Eric Zuesse
OPEDS
WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
Here is a frame from a video (1) that YouTube removed (at Ukraine’s request) in which a member of the U.S.-installed Ukrainian Parliament answers, at 12:46, a reporter’s question, by blurting out “Heil Hitler”:
Here’s the opening of a Daily Mail article:
• Azov battalion, the far-right militia defending the port city of Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, runs the course for children
• During the week-long course, they teach so-called 'Azovets' how to fire weapons and survive in a conflict zone
• Camp comes under command of Andriy Biletsky, who once admitted that the battalion 'do not like ceasefire at all'
• Conflict broke out in April 2014, when separatists rebelled against rule of Kiev's new Western-looking government
By STEPH COCKROFT FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 18:10 EST, 12 August 2015 | UPDATED: 03:20 EST, 13 August 2015
The U.S. CIA armed (and still does) the Azov Battalion (now called the Azov Regiment).
Biletsky has been explicit about his ideology: “Social Nationalism is based on a number of fundamental principles that clearly distinguish it from other right-wing movements. This triad is: socialism, racism, imperialism.” He defines: “I. Socialism. We fight to create a harmonious national community.” And: “II. Racism. All our nationalism is nothing — just a castle in the sand — without reliance on the foundation of blood Races.” And: “III. Imperialism. … The task of the present generation is to create a Third Empire [a Ukrainian Third Reich] — Great Ukraine.” He teaches this not only to his troops but to Ukraine's children. A French TV documentary, “Ukraine — Masks of the Revolution”, interviewed him. Ukraine objected to the documentary, so it was removed from YouTube.
The people who control the U.S. Government, which installed and controls today’s Ukrainian Government, are no longer unified about the racist-fascists, or “nazis,” that their agents who run America’s Government have emplaced in control over Ukraine’s Government.
Political partisanship in America has finally reached the point where it might endanger the previous foreign-policy unanimity of America’s billionaires, who essentially own both Parties and their respective news-media to choose and “get out the vote” for their respective nominees on election days. No issues have been even nearly as bipartisan between their two Parties as foreign-affairs issues have been — for example, the unanimity typically reaches above 95% on sanctions legislation, to punish Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and other countries that they want to “regime-change” (take over) — but, now, their previous bipartisanship on these issues is beginning to break down. The news media of the Democratic Party (2) still predominantly portray the Azov Battalion and other nazi Ukrainian organizations as being freedom fighters, champions of democracy, but the news-media of the Republican Party are even beginning to portray Ukraine’s nazis as being Ukraine’s nazis, and are beginning to handle those nazis as providing them an opportunity to gain politically with American voters against Democratic Party billionaires’ nominees, by exposing those Democratic nominees’ support for Ukraine’s nazis.
On October 5th, the anonymous author of the “Moon of Alabama” website headlined “Media Hide Fascist Ideology Of Ukrainian Militia Which Visit Congress” and summarized, quoted from, and linked to, dozens of recent mainstream U.S. news-stories that now are presenting as heroes the Hitler-modelled Ukrainian White-power-nationalist, rabidly anti-Russian, Azov Battalion. For example, the (Democratic Party’s) New York Times issued, on October 4th, “Released Azov commanders have an emotional reunion with family members in Turkey.” Their London bureau’s Senior Editor Enjoli Liston, who had previously worked at the U.S.-&-UK billionaires’ rabidly anti-Russian newspaper The Guardian, portrayed the Azov Battalion as heroic avatars of freedom. On 27 September 2022, a Republican-Party news-site, News Punch, headlined “Rep. Adam Schiff Greets Ukraine Neo-Nazis in US Capitol: ‘They Are So Brave’,” and reported that the Democratic Party’s leader in the House hearings against the Republican Trump in Russiagate, Adam Schiff, was now welcoming as heroes, leaders of the nazi Azov Battalion. (The Azovs, one with a missing leg and both dressed in black, not insignia-studded uniforms), are seen surrounded by regular Ukraine army females—Ed).
Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff invited neo-Nazis serving in Ukraine’s Azov Battalion to the U.S. Capitol on Monday.
As recently as 16 December 2021, the United States was one of only two countries, the other being Ukraine, that voted against a General Assembly resolution to condemn “Nazism, neo‑Nazism, and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Most of America’s other-than-Ukraine ‘allies’ — or vassal-nations — simply abstained, including: UK, Turkey, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia, South Korea, Romania, Norway, New Zealand, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Latvia, Japan, Ireland, Iceland, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Georgia, France, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Czechia, Cyprus, Croatia, Canada, Bulgaria, Belgium, and a few smaller countries. The “Vote summary” showed: “Yes: 130 | No: 2 | Abstentions: 51 | Non-Voting: 10 | Total voting membership: 193.” Consequently, without any question, the world’s leading pro-nazi country (at least its billionaires who control that country) is: America, and there is no close second (since Ukraine is so obviously controlled by the U.S. regime).
Editor's Notes
(1) The French documentary Masks of Revolution, mostly banned in US-controlled social media, is easily superior in terms of journalistic value and integrity to anything produced by US networks, but is nonetheless far from impartial. It clearly sides with "the West" in its characterisations of Russia's policies and motives, something that vitiates its impact. It buys, for example, the spurious notion that Russia—supposedly on a whim, or due to inscrutable Slavic perfidy— might actually have plans to invade Europe and France itself, which is nonsensical. It proclaims as fact that Putin prodded the Donbas republics—Donetsk and Lugansk—to be more aggressive toward Kiev, while precisely the opposite was the case.
(2) Moon of Alabama (MoA), as noted by the author, provides an excellent snapshot of the US /Western media's cynical switch in editorial attitude toward Ukraine's Nazis. (Media Hide Fascist Ideology Of Ukrainian Militia Which Visit Congress, Oct 5, 2022). The overview presented by MoA is simply obligatory. In this context, it is noteworthy that the Democrats control today the largest and most powerful bloc of media (in all formats, internet, TV, legacy newspapers, etc.) in the entire West and possibly the world, a power they have been shamelessly brandishing to turn reality upside down in pursuit of imperialist/corporatist and hegemonist goals, while completely betraying the foundational ideals of the real left. The Russiagate hoax was and remains just one example. The manufacturing and reckless pursuit of the Ukraine war—which could easily land the world in a global nuclear war— is another.
As "b" notes, speaking for every decent and well-informed person in the world:
As I had written previously:
Today the New York Times topped that evolution by turning a Ukrainian government press release into a tear-dripping story about the reunion of freed Azov losers with their families: Released Azov commanders have an emotional reunion with family members in Turkey.
How can anyone working at the New York Times not be ashamed of this whitewash of a deeply fascist organization. The NYT is far from the only 'western' media doing this. It was easy to find some 40 stories in mainstream media which between 2014 and April 2022 that critically discussed the 'controversial' Nazi ideology of Azov and other Ukrainian militia. Then the coverage abruptly changed turning those fascist groups into harmless patriots. Others have done similar analyses:
It is not just the media but also politicians who have done a U-turn from condemning Azov and other Nazi groups to welcoming them as guests in Washington DC. |
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