From an outsider’s perspective it is nonsensical and self-defeating, the reason I found it most believable is because I can imagine what mental gymnastics are at play:
Believing so hard that you’re not a Nazi because of this or that, your peers believe the same, so using Nazi symbols together obviously isn’t a symbol of their true beliefs*, it’s just to make the Russians go .
Plus, who cares what the Russians think, they lie about you constantly anyways, calling everything an Azov base .
*Platner did this when he downplayed his Totenkopf tattoo by talking about how un-Nazi his beliefs are.
The West voted against Russia’s UN resolutions condemning Nazism and racism because they didn’t want their support used by “Russian agents” to attack support for Ukraine, so they end up voting against anti-Nazi resolutions which if anything was a bigger propaganda win for Russia than going along.
In both cases it’s preaching to the crowd + smug self-righteousness.
In the post-soviet states, there’s been a big push to associate nationalists of the past as the freedom fighters, we have statues built for generals who allied with the reich, they are presented as opportunists who were allying with the lesser evil, to give our countries liberty. The new mission of the new age nationalists, in their eyes, is to “actually” get rid of all the “real” problems, within the established borders. They’re not targeting “victims”, they’re targeting enemies of the state.
So I can understand why they would wear this kind of stuff. I can understand why it’s used to encourage the idea of a strong nation state with it’s own values that doesn’t care about what anyone else has to say about them. They see an opportunity to realize the creation of their glorious independent nation, that their ancestors failed to do. They don’t wanna “oppress” anyone, they just want to make people assimilate or leave. And forcing assimilation, within the country according to the local national values, isn’t viewed as a crime or a bad thing to do.
At least that’s how I see it. But it is convenient to simply say anyone who makes arguments like my own is simply a triggered bot who doesn’t understand they’re just doing a little trolling.
From an outsider’s perspective it is nonsensical and self-defeating, the reason I found it most believable is because I can imagine what mental gymnastics are at play:
*Platner did this when he downplayed his Totenkopf tattoo by talking about how un-Nazi his beliefs are.
The West voted against Russia’s UN resolutions condemning Nazism and racism because they didn’t want their support used by “Russian agents” to attack support for Ukraine, so they end up voting against anti-Nazi resolutions which if anything was a bigger propaganda win for Russia than going along.
In both cases it’s preaching to the crowd + smug self-righteousness.
In the post-soviet states, there’s been a big push to associate nationalists of the past as the freedom fighters, we have statues built for generals who allied with the reich, they are presented as opportunists who were allying with the lesser evil, to give our countries liberty. The new mission of the new age nationalists, in their eyes, is to “actually” get rid of all the “real” problems, within the established borders. They’re not targeting “victims”, they’re targeting enemies of the state.
So I can understand why they would wear this kind of stuff. I can understand why it’s used to encourage the idea of a strong nation state with it’s own values that doesn’t care about what anyone else has to say about them. They see an opportunity to realize the creation of their glorious independent nation, that their ancestors failed to do. They don’t wanna “oppress” anyone, they just want to make people assimilate or leave. And forcing assimilation, within the country according to the local national values, isn’t viewed as a crime or a bad thing to do.
At least that’s how I see it. But it is convenient to simply say anyone who makes arguments like my own is simply a triggered bot who doesn’t understand they’re just doing a little trolling.