Robert Parry: Sidestepping Ukraine’s ‘N-Word’ for Nazi

[Igel]

17. Russia has deployed Chechens to fight.

And the DNR is more than happy to have chetnici fighting and defending them.

These were Hitler allies in WWII. They massacred Muslims in Srebrenica. In the 1940s.

Oddly, nobody likes to point these out, either.

The problem is fairly simple once you get past details.

Where there are Ukrainian forces, there are few attacks on gays or on Russians for using Russian. There's the occasional attack on Russian orthodox churches, but not so many. There are some fascists, but most of them aren't what we'd call fascists. They're anti-Russians. Some are dyed-in-the-wool fascists, but there's a good reason that most European fascists went with Putin and not with Yatseniuk.

Where there are DNR and LNR forces, you find Catholic churches closed. Most Jews have fled the Donbas because of persecution--and sought shelter not in Russia, but in "fascist Ukraine." You find gay clubs closed and gays bashed for violating morality laws. You find bookstores that sell Ukrainian books shut. Not by the occasional basher of all things Ukrainian or gay or Jewish, but as a matter of policy, by high-ranking politicians enjoying government and DU support.

It's not individual instances of abuse. Those you can find in Sweden, in Norway, nearly anyplace you find people and those that can be bashed. What you need to look for is the patterns. Even where the "fascist battalions" go in after a battle you find fewer abuses than where the LNR and DNR have uncontested power. The only place you really find a lot of abuses showing up is in the Russian media--and by and large, those incidents lack evidence even on the ground when media go to find corroboration.

People get hung up on words. The problem is when you get caught up on words as used in a society that, for decades, delighted in manipulating the meanings of words. Where "fascist" means "anti-Soviet," but "Soviet" means Russian. Where "conservatives" are pro-Stalinist or at least pro-Communist, while "raging liberals" are for a mixed economy. Where the use of "objective" means "how I see it," while "subjective" means how anybody else sees it.

You can translate the morphemes, but often that masks the meaning.