi sonnenrad patches on their uniforms.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, ‘The sonnenrad or sunwheel is one of a number of ancient European symbols appropriated by the Nazis in their attempt to invent an idealized “Aryan/Norse” heritage.’
‘Symbolic of the spirit of their nation,’ you say?
NATO deleted its tweet, but Ukraine’s foreign ministry did not. Why would it? Bearing Nazi symbols has never stopped the West from sending the Ukrainian military the weapons that it needs to fight those filthy ‘Judeo-Bolsheviks’!
Keep in mind, too, that Ukrainian women in the military are not, contrary to the feminist fantasies of pro-war American journos and pols, combatants. They are the equivalent of the Israeli Defense Force’s ‘Beauty Brigade,’ used precisely for photo-ops such as these tweets, except instead of Gal-Gadot lookalikes in bikinis they are Slavs sporting sickles. To each his own, I suppose.
You have to read this article (which is chock full of links) to believe it:
Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultra-nationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.
Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultra-nationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.
Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march.
[Neo-Nazis and the Far Right are on the March in Ukraine, by Lev Golinkin, The Nation, 22 February 2019]
If you thought that it was bad enough having irredentist, illiberal, Islamist Turkey in NATO, just wait until sieg-heiling, goose-stepping, jack-booted, Holocaust-denying Ukraine! This, from an ‘American ally’ (who/what/when/where was this decided?), supposedly a scrappy, plucky underdog defending ‘the Occident’ and ‘democracy’ against ‘the Orient’ and ‘autocracy’?
‘Facebook’s new public policy manager for Ukraine is nationalist hawk who volunteered with fascist party during US-backed coup,’ by Ben Norton, The Grayzone, 4 June 2019
‘“Canada Adopts America First Foreign Policy,”’ US State Dept boasted in 2017, with appointment of FM Chrystia Freeland,’ by Ben Norton, The Grayzone, 5 July 2019
‘How a network of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists penetrated Canada’s Conservative Party to lobby for military conflict,’ by Moss Robeson, The Grayzone, 26 March 2020
‘Influential DC Ukrainian think tank hosts neo-Nazi activist convicted for racist violence,’ by Moss Robeson, The Grayzone, 20 July 2020
‘Ukrainian ultra-nationalist lobby flaunts influence over Biden, blocks top Russia expert’s appointment,’ by Moss Robeson, The Grayzone, 29 April 2021
That second-to-last article bears further detail. The US-Ukraine Foundation, through its ‘Friends of Ukraine’ network, hosted a webinar featuring Diana Vynohradova, who is an instructor at Right Sector’s ‘Kommandos’ youth camp. The topic of the webinar was a documentary of Vasyl Slipak, a Ukrainian opera singer who died whilst fighting with Right Sector's ‘Volunteer Ukrainian Corps.’
Aside from the obvious sieg heils and swastikas from her friends, note Ms. Vynohradova’s ‘1488’ and ‘sun cross’ tattoos (which according to the Anti-Defamation League ‘is one of the most important and commonly used white supremacist symbols’). The band which Ms. Vynohradova is sieg heiling is ‘Sokyra Peruna,’ a death metal band whose lead singer, Arseniy ‘Bilodub’ Klimachev, is a leader of Right Sector and the founder of the neo-Nazi clothing line ‘SvaStone.’
Shortly before the US-Ukraine Foundation’s webinar, the Ukrainian investigative-journalism website Zaborona published an exposé on the collusion of Ukrainian neo-Nazis like Ms. Vynohradova with EU and UK officials to propagate ‘fake news’ under the guise of ‘fact-checking.’ Zaborona reported that Ms. Vynohradova had been convicted for participation in the lynching of a Nigerian foreign national in Ukraine and that during the Euromaidan, she appeared on the main stage (the same stage where Sen. John McCain declared ‘we are all Ukrainians now’) to exhort the protestors ‘not to give in to supplications from the kikes.’ The editor of Zaborona, who had been ‘doxxed’ by Ms. Vynohradova's supporters and visited with death threats, fled Kiev with her family. None of this stopped the US-Ukraine Foundation from giving her a warm reception.
Yuri Biryukov, an adviser to the Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, posted a picture of himself on Facebook wearing a Nazi stahlhelm with the caption ‘1488.’ 1488 is a code for ‘the 14 Words’ coined by the American neo-Nazi and domestic terrorist David Lane (‘we must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children’ and/or ‘because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth’), as well as a code for Mr. Lane’s ‘88 Precepts’ and/or ‘Heil Hitler’ (H being the eighth letter of the alphabet). ‘Together, the numbers form a general endorsement of white supremacy and its beliefs,’ according to the ADL. ‘As such, they are ubiquitous within the white-supremacist movement—as graffiti, in graphics and tattoos, even in screen names and email addresses.’
Pres. Poroshenko posted a picture of himself posing next to a Ukrainian soldier with a Totenkopf patch on his uniform. ‘Totenkopf is German for “death’s head” or skull and typically refers to the skull-and-crossbones image,’ according to the Anti-Defamation League. ‘During the Nazi era, Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) adopted one particular totenkopf image as a symbol.’
Last year, it caused an international crisis when a ‘Belarusian activist’ named Roman Protasevich was arrested after a plane on which he was traveling was diverted Belarusian airspace and then forcibly grounded. What the breathless coverage neglected to mention, however, was that this individual had traveled to Ukraine to enlist in the Azov Battalion. His social media not only included pictures of him uniformed with the neo-Nazi Azov insignia, but also, apparently on dress-down days, wearing ‘SvaStone’ t-shirts (a neo-Nazi fashion line for Ukrainian youth.)
Note that I am not simply dredging up random neo-Nazi thugs and punks from Ukraine, although there is certainly no shortage of those. Everyone whom I have mentioned is a Ukrainian in a position of some public- or private-sector authority with whom Western governmental and non-governmental organisations have chosen to support in some way, whether sending them money or weaponry.
Now, Americans like me, who unironically identify with and take pride in their history, are called ‘racist’ (and lately, as the effect of that curse-word has been diminished through overuse, ‘white supremacist’ and/or ‘white nationalist’). Yet whilst conducting a witch hunt for white supremacists and white nationalists here at home, in the process poisoning the public discourse and radically polarising the polity, these same leaders have been sending billions of dollars’ worth of military weaponry to actual white supremacists and white nationalists abroad, who want to use them to kill the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and sexual minorities in their country. In other words, ‘punch a Nazi’ (to fight Donald Trump) became ‘arm a Nazi’ (to fight Vladimir Putin).
I must refrain from commenting on this treachery any further because there is really no way that I can express how I feel about it without resorting to calls for violence. Suffice it to say, with H.L. Mencken, ‘Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.’
Neo-Nazism in Ukraine is not a sufficient cause of Ukraine’s conflict with Russia, but it is a necessary cause. Without the threat of Ukrainian neo-Nazism, there would still be a conflict with Russia, but it would not be as urgent or as intense as it is. Ukrainian neo-Nazis do not represent the majority of Ukrainians (who in 2019 elected a Jewish prime minister who campaigned on peace with Russia), but as a highly organised and heavily militarised minority they do exert outsized power within Ukraine, particularly in the security branches of the state. ‘With its military experience and weapons, Azov has the ability to blackmail the government and defend themselves against any opposition,’ explains Ivan Katchanovski (a professor of political science at Ottawa University). ‘They openly say that if the government will not advance an ideology similar to theirs, they will overthrow it.’
For example, when Ukraine agreed to allow the people in Donbas to hold their own local elections as part of the Minsk peace plan negotiated through the OSCE, Andriy Biletsky (a former leader of the Azov Battalion and current leader of the Svoboda party in the Ukrainian parliament) led a 10,000-strong march of the Azov Battalion through the streets of Kiev threatening to overthrow the Ukrainian president and parliament if they permitted these elections. According to Prof. Katchanovski, ‘Currently the organizations that are fascist are stronger in Ukraine than in any other country in the world, but this fact is not reported by Western media because they see these organizations as supportive of the geopolitical agenda against Russia.’
The Azov Battalion and other neo-Nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine have become like the Cohortes Praetoriae, or ‘Praetorian Guard’—the bodyguards and spies of the Roman emperors which were decisive in determining the imperial succession and in the late state of the empire began to hold emperors hostage and rule through them.
What worsens Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem is that the USA, by pushing Ukraine towards the most militaristic position in order to fight a proxy war with Russia, has implicitly sided with and thereby empowered the neo-Nazi extreme over the Ukrainian mainstream.
In the spring of 2019, after five years of civil war in the Donbas, the comedian-turned-politician Volodymyr Zelensky3 was elected Ukrainian president with 73% of the vote and a mandate to implement the internationally negotiated Minsk peace plan to which his predecessor, Pres. Poroshenko, had nominally agreed to but had never implemented. In his inaugural address, Pres. Zelensky avowed, ‘I am definitely not afraid to make difficult decisions, not afraid to lose my own popularity, my ratings, and if there’s a need I’m prepared to give up my own position—as long as peace arrives.’ Dmytro Yarosh (the founder of the neo-Nazi Right Sector paramilitary and former head of the Ukrainian national police) violently objected to Pres. Zelensky’s overtures of peace. ‘No, he would lose his life,’ he threatened. ‘He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the revolution and the war.’ Mr. Yarosh is now serving as Pres. Zelensky’s national-security advisor.
In the fall of 2019, Pres. Zelensky, newly elected and then still committed to the implementation of Minsk II, traveled to the town of Zolote in Donbas, one of the fronts in the Ukrainian civil war. Pres. Zelensky traveled there to convince soldiers of the Azov Battalion (which, along with other neo-Nazi paramilitaries, comprised the bulk of the Ukrainian fighting force) to demilitarise the area, in accord with the peace plan. The Azov soldiers bluntly refused. ‘I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser,’ stated Pres. Zelensky. ‘I came to you and told you: Remove the weapons.’ Again, the Azov soldiers bluntly refused. Footage of the confrontation went viral and Pres. Zelensky became the target of a right-wing backlash in his country. Andriy Biletsky (a former leader of the Azov Battalion and current leader of the Svoboda party in the Ukrainian parliament) declared that he would unilaterally reinforce Zolote with the Azov Battalion if Pres. Zelensky took any further action towards demilitarisation. The Azov Battalion, which had opposed Pres. Zelensky’s pro-peace political campaign with a campaign of its own, ‘No to Capitulation,’ stepped up this pro-war campaign.
In order to defy this fearsome subculture in Ukraine, Pres. Zelensky needed the support of his American allies. ‘There were moments in history, when there’s an opportunity that is so good and wise and so often lost, the chance,’ Prof. Stephen F. Cohen explained in an interview in the fall after the Ukrainian election. ‘So, the chance for Zelensky, the new president who had this very large victory, 70 plus percent to negotiate with Russia an end to that war, it’s got to be seized, and it requires the United States simply saying to Zelensky, “Go for it, we’ve got your back.”’
Unfortunately, American support was not forthcoming. For example, when Pres. Zelensky first took office he told the acting US Ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor, that he was eager to negotiate with Russian president Vladimir Putin. ‘Don't get sucked in,’ was Amb. Taylor's unhelpful reply to the hopeful Pres. Zelensky. Amb. Taylor later became a Blue-Party star in ‘UkraineGate’ and believes that Ukraine is ‘on the front line’ of Russia's ‘war against the Europe and the United States,’ so it is no wonder that he discouraged Pres. Zelensky from diplomacy. Americans like Amb. Taylor are willing to fight the Russians to the last Ukrainian. Indeed, the spectacle of UkraineGate, in which an American president was impeached for interfering with the American proxy war against Russia in Ukraine (one that he had started himself in an attempt to deflect from RussiaGate), must have sent an unmistakable message to Pres. Zelensky about American priorities.
Pro-war American journos and pols often glibly cite Pres. Zelensky’s Jewish heritage as prima facie proof that Ukraine cannot have a neo-Nazi problem, but this is a non sequitur. (Would they accept the logically identical argument that the USA does not a problem with racism because a black man was elected president twice?) Of course, Ukraine is not a ‘Nazi’ state the way that Germany once was a Nazi state. The fact is, however—and what they so sedulously and suspiciously omit from their coverage and commentary—that neo-Nazis and other far-right figures disproportionately occupy the security branches of the Ukrainian state, which has worsened all of Ukraine’s domestic conflicts with its pro-Russia minority population and its foreign conflicts with Russia itself.
Independent journalists at The Grayzone have spelled out the story of Pres. Zelensky’s decline from a would-be Constantine I determined to reclaim authority from Ukraine’s foreign and domestic Praetorians, to a non-entity reduced beholden to Ukraine’s foreign and domestic Praetorians.
‘How Ukraine’s Jewish president made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on the front lines of war with Russia,’ by Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone, 4 March 2022
‘“One less traitor”: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping, and torture of political opposition,’ by Max Blumenthal and Esha Krishnaswamy, The Grayzone, 17 April 2022
‘The real Zelensky: From celebrity populist to unpopular Pinochet-style neoliberal,’ by Natylie Baldwin, The Grayzone, 28 April 2022
At a conference in Kiev early this February, a Ukrainian nationalist by the name of Yehven Karas mocked all of the mainstream Western media narratives about Ukraine.
Mr. Karas described the nationalist (a word which he used synonymously with ‘neo-Nazi’) character of the Euromaidan, in contrast to the liberal-democratic face that it had in the Western press:
Maidan was the victory of the nationalist ideas. Nationalists were the key factor there, and clearly at the front lines. Now there is a lot of speculation, saying, ‘Well, there were only few neo-Nazis.’ LGBT and foreign embassies saying, ‘There were not much neo-Nazis on Maidan, maybe about 10% of real ideological ones.’ [Chuckles.] The thing is that such a thing only a moron that was never at war and don’t understand that those 10%, maybe even less, 8%, but how much they are much more effective in the proportion of influence, how much their effectiveness was endless. If not for those 8%, the effectiveness would have dropped by 90%. So it’s the numbers is not the point. Like now some left-wingers, like Boell Foundation and so on, trying to count numbers, saying something like, ‘There were that many nationalists, they had that much influence.’ ‘Influence’? If not for nationalists that whole thing would’ve turned into a gay parade.
Mr. Karas described the true power-hungry and blood-thirsty nature of Ukrainian nationalism, which has nothing to do with Western liberal democracy:
We were now been given so much weaponry, not because as some say ‘the West is helping us,’ not because they want the best for us, but because we perform the tasks set by the West, because we are the only ones who are ready to do them, because we have fun, we have fun killing, and we have fun fighting. And they’re like, ‘Wow, let’s see what’s gonna happen.’ And that is the reason for the new alliance: Turkey, Poland, Britain, and Ukraine. We are the flagman here, because we have started a war that has not been seen for 60 years. So, imagine how many weapons we have, how many veterans we have, and now imagine Russia falls apart or turns into five different Russias or whatever. We have the most ‘Javelins’ on the European continent, maybe only the UK has more. This potential of these armed forces will immediately become a problem for all those who are now trying to give us problems. It is our joy and our sorrow. You have to understand why. Yes it is hard, not because, ‘We are Ukrainians, our ass has suffered for 300 years. Why finally everything good not just given to us. We such a good people. We want to join Europe.’ No, we are a huge powerful state, and if we come to power it will be both joy and sorrow for the whole world. Therefore, it is a huge ambitious task. We live in a very cool time, and that is why there is an extremely ambitious cool goal—not just become ‘a part of European family that has already collapsed.’ This is about new political alliances on the global level, new political challenges.
Mr. Karas is the leader of the Ukrainian paramilitary force ‘C14.’ Prior to the Euromaidan, C14 was a gang named after the neo-Nazi ‘14 Words’ slogan and the youth front of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party (picture the white-power gang in ‘American History X’ but in eastern Europe instead of southern California). In the post-Euromaidan regime, C14 has worked extra-legally with Ukrainian police to ‘purge’ Roma and other migrants out of the cities. C14 is now publicly funded by the Ukrainian state as a ‘national-patriotic education project.’ Another C14 leader by the name of Serhiy Bondar was invited to speak at ‘America House Kyiv,’ a US-funded NGO which describes itself as ‘your main resource in Ukraine for American culture, education, and information.’
I refuse to provide any support, moral and/or material, to the cause for which Ukrainians like Mr. Karas and other members of C14 are fighting. Their cause is worth less than nothing to me. In my opinion, it is not worth one cent more for gas. I would pay more in gas, on the other hand, if it helped fight them.
So, when Pres. Putin announces that the objective of the war is the ‘de-militarization’ and ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, a claim which elicits chuckles from pro-war American journos and pols, this is what he means.
Imagine, if you will, the Russians funding and directing an anti-government insurrection against these U.S. of A. which relied heavily on domestic extremists like the Ku Klux Klan and which resulted in a new pro-Russia regime in which these domestic extremists controulled the armed forces and the police forces. Is this the way that we Americans would like to be treated? If not, then why have we treated the Russians (and normal non-Nazi Ukrainians, for that matter) that way?
The American complacency towards and complicity with Ukrainian neo-Nazism reminds me of an ominous scene from the 1972 film ‘Cabaret.’ As two characters have lunch at biergarten, Maximilian (a conservative German aristocrat) explains to Brian (a liberal English intellectual), both in a love triangle with Liza Minnelli’s character, that as bad as the Nazis are, they are useful for fighting the Communists, and respectable and responsible Germans like him can keep them under controul. Then, after they toast, a young man from the Hitler Youth begins singing a kitschy/folkish ballad which turns into a more militant/nationalistic anthem and, one by one, the rest of the crowd stands up and joins in singing. ‘Still think you can control them?’ Brian asks Max as they drive away.
Next: ‘3. Ukraine & Russia’
Previous: ‘1. The Euromaidan Regime Change’
‘Assured of [Franz von] Papen’s help on the diplomatic front [the former chancellor was now the ambassador to Austria] and with [Hjalmar] Schacht as master mind of accelerated rearmament [he was the Reichsminister of Economics], Hitler felt prepared to weather the criticism from abroad raised by the [Engelbert] Dollfuss murder [the assassination of the anti-Nazi fascist dictator of Austria]. The most scathing attacks were coming from Mussolini. He had not only wired Austrian Vice-Chancellor Prince Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg that Italy would fight for Austrian independence but traveled to Vienna to express his feelings in person. “It would mean the end of European civilization if this country of murderers and pederasts were to overrun Europe,” he told Starhemberg, then charged Hitler with instigation of the revolt in Vienna. He became so emotional, according to Starhemberg, that his eyes rolled. “Hitler is the murderer of Dollfuss, Hitler is the guilty man, he is responsible for this.” He called the Führer “a horrible sexual degenerate, a dangerous fool,” and described Nazism as a “revolution of the old Germanic tribes in the primeval forest against the Latin civilization of Rome.” Nor could one compare Nazism to Fascism. “Certainly there are outward similarities. Both are authoritarian systems, both are collectivist, socialistic. Both systems oppose liberalism. But Fascism is a regime that is rooted in the great cultural tradition of the Italian people; Fascism recognizes the right of the individual, it recognizes religion and family. National Socialism, on the other hand, is savage barbarism; in common with barbarian hordes it allows no rights to the individual; the chieftain is lord over life and death of his people. Murder and killing, loot and pillage and blackmail are all it can produce.” He began to shout. “This abominable and repulsive spectacle that Hitler showed the world on the thirtieth of June would not have been tolerated in any other country in the world. Only these primitive Germans, prepared even for murder, will put up with such things.” Hopefully, he added, the assassination of Dollfuss might do some good. Perhaps the Great Powers would recognize the German danger and organize a grand coalition against Hitler. A common front was the only answer, he said. “Hitler will arm the Germans and make war—perhaps even in two or three years. I cannot stand up to him alone. We must do something, we must do something quickly.” Mussolini’s disgust at Hitler and Germany was such that he began expressing similar feelings in public. “Thirty centuries of history allow us to regard with supreme indulgence certain doctrines taught beyond the Alps by the descendants of people who were wholly illiterate in the days when Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus flourished in Rom,” he announced from the top of a tank at the inauguration of the fifth Fiere del Levante. His private epithets, such as the one describing Germans as pederasts and murderers, also began to be echoed in the Italian press.’—John Toland, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography
‘Fascism, since that is the word that is used, fascism presents, wherever it manifests itself, characteristics which are varied to the extent that countries and national temperaments vary. It is essentially a defensive reaction of the organism, a manifestation of the desire to live, of the desire not to die, which at certain times seizes a whole people. So each people reacts in its own way, according to its conception of life. Our rising, here, has a Spanish meaning! What can it have in common with Hitlerism, which was, above all, a reaction against the state of things created by the defeat, and by the abdication and the despair that followed it?’—Francisco Franco interview with Henri Massis, 1938
After the ‘MeToo’ sex panic, ‘International Women’s Day’ (a holiday previously celebrated primarily by Russians and other ex-Soviet peoples) became trendy amongst American liberals, who took a liking to it for all the wrong reasons. What is elsewhere in the world a wholesome celebration of womanhood in the abstract and women in the flesh is, in the West, a state-sanctioned and society-wide protest wherein corporations and governments alike promote feminist canards.
Many Americans are under the impression that the story of Volodymyr Zelensky is that of ‘Man of the Year’—that is, a comedy of life imitating art. There is no irony in his story, however. Mr. Zelensky and his party were an invention of an oligarch, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, against a rival oligarch (and Ukrainian president) Petro Poroshenko. Pres. Poroshenko had nationalised Mr. Kolomoyskyi’s banking businesses and fired him from his position as the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk oblast, but Mr. Kolomoyskyi still owned ‘1+1,’ the most popular channel on Ukrainian television, where Mr. Zelensky was a star. Mr. Kolomoyskyi created a show starring Mr. Zelensky, ‘Servant of the People,’ with the telling slogan, ‘The Life Story of a Future President.’ The show was a part of a broader media campaign which Mr. Kolomoyskyi waged against Pres. Poroshenko from 1+1. When the show ended, Mr. Zelensky campaigned for president (as the candidate of a party with the same name as the show), and Mr. Kolomoyskyi continued to finance Mr. Zelensky’s career. Mr. Zelensky defeated Pres. Poroshenko in the 2019 election, whereafter the latter was forced to liquidate his own media businesses, was accused of treason and terrorism, had his assets seized, and fled the country on a ‘business trip.’ Pres. Zelensky is a clown who has become a pawn in post-Soviet oligarchical politics. Mr. Kolomoyskyi, although Jewish (he even has dual-citizenship with Israel), is a major financier of the extremist Azov Battalion, as well as the criminal ‘volunteer’ Battalions of Dnipro and Aidar, the latter two of which have served as his private army.