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US revoked the weapon ban on the openly Nazi, Azov brigade. The Azov Brigade, now 3rd separate assault force is also having considerable success in recruiting new soldiers. Now I don't know how much influence does Neo-Nazis wield in the Ukrainian government, but even assuming it is little, the thought of a trained, professional Nazi brigade with combat experience being armed with weapons and given legitimacy scares the shit out of me. What is the US thinking? What is their endgame? In the scenario that Ukraine is able to survive, do they think they can easily do away with the Brigade? In my opinion this is a huge miscalculation. The US might very well think Ukrainian politicians can outmaneuver Azovs if they decided to enter the political space orv if in worst case scenario, Azovs took Ukraine through a coup, they can deal with it through military action. Either option will come with huge costs, never-mind the possibility or degree of their success in disposing them.
Does anyone have any credible sources for the current Nazi influence in Ukraine?
No, but then I wouldn't expect to much credible information on something that largely doesn't exist, and I don't know any credible sources that would unironically use the term 'professional Nazi' either.
Given that the Azov Brigade's primary Nazi-ness was primarily performative, not ideological, and the primary ideological parallel was 'anyone the russians hate who could kill a lot of them had something going for them' rather than 'uber-racist genocidal anti-semetic state-supremacist nationalist with a desire to conquer Europe and colonize the east,' I'm also unclear what you think a 'trained, professional Nazi brigade' entails. Fashion-conscious parades? Cosplay with vigor? Casual drives through the Ardennes?
The neo-nazi accusation is about as old as the Russian incursion into Ukraine, which is to say 2014 and attempted at the Nova Russia uprising that fizzled into the Separatists, and has been the go-to accusation for the Russian propaganda aparatus for a decade now. It's about as well founded as it ever was. The Azovs were Nazis in much the same way that Satanists are worshippers of evil- it was (and to a degree still is) a form of unrepentant defiance by identifying with your hated outgroup's nominal worst fear / hated foe, rather than with what otherwise might be presented as a cultural sibling.
At the end of the day, the Azovs were one of a large number of private and oligarch-sponsored militias groups that rose during the chaos of Russia's attempted nova russia uprising. They weren't particularly nazi, unless you conflate all right-wing politics with nazi, and the only thing particularly notable about them aside from their wearing accusations like a badge of honor was a relatively high valor and willingness to keep fighting, which is why they were notably effective, and one of the reasons the Russians have fixated on them in particular.
That Azov formation is long dead. Between the post-2015 reorganization of the oligarchic controlled militias into the national military with replacements of key leaders, the normal military manning cycles, and the extremely high attrition during the Mariupole campaign in 2022, very little of the original formation remains, and the formation itself has been expanded and thus flooded so even pre-war composition would be flooded by outsiders, i.e. diluting the characteristics of the precursor personnel.
Unless you believe that nazism is a magical mind-virus that converts by insinuation and proximity, there's no particular Nazi influence in the Azov Brigade. The Azovs are basically a quote-unquote 'prestige' unit that people want to join because it is prestigious, and it is prestigious does much the same thing as any other, but with better (or, if you prefer, notorious) PR.
"If there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, then you got a table with 11 Nazis."
So kind of yeah, that's a somewhat common sentiment among some people.
The counterpoint of this is that the is a Nazi-cosplayer at a table and 10 other people sitting there, then you have a table with 0 Nazis. And if someone comes along and points and shouts 'Nazi', you still have 0 Nazis.
Nazi is as Nazi does, not as Nazi dresses or Nazi-accused. Belief otherwise may be somewhat common sentiment among some people, but these are generally the same people who similarly mis-used 'fascist', and they are just as wrong even if their numbers do allow them to appeal to the bandwagon fallacy.
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That’s a misunderstanding of the phrase though. The phrase doesn’t mean you’ll catch Nazi ideology like it’s COVID. What it means is that if you’re hanging around with Nazis you are already at least okay with the ideas they espouse. It’s not a dealbreaker for you or you won’t sit there and talk to that guy. And I think it’s pretty reasonable in that sense, though it’s true of almost any ideology. If you’re talking to them and especially in the political sense of negotiation with them for power, you’re at least okay enough with them that you’re willing to give them a seat at the political table.
What it means is a threat.
How? Again, it’s not the claim that you catch Nazi like a big. The claim isn’t even about the Nazis per se. The claim is that people willing to have Nazis involved in their professional or political or social circles are at least okay with the ideology.
It's a threat insofar as SJ persecutes Nazis and thus a statement that non-haters of Nazis are Nazis is a threat to persecute anyone who doesn't join in the persecution.
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