Dear Lemmy, as you may well be aware, racial hierarchies and colonial empires are doing good in these early 2020s. In particular, in the days of the war in Ukraine, it’s important to point out the fascist tendencies at play.
Fascism and racial/cultural hierarchies are on the rise on every continent, from Turkey to Brasil, to China, to France, to India… Fuck all Nations! Destroy all borders, and long live autonomous Communes!
On the Ukraine side of things, there’s a bunch of neo-nazis in the army, as well as more traditional nationalists/fascists. It’s not exactly a secret, and the former president was very close to these circles:
On the Russian side of things, there’s also a bunch of neo-nazis in the army as well as traditional nationalists/fascists. It’s not exactly a secret either:
Both governments have long fought against popular movements and anarchist/antifascist networks. Both countries have neo-nazi/fascist militias parading down the streets and beating/killing random people. Just like France or USA have them too.
Don’t trust me? Check out the wikipedia page on neo-nazism. Follow their sources and make yourself an opinion. It’s very instructive, although very incomplete. I definitely recommend to check out the Racism in Ukraine and Racism in Russia pages, too.
Please remember that when you try to paint one side of a conflict as the good anti-nazi hero. Nazis are fucking everywhere. Fascists and nazis have been running the show in much of the world even after WWII ended. Nazi collaborators were responsible for France’s war against the algerian people, and their grandchildren (spiritual or biological) are responsible for today’s new repression, wars and genocides.
We need to dismantle nazism and fascism at its root: the nation State and cultural supremacy. Yes, you should be proud of your local culture and land. No, that does not justify diminishing other cultures/lands.
All we exploited/struggling people have to stand in solidarity with other people struggling for freedom and equality across the planet. No border divides us in the international socialist/anarchist movement. We will fight against all Empires for autonomous communities worldwide!
PS: If you need more detailed resources on neo-nazi/neo-fascist/nationalist/traditionalist on the rise in a specific country/region, feel free to ask. There are chances i have some good articles/documentaries, and if not i’ve got ideas about who to ask.
I feel like a lot of these people started showing up when it because public knowledge that lemmy.ml allows covid disinformation
I feel like a lot of these people are just marxism gone wrong. Add a pinch of stalinism, and a bit of leninist/trotskyist discourse, and what you have is uncritical support on any tyrannical power that’s not the USA/UK. In the real world, in the unions and in the squats, we call these people fascists (of the red-brown kind because they use red words to promote fascism).
I mean, just imagine going to your union comrades and saying invading a sovereign country is justifiable in the name of socialism. You’ll get weird looks and nervous laughter. If you add the bit about the persons leading the invasion are siding with oligarchs and having privatized the entire country since the USSR collapsed, you’ll get called a scab and may come home with a few bruises.
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Ok, historically the Soviet Union deserves alot of credit for kicking Nazi ass. Most of it, even.
China? Huh? Are you talking about the Japanese? They were allied with Nazis, and they were bad, but they weren’t Nazis themselves. And this is an important distinction, because if you refuse to make it, then “Nazi” means nothing more than just a really strong synonym of “bad”.
Given how much “bad” there is in the world, then nearly everything and everyone becomes “Nazis”.
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Then please explain the “China have been historically the main protagonists against Nazism” statement. I’m having trouble making sense of it. I agree that Russia/USSR was one of the main protagonists (if not the main one), but China?
I’m just not following.
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20-30 million people each died from China and Russia during WW2, fighting the Nazism threat.
The Nazis or their ideological allies in Eastern Europe never set foot in China. Did China send troops to Europe to die? Was there some little known front in central Asia that they never taught me in school? Did the Chinese employ psychic soldiers to fight against the occult Nazi threat like out of Hellboy, whose souls were promptly eaten by Cthulhu?
Russia’s a given. Everyone knows about that. I don’t dispute it. China? China didn’t fight the Nazis that I am aware of. I don’t feel like I’m alone in being unaware of that. Enlighten us.
but in reality fascists were always opposite of socialists.
Not sure what this means. If you’re saying that the two have conflicting ideologies, sure. Again, never knew anyone to dispute that. Even the people who make the comparisons are coming from a third and distinct ideology, which sees little functional difference between the two. They’re not equating them to be literally the same.
The correct term is Nationalist Fascist, or NatFash.
If you say so. I didn’t realize we were playing stupid word games where you think you’ve struck a blow for global Marxism by insisting that they should be referred to by a slightly different label, 30 years after most of the last of them died of old age.
historically the main protagonists against Nazism.
That zooms out so far from the specifics of the Ukraine/Russia comparison as to relocate this whole conversation to a different context, totally unrelated to the conflict that this thread is intending to speak to.
It’s true that USSR expended lives and resources at tremendous scales to fight Nazis, and it’s true that nazis and nationalists are attracted to military and exist in present day Russian and Ukranian armies. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive, and the historical record of the 20th century is too remote to offer any meaningful clarification.
At best it just invites you to make indirect, speculative inferences. We have much better, more current reporting we can and should rely on.
I think, as OP pointed out, it’s inherently the case that these elements are disproportionately attracted to armed forces, and that in and of itself is adequate to explain their presence in the army of any nation with cultural exposure to nazism.
That’s a diagnosis that’s relevant to nazism as present day social phenomena, and more pertinent to the conflict than the historical record you are choosing to substitute in it’s place.
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This is completely all over the map, so I’m dismissing most of this as unresponsive and returning to the original point: I don’t think bringing USSR’s history in the 20th century is as pertinent or helpful to understanding the relative influence of Nazism in the armed forces in the Ukraine in 2022, I think OPs characterization relied on analysis more proximate to the present day and more directly related to social forces that speak to what is happening there.
You’re now throwing a whole lot of unrelated stuff at the wall all at once talking about things independent of that comparison: saying there’s “formalized” representation in the Ukraine army, bringing up how it’s a “whitewashing” and how OP is disingenuous etc. etc.
I’ll just note that these versions of reality don’t align with what I’ve seen in western media™, which have noted that those arguments appear to be emphasized out of proportion to their significance, and the backdrop that these arguments are occurring in, is one where they are functioning as a propaganda role in justifying intrusion in Ukraine, and have largely been dismissed by sources I follow that have commented to the NYT and NPR.
I suspect you’re just going to that that argue that characterization as western lies, and demand elaborate, point-by-point thousand word explanations, and insist that failing to engage with you in such a manner means I’m scared or whatever. I’m just gonna roll my eyes and move on with my day. That’s gonna be the process in disputing anything: I’ll make one point, and the subject will expand to cover a dozen new things.
The point here is that the history of USSR in the 20th century isn’t as relevant to the convo as you were trying to suggest it was.
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Russia and China have been historically the main protagonists against Nazism
That’s not wrong. I’m just pointing out both also have their history of ethnic cleansing and cultural supremacy. And i’m also pointing out that just because some structure did something good a while ago doesn’t mean they can’t do something bad (and vice-versa), especially given the major political changes there were since 1945 all around the world.
You aid English Fascism, and that isbclear from the Lithuania link you use to smear Russia.
Please get educated. You seem to indicate either that the top-level domain of a domain domain, or a specific language, is an indicator of State-sponsored propaganda: that makes no fucking sense. And if you want me to post more links about neo-fascism in Russia, i’ll gladly put up a compilation tomorrow when i find the time :)
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Of course Russia’s government is inherently fascist. Putin and his regime are right-wing nationalists and racists.
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Russia is only anti-fascist in name, but fascist in its real character. Ukraine can have as many oligarchs as it wants, which doesn’t justify Russia invading it.
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Not saying that Russia is a bastion of tolerance but the problem with this comprison is that while the linked article only lists a handful of cases of Nazism, Ukraine on the other hand has memorials for Nazis and have large paramilitary forces that openly display Nazi insignia and they are provided training by Canada at least. Not sure which other western countries have helped them but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more. One of the offical accounts related to Ukrainian military tweeted about trearing bullets with lard for use against Muslim “orcs”.
You could say that Russia being a capitalist country is maybe not idealogically opposed to fascism but use the history of the Great Patriotic War for nationalistic purposes. I am not sure how true that is because I don’t know much about Russia. But equating Ukraine which glorifies Nazis and had neo-Nazis brought to power in the 2014 coup seems like a false equivalence to me.
I am not sure how true that is because I don’t know much about Russia.
Thanks for acknowledging this, the discussion on Lemmy would be easier if we started from this (honest) point rather than spewing propaganda from every side. Please note i also know relatively little about Russia: what i know i know from ex-USSR political refugees i’ve met throughout my life so i’ve got close to zero academic knowledge but plenty of anecdotes and homebrew political analysis (from an anarchist perspective).
You could say that Russia being a capitalist country is maybe not idealogically opposed to fascism but use the history of the Great Patriotic War for nationalistic purposes.
That’s precisely what i’m saying. If you follow the links in my original post (two of which are written by russian collectives) they’ll even argue that Putin’s is a direct fuel of both neo-nazism (there were, i don’t know if it’s still the case today with this new State narrative, government support toward neo-nazi groups) and a revival of Russian fascism (Putin has given a lot of power to the orthodox church).
If you’d like to read more from both russian/ukranian perspective on the topics of neo-nazism and fascism on both sides (Ukraine/Russia government), i strongly recommend the articles published on crimethinc.com since mid-february.
But equating Ukraine which glorifies Nazis and had neo-Nazis brought to power in the 2014 coup seems like a false equivalence to me.
There is a symbolic difference: Neo-nazism is a reverence to Hitler and his specific ideology, but fascism is an evolving beast and can take many forms. You don’t need swastikas or antisemitism to obtain fascism. In this sense, fascism is very much alive and well on both sides of the border.
Let’s take another example: France has strong laws against nazism and racial discrimination, but they are never applied. France is a deeply racist country with structural racism at play on many levels. That leads to contradictions like Eric Zemmour: the guy was paid to be every day on public television spewing hatred (against women, against muslims, etc). It only stopped a few years back when he was condemned for encouraging we deport all muslims from France (suggesting “it’s been done before” in reference to Hitler and the jews), yet the next week he found a very comfortable spot appearing every day on a private channel. The guy is now a candidate for presidency who like Trump back in the day all media advertise for. This guy is a pure product of French society, which on paper is supposed to stand for the opposite.
France is supposed to be anti-racist, but glorifies racist police abuse, or figures like Christopher Columbus or Jules Ferry. The law tells us little about actual political context somewhere. The situation is rude for antifascists both in Ukraine and in Russia, and i personally stand in support of them both against their respective government.
all true. but France is also explicitly sectarian. it uses this “laicité” concept, which is often mistranslated as secularism. but France is not secular - it’s a distinct thing.
it means the state is allowed to forbid religious practices. where secularism is tolerant, laicité is intolerant. and it is exclusively used against Muslims. it’s a unique legal and political justification for state sectarianism.
i find it mad that so few people know about it. the French politicians say “it’s just like secularism” and everyone is fooled by that.
this “laicité” concept, which is often mistranslated as secularism
Hey that’s a very good point but you miss some French cultural/political context! Laïcité does exactly mean secularism, and its legal basis means freedom of thought/beliefs for everyone: laïcité was formally established in 1905 when the State was separated from the Church (again and almost finally, except in Alsace/Lorraine where the Catholic Church is still part of the State apparatus for other reasons).
The 1905 law clearly states that the State has no business telling people what to believe or not, that this is a private matter between people. This is the legal basis for laïcité.
But since the 80s, some segments on the far-left and far-right have been involved in transforming the concept in public discourse to target it against muslims. It started with unionized teachers from marxist-leninist organizations (was it FO? not sure anymore) refusing to do classes to veiled schoolgirls, and bringing TV crews to the classroom to embarrass those poor kids. I don’t believe at the time it was presented to be in the name of “laïcité”.
Then this discourse grew in both New Atheist circles (a subset of the wider anticlerical movement) on the left, as well as in Judeo-Christian conservative groups on the right. Especially after September 11th, this discourse was instrumentalized against muslims by building a narrative that veiled girls are supporters of terrorism or that they advocate for Shariah, or that they’re submitted to Male authority. Many outlets even made parallels to Afghanistan or Algeria, but we’re talking about kids who grew up here (for the vast majority), only speak French, and have no ties or clue to what’s happening around there. As for male domination, there’s a few blind spots in this argument:
- it’s just a piece of cloth?! you can be abused/dominated by men with or without any external sign for it
- if you truly believe the girls are being abused and they need to get help, how does it help to ban them from public schools so they remain in their bubbles?
- in many parts of the world France has colonized, women either held power or had a history of it (for example, Kahina in amazigh regions of North Africa is becoming a symbol again in the new struggles for Kabyl independence)
- women to this day in France are struggling to have their basic rights preserved (against police abuse and power/sexual abuse in the workplace and in education), no matter their religion (see also Me Too movement)
- men telling women what to do (or not to do) framed as a feminist argument, really? how is French police officers (male) asking a woman to undress any different from Iranian police officers (male) asking a woman to dress up?
- in particular in the western world, the “sexual liberation” movement of the 60s has given birth to a new norm/dogma where women must be sexually available for men to enjoy in the name of sexual freedom (where the veil is seen as an obstacle to sexual availability): this has been greatly described in Ovidie’s documentary À quoi rêvent les jeunes filles?
Starting with Sarkozy, this new formalized islamophobia was given a legal basis, which reused some discourse about laïcité but amended it so much that it completely lost the spirit. The new texts, instead of saying that the State must be neutral in faith/religious matters, says that agents of the State and public services must not promote religion in any way: this led to the ban of religious signs from public servants (which may or may not have been illegal before, but was certainly not enforced), which was then extended more broadly, for example for parents accompanying children on school trips. And more recently, it’s given birth to the complete hysteria about “burkini” and other non-sensical racist “controversies”.
All along, this was anti-muslim racism. It actually predates the situation i just described: colonization in much of the world (including french colonies) was often framed as a humanitarian intervention against uncivilized (male) barbarians hurting their poor women (which some political commenters have dubbed “white men saving brown women from brown men”). For example at the height of the colonial war in Algeria (1950s-1960s), the French government was organizing mass unveiling campaign (see this poster with the message: “aren’t you pretty? unveil yourself”).
Frantz Fanon has explained in great lengths how the colonial enterprise must destroy any sense of belonging or cultural identity in the colonized in order to succeed. I strongly recommend (all of) his books. If you speak french, Un racisme à peine voilé (“A thinly-veiled racism”) is a documentary from 2004 which goes to great lengths to explain the rise of the anti-veil sentiment in schools since the 80s. It’s a bit dated and does not account for the most recent racist developments but is still very much on-point.
One last point to conclude: newer, restrictive laws on “laïcité” (against religious signs) do not apply in practice to christians and jews, and even less so to minority religions whose religious signs bigots are unable to recognize. It’s not uncommon to see public servants (including teachers) wearing christian crosses, despite the law saying otherwise.
Thanks for the detailed explanation
reused some discourse about laïcité but amended it so much that it completely lost the spirit
I guess this is the most important point. Laicite was originally the same as secularism, but the idea has been strategically manipulated by politicians, to sow divide within society. I did not know that. (TBH I didn’t know the other historical points either)
destroy any sense of belonging or cultural identity
I do see that pattern. Being French means being nothing but French. You cannot have a second ethnicity. France made a big effort to destroy any local identities (most famously langue-doc). The modern laicite is like a new vergonha, shaming the muslims, while creating a convenient divide within French society. A classic political strategy, old as the hills.
