{"id":6669,"date":"2022-03-15T12:47:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T10:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/?p=6669"},"modified":"2022-03-15T12:48:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T10:48:26","slug":"neo-nazis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/neo-nazis\/","title":{"rendered":"Neo-Nazis are exploiting Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine for their own purposes | The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rita Katz | The Washington Post | 15 March 2022<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not since ISIS have we seen such a flurry of recruitment activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHi can you please forward a message since two of us are trying to get a carshare from germany to ukraine going,\u201d reads a Feb. 26 message forwarded to a popular neo-Nazi Web channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are 3 french, leaving Strasbourg tomorrow morning with our car,\u201d another message answered. \u201cThere is place for 2 german fighters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the types of conversations that have flooded Western neo-Nazi and white-nationalist venues online every day since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine: users organizing carpools, plotting how to cross the Poland-Ukraine border to join the fight against Russia. Their goal is not to defend Ukraine as we know it \u2014 a multiethnic, democratically minded society led by a Jewish president. Some neo-Nazis simply see this new war as a place to act out their violent fantasies. For others, though, the force pulling them toward the conflict is a shared vision for an ultranationalist ethno-state. They see Ukraine as a golden opportunity to pursue this goal and turn it into a model to export across the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The would-be militants have been recruited by groups like the\u00a0Azov Battalion<\/a>, a far-right nationalist Ukrainian paramilitary and political movement. Azov was absorbed into the Ukrainian national guard in 2014 and has been a basis for Putin\u2019s false claim that Ukraine\u2019s government is run by neo-Nazis. Though Azov remains a fringe movement in Ukraine, it is a larger-than-life brand among many extremists. It has openly welcomed Westerners into its ranks\u00a0via white-supremacist sites<\/a>. Azov stickers and patches have been seen around the globe: from a\u00a0bookbag<\/a>\u00a0at a July 2020 neo-Nazi counterprotest in Tennessee to the\u00a0motorcycle<\/a>\u00a0of an attempted mosque bomber in Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, not all in the far right adore Azov, which some see as having ties to Israel or Jewish funders<\/a>. But since Azov publicly invited foreign fighters into its ranks on Feb. 25<\/a>, the organization\u2019s official Telegram chat group has been packed with messages from people in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and other Western countries expressing interest in joining. Neo-Nazi chat groups and channels in various languages have echoed Azov\u2019s calls. I haven\u2019t noticed this level of movement-wide recruitment activity since the Islamic State declared its so-called caliphate in 2014 and sought sympathizers globally to join its fold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We at\u00a0SITE,\u00a0<\/a>an intelligence group tracking global extremists, have noticed a surge in online activity by white nationalists and neo-Nazis in conjunction with the war in Ukraine. Among the hundreds of individuals who have announced their intent to join Azov in recent weeks are several known neo-Nazis. For instance, \u201cMD,\u201d an American member of Azov\u2019s recruitment chat group, has repeatedly tried to get fellow countrymen to join the battalion in Ukraine. \u201cAre there any Americans looking to go? We could for a group to go over there,\u201d he said. We discovered that MD is also a member of some of the most sadistic far-right extremist chats on Telegram, where he has proposed establishing a neo-Nazi militia in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cD,\u201d another member of the chat, is a self-described military veteran in Britain who is active in dozens of neo-Nazi venues on Telegram. Like MD, he has sought to form his own band of countrymen. \u201cAny UK bois, I\u2019m in Uk and leaving hopefully in 1-2 weeks,\u201d D wrote on Feb. 27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D\u2019s motivations seemed even more troubling than MD\u2019s. He wrote, \u201cAnyway when I get to Ukraine I\u2019m going to kill extra Jews now whenever I see them.\u201d Another post read in part, \u201cI\u2019m getting my gear together, hail Hitler, glory to Ukraine and let\u2019s all kill some [expletive] Jews for Wotan!\u201d (Wotan is a god from Norse mythology, which many far-right extremists appeal to in their rhetoric and aesthetics.) D later indicated that he had formed a \u201cgroup from UK\u201d to head to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPolish guy living in America here, looking to help out in any way I\u2019m able,\u201d chat member \u201cZ\u201d posted on Feb. 25, later adding, \u201ci\u2019ve got a lot of gear i can bring around, from helmets to vests of all sorts.\u201d Z is also an active member of many neo-Nazi chat groups, we discovered. The same Z wrote in another chat group: \u201cI hate Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s because Western white supremacists and neo-Nazis, for the most part, do not support the current Ukrainian government \u2014 and not simply because of its\u00a0ban<\/a>\u00a0on antisemitism, President Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s Jewish heritage or other specific matters. Ukraine is a developing democracy, which far-right extremists oppose as contrary to the fascist governments they want to see. As the administrator of a popular German and English neo-Nazi chat group wrote while urging members to join Azov, \u201cI am not defending Ukraine, I am defending National Socialism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, while\u00a0some white nationalists have expressed admiration for Putin<\/a>, many Western far-right extremists oppose Russia, which they conflate with the former Soviet Union and therefore consider communist. Yet this mobilization on Ukraine\u2019s behalf is driven by more than just a mutual enemy: The mobilizers see\u00a0the Russia-Ukraine war<\/a>\u00a0as a major opportunity to advance white nationalism via militancy. To them, Ukraine is a sandbox for fascist state-building, ripe for the kind of armed far-right power grab they long to see in their own countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the most extreme among these neo-Nazis, the plan is even more sinister. They see Ukraine as a chance to further \u201caccelerationist\u201d agendas, which seek to speed up a civilization-wide collapse and then build fascist ethno-states from the ashes. This school of thought is demonstrated vividly by \u201cSlovak,\u201d whom we at SITE consider one of the most influential accelerationist neo-Nazi voices in the far right. On Feb. 25, Slovak announced<\/a> that he was leaving an unknown country to fight in Ukraine. \u201c<\/em>This war is going to burn away the physical and moral weakness of our people, so that a strong nation may rise from the ashes,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOur job is to ensure that conditions remain terrible enough for long enough for this transformation to happen, and happen it must. Our future is at stake and we may not get another chance, certainly not one as good as this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired, Slovak wrote that Ukraine could see its own decades-long fight, likening it to the resistance mounted in Afghanistan against NATO or the Russians. \u201cThe Afghans did it for over 40 years against both of these forces and now they\u2019re in control of their destiny,\u201d he wrote. \u201cUkraine will have to borrow a page from their book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Niche as this accelerationist philosophy may seem, it must be taken seriously. Copycat attacks were plotted in\u00a0California<\/a>\u00a0and elsewhere after a terrorist\u00a0espousing accelerationist philosophies<\/a>\u00a0killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, none of these developments validate Putin\u2019s claims that the war is about \u201cdenazifying\u201d Ukraine. Forget about Zelensky\u2019s Jewish background: It\u2019s an ironic claim for Putin to make, since he gives safe haven to individuals such as Rinaldo Nazzaro, who was until recently the leader of the Base, a largely American cell-based neo-Nazi organization whose members<\/a> have been linked to terrorist plots. Nazarro appears<\/a> to have lived in Russia since at least 2018. Putin has also given haven to the Russian Imperialist Movement<\/a>, which the State Department describes as giving \u201cparamilitary-style training to white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Europe.\u201d Putin gives these entities haven to help \u201caggravate societal fissures in the West,\u201d a declassified U.S. intelligence report<\/a> from last year suggested. Whatever sparse kernels of truth Putin is picking at regarding groups like Azov, it was he who invaded a sovereign country and created a new extremist breeding ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue at hand is not a matter of validating or invalidating narratives, though. The issue is security \u2014 for Ukraine and for the countries these extremists come from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, the Ukraine situation reminds me of Syria in the early and middle years of the last decade. Just as the Syrian conflict served as a perfect breeding ground for groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, similar conditions may be brewing in Ukraine for the far right. Syria became a plotting and training ground for terrorists to mount attacks in the West, such as the attacks in Paris in 2015 and in Brussels in 2016 attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The extremists who successfully make it to Ukraine could return home with new weapons and combat experience under their belts \u2014 or stay in Ukraine, where they can further influence their countrymen online. Just because extremists are \u201csomewhere else\u201d does not make them any less dangerous to the countries they come from, as we\u2019ve learned all too well. No matter where war takes place, it always amounts to opportunity for extremists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rita Katz is the executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group and a terrorism analyst. She is the author of the forthcoming book, \u201cSaints and Soldiers: Inside Internet-Age Terrorism, From Syria to the Capitol Siege.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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