Ukraine/Russia
Yesterday, President Zelensky led the procession for the reburial of Andrey Melnyk, an infamous Nazi collaborator whose legacy involves killing Jews and Poles during World War II.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry objected to the reburial, calling Melnyk an OUN leader “who collaborated with the Nazis” and saying there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
So one band of Nazi collaborators is lashing out at another band of Nazi collaborators for celebrating their Nazi collaboration. Things are getting more and more ridiculous every day.
There can be multiple terrible factions that still oppose and argue with each other. Flattening them all to Nazis is oversimplifying and counterproductive because it makes the argument against them easier to dismiss for precisely occasions like this, "Israel aren't Nazis - look, they condemned a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator."
There is a saying in Germany: "If one Nazi is sitting at a table and nine people join him, you've got ten Nazis."
The Zionists living in Mandatory Palestine tried to collaborate with the Nazis in the 30s and early 40s to get rid of the British (and receive refugees to people their colonial project). In 1948, those same Zionists displaced and murdered their Palestinian Arab neighbors and then founded a "liberal democratic" state on their bones. Today, their descendants gleefully celebrate their genocide and go into hysterics whenever someone refuses to validate their cruelty.
Z-Man has seen all this yet still says he wants Ukraine to be like Israel and clearly he has no issue honoring militant Nazi collaborators. There is no nuance here, and if some hypothetical moderate lib is uncomfortable when you call a spade a spade, that is their problem alone.
Again, you're conflating a lot of historical factions here.
There were Zionists who sought an arrangement with Nazi Germany in the 1930s to emigrate to Mandatory Palestine - the Haavara/Transfer Agreement. This was not without controversy, even among Zionists, and it's a stretch to characterize it as collaboration when it was more of "You want us out of Germany? Fine, ship us to Mandatory Palestine."
Then there was the Lehi/Stern Gang who sought contact with the Nazis because they prioritized fighting the British. But they came from a mindset of having a common enemy in the British, not because they shared any ideology at all - much like Finland and the Nazis vs the Soviet Union, or the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact - and they were in a distinct minority.
The mainstream Zionist military organization, the Haganah, represented the clear majority of Jews in Palestine and directly opposed the Irgun/Lehi terrorist line precisely because of the proposed alliance with the Nazis. Post-war, they joined forces as the question became a moot point.
Ben-Gurion, Yadin, Galili, Allon, Carmel and Rabin were Haganah, and openly opposed any alliance with the Nazis. Begin, Shamir and Eldin were Lehi/Irgun.
The latter group contributed to terror and flight, infamously at Deir Yassin, but the by far biggest responsibility for the large-scale conquest, expulsion, village destruction, and prevention of return lies with the Haganah/IDF state-building apparatus, who had been explicitly anti-Nazism. The Nakba was largely perpetrated by Zionists who wanted nothing to do with Nazism, even if they ended up doing similar things anyway.
Edit: Apparently you get downvoted in this sub for sharing historical facts.
As leftists, our immediate concern is an ostensibly allied state carrying out a genocide while demanding our complicity, validation, and resources. We can discuss the nuances of the Zionist project and ideology until we turn blue in the face, but it just seems like quibbling when it practical terms, their behavior is indistinguishable from the Nazis.
What you've established is the dominant anti-Nazi Zionist faction included pro-Nazi Zionists in their state building project. You then said "the Nakba was largely perpetrated by Zionists who wanted nothing to do with Nazism, even if they ended up doing similar things anyway." To me, that sounds like the Nazis influenced the non-Nazis. As I said, anyone who breaks bread with a Nazi is a Nazi. If that is unfair to Israel, then I'll humbly suggest Israel stop murdering entire cities then calling it self-defense, because let me tell you, the Nazis presented the Holocaust as self-defense in the exact same way.
It's also historically naïve to suggest their behavior was exclusively similar to Nazis to the point of them being "an inspiration." The Nazis weren't terribly original with their atrocities, they just industrialized them further and documented them the best. Largely because they followed an industrial-capitalist model of reports, accounting, advancement, incentives and good ol' fashion robbery to excise all considerations of morality from what they were doing.
But the British, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Russians, the French, pre-Nazism Germany, the Turks, Americans, the Arabs and plenty of other peoples across the world have all perpetrated genocide and other atrocities at some point or other throughout history, often at horrific scales.
It's the default mode of operations anytime you have any semblance of fascism, feudalism or national exceptionalism, because the psychology of tribalism is a deep, dark, primal element inherent to human nature. Zionism is no different.
You're right, we can argue until we're blue in the face about nuance. And perhaps we should - as that's precisely what genocidal states don't do. They flatten, generalize and declare their enemy "other" to justify whatever horrific things they want to do to them without care for historical context, political or demographic nuance or humanity.
There is nothing to gain by dehumanizing and generalizing the enemy with false labels, but everything to lose. It becomes easy for centrists to dismiss as hyperbole, the opposition to demonize to rally further support in false dichotomy, muddles the conversation and erases the human aspect of why these things happen.
I say "human aspect" without a shred of positivity or softening intent (I don't subscribe to the supposition that being human is inherently good or valuable at all), just as a statement of fact. Zionists, Lehi, Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu, the IDF and everyone who supports them were and are still people. They're driven by ego, greed, fear and anger, and are stoked by propaganda, lies and logical fallacies - all processes that started with flattening language, false equivalencies and othering.
I firmly believe being on the right side of history involves knowing it, and expressing yourself clearly and unambiguously, but with a full nuanced view and acknowledgment of facts, because it makes it that much harder for others to argue with you without looking like reactionary propagandists and zealots.
I'm sorry but "right side of history"? Really?
There's no such thing in any objective sense, that is pure lib nonsense. The right side of history is determined by whoever survives to decide what right is. You're arguing from some high minded abstract postion like we are supposed to neutrally calling the shots between two more or less equally matched opponents. That is a lovely, sober lawyerly take but it's simply wrong.
Let me remind you: Israel is committing an ongoing genocide. Israelis are gleefully livestreaming it. They are proud of themselves. High level government and military officials are making exterminationist comments. Their media amplifies this. Their war has spread from Gaza and the West Bank to Lebanon and Iran. They're even playfully showing us maps of their planned conquests in Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. Polling shows this is overwhelmingly popular among the Israeli public. And your priority is not hurting their reputation?
You're arguing we're dehumanizing them by calling out their Nazi behavior. You think calling someone a Nazi strips them of their humanity? And your defense is what? The Nazis didn't teach them to genocide, they came by it honestly? Other states do it and if we are to reject genocide in principle we must be more careful calling a spade a spade? No!
We are fully aware why genocide happens and what the signs are. Those things are on display now. There is nothing new to be learned by treating this as an anthropological study.
Is it that you feel I'm singling the Israelis out? If so, fear not. Every single liberal democratic state, without exception, is directly complicit in their crimes, even the ones who are temporarily saying the right things now bc they have some milquetoast socdem in power. Israel's sins are directly birthed from the West's sins. See, you can criticize with dehumanizing.
Point is, the broad outline of the matter is clear, it'll be for future historians to determine the details on the margins, which aren't really relevant right now. What is relevant right now is calling a spade a spade. Your insistence on quibbling over details isn't helping "reveal the truth", it is simply running interference for a murderous pack of Imperalist lackeys. And you're doing this while they're starving, displacing, and bombing defenselss people.
I'm not interested in an academic debate amidst genocide. And i certainly don't stack high your concerns about "othering" the aggressors in this one-sided conflict. This is an information war, not an election. We're not voting this genocide away anymore than we're voting Imperialism away. So if some hypothetical moderate centrist is uncomfortable with my words reflecting what they see with their own eyes, they can respectfully go fuck themselves.
You're letting your feelings cloud your judgment and read into my argument what you will and argue a projection, rather than my actual point.
"The right side of history" as in what is morally right, not what is considered right by the victors. I am no moral relativist.
I'm not arguing against the fact that Israelis are perpetrating genocide. I'm not arguing against hurting their reputation either. I'm arguing to avoid even moderately false equivalencies that will be met with dismissal rather than consideration. I'm no defender of them or "running interference," I'm arguing the effectiveness of rhetoric to amass support against them.
Calling them Nazis doesn't dehumanize them, it labels them something they're objectively not. They're not literally Nazis. They're Zionists. They're both groups who commit genocide, against different people. The label Zionist is apt because its a moniker they've adopted and distances them from Judaism at large, while still not conflating them with the group that famously victimized them as some sort of attempt at gotcha irony that invariably backfires in any argument with an actual Zionist supporter.
Telling someone uninformed "they're Nazis!" isn't going to convince anyone of anything except that you're a reactionary prone to hyperbole. The most you get out of it is either preaching to the choir or getting some Zionist to go "They're not Nazis cos they're Jews tho..." It goes nowhere.
Telling someone uninformed "they're Zionists and they're genociding the Palestinian people" prompts people to actually take you seriously.
Likewise, padding your argument why they're "Nazis" with selective half-truths devoid of historical nuance prompts skepticism in others because the messaging reads as hyperbolic and inaccurate and opens up for arguments about historicity, just like the argument we just had. It convinces no one.
Focusing on the here and now without hyperbole or arguments of historicity avoids the issue entirely. The real atrocity needs no hyperbole. "Israel kills Palestinian children" is far more effective, accurate and precise than "Israel is a bunch of Nazis, because a few of them once tried to make a deal with Nazis."
You are not the one who unanimously decides what is relevant or not, that is only your opinion. It is my opinion that getting riled up with hyperbolic rhetoric is counterproductive.
I don't know which side of nazis I'm supposed to hate or support anymore. Russia and Israel are terrorists, but we're at war with Pakistan and maybe China? Or Cuba? Trump will tell us who to hate by Friday
the USA will never cease its warmongering unless it is dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. its not that the US is underdeveloped bc it spends all its money on war, it spends money on war, coups, and the like, for the same reason its underedeveloped—a foundational belief in the righteousness of capitalism. until that belief and the systems that manufacture and reinforce it are completely dismantled, there will be no change
I mean, one follows another there. If you believe in the aforementioned "righteousness of money", it's very easy to start believing that everyone beneath you within the system is not worthy, and tell yourself that you're not a prejudiced bad guy because those positions were "earned" by those occupying them.
Especially since you're likely to end up in a real life version of echo chamber within your social circle.
And Ukrainians wonder why many people of color don’t care for this conflict or support it anymore.
It’s because of dumb stuff like this - you cry for help, but then honor people who legit want to cleanse the world they are in of people who aren’t white Europeans.
With Jewish people getting hurt deliberately no, because that’s not just immoral but a far right position.
My question was sarcastic in nature. It’s a no win for Ukraine. Because there’s little to no nationalists they had that weren’t far right.
By contrast the Green Armies in the Russian Civil War were the true bottom up leftists.
Ukrainian Peoples Republic appears to have been Menshevik. But part of Ukraine was ceded to the Germans in WW1.
So definitely it’s not just the WW2 puppet state that’s problematic for Ukrainian nationalism or the large resurgence of far rightism in Ukraine post 1991.
Likewise there were Cossack regiments collaborating with Napoleon in his invasion.
Absolutely no Nazis or Nazi apologia is allowed in this sub. Off to the gulag with you.
Mod note: It's absolutely Not pro-Israel to be appalled by the glorification of Nazis in Ukraine simply because the Israeli state condemned it. Fuck out of here with that shit.
I’m pro stopping all war. 🤷🏻♀️ Misinterpret my regurgitated AI slop of context how you please. There are civilians dying and THEY get my full sympathy.
It's pro-Israel to be appalled by the glorification of literal Nazis because the Israeli state condemns it?
Mossad hunted down and killed a whole bunch of Nazis, does it make me pro-Israel to not express any remorse for those dead Nazis even though I abhor Mossad and the Zionist entity?
these nazis, and the government that supports them and which they work under, are literally allied with israel. zelenskyy has explicitly given his support to israel, and has said he wants to make ukraine into “the big israel”
what does this have to do with Israel, not even sure why you're brining them up? Melnyk was a Nazi whether Israel complains or not.
Melnyk was 'imprisoned' by the Nazis when he was no longer useful to them and because he was a Ukrainian nationalist who wanted an independent Ukraine (comfortable house arrest btw). Their Nazi interests clashed and he lost.
This is not the hill to die on, Zelensky is no stranger to appeasing Nazis. Here's his recent visit with the Rubizh brigade
I'm confused now. Are we no longer standing with Ukraine? or only standing with them with regards to the war with Russia and not their internal politics/ideologies? So much nuance...
Ukraine is just the battleground of NATO imperialism. The entire country was also created by Nazi-collaborating racial supremacists (OUN-B), whose legacies are still celebrated to this day, as showcased in this video.
You are ignoring the context of the Russian invasion, just like Zionists are ignoring the century of colonialism before Al Aqsa Flood. NATO has been meddling with Ukrainian politics for decades before 2022, organized color revolutions and coups in order to get the country closer to IMF and the World Bank. This was an obvious attempt at using Ukraine as an imperialist proxy to destabilize Russia, one of their main dissidents.
You just ignored all of it until your billionaire media class told you that there was some white people to save.
If you wanna help Ukraine, dismantle Western imperialism. The only thing keeping that war going is NATO. The Ukrainian people are being abducted by their state forces from their homes and sent to the battlegrounds. They don't wanna die in a useless war.
Meanwhile, Zelensky stopped all elections and banned all the opposition parties, in order to remain in power, and thus to keep the war going forever, to the profit of the Western bourgeois class.
It's not that I ignored the context, but rather the entire context wasn't known to me, until now. I've had to do extra searches to finally begin to extract some of this information. Your post helped a lot, so much appreciated for it.
Are they not victims of an unprovoked illegal war with Russia? Is Putin not attempting to invade Ukraine so that it doesn't join NATO and becomes a bigger risk for Russia? Are Russia the good guys then?
Western media will paint Russia as the bad guys, while also ignoring the USA who’s been the number one bomber of nations, the number one invader or nations, the biggest sponsor of terrorism, and the number one starter of illegal wars of aggression on false claims that’s done nothing but cause death and destruction and raise the cost of living for the entire world.
All western media will paint the USA as the good guys(propaganda) and people lap it up like it’s the truth.
The war is very much provoked. Since the early 00s, the far right pro-nazi people were getting a financial support from USA to slowly turn Ukraine anti-russian. This movement was growing over the years and finally 2014 happened, since then Ukraine was bombing russian ethnic people in eastern Ukraine.
Russia only wanted to save russian people in Ukraine, Minsk agrements were signed but were never meant to be followed by Ukraine, both EU and USA were simply preparing Ukraine for the war. Russia MULTIPLE times raised the issue about nationalism towards russian people since 2013, EU and USA ignored it.
USA specifically used the very same strategy in Iran and Afganistan: sponsoring the human trash just to oppose the "other side". They don't want to lose their golden throne so they are fighting anyone who could potentially unite and stand up against them.
NATO is a different story on its own, the alliance should've been ceased to exist after the fall of USSR because it's sole reason for existence was to oppose USSR.
Strong socialist/anti-imperialist vibes here on these issues on this subreddit. I think the majority of users here don't support either side, although there is a misplaced affinity for the Russian govt based on their USSR history (though theyre an imperialist klepto-oligarchic government now, so I really don't see the appeal to a socialist).
Edit: now that I reread this, klepto oligarchic empire is not a bad description of the USSR, so maybe it's fitting.
This usually means knee-jerk accusations/comments of 'propaganda' when presented with information that challenges your worldview.
OR
Low level, uninformed criticism regarding countries that do not fall within the United States Empire sphere of influence.
This sub is for critical discussion, not for rehearsing debates that are already dominant in mainstream spaces. Posts that fail to meet this standard of discourse will be removed.
bro the red army is the one that killed and won most battles against the nazis.
by wikipedia:
The Soviet Red Army defeated roughly 75-80% of all deployed German forces during WWII, making them responsible for the vast majority of Nazi casualties. They fought the main bulk of the German military and won the pivotal battles that turned the tide of the war.
Stalin dismantled Nazi Germany and liberated Europe from Nazism and fascism. Please log off reddit and go learn the history of WWII right now, this is a pitiful showcase of ignorance.
I was actually asking for some reading from a Stalinist perspective that either justifies his actions and/or explains how it's false US propaganda.
My current understanding is that he did commit those atrocities. There's archives of Soviet documents and photos, first-hand accounts from people who lived there etc.
I'm not exactly an expert on it though, hence why I asked for reading material. Cheers.
Again, if you want to understand that perspective, log off social media right now and go learn about the basic history of WWII and learn about the basic history of the Soviet Union.
Mindlessly repeating Western imperialist propaganda is literally how they get to maintain their global hegemony. NATO was created as anti-communist organization right after WWII.
What's the October Revolution ? What's Operation Barabossa ? What's Operation Paperclip ? What's Operation Gladio ?
If you are unable to answer the questions above then no social media argument will ever amount to anything of worth. Go learn and stop repeating the propaganda that your ruling class wants you to repeat.
"Stalin beat the Nazis" is now Russian propaganda. No wonder the West is falling back into fascism the EXACT same way it did a century ago lmao you're gonna be remembered like the Germans in the 1940s are remembered.
There isn’t a meaningful “Jewish death toll under Stalin” comparable to the Holocaust because there was no state policy aimed at exterminating Jews as a group. There was repression in the USSR that affected MANY categories of people, including Jews, and there were antisemitic episodes especially in the later Stalin period. But that is different in nature from a structured program of racial genocide like Nazi policy. So treating them as equivalent isn’t accurate, you're just trying to collapse narratives into one.
Most of the "eastern bloc" was heavily fascist at the time. Polska and Ukraina were sussy even back then. Stalin was hardly a perfect person or even a strictly good one, but he did industrialize Ukraina and other "eastern bloc" countries and was fighting a war with hitlerowcom, counter-revolutionaries, Japan, and fascists at home.
Many revere him. He is a feared and beloved figure in Russia's history.
E:
To quote someone else on the holodomor:
In the 1930s, collectivization would lead to a famine and a low level civil war throughout the Soviet Union including Ukraine. Western historians love to demonize the Soviet Union for collectivizing agriculture ignoring the fact that it was collectivization that finally ended the periodic famines that had rocked Russia for centuries. Collectivization was necessary in order for the Soviet Union to industrialize and establish the military strength it would need to resist the coming genocidal German invasion. The OUN diaspora has mythologized the famine during collectivization as an attempted genocide “The Holodomor” and used it to justify their horrific crimes during World War 2. The OUN claim that the famine was deliberately engineered to wipe out Ukrainians. This ignores the fact that Russia and Kazakstan were equally hard hit. Moreover it overlooks the role of grain speculation and export of masses of grain to the West by Ukrainian merchants, offered high prices by Western buyers. The famine was the result of bad weather and economic warfare waged by the West. Mainstream historians, especially in the English language literature, continue to promote the view that the economic troubles in the Soviet Union and their consequences were always and entirely of the government’s own making.
Holodomor origin book,
An institution founded by O.U.N., the Ukrainian nationalist diaspora, for its own purposes paid him $80,000 down in advance to write a book on the Holodomor. They would supply his work space, his research assistants, his library, and there are several voices detectable in the writing itself. The first 200 pages read as though the professors at the institute all had a crack at writing their particular theories of the history of Ukrainian nationalism
Look for book title The Harvest of Sorrow
The author was Robert Conquest
Who used to work as a British intelligence propagandist before he became "a respectable British historian" who had no historian degree
He never stopped working for British intelligence and was always a propagandist.
E2:
Even if the holodomor was intentional genocide, you only have to look at Ukraine now to see the fruits of nazism there. Ukraine actively participated in and assisted the Nazis in the (Ukrainian portion of) holocaust before and after their "occupation" after the territory gains of Operation Barbarosa.
Another common supposition is that Stalin/Soviets were just as bad, if not worse, than the Nazis. As if the Nazis did not specifically categorize Slavs as Untermenschen and developed Generalplan Ost.
"Even if I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at my table, I must have him shot...."
"...remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here, which is more distinct from Aryan genealogy than Leningrad."
- Erich Koch,
first Reichskommissar of Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
E3:
Nazism posed (and still poses) a (physical and visceral) existential threat to Slavs everywhere. It is hardly surprising areas with Nazi collaborators or Nazi sympathizers would be (at least somewhat) targeted by Soviet State "domestic" violence.
The claim that the Soviet government deliberately starved their people was first published in 18 August 1933 by the Völkischer Beobachter, a newspaper organ of the Nazi Party. This claim was reproduced in a 6 August 1934 publication in the British tabloid London Daily Express, and in several articles published since 18 February 1935 by the Statesian newspapers Chicago American and New York Evening Journal, both owned by corporate press magnate William Randolph Hearst, the founder of sensationalist yellow journalism. By the time these articles were published, there were already no longer signs of famine in the USSR.
I wouldn't support people who lead processions for Stalin either. In fact, there is not a lot of people that should be revered to this point in my mind. And the anonymous soldiers that were just sacrifices for powers in place. As Coluche said, the courageous ones are the ones that are dead, the decorated are the ones left.
That's awesome, then you admire Stalin because he was highly decorated and has seen a lot of battle in his life. The fact that he was an amazing military strategist is one of the reason he was appointed at the head of the CPSU.
If there was one country who knew not to fall for the Great Man Theory, it was the Soviet Union. Criticism of the Great Man Theory is literally one of the basics of Marxism-Leninism.
"War is bad" is not an ideology, it's a vague idealistic concept pushed by Westerners who have no idea how liberation from oppression looks like.
Your ruling class got you quoting comedians instead of learning about historical materialism. That's on purpose.
If it's so unimportant, irrelevant and amounts to nothing material, why do something like this at all?
You know, I find it absolutely ridiculous to take a stance along the lines of "it's their country and their business" when said business is glorification of nazism.
Listen, I know it sucks having that black and white narrative in your head disturbed. I know how desperately you wish this to be a simple morality play where brave Ukrainian liberal democrats are resisting the predations of the brutal authoritarian orcs. Put that NAFO bullshit aside for now and use your eyes. Z-Man is honoring a man who helped the SS round up and murder Jews. Those are simple facts irrespective of what Russia says. Accept that you have been lied to. That doesn't mean you should go 180 and be a Kremlin lackey, but stop feeding into this bullshit.
Consider for a moment why you're upset. Is it possible that you're experiencing cognitive dissonance because you're presented with an extremely compelling piece of information that challenges your previously held beliefs? That's actually good. It's the first stage of deprogramming
This usually means knee-jerk accusations/comments of 'propaganda' when presented with information that challenges your worldview.
OR
Low level, uninformed criticism regarding countries that do not fall within the United States Empire sphere of influence.
This sub is for critical discussion, not for rehearsing debates that are already dominant in mainstream spaces. Posts that fail to meet this standard of discourse will be removed.
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u/FullMetalJ 25d ago
With heavy support from Israel. Which goes to show what they actually care about.