Global Research

The unashamed glorification of Nazism has been the “new normal” in former Ukraine for nearly a decade now. And while even the mainstream propaganda machine has been reporting on it relatively regularly until early 2022, ever since, there’s been a disturbing trend of whitewashing amid attempts to portray the Neo-Nazi junta as some sort of “heroes of the free world”. Worse yet, it was Russia and its leadership that have been openly portrayed as the “new Nazi Germany”. Still, such analogies are quite laughable as it was the other side that has effectively institutionalized celebrating actual Nazis as “national heroes”.

Mainstream propaganda machine flagships such as The New York Times have recently been forced to admit their central role in whitewashing attempts that had long been obvious and known to virtually all independent analysts and media outlets. On June 5, NYT published a surprisingly honest report headlined “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History.” This rather unexpected admission comes after years of countless people trying to point out the obvious adoration of Nazi insignia and symbolism among the Neo-Nazi junta forces, particularly the volunteer battalions that have been fighting the Donbass republics since 2014.

The sheer amount of footage, reports and other rather conclusive evidence about this makes anyone thinking otherwise willfully blind and/or ignorant. However, even in this case, the mainstream propaganda machine hadn’t engaged in honest reporting to try and expose (or at least criticize) the Kiev regime forces for what they are, but to complain about the fact that they’re not hiding this well enough. This obviously suggests that the real problem for the political West is the clear lack of PR optics from the Neo-Nazi junta. This is why numerous members of its armed forces are being asked to cover their openly Nazi symbols.

The NYT report expresses frustration over the PR effects of having so many Kiev regime soldiers displaying their Nazi symbols so proudly. However, even in this case, the mainstream propaganda machine is still trying to justify their favorite puppet regime by suggesting that countless photographs and videos of Neo-Nazi junta forces displaying their ideological forefathers’ insignia are merely “unfortunate” or even “misleading”. For instance, the report admits that “in each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups”.

Despite this admission, once again, we can see the obvious whitewashing attempt to imply that the Kiev regime forces have “inadvertently” adopted this from the aforementioned “far-right hate groups” instead from the Wehrmacht or their many European allies. The authors then begrudgingly admit that this has forced mainstream media editors and writers to delete footage of soldiers displaying Nazi insignia. However, even this admission is then wrapped into another layer of propaganda, as the report claims that “the photographs, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II”.

Here we see yet another attempt to equate the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany while once again whitewashing the openly Neo-Nazi Kiev regime. Not to mention there’s nothing “complicated” about someone displaying the swastika or insignia of various SS units. Quite the contrary, it’s disturbingly simple to accurately assess the ideological affiliation of soldiers using such symbols. However, the NYT claims these are being displayed “only with some regularity”.

“In November, during a meeting with Times reporters near the front line, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf variation made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press officer present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs,” the NYT report states.

“But some members of these groups have been fighting Russia since the Kremlin illegally annexed part of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and are now part of the broader military structure. Some are regarded as national heroes, even as the far-right remains marginalized politically,” the whitewashing continues, with the authors further adding: “The iconography of these groups, including a skull-and-crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and a symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front line, including soldiers who say the imagery symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism.”

So, once again, unashamed glorification of Nazism is “not really Nazism” because it “symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride”. Such assertions are an obvious insult to millions of Ukrainians themselves who have been brutally murdered by the Wehrmacht, not to mention the numerous SS units that committed the most heinous war crimes in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, in addition to the rest of Europe. Still, it seems rabid Russophobia “justifies” such policies. The report then states:

“In April, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a photograph on its Twitter account of a soldier wearing a patch featuring a skull and crossbones known as the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head. The specific symbol in the picture was made notorious by a Nazi unit that committed war crimes and guarded concentration camps during World War II… …The patch in the photograph sets the Totenkopf atop a Ukrainian flag with a small No. 6 below. That patch is the official merchandise of Death in June, a British neo-folk band that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said produces ‘hate speech’ that ‘exploits themes and images of fascism and Nazism’.”

Astonishingly (although unsurprisingly), the NYT somehow managed to find the “evil hand of Putin” behind all this with claims that “in the short term, that threatens to reinforce Putin’s propaganda and giving fuel to his false claims that Ukraine must be ‘de-Nazified’ — a position that ignores the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish”. However, the fact that the Neo-Nazi junta frontman is of Jewish ancestry means nothing, as the infamous neoliberal billionaire George Soros, whose role has been instrumental in many Western-backed “color revolutions”, openly admitted that he was collaborating with the Nazis, leading to the deaths of his Jewish compatriots.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.