Here’s how Ukraine was being reported by the West before the war.

Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, 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. A neo-Nazi battalion in the heart of Europe

If you whitewash NAZI POGROMS just because you want to beat Russia, fuck you. Siding with far-right fascists to defeat far-right fascists doesn’t make you the good guy. There is no lesser of two evils here.

If you dismiss any criticism of Ukraine as Russian propaganda, you might want to ask why the rest of the world, including the West, was concerned about Nazism in the area and then suddenly changed their tune only after the war started.

We should be getting both sides into peace negotiations, not prolonging the bloodshed and providing Nazis with illegal cluster bombs

  • jabrd [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    The US funding and arming far right militias as a means of attacking a geopolitical rival has historically always been a good idea and resulted in very few consequences

                • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  The funny thing about Zelensky is not only is he Jewish, but he is a Russian speaking Jewish man. The parts of Ukraine that overwhelmingly voted for him were not the nazi hotbeds in Lviv but the Russian separatist regions of Donbass and Luhansk. Turns out support for Zelensky was strongest in the regions that wanted to leave in the first place? Why is this? Because Zelensky ran on a peace platform, and presented himself as in favor of Minsk II, against escalation with Russia, and not as much of a rabid reactionary as the (US-backed, nazi-glorifying) Petro Poroshenko, who was put in power through a transparent US-backed right-wing coup during Euromaidan in 2014.

                  The people in the Donbass and Luhansk regions mostly speak Russian. They were part of Russia historically, but Lenin, Stalin, and Khruschev all granted more land to the Ukrainian SSR in an attempt to keep them happy and better integrate the agriculture with the industry.

                  This is why there was strong Russian identity in those regions, and strong separatist tendencies. The west half of Ukraine meanwhile, especially near Lviv, is the home of the most far right parts of Ukrainian society, who want to be part of NATO, who glorify nazi collaborators like Bandera, who join fascist street gangs like C14 and ethnically cleanse Roma people living in tents.

                  Zelensky presented himself as wanting to prevent the Ukrainian civil war (going on since 2014) from escalating into a full scale war with Russia, but after he got in office, he made few efforts to actually do this, and rather turned out to be a quite willing collaborator with the United States, and was willing to turn a blind eye to the reactionaries despite himself being a Russian-speaking Jewish man. He made a big show at the beginning of the presidency of filming himself “confronting” Azov battalion and telling them to put down their weapons. But guess what? He had no mechanism of enforcement. They didn’t take him seriously, and made clear their intention to violate any and all attempts to de-escalate. Zelensky, being a man who is Jewish and speaks Russia, is actually the perfect mascot this shit, because his surface appearance covers up the underlying reality. of the Banderite situation in Ukraine.

                • Bnova [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  You wouldn’t know a Nazis if they were goose stepping right in front of you. Nazis obviously do not care for Jewish people but their real enemy is and has always been the left. Otto Skorzeni litterally worked on behalf of the Israeli government. Walther Rauff, the inventor of “gas vans” also worked for Israel. About a dozen Nazis war criminals worked for Israel, and both the Nazis and the Israeli government knew this. Contemporary Nazis fucking love Israel because they’ve created a white ethnostate and admire their ability to have done so.

                  So to answer your question can Ukraine have a Nazi problem with a Jewish head of state? Absolutely, Nazis have no problem working with Jewish people when it serves their interests and it has served their interest to work with Zelensky because people such as yourself who are incapable of seeing through this thin veil guzzle the propaganda willingly and supported giving them a fuck ton of weapons to carry out pogroms on Roma and Russians.

                • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  Good to know everything a fascist movement needs to gain the unconditional support of unwitting liberals is to put a token jewish person on top. They could literally march all the others to the camps you would be cheering them saying “well the president is jewish so they cant be fascist.”

                • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  Ever hear of Emil Maurice, friend and bodyguard to Hitler, Founding member of the SS, Jewish, Honorary Aryan by decree?

                  Jewish people can, have, and do support nazis. Its actually racist to think that because of their heritage they are incapable of doing such. Its as bad as saying “African Americans love fried chicken.”

            • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              The letter Z isn’t the new swastika, the swastika is still the swastika and the people who wear the swastika are still the nazis

              You are the only nazi supporter here you bootlicking fascist scum

              The only analogy libs can even make between modern Russia and the nazis is invading another country, as if that was the worst thing the nazis ever did

              Funny how the entire premise of your side relies on minimizing and whitewashing the horrors of the Holocaust

            • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              are you deliberately or only accidentally unable to distinguish between being a “Z apologist” and simply recognizing that the United Snakes created the current geopolitical situation by pitting former Soviet countries against each other and pouring money into the most reactionary ghouls in both Russia and Ukraine?

              don’t actually live in Russia?

              very-intelligent

              I’m not Russian, but you know people besides Americans use the internet right?

              • The dogspaw @midwest.social
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                Russia pit Slavic country’s against each other funny how eastern Europe hates Russia just because they have done nothing but bring suffering and death to that region of the world for centuries funny how they want to align with the west and have money and health care and be able to live and not have Russian missiles fall on there head but america bad

                • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  The fact that you’re typing and posting so quickly that you can’t even use punctuation also implies you’re not putting a lot of thought into reading and understanding what people are telling you. And now I’m editing in a second sentence so that I need punctuation. I don’t feel like getting a childish comeback in my inbox.

                • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  Why do people keep doing this? Why this deflection against admitting that there are many Nazis in the UA military establishment? Is it that important for you that UA be as pure and white as driven snow?

                • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/07/19/zrjy-j19.html

                  UN report confirms Ukrainians’ use of civilians as “human shields”

                  In March, the Ukrainian government blamed Russian forces for the deaths of more than 50 elderly and disabled residents of a care home in the village of Stara Krasnyanka in the eastern province of Lugansk. According to Ukrainian officials, a fire broke out in the facility following a supposedly unprovoked attack on the innocents by Russian forces.

                  In reality—in a case the report found to be “emblematic” of the war—on March 7, days before the attack, Ukrainian forces had taken up positions within the care home “as it had strategic value due to its proximity to an important road.” Previous requests by the facility to local Ukrainian authorities to evacuate residents were denied due to the fact that Kiev had mined the surrounding area and blocked roads, thereby preventing anyone from fleeing.

                  Do you see what’s happening? These fucking nazi fucks who have absolutely zero respect for human life are manipulating you with lies about atrocities by deliberately putting their own citizens in the crossfire of a war. This is the kind of shit nazis do. And your own institutions are the ones calling them out for it, not just the other side. And you just don’t hear it.

    • pastalicious [he/him, undecided]@hexbear.net
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      If there are ever consequences the US will leverage the consequences into justification for their next imperial project. They literally cannot lose in this particular dynamic. Only multipolarity or the ceiling of profit they can extract via financialization will stall this empire. Luckily both are beginning to happen. Also I’m dumb, there’s probably other stuff too.

        • pastalicious [he/him, undecided]@hexbear.net
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          I’m a bit out of my depth here, I don’t know history enough and don’t retain knowledge well. I feel like monopolarity hasn’t been a great thing for anyone who isn’t part of the NATO aligned countries. The US has intentionally bombed and blockaded countries to the point of infrastructure collapse and kept them in this state sometimes for decades. We’ve supported and instigated coups that have been followed up with death squads murdering hundreds of thousands. On the other hand world wars have a huge death toll and a higher likelihood of life ending nuclear war. I feel like any perceived stability that comes with monopolarity is a mirage that only exists for a fraction of the population, and multipolarity while potentially deadly also represents a world where less powerful people and nations may find new options for support. Like many countries turning to the Chinese Yuan for global trade. Yet nuclear war and world war with their massive potential death toll seems real bad. Someone better at history and geopolitics help me determine what’s worse.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Afaik the hope isn’t for stable mulipolarity, it’s more that a multipolar world has a chance to free the planet from USian domination, and if the US hegemony further collapses it opens up the possibility of seriously addressing global warming, amidst other things.

            So like you were saying, its more about opportunities for change, rather than an end unto itself. Believe me, I have really mixed feelings about this. I live in America, and am disabled, so a serious collapse or destruction of American power will probably be really bad for me personally, despite creating hope for the world. : p

          • jabrd [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Im not arguing for unipolarity and regardless of what anyone thinks or wants we’re heading in the one direction towards american decline and the rise of alternative power blocs. I just feel that people should have sober expectations about what that has historically meant

        • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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          The general intensity and frequency of wars hasn’t actually increased or decreased since the bipolar world ended in 1991

          Tens of millions died during the Cold War and tens of millions have died under US unipolarty

          The matter isn’t decided by the number of players, but by nuclear deterrence, military buildup and class conflict in the Third World

    • The dogspaw @midwest.social
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      Its beyond my mind who you call yourself a communist while cheering on a racist facist colonizer at least china plays lip service to being communist Russia doesn’t even pretend but you people will still larp for them

      • Redcat [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        colonization is when russians aren’t genocided and get to live in russia

        wanna decolonize eastern ukraine and crimea? give them to kazakhstan

      • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        You know how on your liberal forums there would always be some MAGA guy who just came in and unloaded all of the deranged shit that they bounce around in their echo chambers in one compressed buzzword soup?

      • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        racist

        Show me links to prove this. I have read multiple interviews from Putin all the way down to soldiers on the front line who all say that this whole war is stupid because they see Ukrainians as their brothers. There are multiple ethnicities in Russia and somehow they manage to get along quite well.

        facist

        That’s not how you spell the word “fascist.” “Fascism” is a is a word with a meaning. It does not apply to Russia as it is now. Maybe don’t use words that you don’t understand and cant spell.

  • somebody should tell all these LIBs

    • their principled opposition to the Iraq war in 2003-20?? was actually Baathist propaganda sweetie
    • they were all just bots shilling for Saddam Hussein
    • and also how dare they stand against the freedom loving and liberation focused Coalition of The Willing which is there to STOP torture and extrajudicial executions
    • there will be no consequences for backing violent extremists in the region because their thirst for the blood of our geopolitical rivals is well under control and easily manipulated
    • what’s ISIS? you mean the thing from TV’s Archer?

    mission-accomplished-1 mission-accomplished-2

      • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        I love how liberals view the war in a vacuum, like Ukraine hasn’t been carrying out pogroms on ethnic Russians (and other minorities) since Euromaidan kicked off and gave absolute literal neo-nazis power and backing from the west. No it’s just Russia are the real nazis, Ukraine is an innocent child baby country, war crime yada yada

  • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    See my profile, I’ve been arguing with a bad person about this for days. “But Russia is also bad, therefore I must pretend to be above the fray, even though all of my words and actions and thoughts support amerikkka!”

  • neroiscariot [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    Pfft we’re on the unavoidable thing on Maui now, but slava until we mark them as terrorists and then have to invade and seize the remains of their private sector…a few bad apples

  • Nacktmull@lemm.ee
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    Don´t you know that when Azov was integrated into the Ukrainian military they instantly transformed into fighters for democracy, equality of LGBTQI+ people and protectors of the freedom of all minorities? /s (Believe it or not, this is what people on reddit will tell you when you point out that Azov are Neonazis)

  • StalinForTime [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    Similarly to the fucked up, twisted irony that descendants of the Holocaust were modern pioneers of settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, it’s completely and utterly fucked that Eastern Europe has fallen so deeply into the grip of fascism. It’s true that the Ukrainians were treated somewhat differently out of pragmatic considerations by the Nazis, but they were still considered ‘Untermenschen’.

    It’s especially galling when the Ukraine was the economically best off part of the Soviet Union, and center of incredible culture, science, technology. But you don’t see these fucks praising an iota of what was unequivocally the best time to be alive in Ukrainian history. Because they don’t care about the quality of life of ordinary people. They’re predatory, nihilistic death-cultists who should be wiped from the face of the earth.

    History often has a sick sense of humor.

    • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      What do you mean? Trump was the one who resumed arming the Azov after it was stopped during the Obama administration. They are all on the same page, and Trump is far from clean when it comes to Ukraine. The only reason for the opposition comes from the fact that they are now the opposition and the Dems are in charge. If the GOP wins it will still be the same, maybe less fanatical about it because Biden is dead set on setting the world on fire.

    • immuredanchorite [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      The other reasons people listed aren’t wrong. But I think primarily it is political opportunism, which is true of every bourgeois politicians anyway. In that sense it is unsurprising.

      • usa_suxxx [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        Plus there isn’t a coherent anti war stance in the mainstream. There’s zero to no risk of this escalating to let’s actually stop the war. It’s just the war is being mismanaged and money spent badly. Not life inherently has value

    • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Russia is a Christian nation, so American fascists believe that it should be enlisted in an alliance to destroy the communist atheist China. Liberals are just as deluded as fascists and believe that they can take on Russia and China (and the entire global south) at the same time, when they can’t even put ole donnie in prison.

        • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          You forgot the most important part of American Christianity, which is that Putin (and United Russia in general) is massively homophobic, which means that chuds are able to look past all the differences in theology if it allows them to be the swine they long to be.

        • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          I think they’re close enough. American Christians have enlisted the aid of Jewish settlers in Isn’treal, so it would probably be even easier to ally themselves with Orthodoxy.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              Yeah, all Jewish people going to Israel is part of their end of the world prophecy. They just want all Jewish people to return to Israel to kick off the rapture so they can go to heaven and everyone goes to hell.

              But aligning with Putin because he’s illiberal and homophobic makes sense. Plus Evangelical Fascists often don’t know or sometimes don’t even have any theology.

    • Redcat [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      For two reasons. The standard cause is Republican detraction from the sitting president. Americans tend to align in favor of wars on partisan terms. Republicans favored Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats favored Syria and Libya. So it all amounts to Liberal infighting. If the president is on the other side of the aisle your guys, your media people, and your grifters get to pretend to be competent realists, shepherds of american reputation, or even anti-war activists. But it’s all an illusion. One of the ways Trump fucked Hillary over was due to her record voting for the Iraq War, and then leading the wars in Syria and Libya. Things that she was always quite proud of. Trump might even genuinely believe that Iraq and Libya and so on were stupid. By and large however Americans are not an anti-war culture. So the actual impulse isn’t so much ‘waging war is bad’, but ‘waging this war in this way was bad’.

      The more complex issue at hand is that far right grifters online tend to see Russia as a means to get China. In their perfect world the United States would ally with Russia and integrate it into it’s world order as a means to encircle and destroy the ‘communist Chinese’. That is because Russia is idealized as a neo-conservative, hyper religious promised land that hates feminism, lgbt+ rights, and so on.

      One good example of this worldview is how back when Trump was elected far right circles online went on a nonstop frenzy of meme-making where Trump and Putin would ally to invade Turkey and genocide all the muslims from ‘Constantinople’. In that case it was less about China and more about destroying the 2000s-2010s boogeyman of, well, every muslim in the world.