the ukrainian right made up 5% in the last election. there is some historic connection to nazism and some ukrainians are genuine nazis.
but the problem is blown out of proportion by the same people who started a war against them.
there’s WAY BIGGER fascism problems in czechia, serbia or the #1 spot: germany.
the world is not black and white.
Seventy-six percent of those who live in western Ukraine have a positive opinion towards Bandera, the poll indicates.
The situation in the southern and eastern regions, except Donbass, is: 15% and 8% are pro-Bandera, and 69%-70% are negative, with, 14% and 18% respectively undecided.
In Donbass, 79% of those polled have a negative attitude to Bandera, 3% positive and 2% are undecided.
Poll from 2014. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7138
Archived link for the curious: https://archive.md/TzJBp
The article mentions this sort of thing happens with Russian soldiers as well, with a solder on video receiving a medal while wearing the totenkopf: https://archive.md/I4QGG
_The Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939, so it was caught by surprise two years later when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Ukraine had suffered greatly under a Soviet government that engineered a famine that killed millions. Many Ukrainians initially viewed the Nazis as liberators.
Factions from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its insurgent army fought alongside the Nazis in what they viewed as a struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty. Members of those groups also took part in atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians. Later in the war, though, some of the groups fought against the Nazis._
Not everything is as it seems, there is a lot of nuance and history here and I think it would be silly to say that Ukraine was a nazi country.
I have seen actual nazi rallies in the US and Australia, there are probably more across the world. White supremacists are a thing, the vocal disgusting minority.
https://www.villagevoice.com/in-search-of-a-soviet-holocaust/
“They’re always looking to come up with a number bigger than six million,” observed Eli Rosenbaum, general counsel for the World Jewish Congress. “It makes the reader think: ‘My god, it’s worse than the Holocaust.’ ”
Your husband’s courage and dedication to liberty will serve as a continuing source of inspiration to all those striving for freedom and self-determination. — Letter from President Reagan to the widow of Yaroslav Stetsko, ranking OUN terrorist, murderer, and Nazi collaborator, read by retired general John Singlaub at a conference of the World Anti-Communist League, September 7, 1986
Just as the Nazis used the OUN for their own ends, so has Reagan exploited the famine, from his purple-prosed commemoration of “this callous act” to his backing of the Mace commission. Faced with failing fascist allies around the world, from Nicaragua to South Africa, the U.S. war lobby needs to boost anti-Communism as never before. Public enthusiasm to fight for the contras will not come easy. But if people could be convinced that Communism is worse than fascism; that Stalin was an insane monster, even worse than Hitler; that the seven million died in more unspeakable agony than the six million …. Well, we just might be set up for the next Gulf of Tonkin. One cannot appease an Evil Empire, after all.
Zelensky won his office on a peace platform with most support coming from the ethnic Russians of eastern Ukraine. The western Ukrainians voted against him. He then betrayed the east by allowing AZOV to carry on a campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Donbass.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7138
Seventy-six percent of those who live in western Ukraine have a positive opinion towards Bandera, the poll indicates. (2014)
Gareth Jones’s accounts of what was happening in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33 were different from other western accounts. Not only did he reveal the true extent of starvation, he reported on the Stalin regime’s failure to deliver aid while exporting grain to the west. The tragedy is now known as the Holodomar and regarded by Ukrainians as genocide.
Jones was the only journalist who risked his name and reputation to expose the Holodomor to the world.
For example, he was once on a 16-seat aircraft with the new German chancellor, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Goebbels, on their way to a rally in Frankfurt.
This was about a month before the “Terror Famine” propaganda story was published in Hearst-owned newspapers.
He managed to get an interview with a local castle owner: William Randolph Hearst who owned St Donat’s Castle near Cardiff. The newspaper magnate was obviously taken by Jones’s accounts of what had happened in Ukraine and invited the reporter to the US.
Jones dutifully arrived at Hearst’s private station – as Chico Marx was leaving the estate – and wrote three articles for Hearst and used, for the first time, the phrase “manmade famine”.
A few bits about Hearst: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst
He was at once a militant nationalist, a staunch anti-communist after the Russian Revolution, and deeply suspicious of the League of Nations and of the British, French, Japanese, and Russians.[2] Following Hitler’s rise to power, Hearst became a supporter of the Nazi Party, ordering his journalists to publish favourable coverage of Nazi Germany, and allowing leading Nazis to publish articles in his newspapers.[3]
With “AMERICA FIRST” emblazoned on his newspaper masthead, Hearst celebrated the “great achievement” of the new Nazi regime in Germany—a lesson to all “liberty-loving people”—the defeat of communism. In 1934, after checking with Jewish leaders to ensure a visit would be to their benefit,[57] Hearst visited Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler. When Hitler asked why he was so misunderstood by the American press, Hearst retorted: “Because Americans believe in democracy, and are averse to dictatorship.”[58] William Randolph Hearst instructed his reporters in Germany to give positive coverage of the Nazis, and fired journalists who refused to write stories favourable of German fascism.[3] Hearst’s papers ran columns without rebuttal by Nazi leader Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg,[3] and Hitler himself, as well as Mussolini and other dictators in Europe and Latin America.[59] During that same year 1934, Japan / U.S. relations were unstable. In an attempt to remedy this, Prince Tokugawa Iesato travelled throughout the United States on a goodwill visit. During his visit, Prince Iesato and his delegation met with William Randolph Hearst with the hope of improving mutual understanding between the two nations.
And don’t forget about the CIA supported Banderite that created a publishing house in NYC to spread more propaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Lebed
Thanks to his collaboration with the CIA and their active shielding of him, Lebed was never tried for the war crimes he and his men had committed against Poles and Jews during WWII.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2018/sep/18/mykola-lebed-and-the-cia/
The CIA facilitated Lebed’s move to the US, getting asylum for him and his family in 1949 and helping him obtain citizenship in 1957. As head of a CIA operation called Project AERODYNAMIC, Lebed spent the next few decades in control of a Agency-funded non-profit publishing company, the Prolog Research and Publishing Association.
Prolog Research and Publishing went on to promote lots of anti-Soviet propaganda, including popularizing the ‘terror famine’ rhetoric. Many of the biased sources discussed in the Village Voice article can trace their claims back to Lebed’s publishing.
I’m not sure I follow all the information you have given, but it is interesting and led me down a few rabbit holes of reading.
The famine is an interesting one, your first article seems to cast doubt on it, but later on you mention a journalist who risked his career to report it. In any case, the famine is historical fact, though both the US and Russia did try to dispute it.
You mentioned the allegations of genocide in Donbas which appear to have been false allegations, I cannot find any reputable sources that the Azov brigade did anything of the sort.
The article mentioning Stepan Bandera is interesting, it seems he was another figure “seen as a symbol of a revolutionary who fought for Ukrainian independence.” Though he had facist beliefs, at the time, I can see an impoverished people (and their later descendants) clinging on to any symbol of hope.
The information about Lebed and his later contributions to the Prologue Research and Publishing Association.
I admit I am not 100% sure where you were going with all this information, but it made for an interesting read with my morning coffee! <3
Downvoted for being correct as usual, some folks just hate being reminded that they’re supporting fucking nazis lol
Accountability hurts the feelings of the immature deeply.
I’ve noticed lol There are more liberals on Lemmy than I was expecting
Oh well, still better than Reddit at least lmbo!
