It was never really about NATO [1] for the russians, but as Putin said in his initial speech at the beginning of the invasion to "find a final solution to the Ukrainian question).
If you want to see the origin of russian ethno-fascism, try to find an early 2000s russian action film called "Brother 2" (Брат 2). It was immensely popular in russia at the time and is the most racist thing I've ever seen.
1 - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-beg...
Why would one be that willfully superficial to look only at a recently crafted public image, instead of... I dunno... The recent history of the organisation?
At the very least being lazy as we are, we could just take a quick look at their recent logo from a few years ago, according to Wikipedia featuring "...a combination of a mirrored Wolfsangel and Black Sun, two symbols associated with the Wehrmacht and SS, over a small Tryzub".
Somehow I doubt that this was all a total accident made up by evil Russians. I also remember internet openly talking about the rise of nazism in Ukraine before it became a taboo topic. And you could too, by simply telling your search engine to look for documents before 2022, when everyone went full post-truth.
> russian ethno-fascism
Ukrainians and Russians are mostly ethnically slavs, ugh.
> If you want to see the origin of russian ethno-fascism, try to find an early 2000s russian action film called "Brother 2" (Брат 2)
Oh please, it's like claiming that Duke Nukem is a represantative origin of women's rights in the US.
> Ukrainians and Russians are mostly ethnically slavs, ugh.
Thanks for your racial theories...
> Oh please, it's like claiming that Duke Nukem is a represantative origin of women's rights in the US.
It was indicative of the culture though. This is why today you won't see a popular game with such rhetoric as Duke Nukem anymore. But Russians still don't realize Brat 2 is racist.
Who cares about it's recent political pivoting? Why are you trying to stir the discussion away from the fact that Azov first and foremost in its recent origin is a military organisation born of banal street-level neonazi skinhead sorts? It's not your typical US Republican or German AfD talks-kinda-maybe-like-nazi-apologist, it's an actual physical organizied force.
And the scandal of integrating it into Ukraine's National Guard back when it was openly waving the Third Reich's symbolics tells us quite a lot of its role in post-revolution Ukraine power structure.
> Right now you're going "symbol scary!". By that logic German AfD, the French Front Nationale, or UKIP are totally above board in that respect...
Are any of these also military organizations at their core? And specifically, what symbols so commonly associated with the Thrid Reich are they using?
> Thanks for your racial theories...
Beg your pardon? You were the one to bring up the topic of ethnicity, not me.
> It was indicative of the culture though. This is why today you won't see a popular game with such rhetoric as Duke Nukem anymore.
Duke Nukem had a reboot and an aniversary edition a few years ago... And the abundance of wierd rape fanasy porn games on Steam doesn't really add up.
> But Russians still don't realize Brat 2 is racist.
Is this a verifiable claim? Cuz you're referring to a 20 smth y.o. lowlife trashy criminal drama, not some "Brat N+1". Is it any different from a movie like La Haine (1995)?
People who vote for them.
You have zero evidence that the regiment follows a neonazi agenda. Neither does the National Guard, the Army, nor the government. Not to mention that Azov itself is multiethnic.
Russians on the other hand have filtration camps and TV hosts on government channels call for nuclear war, ethnic cleansing and destruction of the Ukrainian national identity. Thank god they have nice logos though, otherwise they'd seem like Nazis! /s
> Beg your pardon? You were the one to bring up the topic of ethnicity, not me.
I didn't make any ethnic assertions. You started the "brothers slavs" trope.
> And specifically, what symbols so commonly associated...
Again, "symbol scary". Azov has no stated political goals against any minority / groups of population. AfD has. FN has. UKIP has.
> Duke Nukem had a reboot and an aniversary edition a few years ago...
Are they as popular as the original then?
> Is this a verifiable claim?
Ask a russian.
And why would we care about them, at least in context of this specific discussion?
> You have zero evidence that the regiment follows a neonazi agenda.
The evidence is plenty, although might feel inaccessable when naive-googling without setting filter to before the great post-truth of 2022.
Azov recruiting neonazis:
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/ukraine-deutsche-soel...
Azov being your typical far-right brute force thugs, targeting identity groups:
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-far-right-vigilantes-destroy... https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-azov-right-wing-militia-to-p... https://khpg.org/en/1517275970
They even have their own hitlerjugend: https://youtu.be/CpV16BQfbrQ
And we've already discussed the symbolics that you were so fast to dismiss. I'm sorry, but if it's recruiting neonazis, dresses as neonazis and operates like neonazis, it's neonazis. I'm not sure what argument could be made here.
The government is a whole another matter. Sure, Israel is not happy with some of its politics, and the Odessa fires incident (specifically the investigation of it) doesn't inspire confidence, but it's hard to clearly distinct policy of one from the network effect of turing a militant skinheads brigade into glorified policie.
> I didn't make any ethnic assertions. You started the "brothers slavs" trope.
Trope? Slavic people were historicaly kinda disjointed, I am not sure where you had inferred all that "brother" stuff from.
> Again, "symbol scary". Azov has no stated political goals against any minority / groups of population. AfD has. FN has. UKIP has.
I dunno, their statements seem pretty clear to me: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/11/ultranationali...
> Are they as popular as the original then?
Correcting for the explosive expansion of the industry, yeah, I'd say the genre had marked itself pretty solidly.
> Ask a russian.
So you actually have no idea?
Also, if someone's genuinely interested in my "sources" I'm willing to put in the work and post them, but didn't want to waste time in case people can't be bothered to be critical and click the links, and I also don't have a horse in this race, but the whole "America best, everyone bad" mentality literally reeks of indoctrination and lack of critical thinking that indoctrination and gaslighting cause, and it's worrying that it's happening in America of all places (which I admired for human rights and freedom of expression and thought, at least until recently). For reference, some were older BBC and CNN articles, a few YouTube videos, and a Quora thread which duplicates some of these.
[1]: Which the US military is supplying weapons to, apparently
[2] Maybe I fell victim to not appropriately fact checking some propaganda though, but I'm also not sure how to fact check something like this, and... The truth of the matter is that the US has done much worse in the past.
Aside: This whole "everything is a propaganda machine" is so frustrating, and I hate that there's literally nothing you can trust these days. I honestly can't even tell if I'm "paranoid" to think so. It just so very saddening, and despite some people's best efforts, it seems human nature is truly disappointing everywhere we turn.