What is the difference between the Nazis and Putin's Russia today? A fascist State organized around one man organizing the genocide of an ethnicity to further his geopolitical aims and restore his nation to a position of prominence and prestige in world affairs who destroys not only others but his own people as well.
He's just using Ukrainians instead of Jewish folks seems more like an implimentation detail. Even hating them is completely optional.
People aren't just using Nazi as a purjorative the regime literally fits a template.
I support Ukraine and oppose Putin - but Putin isn’t a Nazi. His ideology, in its details, is quite different from that of Nazism.
Russian propaganda that “Ukraine is a Nazi state” is stupid, but you have to understand that “Nazism” means something quite different to Russians than to most Westerners. Most Westerners focus on the Nazis’ genocidal Antisemitism; in Russia, the focus is more on the Nazis’ genocidal Russophobia. That different focus makes the propaganda seem not quite as ludicrous as it does in the West, especially when one considers the language policy issue (encouraging the use of Ukrainian language over Russian), which the Russian government paints as Russophobic discrimination.
Just look at Russia - a real Nazist regime while most Russians conveniently believe they are fighting world Nazism. The truth is actually available to them, yet it is so scary and inconvenient that they instinctively choose to ignore it.
Their propagandists on state TV even stated recently discussing Ukraine that Nazism = political nationalism + totalitarism. Which obviously doesn't apply to Ukraine, yet absolutely describes Russia.
The only difference is that German Nazis believed Jews were themselves evil, and Russian Nazis believe Ukrainians are irreversibly corrupted by evil West. The exact flavors of their victim complex and exceptionalism are irrelevant.
What does jews have with nazis? Nazism is National Socialism. It's not about jews. Ukrainian nazis hate Russian culture and everyone who supports Russia, they burned them alive in Odessa (and nobody punished them... yet). They did terrible things. There are entire battalions of them. They praise Stepan Bandera who was literal fascist. And Kiev authorities support them and rely on them.
For some reason it's not talked about loudly. But I'm terrified of what Ukraine has become to allow such insults to its own history.
So what's the play? Jewish people and neo-Nazis collaborating to gain power? And then later turn on each other? The Wikipedia article on them says there are Jewish people serving in Azov Battalion.
If Azov are neo-Nazis, who is their enemy? Obviously the Islamic Chechen military who have been deployed against them but other than that, who? Chechnya isn't on their border. Other Slavs? Where are the non-white people they are fighting?
Could it be that the Nazi emblems were adopted more for historical and anti-Russian sentiment? I honestly can't make much sense of it all. They may be National Socialists, but they seem pretty okay allying closely with Jews and there are few non-white people to fight.
So one battalion are extreme nationalists and definitely pretty fucked up. That hardly condemns the whole country. And in a war for survival, anyone would let them fight. I'm very open to changing my mind about any of this but I fail to see the pressing issue right now.
Putin's narrative? The Ukrainian government are entirely open about what Azov is.
Putins narrative is that the Ukrainian government is run by Nazis. Thats obviously false, but yeah, they absolutely used Nazi paramilitaries to cling on to Russian speaking territory and dont deny it.
It sort of sounds like you're saying that this means Nazis arent the bad guys we thought they were and we should stop villifying them, which is an interesting hill to choose to die on.
So what if there is anti-russian sentiment? russians have earned their reputation with the 10-15 million Ukrainians they have murdered over the past 150 years. We don't need neo-nazis to make us hate russians for what they have done to our families and friends and our country. I don't know anybody who didn't lose grandparents or great grandparents to Stalin's purges.
I have now lost 3 family members and 15 people from my graduating uni class.
Germany has neo-nazis in its military. russia's military is entirely conscripts and track-suit wearing, Neo-soviets covered in anti-Ukrainian tattoos.
America's military is at least 20% neo-nazi/extremist.
There are bad apples in every country.
Just like the USA saved russia and Europe from Hitler, we will save Europe and America from vladolf putler. You can all be cowards and sleep peacefully in your bed while I hear bombshells every night.
Could you please stop spouting Russian propaganda at every step? Russia has a far bigger Neo Nazi problem then Ukraine, on top of that it isn't exactly the Ukranian Neo Nazi's that are currently invading another country to slaughter their citizens.
Neo Nazi's are unfortunately all too common, in the context of Ukraine they are merely a very convenient excuse to invade another sovereign country.
The interesting thing is to notice how Putin calls the Ukrainians Nazis. It's like he's thinking that it's an easy word to throw around because our society is so prevalent with people throwing that word around. It's like the subversion tactics were to make it easy to call someone a nazi and make it so commonplace to cancel people that he's literally using that term himself.
Can we please learn the difference between fascism, nationalism and nazism?
Putin nor his supporters haven't gone full nazi. Full fascist, perhaps. Nationalist, definitely.
He used the "denazify Ukraine" slogan when Zelenskyy is actually Jewish not because of deep seated racial or religious motivations, but just to get more of the populace to buy his belligerent cause. Putin just cares about Crimea, Sevastopol, and the strategic importance of the Black Sea (oil and military).
Nazism (in understanding of the Russian propaganda) is not equal to antisemitism. To see the used pattern replace Jews with ethnic Russians and Holocaust with 8 years of Donbas shelling. They literally tried to paint the Donbas war as an act of genocide from the Ukrainian army, though it's hard to call them successful in this regard.
I'm German, so I do have obviously a view on Nazism. I was never taught the USSRs perspective on WW2 so. I think mainly because of the Cold War propaganda, we skipped ( and I had a really great history teacher at that time) over the Russian effort.
Turns out now, that this lack of education, for lack of a better term, might be an issue. So, sincere question, what is the Russian understanding of Nazism?
To Putin, Ukrainians are Russians who have been corrupted by anti-Russian influences into believing themselves to be a different people, and the Ukrainian language is a corrupted form of Russian (Russian with some Polish mixed in)
Hitler didn’t see Jews as Germans who had been corrupted into viewing themselves as non-Germans. On the contrary, he insisted full-blooded Jews could never be Germans, no matter how much they wanted to be-even if they completely rejected their Jewish identity. There was a tiny minority of Jews (the Association of German National Jews) who supported Hitler - how did he repay them for their support? He sent them to the camps.
In WW2 the Nazis were trying to exterminate the slavs. In this war Putin is attracting condemnation for handing out passports. This changes the dynamic and the stakes. The two arent really comparable.
It isnt a racism inspired genocide like Israel is committing in Gaza.
He's just using Ukrainians instead of Jewish folks seems more like an implimentation detail. Even hating them is completely optional.
People aren't just using Nazi as a purjorative the regime literally fits a template.
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