07-15-2022, 02:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-15-2022, 02:56 PM by Eric the Green.)
The Facts on ‘De-Nazifying’ Ukraine
By Robert Farley
Posted on March 31, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia’s talk of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine is a non-starter in peace negotiations.
“We won’t sit down at the table at all if all we talk about is some ‘de-militarization’ or some ‘de-Nazification,'” Zelensky said in an interview with independent Russian journalists on March 27. “For me, these are absolutely incomprehensible things.”
Two days earlier, in a speech from Poland, President Joe Biden dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia invaded because it seeks “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. Putin has also talked about “neo-Nazis, who settled in Kyiv and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage.”
“Putin has the gall to say he’s ‘de-Nazifying’ Ukraine. It’s a lie,” Biden said. “It’s just cynical. He knows that. And it’s also obscene.”
Biden noted that Zelensky was democratically elected — getting 73% of the vote in 2019 — and he is Jewish.
Although historians say Putin’s assertions about the need to liberate Ukraine from the grip of neo-Nazis and genocide against ethnic Russians in Ukraine are false propaganda, the repeated assertions from Putin and other Russian officials had at least one American politician questioning aid to Ukraine.
“It’s shocking to me that Congress is so willing to funnel $14 billion in military equipment over and over again into Ukraine and you have to ask, is this money and is this United States military equipment falling into the hands of Nazis in Ukraine?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on March 22.
We’ll explain what these claims are all about and why experts say they are misleading.
A statement signed by more than 300 historians who study genocide, Nazism and World War II said Putin’s rhetoric about de-Nazifying fascists among Ukraine’s elected leadership is “propaganda.”
“We strongly reject the Russian government’s cynical abuse of the term genocide, the memory of World War II and the Holocaust, and the equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression,” the statement says. “This rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and those who courageously fought against it, including Russian and Ukrainian soldiers of the Red Army.
“We do not idealize the Ukrainian state and society. Like any other country, it has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups. Ukraine also ought to better confront the darker chapters of its painful and complicated history. Yet none of this justifies the Russian aggression and the gross mischaracterization of Ukraine.”
One of the authors of the statement, Eugene Finkel, an associate professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, told us the influence of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi faction is relatively small.
“Neo-Nazi, far right and xenophobic groups do exist in Ukraine, like in pretty much any other country, including Russia,” Finkel said. “They are vocal and can be prone to violence but they are numerically small, marginal and their political influence at the state level is non-existent. That is not to say that Ukraine doesn’t have a far-right problem. It does. But I would consider the KKK in the US and skinheads and neo-Nazi groups in Russia a much bigger problem and threat than the Ukrainian far right.”
‘Political Periphery’
Since Ukraine regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, far-right, ultra-nationalist political groups have struggled to make much headway in Ukrainian politics.
“During much of Ukraine’s post-Soviet history, the radical right has remained on the political periphery, wielding little influence over national politics,” Melanie Mierzejewski-Voznyak wrote for “The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right,” which was published in 2018.
In the 30 years since Ukraine’s declaration of independence, Mierzejewski-Voznyak wrote, “its radical right’s national electoral support only rarely exceeded 3 percent of the popular vote. Radical right parties typically enjoyed just a few wins in single-mandate districts, and no far right candidate for president has ever secured more than 5 percent of the popular vote in an election.” The far right did, however, for the first time win a proportional share of the parliamentary government in 2012 when it won 10.4% of the popular vote. Since then, the far right’s share in parliamentary elections fell to 6% in 2014 and then to 2% in 2019.
“The claim that neo-Nazi or far-right groups hold any significant power in Ukraine is absurd,” Jared McBride, an adjunct history professor at UCLA whose work specializes in nationalist movements and mass violence and genocide in Russia and Ukraine, told us via email. “The most well-known far-right wing party, Svoboda (similar to say [Marine] Le Pen’s party or other corollaries in Europe) won 2.15 percent of the vote in 2019 election and holds one seat in the Rada – meaning they are politically irrelevant.” (Le Pen is the leader of the French far-right party the National Rally.)....
This and more at:
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/the-fa...g-ukraine/
By Robert Farley
Posted on March 31, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia’s talk of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine is a non-starter in peace negotiations.
“We won’t sit down at the table at all if all we talk about is some ‘de-militarization’ or some ‘de-Nazification,'” Zelensky said in an interview with independent Russian journalists on March 27. “For me, these are absolutely incomprehensible things.”
Two days earlier, in a speech from Poland, President Joe Biden dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia invaded because it seeks “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. Putin has also talked about “neo-Nazis, who settled in Kyiv and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage.”
“Putin has the gall to say he’s ‘de-Nazifying’ Ukraine. It’s a lie,” Biden said. “It’s just cynical. He knows that. And it’s also obscene.”
Biden noted that Zelensky was democratically elected — getting 73% of the vote in 2019 — and he is Jewish.
Although historians say Putin’s assertions about the need to liberate Ukraine from the grip of neo-Nazis and genocide against ethnic Russians in Ukraine are false propaganda, the repeated assertions from Putin and other Russian officials had at least one American politician questioning aid to Ukraine.
“It’s shocking to me that Congress is so willing to funnel $14 billion in military equipment over and over again into Ukraine and you have to ask, is this money and is this United States military equipment falling into the hands of Nazis in Ukraine?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on March 22.
We’ll explain what these claims are all about and why experts say they are misleading.
A statement signed by more than 300 historians who study genocide, Nazism and World War II said Putin’s rhetoric about de-Nazifying fascists among Ukraine’s elected leadership is “propaganda.”
“We strongly reject the Russian government’s cynical abuse of the term genocide, the memory of World War II and the Holocaust, and the equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression,” the statement says. “This rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and those who courageously fought against it, including Russian and Ukrainian soldiers of the Red Army.
“We do not idealize the Ukrainian state and society. Like any other country, it has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups. Ukraine also ought to better confront the darker chapters of its painful and complicated history. Yet none of this justifies the Russian aggression and the gross mischaracterization of Ukraine.”
One of the authors of the statement, Eugene Finkel, an associate professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, told us the influence of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi faction is relatively small.
“Neo-Nazi, far right and xenophobic groups do exist in Ukraine, like in pretty much any other country, including Russia,” Finkel said. “They are vocal and can be prone to violence but they are numerically small, marginal and their political influence at the state level is non-existent. That is not to say that Ukraine doesn’t have a far-right problem. It does. But I would consider the KKK in the US and skinheads and neo-Nazi groups in Russia a much bigger problem and threat than the Ukrainian far right.”
‘Political Periphery’
Since Ukraine regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, far-right, ultra-nationalist political groups have struggled to make much headway in Ukrainian politics.
“During much of Ukraine’s post-Soviet history, the radical right has remained on the political periphery, wielding little influence over national politics,” Melanie Mierzejewski-Voznyak wrote for “The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right,” which was published in 2018.
In the 30 years since Ukraine’s declaration of independence, Mierzejewski-Voznyak wrote, “its radical right’s national electoral support only rarely exceeded 3 percent of the popular vote. Radical right parties typically enjoyed just a few wins in single-mandate districts, and no far right candidate for president has ever secured more than 5 percent of the popular vote in an election.” The far right did, however, for the first time win a proportional share of the parliamentary government in 2012 when it won 10.4% of the popular vote. Since then, the far right’s share in parliamentary elections fell to 6% in 2014 and then to 2% in 2019.
“The claim that neo-Nazi or far-right groups hold any significant power in Ukraine is absurd,” Jared McBride, an adjunct history professor at UCLA whose work specializes in nationalist movements and mass violence and genocide in Russia and Ukraine, told us via email. “The most well-known far-right wing party, Svoboda (similar to say [Marine] Le Pen’s party or other corollaries in Europe) won 2.15 percent of the vote in 2019 election and holds one seat in the Rada – meaning they are politically irrelevant.” (Le Pen is the leader of the French far-right party the National Rally.)....
This and more at:
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/the-fa...g-ukraine/