blungld said:
Cal88 said:
Modern Ukrainian nationalism is rooted in 1930s-40s western Ukrainian nationalism, which was fully integrated ideologically and militarily with Nazi Germany. The largest SS division in WW2 was Ukrainian, its insignia are widely displayed today, and its leaders like Stepan Bandera are worshipped as national heroes of Ukraine, with major thoroughfares and large monuments recently built to their glory across western and central Ukraine. I will post evidence of this later this week.
You do know that much of (not all) of this service was FORCED on Ukrainians, right? Are you going to argue that Israel is Nazi because some Jews worked as a matter of survival in the concentration camps? Or that Poland too is Nazi for the same reasons? Is America also Nazi because we had town halls and Madison Square Garden filled with pro-Nazi rallies? Your claim is so out of context and so exaggerated and without any concession to what the Ukrainian people have been through.
My grandfather is Ukrainian. He was executed in Auschwitz because he spoke out against the SS and their capture and forced labor of young men in Ukraine. My mother, the most anti-Nazi liberal kind person I know was sent to brown shirt camp in Germany over summer to be indoctrinated. This wasn't a choice. It was survival. Either make a run for Russia and be purged by Stalin, or find a way to survive in occupied Ukraine/Poland. My family eventually escaped to Vienna with many harrowing encounters with Nazi soldiers (stories that give me chills) where they were sure they would be killed, and then to a Displaced Person's camp in Belgium where American kindness paved their way to migrate to America. I have many many relatives in Ukraine in Poland. They are incredibly proud of Ukraine and to be back in a free country where so many of their family were executed and persecuted all the way back to the Holodomor. They are not fascists or communists or Nazis. They are patriots who relish freedom and democracy. They resent Russia and celebrate Americans. Get your nose out of your research and websites. Quit seeing everything through your obvious Russian bias. I have lived experience with the actual people. They are no more Nazi than we are here--the only difference being that they live in a very desired piece of real estate that has been under virtual assault for centuries. That does tend to make you more nationalistic and militaristic--but not Nazi and not a country to NOT side with against Russia. Ukraine is a great ally that aligns with our economic and political ideals and objectives. Russia does not. This is not complicated. Russia invaded a burgeoning democracy and flooded the world with misinformation and propaganda that you and others repeat.
I have relatives in Ukraine as well, my brother being married to a Ukrainian from Dnipro. Her family and many of her relatives have fled last winter to Slovakia, Poland and Russia, some (especially the younger) several years ago due to the state of the economy in Ukraine, which has never been good since the 1990s. Her son is of prime military age, thankfully he has emigrated to Poland several years ago, or he would have been thrown into the battlefront right now. Her extended family has split allegiances, being russophones, with the older generation being largely pro-Russian, as are her relatives from Odessa.
Quote:
Are you going to argue that Israel is Nazi because some Jews worked as a matter of survival in the concentration camps? Or that Poland too is Nazi for the same reasons? Is America also Nazi because we had town halls and Madison Square Garden filled with pro-Nazi rallies? Your claim is so out of context and so exaggerated and without any concession to what the Ukrainian people have been through.
Poland doesn't have active neo-nazi battalions in its army, or major monuments
recently erected to the glory of SS leaders like Stepan Bandera in its main town squares, or main thoroughfares
recently named after their WW2 Ukrainian SS leaders. No country in Europe does, except Ukraine, which has literally many dozens of them. You can't say this is forced on Ukraine, they've literally voted in favor of honoring Bandera with a national holiday:
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-nazi-collaborator-birthday-holiday-anti-semitic-1272911Modern Ukrainian nationalism is married to their nazi collaborator past. There are many, many stunning examples of this, here are just a couple for now:
This is the heritage these people are honoring, that of
the Galician SS division, the largest SS division in WW2, which has committed genocide against Poles, Jews and Roma in western Ukraine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)Ukrainian soldiers sing to the glory of Bandera: "our father is Bandera, our mother is Ukraine":
Thousands of Ukrainian fans give the nazi salute while scanding Slava Ukaraini:
This is the treatment that is reserved to some Russian-speaking minorities in western Ukraine, those are not European values:
