ByMichael Goldfarb, Michael Goldfarb
2 min read
In an era of diminished news budgets, foreign reporting is skimpy at best. We know there is fighting in eastern Ukraine along the border with Russia. But we get few details about Ukraine's fiercest warriors, the 500-strong Azov Battalion.
Are they heroes fighting Russian aggression? Or antisemitic, neo-fascist nationalists on a glory hunt?
To find the answer, follow the Wolf's Angel.
This symbol of the Waffen SS was adapted by the Social National Party in Ukraine - the words 'Social' and 'National' are intentional - when it was founded in 1995. In 2004, the party changed its name to Svoboda and began to publicly moderate its extreme nationalism. That did not stop its leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, from making speeches excoriating the "Muscovite Jewish mafia".
Ukraine's neo-fascist right wing, like most extremist political movements, is prone to splits. The three main parties representing this segment of the Ukrainian electorate still got 10 per cent of the vote in last May's elections for the Verkhovna Rada [parliament]. The leader of the Radical Party, the largest of these groups, is Oleh Lyashko, who is also one of the leaders of the Azov Battalion. The Wolf's Angel is now their symbol.
'Heroes' of anti-Russia fight use the Waffen SS Wolf's Angel symbol
Traces of their worldview are all over the internet. It is pure Aryan Nation fantasy.
So why, at a time of heightened awareness about antisemitism's return to Europe, has there been so little about the Azov crew?
The internet era is all about rapid flow of unverified, uncontextualised "information", much of it inaccurate. Journalism has changed its rules to keep up. Normal verification procedures have gone out the window; objectivity now means correcting an earlier rumour reported as fact.
Ukraine has been the place where all of these changes exploded. Reporters with agendas and language skills make up the West's primary lens on events. But they have left truth in A&E.
In the middle of this are the Jews - or the idea of the "Jews", since there are relatively few Jews left in the borderlands. Ukrainian ultra-nationalism, a powerful force, has never really shed its antisemitism. Its heartland is western Ukraine in places whose names are familiar to all Jews: Tarnopil, Berdichev, Lemberg (today L'viv).
The ultra-nationalist parties annually honour those Ukrainians who helped the Nazis eliminate almost 100 per cent of the Jewish population during the Holocaust.
From the beginning of the conflict last February on Kiev's Maidan [Independence Square], there have been neo-Nazi elements at the sharp end of the conflict. The Azov battalion evolved from these groups.
Their influence has been consistently denied or underplayed by spokespeople for the Ukrainian government but also by Western reporters for outlets such as the Economist and Washington Post, for whom this is a story about a resurgent imperialism in Russia led by the odious and slightly deranged Vladimir Putin. For some of them, war with Russia - with its massive nuclear arsenal - is something the West must anticipate out of this crisis. This view was articulated by Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum last month, in an article headlined: "War in Europe Is Not An Hysterical Idea."
In making her case, Ms Applebaum did not mention the fascist elements in Ukraine - although she linked Putin to Mein Kampf in the same sentence.
As for Ukraine's 70,000 Jews, most live in Kiev and are staunch backers of the government. But when the fighting is done with Russia and the ultra-nationalists turn on parliament to battle for an ethnically pure Ukraine - as they have sworn they will do - what will Ukrainian Jews think then?
Michael Goldfarb is a journalist and author