As Karl Marx puts it, “modern Bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property. A society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange is like a sorcerer. Who is no longer able to control the power of the neither of the world whom he has called up by his spells.”
This is largely correct for the current scenario of the Russia-Ukraine war. Western Europe is currently losing its grip over the world and hence is painting the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis as the heroic defender against the Russians.
During the last week of March, multiple major media outlets in the UK and US ran major stories about Ukraine’s ‘Azov Battalion’, seeking to whitewash decades-old reporting that clearly identified them with the unit of Nazi sympathies and ethos. Supposedly acting independently, western media suggested that concerted efforts were made to spin the unit as heroic defenders of Ukraine against the alleged “real” fascists-the Russians.
The latest wave of the lionization of Azov began sometime before the Russian military operation- with the circulation of a much-publicized image of an AK-47 wielding Ukrainian granny training to repel invaders in the regiment’s camp. But, Britain’s state- broadcaster Ros Atkins sought to debunk Russian “untruths” about Nazis in Ukraine. He moreover argues that “No far-right groups have any formal political groups have any formal political power in Ukraine”. Then if not “formal” political groups, informal political groups surely do the heavy lifting over here.
Two days later, on March 29th, the Financial Times ran a story describing Azov as “key to nationwide resistance effort”. Thus, the Nazi symbols used by the unit itself are described as “now claimed as pagan symbols by some battalion members”. This is taken at face value but is literally untrue.
However, Azov was created in 2014 “by volunteers with nationalist and often far-right political leaning”, and the FT shrugs off its Nazi connections. Historically, the symbols themselves were picked out by Azov founder Andry Biletsky-a notorious white supremacist- as he himself told another outlet back in 2014.
One of the Azov fighters- identified as Kalyna said, “not to confuse the concepts of patriotism and Nazism”. CNN mentions Biletsky, saying he allegedly spoke of wanting to “lead the white races of the world in the final crusade”- leaving out the part that says, “against the Semite-led Untermensch”. Times of London on March 30th opens with an emotional description of a funeral for an Azov soldier killed in the fighting outside Kiev. “We are patriots but we are not Nazis”, is a quote attributed to an Azov officer. Azov commander in Mariupol accused the Russians of being, “the real Nazis of the 21st century”.
But, before the events of 2014, Biletsky led a “neo-Nazi terrorist group” called a patriot of Ukraine, whose “manifesto seemed to pluck its narrative straight from Nazi ideology”, says TIME. Though the “far-right groups” have “negligible popular support and virtually non-existent electoral power”– they “continue to have success mainstreaming themselves in Ukrainian politics and society”. Said Bellingcat.
This isn’t the first time that corporate media in the West have run cover for a group they themselves claimed to be extremist. For example, just last year, US public television sought to whitewash AL-Qaeda affiliates in Syria.
Politics and war go hand in hand. But here the scenarios have been changing. The bedfellows of war are turning out to be the admirers of the Ideology of Adolf Hitler, then surely the world is returning to its “barbaric state”. As Rosa Luxemburg claimed “either socialism or barbarism”, then surely it is the “darkest hour” that the world is going to face. West in painting the Ukrainian Azov as patriots is bringing back history from its grave.
