Why Have So Many Neo-Nazis Rallied to Ukraine's Cause? | Opinion

Brave Ukrainian soldiers are risking their lives to defend their nation and their families against Russian aggression. There's only one problem: Many of those fighting for today's Ukraine also seem to be fighting for a Ukrainian past that is shameful.

Most Americans and Europeans applaud the heroic Ukrainian military and hope for its victory over Russia's aggression. But these same people might clap more softly if they saw how many of these Ukrainian and allied "heroes" are wearing symbols that are unambiguously associated with Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Some of the most recent battles of the war have taken place inside Russia itself, with the border city of Belgorod coming under attack by a group of volunteers who bring nothing but discredit to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's government. The Russian Volunteer Corps is run by Denis Kapustin, who openly espouses Hitler's views, and threatens to widen a war that may engulf much of the rest of Europe.

But such ideology and symbology is not confined to Ukraine's allied forces. Rather, they are to be found in many places on the Ukrainian sides of the front lines.

A group called the Azov Brigade fought bravely to defend eastern Ukraine, holding out in Mariupol's Azovstal Steel Plant for weeks after others had given up hope. Unfortunately, the same Azov Brigade has proudly boasted of its neo-Nazi ideology and wore their own version of the swastika until it was no longer convenient for them to do so. Yet the unit has been "folded into Ukrainian military" and become an important component of it.

Among the symbols used by these neo-Nazi groups is the "Totenkopf," the death's head worn by extermination camp guards and others who perpetrated the Holocaust. They also wear the black sun symbol, which is closely connected to Heinrich Himmler, the notorious head of the Nazi stormtroopers.

These symbols are associated not only with Nazism and antisemitism but with white supremacy and anti-gay groups.

The New York Times has described the relationship between Ukraine and Nazi imagery as "complicated." If that is somehow intended as a justification, it defies history. Although many Ukrainians were killed by German soldiers, too many also joined with the German military in its genocidal program. The SS organized a subgroup in Ukraine called the 14th SS-Volunteer Division "Galicia." Many Ukrainian Nazis volunteered to become death camp guards in Poland, and many were complicit in the massacre of Jews at Babi Yar. A considerable number of Ukrainians supported the Nazi invasion of their country and saw it as liberating them from the oppression of the Soviet Union. That was then! But there is no excuse or justification for the current Ukrainian leadership tolerating the glorification of the Nazis and the widespread and open use of Nazi symbols by its soldiers.

Historically Ukraine has been one of the most antisemitic countries in the world. Even before the Nazi invasion, Ukrainian citizens conducted pogroms and mass killings of Jews. One of the worst offenders was Bohdan Khmelnytsky who several hundred years ago murdered tens of thousands of Jewish women, babies, and men, in a prelude to the Holocaust, and in the name of Ukrainian nationalism. That, too, was then, but now the statue of this antisemitic mass murderer stands proudly at the center of Kyiv and his picture adorns current Ukrainian currency.

So, the issue is not complex. There are still far too many Ukrainian antisemites and neo-Nazis. This presents a problem not only for the current war with Russia, but also for its aftermath. If the Ukrainian military defeats Russia, many of these Nazis will be regarded as heroes. Some will almost certainly be elected to positions of power and authority. If Ukraine loses the war to Russia, these neo-Nazis will surely blame it on the Jews and on the Jewish president of Ukraine. As is often the case when extremism is tolerated, it becomes a lose-lose proposition for the Jews.

The New York Times points out that some Russian soldiers also wear Nazi symbols, as if that somehow justifies the actions of the neo-Nazis on the side of "Good." It only goes to show that anti-Jewish racism (a better term than antisemitism) is pervasive both on the extreme right and the extreme left, among ultra-nationalists and anti-nationalists and on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian war. Whatever other variables there may be, the one constant over the millennia has been the "blame the Jews" trope.

The Times reports that even some Jewish organizations are prepared to give Ukraine a pass on its toleration of neo-Nazis, because they don't want to be perceived as supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin's narrative about Ukraine being a Nazi state. Ukraine is not a Nazi state; it is a state that elected a Jew as president, while tolerating Nazism in its military. Those who refuse to condemn such intolerable toleration only encourage it by their mistaken silence.

Calling out military groups that would like to turn Ukraine into a Nazi state, does not further the Russian narrative. It only tells a painful truth about the present, the past, and the likely future.