Why The New York Times Shouldn't Be Excusing Nazi Symbols
The fact I feel the need to write a headline like that (or a post about this!) is totally insane
In 2018, Reuters published a story entitled “Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem.” It told the American public, “numerous organized radical right-wing groups exist in Ukraine,” warning about the notion they’ve been “officially integrated into state structures.” The article details Azov’s use of Nazi-era symbolism and the recruitment of neo-Nazis into its ranks. It negatively contextualizes an article from Foreign Affairs for “downplaying any risks the group might pose.” The author seems incredulous towards claims that “like other volunteer militias, Azov has been ‘reined in’ through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces.”
Rightly so, I’d say. If the US state officially integrated a straightforward Neo-Nazi organization into our military, I don’t think people would view it ambiguously.
More recently, in 2022, NBC News, an outlet unabashedly for the war in Ukraine, wrote a fairly detailed article about how Ukraine’s Nazi problem is indeed real, covering everything from the Azov leader’s assertion that “Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races” to streets named for WWII Ukrainian Nazis. It did so as it claimed that “Putin is worse,” but that is a different discussion.
This is why the New York Times’s June 5th, 2023 publishing of “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History” should be viewed harshly.
The New York Times has pushed lots of propaganda in the name of US imperialism through the decades. But I must emphasize that in publishing this, the outlet willingly attempts to minimize the significance of (and thus excuses) open support for one of the most brutal regimes (with one of the most disgusting ideologies) of all time, simply because it services the US imperial agenda.
Neo-Nazis
We live in an era where people are quick to label people “Nazis” as if everyone who disagrees with them openly supports Adolph Hitler. Unfortunately, most people do not do this because their political opponents wear Swastikas.
These guys do – and American media knows all about it.
Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a soldier standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an emergency worker posing in front of a truck.
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.
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.
- Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
Note that they don’t say, “Far-right hate groups are wearing these patches,” just that they’re “part of hate group iconography.”
The problem is that people do not casually wear the patch of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (the Ukrainian division of the Nazi SS; the lion patch in the below photo). Some historians contend they did not commit atrocities; however, the Ukrainian Nazi contingent provably destroyed several Polish communities, allegedly having murdered Polish civilians. Pro-Ukrainian historians quickly note they were under the command of Germany rather than locally at the time, which somehow excuses the Ukrainian Nazi SS unit’s killing of civilians. A Polish government commission into Nazi war crimes concluded the 14th SS Galicia was responsible for the massacre of women and children, and I can’t imagine why Nazis would do that!
NYT argues that these symbols “represent Ukrainian sovereignty and pride” rather than Nazism.
On the subject of Ukrainian national pride: Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator and outspoken anti-semite, is considered a national hero by certain people in Ukraine (and is roundly condemned by others). Bandera was the leader of the militant (often labeled terrorist) faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which had a “revolutionary” program of radical nationalism, fascism, and anti-semitism/xenophobia. He was responsible for acts of violence and atrocities against civilians, especially ethnic Poles and Jews.
I’ll let the reader guess which military contingents are part of the “certain people” that hold up Bandera as a national hero.
A wartime change of heart
In 2019, The New York Times editors were happy to link the massacre of 49 people in New Zealand with Azov. Also in 2019, they published an article about how the O.K. hand gesture now signifies white power. Clearly, they were pretty averse to Nazis and white supremacy at the time, so much so that they ceded a harmless, universal symbol of approval.
But today, the New York Times doesn’t feel the need to condemn any of this. Instead, they ask the Neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian military to consider the optics! Oh no, the Ukrainian military's use of Nazi symbols on uniforms has caused controversy!
So far, the imagery has not eroded international support for the war. It has, however, left diplomats, Western journalists and advocacy groups in a difficult position: Calling attention to the iconography risks playing into Russian propaganda. Saying nothing allows it to spread.
- Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
The ridiculous implication is that these people (who should simply be acknowledged as Neo-Nazis) should consider that their ambivalence and acceptance of such symbols “risks reinforcing Russia's propaganda” and “undermining international support for Ukraine.” It tells us oh-so-uninformed Americans that it is difficult to separate those angered by the Russian invasion from those supporting far-right groups.
NYT: "Please stop wearing Nazi symbols because Putler called you Nazis, and that can't look true!"
NAZIS: "But we're Nazis. We wear Nazi symbols for a reason."
As if the lowly plebs living in the heart of the imperial core are so impossibly stupid that we can not tell the difference between a Ukrainian person who isn’t Sieg Heiling and one who is.
In all seriousness, this is insulting in a way that the US elite has truly mastered. Of course, many, many Ukrainian people are not Neo-Nazis. I’d even venture to guess most of them aren’t. Most people don’t want to live through a war, and even less want to commit genocide.
Still, this isn’t a “thorny” issue and certainly isn’t complicated. There are groups in Ukraine, many of them officially integrated into the military, that are overtly Neo-Nazi.
Conclusion
In 2019, if a person made the O.K. sign, the NYT was convinced they were “a Nazi.” In 2023, why aren’t… Nazis?
Ultimately, NYT is afraid that eventually, people will stop tolerating the billions of dollars spent in an unwinnable war to expand NATO while that money could be doing incredible things here at home.
When I say something like this, some “leftist” (you know, the “side” that people, for some reason, associate with anti-war) always responds, “But money isn’t even real! They aren't taking it from Americans!" However, my point isn't "fiat money is limited and this is a zero-sum game," it's that the Biden admin's imperial priorities are terrible.
The truth is that most people in Ukraine aren’t Nazis; they’re unwitting pawns in the USA’s agenda to maintain imperial control in the face of a world where Russia and China are fast becoming more relevant (and more oriented towards cooperative international paradigms). Those people are living in a warzone while the USA is propping up Neo-Nazis in a bid to expand NATO, an ultimately anti-communist coalition that whitewashed Nazis and brought them in as senior commanders.
This is hardly the most detailed article that can be written on this subject, but I ask why it needs to be said at all. This isn’t hard. The NYT’s long-standing support for US imperialism is well-documented and has been heavily criticized, and this disgusting Nazi apologia serves that same agenda.
The promise of America is put on hold for the reality of “the United States.” Roads, rails, poverty, and an endless list of problems politicians run campaigns on fixing should be prioritized over the attempt to use a small country as a pawn to control the rearrangement of power.
According to Lenin, imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, characterized by the domination of monopolistic corporations and the pursuit of global economic and political dominance. Imperialist powers engage in the division and re-division of the world, striving for control over markets, resources, and geopolitics. The war in Ukraine is a clear-cut example of US imperialism via proxy.
The Biden administration likes to remind us of the “innocent people dying in Ukraine” to demonize Russia in a conflict the US bears a lot of responsibility for through many years of NATO expansion. And Russia is indeed killing Ukrainians. However, it’s a war. That is inevitable now. If the US was not pushing NATO expansion and instead worked diplomatically with all parties involved, this war didn’t have to happen. It certainly shouldn’t have.
Our state seems to like keeping bees in a jar to shake up and throw at people rather than talk to them. NYT is just working to preserve that. Again.
It would be nice if we could just lock Azov and Rusich in a thunderdome together so they would leave everyone else alone…
Though also I’m a little disappointed you didn’t take the opportunity to dig through the NYT’s long history of dubious Nazi coverage…
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/02/10/1922-hitler-in-bavaria/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1922-new-york-times-hitler/
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-moral-failings-of-american-press-coverage-of-nazi-germany