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Actual Nazis visit Israel. Corporate media doesn't raise an eyebrow. | |
2023-01-11 | |
[ElectronicIntifada] Representatives of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion have been touring Israel to drum up support for the unit’s imprisoned fighters. They have been meeting with Israeli politicians and soldiers. Azov intelligence officer Illia Samoilenko was released in a prisoner exchange with Russia in September. He had been one of the hundreds of Azov fighters who surrendered in May at the end of the long Russian siege of the eastern city of Mariupol. "Israel values freedom, values strength, Israel values honor. It’s the same things that we also value," he told Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week. Samoilenko also told The Times of Israel that "he sees Israel and Ukraine on the same side, the civilized battling the uncivilized in a struggle for the future of humanity," the outlet summarized. The Anti-Defamation League, a major Jewish communal and Israel lobby group, for instance, warned in 2019 that Azov was a "Ukrainian extremist group" with "ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists." But now with Western governments arming Ukraine, including the Azov Battalion, in a proxy war against Russia, there is a concerted effort to hide this ugly reality from public view. Consequently – with help from the media and now Israel and its lobby – Azov has in recent months attempted to rebrand itself. Seeking a stamp of approval from Israel is a time-honored strategy of European and American far-right extremists seeking to gain mainstream legitimacy. In May The Times of London reported that Azov was planning to change its symbol from the wolfsangel – a far-right symbol associated with a division of the German army during Hitler’s Nazi regime. But even that surface-level whitewash seems to have been too much of a change for Azov to endure. The symbol remains visible in all of Azov’s online outlets. Recent Azov social media postings show their fighters still using the wolfsangel.
AZOV 2.0 | |
Posted by:Spike the Hairy6811 |
#6 "I shot Baby Hitler... not." Bawlin', Poor Flyora has trouble recallin' That other papoose... But there, droppin' a deuce, Squalls, with milk on moustache, Baby Stalin. |
Posted by: Ulaick Thamble7650 2023-01-11 21:34 |
#5 I guess the future where everyone became Hitler for fifteen minutes came faster than we thought it would. |
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2023-01-11 20:47 |
#4 I'm not sure if they took that page from us or we simply gave em the whole playbook. |
Posted by: Rex Mundi 2023-01-11 14:53 |
#3 The Russians have smartly taken a page from the American Liberal playbook. Just label your enemy a Nazi, and that is a justification of your actions against them, whether it's invasion of a country, bombing of civilian infrastucture or just good old fashioned raping and looting. |
Posted by: AuburnTom 2023-01-11 12:14 |
#2 Accepting Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Far Easterners and any other while/for fighting for the survival of their Nation? You know... Or, well, you should know that not every racist who is also a nationalist is NOT automatically a national socialist. And if you can't differentiate (or refuse to bother for internet is all capslock all the time) the difference between a racist asshole, an xenophobe, a racist asshole who implements final solution and a neo-nobility, them you might want to turn down hyperbole and get some realism applied. |
Posted by: Nomad 2023-01-11 10:20 |
#1 “Restore the honor of the white race” In recent months, the Azov Battalion appears to have renamed itself the “Azov Regiment,” another apparent attempt to legitimize itself as a normal element of the Ukrainian state and whitewash its Nazi image while maintaining all the same policies. This name change was played up in a puff piece by The Jerusalem Post this week, which claimed that “the Azov Battalion [is] the predecessor of the Azov Regiment.” But just as when the US and its allies have repeatedly attempted to rebrand the Syrian branch of al-Qaida as “moderate rebels,” such cosmetic changes are unlikely to fool anyone outside the ranks of spineless mainstream media journalists. And despite Samoilenko and Fedosiuk’s charming of the Israeli press this week, there’s absolutely no reason to think that Azov has moved away from its racist, anti-Semitic roots. As well as still using the Nazi wolfsangel symbol, recent Azov social media postings show that the group’s founder Andriy Biletsky is still a regular presence at Azov parades. Biletsky has “pledged to restore the honor of the white race” and when he was in parliament he advanced laws forbidding “race mixing.” |
Posted by: Spike the Hairy6811 2023-01-11 01:28 |