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Azov International

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COMMENT: In numer­ous pro­grams, we have not­ed inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing between the Ukrain­ian Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion and ele­ments around the world:

  1. Azov is part of the “Inter­mar­i­um Revival” that is seen as using Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of the Ukraine “piv­ot point” as a spring­board for a glob­al Nazi takeover.
  2. Amer­i­can Nazis and white suprema­cists are among the ele­ments net­work­ing with Azov and then “bring­ing it all back home” to their native lands.
  3. Azov Bat­tal­ion and Pravy Sek­tor (“Right Sec­tor”) ele­ments have decamped to Hong Kong, net­work­ing with the so-called “Pro-Democ­ra­cy” forces and work­ing on behalf of EU NGOs.

Azov’s Hong Kong com­pa­tri­ots have adopt­ed the OUN/B slo­gan, now the offi­cial salute of the Ukrain­ian police and mil­i­tary. ” . . . . The inter­est has been mutu­al, with Hong Kong’s ‘democ­rats’ draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from Ukraine’s pro-West­ern Euro­maid­an ‘rev­o­lu­tion’ that has empow­ered far-right, fascis­tic forces. Hong Kong pro­test­ers have embraced the slo­gan ‘Glo­ry to Hong Kong’, adapt­ed from ‘Sla­va Ukrayi­ni’ or ‘Glo­ry to Ukraine’, a slo­gan invent­ed by Ukrain­ian fas­cists and used by Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors dur­ing WWII that was re-pop­u­lar­ized by the Euro­maid­an move­ment. . . . ”

Joshua Wong–“boy won­der” and dar­ling of the Amer­i­can MSM–has dou­bled down on affin­i­ty with Ukraine: ” . . . . ‘No mat­ter the dif­fer­ences between Ukraine and Hong Kong, our fights for free­dom and democ­ra­cy are the same,’ Joshua Wong told The Kyiv Post in 2019. ‘[W]e have to learn from Ukraini­ans… and show sol­i­dar­i­ty. Ukraine con­front­ed the force of Rus­sia — we are fac­ing the force of Bei­jing.’ . . . .”

In Brazil, as well, the “Azov For­eign Legion” has made its pres­ence felt. Both Pravy Sek­tor and Azov have estab­lished res­o­nance with Jair Bol­sonaro’s forces in Brazil.

Accord­ing to Brazil Wire: “Sound truck at a minor protest in São Paulo today flew the flag of Ukrain­ian Neon­azis “Right Sec­tor”. Mem­bers of the Brazil­ian extreme-right have been trained in Ukraine, as report­ed by the @FT in Jan­u­ary 2017. https://t.co/RXkigSOSba pic.twitter.com/zWyWtvTOsQ— Brasil Wire (@BrasilWire) May 24, 2020.”

Azov appears to have influ­ence in Brazil, as well, alleged­ly hav­ing recruit­ed fight­ers from that coun­try: ” . . . . The country’s sim­mer­ing neo-Nazi move­ment, with its secret world of swastikas, hate pro­pa­gan­da and street vio­lence, was being recruit­ed by rightwing extrem­ists in Ukraine to fight against pro-Russ­ian rebels in the Euro­pean country’s civ­il war. Ukraine’s Mis­an­throp­ic Divi­sion, an extreme right group aligned with the Azov Bat­tal­ion, an ultra­na­tion­al­ist para­mil­i­tary group aligned with Kiev, was behind the recruit­ment dri­ve, Mr Jardim, Brazil’s fore­most neo-Nazi hunter, alleged. . . .”

 1.“Hong Kong’s ‘Pro Democ­ra­cy’ Move­ment Allies with US Politi­cians Who Seek to Crush Black Lives Mat­ter” by Ajit Singh [The Gray­zone]; Con­sor­tium News; 6/10/2020.

. . . . In recent days, the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has been ter­ror­ized by white vig­i­lante groups. Mean­while, Hong Kong’s “pro-democ­ra­cy” protests have served as a mag­net for the U.S.  and Euro­pean far-right sup­port­ers. The ultra-right pil­grim­ages to Hong Kong have includ­ed numer­ous Amer­i­can white nation­al­ists and Ukrain­ian neo-Nazis who pre­vi­ous­ly fought in the fas­cist para­mil­i­tary group, Azov Bat­tal­ion.

The inter­est has been mutu­al, with Hong Kong’s “democ­rats” draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from Ukraine’s pro-West­ern Euro­maid­an “rev­o­lu­tion” that has empow­ered far-right, fascis­tic forces. Hong Kong pro­test­ers have embraced the slo­gan “Glo­ry to Hong Kong”, adapt­ed from “Sla­va Ukrayi­ni” or “Glo­ry to Ukraine”, a slo­gan invent­ed by Ukrain­ian fas­cists and used by Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors dur­ing WWII that was re-pop­u­lar­ized by the Euro­maid­an move­ment.

“No mat­ter the dif­fer­ences between Ukraine and Hong Kong, our fights for free­dom and democ­ra­cy are the same,” Joshua Wong told The Kyiv Post in 2019. “[W]e have to learn from Ukraini­ans… and show sol­i­dar­i­ty. Ukraine con­front­ed the force of Rus­sia — we are fac­ing the force of Bei­jing.” . . . .

2. “Brazil neo-Nazi claim chal­lenges myth of nation’s racial har­mo­ny” by Joe Leahy; The Finan­cial Times; 01/09/2017

When Brazil­ian police inves­ti­ga­tor Paulo César Jardim launched a series of raids on the homes of alleged neo-Nazis in the south­ern state of Rio Grande do Sul, he unveiled a bizarre plot.

The country’s sim­mer­ing neo-Nazi move­ment, with its secret world of swastikas, hate pro­pa­gan­da and street vio­lence, was being recruit­ed by rightwing extrem­ists in Ukraine to fight against pro-Russ­ian rebels in the Euro­pean country’s civ­il war.

Ukraine’s Mis­an­throp­ic Divi­sion, an extreme right group aligned with the Azov Bat­tal­ion, an ultra­na­tion­al­ist para­mil­i­tary group aligned with Kiev, was behind the recruit­ment dri­ve, Mr Jardim, Brazil’s fore­most neo-Nazi hunter, alleged.

One per­son was detained along with 47 9mm pis­tol shells in the Decem­ber raids. He was lat­er released. Police were still inves­ti­gat­ing whether any Brazil­ians had already joined the fight­ing in Ukraine, he said, declin­ing to elab­o­rate fur­ther on the probe. A spokesman for the Azov Bat­tal­ion — now incor­po­rat­ed into the Nation­al Guard — said no Brazil­ians had fought for it.

“We became aware that some­one had come from Europe…an Italian…had come to Brazil to recruit peo­ple for Ukraine,” Mr Jardim told the FT.

The rev­e­la­tion, if proven, that Brazil’s under­ground ultra­na­tion­al­ist move­ments are seek­ing com­bat expe­ri­ence over­seas is a wor­ry­ing devel­op­ment in a phe­nom­e­non that has shocked a coun­try that con­sid­ers itself a racial melt­ing pot.

The rise of neo-Nazis in Brazil has chal­lenged a pop­u­lar myth that racism, at least the overt vari­ety on dis­play in the US and oth­er west­ern coun­tries, does not exist there. With more than half the pop­u­la­tion claim­ing at least some African her­itage, Brazil­ians pride them­selves on the relaxed rela­tions between the country’s dif­fer­ent racial groups. But there has been a steady stream of attacks in recent years. Just last year, neo-Nazis attacked a punk band that cham­pi­oned gay and equal rights with knives and tom­a­hawks.

While the far-right is still regard­ed as the fringe of pol­i­tics in a coun­try that freed itself from two decades of mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship only in the mid-1980s, ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians and their sup­port­ers are keen to fill a polit­i­cal vac­u­um that has devel­oped after the August impeach­ment of for­mer pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff, ana­lysts say.

Jair Bol­sonaro, a far-right con­gress­man and for­mer Brazil­ian army cap­tain, grabbed head­lines last year for prais­ing a known tor­tur­er from the dic­ta­tor­ship era. Also last year, a group of ultra­con­ser­v­a­tives invad­ed Con­gress and unveiled ban­ners call­ing for the return of mil­i­tary rule.

Mr Bol­sonaro has denied he is a neo-Nazi but crit­ics accuse him of shar­ing many of the movement’s views, such as racism and intol­er­ance.

….

The strong­hold of neo-Nazism in Brazil is the country’s south and south-east, from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to Rio Grande do Sul, the regions that received the bulk of Brazil’s Ger­man, Ital­ian and Pol­ish immi­grants.

While South Amer­i­ca was also known for receiv­ing Nazis flee­ing from the defeat of Hitler’s Ger­many in the sec­ond world war, the neo-Nazi move­ments are unre­lat­ed to these indi­vid­u­als and most­ly grew out of hate sites on the inter­net, experts say.

Brazil, with a pop­u­la­tion of 200m, has 150,000 “sym­pa­this­ers” involved in neo-Nazi move­ments, accord­ing to a paper by anthro­pol­o­gist Andri­ana Dias of Uni­camp, a uni­ver­si­ty.

“The vio­lence expressed by these groups, whether in phys­i­cal attacks on blacks, Jews or homo­sex­u­als, or the dis­sem­i­na­tion of their hate literature…has in recent years demand­ed a lot of work…in terms of inves­ti­ga­tion and con­vic­tions,” she wrote.

One of the land­mark cas­es occurred in Por­to Ale­gre in 2005 on the 60th anniver­sary of the end of the Holo­caust when a group of neo-Nazis armed with knives attacked Jews com­mem­o­rat­ing the event, seri­ous­ly injur­ing sev­er­al of their vic­tims.

In more recent cas­es, skin­heads have tar­get­ed gays on Aveni­da Paulista, the main thor­ough­fare in São Paulo. In 2011, three skin­heads were con­vict­ed for try­ing to kill four peo­ple, includ­ing a black per­son with a pros­thet­ic limb, with clubs and knives.

Since the 2005 attack in Por­to Ale­gre, police in Rio Grande do Sul had adopt­ed a more pre­ven­tive approach, arrest­ing and ques­tion­ing sus­pects before they could hatch their plots, Mr Jardim said. There had been up to 50 indict­ments over the past 15 years, he added.

This was the approach used in the Ukraine inves­ti­ga­tion — called Oper­a­tion Azov after the alleged involve­ment of the east­ern Euro­pean para­mil­i­tary group.

Mr Jardim said that when he brought sus­pects in for ques­tion­ing, as he did dur­ing Oper­a­tion Azov, he often tried to con­vince them that their creed was out of place in a coun­try whose heroes includ­ed World Cup foot­ballers Ronald­in­ho, Ronal­do and Romário — all of them black. But they rarely changed their minds.

“These are not com­mon crim­i­nals or rob­bers, they have an ide­ol­o­gy. They are peo­ple who believe in eth­nic cleans­ing, in racial puri­ty,” he said.

 

Discussion

6 comments for “Azov International”

  1. It’s inter­est­ing that Joe Leahy in the arti­cle refers to the Russ­ian eth­nics in the Don­bass region of east­ern Ukraine as “rebels”. Some­times peo­ple call them “sep­a­ratists”. They’re nei­ther. The Ukrain­ian Verk­hov­na Rada (par­lia­ment) was tak­en over in vio­la­tion of Ukraine’s con­sti­tu­tion in a bloody coup d’é­tat. The cur­rent “gov­ern­ment” of Ukraine is an ille­gal jun­ta. The Russ­ian eth­nics who’d heard “give russkies the knife” from the same Ban­derovites for a long time, went through the legal motions of estab­lish­ing region­al coun­cils by pop­u­lar elec­tion so as to rep­re­sent law­ful gov­er­nance under col­or of law in the part of Ukraine that they could defend with mili­tias orga­nized to defend their homes from their own neigh­bor­hoods. All of these Russ­ian eth­nics (and some Ukrain­ian-eth­nic allies) had fam­i­ly mem­bers who were killed or maimed in the Great Patri­ot­ic War (WWII) against Axis fas­cism.

    Posted by AtlantaBill | June 14, 2020, 11:04 am
  2. Using the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists for ter­ror plot­ting in for­eign coun­tries is not a new tac­tic for the Nazis. The Urain­ian Fas­cist move­ment has been used in ter­ror plots by Ger­mans and Japan­ese pri­or around the world. They sup­port­ed a Cuban pro-Nazi group, the “Grey Shirts”. See Falange The Axis Secret Army in Amer­i­ca by Allan Chase, G.P. Ptunam’s Sons, New York, 1943, page 84 which states:
    “Golow­chenko, who spoke Span­ish with a heavy accent, arrived in Havana in I 940 to assume the lead­er­ship of Cuba’s Ukrain­ian Nazis. There were only two hun­dred Ukrain­ian Nazis in Havana but, as Michael Say­ers and Albert Kahn revealed in their book, Sab­o­tage, the Ukrain­ian Fas­cist move­ment has for many years been used by the Ger­mans and the Japan­ese as a reser­voir of ter­ror­ists all over the world. Havana’s two Hun­dred Ukrain­ian Nazis were all hard-bit­ten, vet­er­an ter­ror­ists-ready to com­mit any act, includ­ing mur­der, at the com­mand of their lead­ers.

    All of the Axis groups in Cuba grew to know Golow­chenko well. He had close rela­tions with the Japan­ese and the Ital­ians, but his par­tic­u­lar job seems to have been as drill-mas­ter for the Gray Shirts and the Falange. He was a hard taskmas­ter on the drill fields, train­ing his men in the meth­ods approved by the Czar’s army in 1914 as well as in tricks he had learned from the Japan­ese.

    Not only Golow­chenko, but also some of his Ukrain­ian Nazi fol­low­ers, devot­ed most of their wak­ing hours to the Legion. They par­tic­i­pat­ed in pub­lic and pri­vate meet­ings of the Gray Shirts, adding a weird inter­na­tion­al fla­vor to the fierce­ly nation­al­is­tic Legion.

    The Nation­al­ism of the Legion became as taint­ed as the nation­al­ism of Fran­co’s “nation­al­ists.” In their files was Nazi pro­pa­gan­da, print­ed in Ger­many, in the strangest lan­guages. One of the choice exhibits was the assort­ment of pro­pa­gan­da print­ed in Hun­gar­i­an, by Ger­man Nazis, for dis­tri­b­u­tion abroad. It became one of the odd jobs of the Gray Shirts to hunt up stray Hun­gar­i­ans in Cuba and press this Ger­man pro­pa­gan­da upon them. Oth­er pieces were print­ed in Eng­lish and Ger­man. “

    Posted by Mary Benton | July 11, 2020, 7:27 pm
  3. And Biden (the guy who start­ed the coup that let the right sek­tor take pow­er) is the “ alter­na­tive” to Trump?
    Good luck world and.... have fun

    Out­stand­ing work Dave.If only we lis­tened a lit­tle clos­er over the decades. Bright side... they expos­ing them­selves

    Posted by Mark Johnson | July 16, 2020, 7:13 pm
  4. @Mark John­son–

    It would be inac­cu­rate to say that Biden start­ed any­thing in nation­al and/or for­eign pol­i­cy. That is done by major cor­po­ra­tions, Pen­ta­gon, CIA.

    But Biden must do their bid­ding, as any and all polit­i­cal fig­ures must, if they wish to pros­per and/or stay alive.

    On domes­tic pol­i­cy, he is much, much bet­ter.

    Still, Dems vs. GOP is, as I have said in a past post “Vichy France Ver­sus Nazi Ger­many.”

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | July 16, 2020, 8:40 pm
  5. If most of the reporters are left wing (90–95%), why haven’t they report­ed on all this Nazi inter­fer­ence in the world? Thanks, David

    Posted by David Lucas | July 23, 2020, 12:26 pm
  6. @David Lucas–

    Most reporters are not “left wing,” although quite a few are “cen­ter-left” in their per­son­al polit­i­cal views.

    Edi­tors and pro­duc­ers, how­ev­er, are not. There is much con­ser­v­a­tive con­tent in news–particularly about bud­getary eco­nom­ics.

    The Nazis don’t get much cov­er­age because the CIA is piv­otal­ly involved in our news cov­er­age.

    Check out the 25 inter­views I did with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion.

    That gives a good view point.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | July 23, 2020, 5:36 pm

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