The Tangled Web Of Analysis On The Russian Military Operations In Ukraine
BY Herschel Smith2 years, 10 months ago
I consider it to be virtually impossible to get real news or even good analysis of the situation in Ukraine from the legacy media. The propaganda and disinformation is far too thick – from all sides, including our own. You can safely ignore most of it.
But this may be the most tangled analysis I’ve ever seen, and it’s symbolic of the sort of thing you’d read at the Small Wars Journal. I’ll only give you the summary paragraph.
Despite the political influence of Ukraine’s veteran constituency, popular support for Ukraine’s far-right paramilitary forces is negligible. Biletsky and other members of far-right parties lost their seat in Ukraine’s Parliament—the Verkhovna Rada—in 2019. However, fascist paramilitary organizations could expand significantly in the wake of a Russian invasion. Ongoing civilian resistance training grant these organizations the opportunity to create widespread recruitment pools in the general populace. Further to that, a defeated democratic Ukraine would face a legitimacy crisis that extremist organizations like Azov and Right Sector could exploit to establish themselves politically, not unlike the Yugoslav Partisans in the Second World War. In this event, while NATO should refuse to recognize any Kremlin-appointed regime, it should likewise refuse to recognize any rebel Nazi government. Even if a strong opposition government led by Nazis may be enticing for the purpose of undermining a puppet regime, it would be a catastrophic mistake that would further destabilize the region and provide legitimacy to other far-right movements globally, particularly in the US.
The word Nazi is used about a 100,000 times in the commentary (I exaggerate only a little), and yet when trying to understand what a Nazi really is, there is only one URL which in effect subtly denies the very claim that the author is making. The very best one can conclude is that a Nazi is an “ultra-nationalist.”
Um … okay. I guess he means not a globalist.
Anyway, this author has a bit of twisted thinking in the summary, recommending that the U.S. take certain actions and recognize certain groups based on what he sees as a budding ultra-nationalist movement in the U.S. Literally. He recommends certain foreign policy actions based on what it might portend for groups he’s afraid of in the U.S.
You can’t make this sort of thing up. This passes for “analysis” at SWJ.
I think he should give his college degrees back and sue them for breach of contract. I’ve seen bad stuff before at SWJ, but never anything quite like this. It sounds like a college freshman at Georgetown wrote it.