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Post by pieter on Jul 25, 2023 13:08:27 GMT -7
Multiple reports are reinvestigating the neo-Nazi fighters and militias involved in the war both in Russia and Ukraine. “You have neo-Nazis on both sides of this conflict,” says Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin, a longtime reporter on the far right in Ukraine and Russia who is critical of the Western media’s normalization of groups like the Azov Battalion. “We are sending a very dangerous message that if you’re the right type of neo-Nazis, we will not only work with you, we will celebrate you,” Golinkin notes.
We also speak with national security reporter Ben Makuch, whose investigations reveal the networks connecting Ukrainian and Russian militias and American neo-Nazis. An anti-Putin Russian militia that carried out attacks inside Russia in May was led by a neo-Nazi who has maintained links with American neo-Nazis. In a new piece, Makuch also shares the story of an American military veteran wanted for murder who is now fighting for ultranationalist groups in Ukraine. “We know there has been secretive pipelines and networks,” says Makuch. “That still exists.”
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Post by pieter on Jul 25, 2023 14:08:23 GMT -7
Folks,
I want to state that I am critical towards Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report hosted by journalists Amy Goodman, Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. I am often tired by the Partisan reporting of both Rightwing and Leftwing media whom air either Conservative, Nationalist or Trumpist views, or radical left Progressive or Socialist wing of the Democrats. Why am I tired of partisan reporting, writing and opinionating, because these rightwing or leftwing media have the danger element of being 'Propaganda machines', 'political marketeers', 'Public Relations Departments' of either Trumpist Republican causes (Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars, New York Post) or Democratic Biden/Harris causes (CNN, ABC, CBS, PBS, New York Times). The USA has already enough Lobby groups, Billionare fundrasers and well develloped Grassroots movements of both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Newspapers, magazines, television Broadcast Corporations and Radio stations should not be the advertisement agencies or propaganda & marketing, and Public Relations departments of these 2 large American political parties. The Democrats and Reopublicans are perfectly capable of defending themselves and have their own websites, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter accounts and public attention via debates. Journalists should not endorse candidates or be partisan. Real journalists should be neutral, objective and fair.
Amy Goodman (born April 13, 1957) is an American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter, and author. Her investigative journalism career includes coverage of the East Timor independence movement. Since 1996, she has been the main host of Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report, a progressive global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the Internet.
Real journalism, reporting, investigating journalism should be non-partisan. My criticism towards Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report is that I detected a rather Pro-Venezuelan, Cuban, Pro-Palestinian (Anti-Israeli), Leftist anti-Trump and anti-Biden, slightly Anti-American, standard critical of US reporting. Critical of the Biden administration, because Democracy Now is clearly from the Leftist Progressive wing of the Democratic Party and close to Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). And Biden in my opinion is closer to the Liberal and Moderate wings of the Democratic party, despite some leftist and progressive aspects of his policies.
That is okay and I deliberately post their video's and interviews and posts over here every now to show the Leftist American view. But you should know who they are. I have sometimes problems with their simplistic, leftwing populist view about the world, in which progressive left is good and conservative right is bad. The reality is more nuanced, and you had and you have and you will have in the future some good rightwing conservative governments, Centrist governments and progressive liberal administrations.
www.youtube.com/@dsademsocialistsPieter
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Post by pieter on Jul 25, 2023 15:14:07 GMT -7
Folks,
Back to this topic. Democracy focuses on the topic of Neo-Nazi's in the Ukrainian armed forces. Ignoring completely as if they are blind the facts of war. And focussing on old news and basing themselves on old reports. The Azov Assault Brigade, a formation of the National Guard of Ukraine formerly based in Mariupol, had many roots.
According to right‑wing radicalism researcher Vyacheslav Likhachev, Azov had many roots. For example, Jewish activist Nathan Khazin [uk] has described a group of around 26 activists in the Automaidan movement in 2013 who he said formed the backbone of Azov, while other sources emphasise the presence of former Patriot of Ukraine activists.
According to Katerina Sergatskova in Hromadske, parts of the Azov Brigade had its roots in a group of ultras of FC Metalist Kharkiv named "Sect 82" (1982 is the year of the founding of the group) accused of neo-Nazi leanings.
Azov patch
On February 2014, Andriy Biletsky, a far-right political activist, founder and leader of the ultranationalist organization Patriot of Ukraine and the related Social-National Assembly (SNA), who had been previously arrested in 2011 accused of robbery and assault, although his case had never reached the courts, was released from prison after the new government considered him a political prisoner of the former Yanukovytch government. After returning to Kharkiv, he rallied some activists from Patriot of Ukraine, SNA, the AutoMaidan movement and some ultras groups, and formed a small militia to help local security forces against the local pro-Russian movement in the city. Biletsky's militia, and later the Battalion, was known as the "Black Corps" (Ukrainian: Чорний Корпус, romanized: Chorny Korpus), and nicknamed by Ukrainian media as the "Men in Black" or "Little Black Men", touted as Ukraine's version of Russia's Little Green Men due to their secrecy and mystery, as well their use of all-black fatigues and masks in Kharkiv and later in Mariupol. During March 2014, as the unrest in Kharkiv worsened, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Militsiya pulled out from the city, the Black Corps started to patrol the streets, protecting pro-Ukrainian activists and attacking pro-Russian ones. On 14 March, members of the pro-Russian militant organization "Oplot" (which would later become a separatist military battalion), and the head of the Donetsk branch, Alexander Zakharchenko (who would become Head of the Donetsk People's Republic) and of the Anti-Maidan movement, attempted to raid the local Patriot of Ukraine headquarters. The Black Corps retaliated with automatic weapons, and the situation escalated into a firefight between the two groups, leading to two dead on the pro-Russian side. At that time, the Black Corps had around 60 to 70 members, mostly lightly armed.
Andriy Yevheniyovych Biletsky (born 5 August 1979) is a Ukrainian far-right politician. He is the leader of political party National Corps. He was the first commander of the volunteer militia Azov Battalion, which he founded in 2014, and a co-founder of the nationalist movement Social-National Assembly. From 2014 until 2019 Biletsky was a People's Deputy of Ukraine.
By April, during the initial phases of the war in Donbas, the Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered a number of defeats and setbacks against the separatists, as they were ill-prepared, ill-equipped, lacking in professionalism, morale, and fighting spirit, and with severe incompetence in the high command. Because of this, many civilians created militias and paramilitary groups, known as "volunteer battalions", to fight the separatists on their own initiative.
On February 2014, Andriy Biletsky, a far-right political activist, founder and leader of the ultranationalist organization Patriot of Ukraine and the related Social-National Assembly (SNA), who had been previously arrested in 2011 accused of robbery and assault, although his case had never reached the courts, was released from prison after the new government considered him a political prisoner of the former Yanukovytch government. After returning to Kharkiv, he rallied some activists from Patriot of Ukraine, SNA, the AutoMaidan movement and some ultras groups, and formed a small militia to help local security forces against the local pro-Russian movement in the city. Biletsky's militia, and later the Battalion, was known as the "Black Corps" (Ukrainian: Чорний Корпус, romanized: Chorny Korpus), and nicknamed by Ukrainian media as the "Men in Black" or "Little Black Men", touted as Ukraine's version of Russia's Little Green Men due to their secrecy and mystery, as well their use of all-black fatigues and masks in Kharkiv and later in Mariupol. During March 2014, as the unrest in Kharkiv worsened, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Militsiya pulled out from the city, the Black Corps started to patrol the streets, protecting pro-Ukrainian activists and attacking pro-Russian ones. On 14 March, members of the pro-Russian militant organization "Oplot" (which would later become a separatist military battalion), and the head of the Donetsk branch, Alexander Zakharchenko (who would become Head of the Donetsk People's Republic) and of the Anti-Maidan movement, attempted to raid the local Patriot of Ukraine headquarters. The Black Corps retaliated with automatic weapons, and the situation escalated into a firefight between the two groups, leading to two dead on the pro-Russian side. At that time, the Black Corps had around 60 to 70 members, mostly lightly armed.
By April, during the initial phases of the war in Donbas, the Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered a number of defeats and setbacks against the separatists, as they were ill-prepared, ill-equipped, lacking in professionalism, morale, and fighting spirit, and with severe incompetence in the high command. Because of this, many civilians created militias and paramilitary groups, known as "volunteer battalions", to fight the separatists on their own initiative. The Azov Brigade was one of these "volunteer battalions". A member of the Azov Regiment posing near a tank during the Siege of Mariupol Uniforms of the Azov Regiment. On the left is a physical training uniform and on the right is a multicam combat uniform.During the Siege of Mariupol, Russia was accused of using the presence of Azov in the battle as justification for war crimes. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov justified the Mariupol hospital airstrike claiming the Azov was using the hospital as a base and had previously evicted the patients and staff. On 16 March, the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre, which was sheltering almost 1,300 civilians, was struck and largely destroyed by an airstrike. Russia denied the bombings and claimed that the Azov Regiment took civilians as hostages inside the building and bombed the theater themselves to frame Russia. This was sharply disputed by Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk region administration, who asserted that "the Russians are already lying, [saying] that the headquarters of the Azov Regiment was there. But they themselves are well aware that there were only civilians." Due to the increased prevalence of factchecking websites, Russia, in counter-disinformation, utilized fake fact checking websites to counter common narratives in the west. For example, in the case of the Mariupol theater bombing, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs started linking to a site that declared the images, videos and foreign news reports that attributed it to a Russian airstrike as fake, and instead, the site was used to add credence to the narrative Azov had mined the building.
After the discovery of the Bucha massacre following the end of the Battle of Kyiv, Russia and Russian media offered multiple contradictory explanations, in an approach disinformation experts called a "scattershot approach". In one of these narratives, Russian media claimed people associated with Azov and/or Azov fighters killed anyone not wearing a pro-Ukrainian blue ribbon after Russian troops left. International media have disproved this timeline using other evidence. The Azov-Kyiv territorial defense unit had been in the Kyiv area, according to Maksym Zhorin.
Scattershot Approach
The firehose of falsehood is a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels (such as news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency. An outgrowth of Soviet propaganda techniques, the firehose of falsehood is a contemporary model for Russian propaganda under Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian government used the technique during its offensive against Georgia in 2008, and continued to use it in Russia's war with Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea, and the prelude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Politicians, governments, and movements in other countries have since used the same tactics, such as former US president Donald Trump.
While difficult to counter, the German Marshall Fund, RAND, and military strategists have described techniques to respond to the firehose of falsehood, generally involving preempting it with good information, strategically reducing or removing misinformation, and teaching digital literacy.
The RAND Corporation coined the name "firehose of falsehood" in 2016, describing a technique it observed in Russian propaganda which combines a very large number of communications and disregard for the truth. It is distinguished from the older Soviet propaganda techniques used during the Cold War in part by the much larger quantity of messages and channels enabled by the internet and changes in how people consume news information. The immediate aim is to entertain, confuse, and overwhelm the audience, and disinterest in or opposition to fact-checking and accurate reporting means the propaganda can be delivered to the public more quickly than better sources. The approach's success flouts the conventional wisdom that communication is more persuasive when it is truthful, credible, and non-contradictory.
According to RAND, the firehose of falsehood model has four distinguishing factors: it
1) is high-volume and multichannel
2) is rapid, continuous, and repetitive
3) lacks a commitment to objective reality
4) lacks commitment to consistency.
The high volume of messages, the use of multiple channels, and the use of internet bots and fake accounts are effective because people are more likely to believe a story when it appears to have been reported by multiple sources. In addition to the recognizably-Russian news source RT, for example, Russia disseminates propaganda using dozens of proxy websites whose connection to RT are "disguised or downplayed." People are also more likely to believe a story when they think many others believe it, especially if those others belong to a group with which they identify. Thus, a group of operatives can influence a person's opinion by creating the false impression that a majority of that person's neighbors support a given view.
The Russian Supreme Court scheduled a hearing for 29 June 2022, on whether or not to classify the Azov regiment a terrorist organization, which was subsequently rescheduled to 2 August 2022. On 2 August, the Supreme Court declared the regiment as a terrorist organization. This allows for harsher penalties to be imposed on members of the Azov Regiment. Members face up to 10 years in jail while leaders face up to 20 years.
In july 2023 I (Pieter) do not believe the Azov Assault Brigade (Ukrainian: Штурмова бригада «Азов», romanized: Shturmova bryhada "Azov") to be a Far Right, Neo-Nazi organisation. But I do believe that the Azov Assault Brigade has a far right Ukrainian Ultra-Nationalist past and thus far right roots. It is very well possible that Ukrainian and foreign Neo-Nazi's serve in the Azov Brigade as volunteers or paid soldiers. Every war attracts Neo-Nazi's and foreign mercenaries. But on the Russian side as well there are Russian and foreign Neo-Nazi's active. For instance in the Wagner group, in the Russian armed forces or as other Volunteer units.
Let's make a historical comparisson. In Poland at the start and during the Second World War you had far right resistance fighters, whom before the war had been Endecja or Falanga National Radical Camp (Polish: Ruch Narodowo Radykalny-Falanga), RNR-Falanga or ONR-Falanga.
During World War II, both organizations created underground resistance organizations: ONR-ABC was transformed into Grupa Szańca (Rampart Group), whose military arm became the Związek Jaszczurczy (Lizard Union), while the ONR-Falanga created the Konfederacja Narodu (Confederation of the Nation). They were not supportive of the mainstream Polish Underground State related to the Polish government in exile. During the German occupation of Poland, many of the former ONR activists belonged to National Armed Forces resistance groups.
In every war a nation unites, and you need every person that can fight and you set pre-war differences asside and fight together with former political oponents in your own nation against the common enemy that attacks your country or occupied you.
PieterLinks/Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Brigadewww.britannica.com/event/2022-Russian-invasion-of-Ukrainewww.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regimentwww.supportazov.com/en/about
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