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Notes -
Did anyone of you had Waffen SS fighter getting standing ovation in Canadian parliament for their 2023 bingo card?
Congratulations - you will be rich.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66908958
Now I doubt that the svastika will be on the Canadian flag anytime soon. But the fact that the ideology blinded the people to make even a basic background check on the so called hero is troubling. And there seems to be some kind of full blown damage control operation going on.
Anyway a lot of Canadian politicians will have to figure out how to unsuck this dick. ADL seems to be silent as of now. Media try to bury the waffen ss part in the bottom of the articles, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more fanatical ex blue checkmarks try to write opinion piece explaining how this unit were somewhat different than the rest of the Waffen SS.
It’s denialism about the role of nazism in Ukrainian nationalism. Like it or not Ukrainian nationalism involves lionizing figures who supported the nazis and often as not lionizing actual neo nazis themselves, and I mean actually literally nazis not just politically incorrect. A general policy of denial had the side effect of bringing in an actual literal SS trooper. This man is viewed as a hero by lots of Ukrainians for the same reason lots of southerners view Lee and stonewall Jackson as heros. But pro-Ukraine western posturing denies that and then gets caught with its pants down. Simple as.
I think at least we can say, Nazism doesn't mean what it means to us to people who lived in Eastern Europe.
One of the more surreal things I've experienced lately was when I asked on the Motte Telegram back around the start of the war (which has a couple of actual Ukranian residents), basically, so what's the deal with Jewish Zelensky having an apparently-actual-Nazi unit (Azov battalion) serving in his army? Taking Western views at least sort of seriously, surely an actual Nazi unit would refuse to take orders from a Jewish President, and a Jewish President would surely boot an actual Nazi unit out of the army he was Commander-In-Chief of. But all the Ukrainian residents were like, yeah, so what, why do you think this is weird? Even for English-speakers who presumably have at least some exposure to the Anglosphere, the idea that Nazis and Jews might not like each other much just seemed incomprehensible to them.
The way I understand it, the Azov aren't that Nazi and Zelensky is really not that Jewish. And even Hitler had a Jew or two he liked.
They are about as Nazi as the IRA were terrorists.
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In the abstract there's room for nuance in this discussion, but in the context of the year of our lord 2023, it will never not be funny that an actual member of the Waffen-SS got a standing ovation from the very people who claim "honk honk" is code for "heil Hitler".
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