I know, you are sick and tired of everyone flippantly throwing around the word ‘Nazi.’ So am I. The frivolous use of the word as a catch-all slur for anyone liberals disagree with is annoying. However, real neo-Nazis do exist. A lot of them are in Ukraine.
Point of clarification since people are inevitably going to take this out of context.
Ukraine is not a Nazi country. Most of the country is very tolerant. In the east, however, there are Nazis. Not as many as Putin would have you believe, but they are there and they have committed war crimes against the people Putin is claiming to protect.
Interesting that the Russians are alleging the Ukrainians are Nazis and now the Western media is declaring Russian allies as Nazis. Zhoga is called a neo-Nazi in dozens of Western media outlets after he was killed. No one provides any actual evidence of this.
For the record, Zhoga has been accused of and appears to have admitted to war crimes. He’s no peach. But is he a neo-Nazi?
I can’t find anything about Zhoga or the Sparta Battalion (who DM refers to as a ‘mob’) being Nazis. I have found a LOT about them accusing Ukrainians of being Nazis and fighting against those Nazis murdering their people.
In fact, even in the Daily Mail’s article accusing Zhoga of being a neo-Nazi, they printed that the announcement of his death accused the Ukrainians of being Nazis.
Sparta fights for the DPR. Denis Pushilin is the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). He announced the death of Zhoga on his Telegram.
He was mortally wounded while ensuring the exit of civilians from this settlement. Scouts “Sparta” covered the evacuation of civilians, mostly women and children. The Nazis opened fire on them…
The Nazis in this announcement are the Ukrainian forces. The head of the DPR said Zhoga was killed protecting civilians from the Nazis who opened fire on the civilians.
The Daily Mail published that nearly halfway down their article after they accused Sparta of being neo-Nazis. Daily Mail either missed it, as did everyone else repeating the claim, or they are intentionally lying to you.
It gets worse …
Look at this screengrab from just a few minutes before I wrote this article.
That’s the Wikipedia page on the Sparta Battalion. There is no reference to them being neo-Nazis in the entire article. Zero results for ‘neo’ for ‘Nazi’ and for ‘white.’ No one has considered Sparta Battalion to be neo-Nazi before now when it suits the Western powers that be to push that narrative.
Now, look at this from the search results for that exact same Wikipedia article:
The search results for that Wikipedia page claim Sparta are neo-Nazis but the actual article doesn’t … yet.
Larry Sanger has warned that the website can no longer be trusted — insisting it is now just “propaganda” for the left-leaning “establishment.”
“If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power,” he said.
“There’s a global enforcement of a certain point of view on issues like COVID,” he insisted.
The Ukrainian AZOV Battalion is widely recognized as neo-Nazis. The US government attempted to ban any funding of them with Ukrainian aid packages. A ban that was removed for … reasons.
The Ukrainian AZOV Battalion and the DPR Sparta Battalion are enemies. Are the neo-Nazi groups fighting each other? Why does Sparta constantly refer to their enemies as Nazis in a derogatory way?
It seems that Sparta Battalion and their former leader Vladimir Zhoga are not actually neo-Nazis but are, in fact, in a war against actual neo-Nazi units.
Sidebar: The AZOV Battalion used to be a privately funded gang that was funded by rich oligarchs but was officially absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard by former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko praised AZOV as:
“These are our best warriors,” he said at an awards ceremony in 2014. “Our best volunteers.”
Remember that story? The mayor of Konotop appealed to the city and asked if they wanted to fight or surrender. They chose to fight. I even covered it on my show. A harrowing story of bravery, right? What I didn’t know is that the mayor being lionized by the West is a for-real neo-Nazi.
His name is Artem Semenikhin. He’s the mayor of Konotop in the North East of Ukraine.
According to reports, Semenikhin drives around in a car bearing the number 14/88, a numerological reference to the phrases “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” and “Heil Hitler”; replaced the picture of President Petro Poroshenko in his office with a portrait of Ukrainian national leader and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera; and refused to fly the city’s official flag at the opening meeting of the city council because he objected to the star of David emblazoned on it. The flag also features a Muslim crescent and a cross.
Now, when I covered the story of Konotop’s ‘surrender or die’ predicament, I didn’t know who Semenikhin was. I could forgive PBS for the same except they tipped their hand.
You see, behind Semenikhin in the PBS story is a painting of Stepan Bandera. Bandera was a Ukrainian politician and Nazi sympathizer during WWII. PBS knew that and that’s why they blurred the painting out.
Here’s the picture blurred on the wall of Stepan Bandera:
When Russian troops came into the office of the mayor of Konotop, Ukraine, he escorted them out and made sure they drove away.
I suppose you could say PBS didn’t do this intentionally and it was just a standard blur filter that streamers use all the time, but I’d find that claim dubious, at best.
Just so we are clear … Western media seems to have falsely accused a pro-Russian commander and his whole unit of being neo-Nazis when they are actively engaged in hostilities with a confirmed neo-Nazi unit while PBS knowingly put neo-Nazi on their programming and hid a painting of a well-known Nazi ally hanging on his wall while they did it.
Good thing the West has banned all Russian media outlets so their narrative doesn’t get challenged like with so many fake Ukrainian stories exposed so far in the conflict.
This is one of the most laughable ‘outrages’ I’ve seen in a while. It’s not a new story. It comes up a few times a year but the answer to the problem is always the same.
First, let me, as a member of the media, highlight why some stories get covered and others don’t. Newsflash, it almost never has anything to do with skin color.
People who just vanish and there’s no additional information or evidence available, tend to not get covered all that much. It’s horrible for the families of the victims but it’s a reality in the news business. There needs to be a ‘hook’ to use to suck the audience into the story.
Those ‘hooks’ could be an unusual set of events, surveillance video showing something that might be relevant to the case, a photograph, text, or cryptic phone call. Sometimes there might even be witnesses. It could also be a small piece of evidence in the case. The media, often at the request of the authorities, puts this info out there to the public so the public can view the evidence and maybe help with the case. If there’s no evidence, the coverage rarely moves beyond the initial few stories for headline news. People like to feel like they can help a case and then become invested in it emotionally.
Crimes that happen in areas that aren’t crime-ridden do tend to get covered more because they are atypical. Is this fair to the victim’s family in those other cases, no. It is a reality though. Most local news outlets that I’ve seen in my career do a great job of highlighting tragic cases involving children even in high crime areas. They don’t often make national news because they aren’t of national interest.
Gabbi Petito’s case had all of the ‘hooks’ that make a compelling news story and then some. She was likely the victim of domestic battery, she was an aspiring social media influencer with fans who followed her travels, her public social media posts provided more evidence in the case, and she was traveling the country when the crime happened which means there’s more need for authorities to get the story on national media to gather evidence. Most stories don’t have most of these components. The fact that Gabby was young, white, and attractive are all secondary factors in the news coverage but people like Joy Reid want you to think those are the primary reasons her story was so widely covered. I’ve covered countless cases like this and the looks or race of the victim are rarely the central dynamics in coverage. The facts and evidence of the case are almost always the driving force. I’ve covered stories with all sorts of races and conventional standards of beauty throughout my career. The only demographic that I’ve ever seen get cast aside and not really given meaningful attention are boys and men who disappear. There are exceptions to that rule but, generally speaking, we cover the missing girl or woman much more readily than for boys or men.
This has never stopped the news media from screaming foul every time a case gets the attention that Gabby’s did when the victim is a white woman.
The media's focus on the Gabby Petito case has been frustrating for some people — who point out that the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women doesn't get nearly the same media attention.https://t.co/CAEI82oXrL
“In the same area that Gabby Petito disappeared, 710 indigenous people— mostly girls—disappeared between the years of 2011 and 2020 but their stories didn’t lead news cycles …” https://t.co/HJ01B6CsRK
Eugene Scott is with the Washington Post. Eugene Scott didn’t know about those other missing people until Gabby went missing. He never bothered to look before so save us the sanctimony.
These hysterics are wonderfully ironic.
The news media is OVERWHELMINGLY liberal. Every survey of the media shows a vast majority are liberal. It’s been that way for decades. Some estimates have the media being around 85% Democrat/liberal. Analysis of the media’s political donations are well over 90% to Democrats. In some election cycles, the media donates to Democrats by as much as 96-97% over Republicans.
The media’s political ideology is only relevant because that same news media tells you constantly that the left is anti-racist and the right is racist.
So, the media says it’s racism that leads to missing white women getting more coverage than minority women but it’s the media who chooses what stories get covered and that media overwhelmingly identifies as being politically left?
If the news media thinks racism is what’s driving missing white women to get more coverage than non-white missing persons then the media should probably stop being so racist in their choice of what they cover, don’t you think?
It’s like the athlete gender pay gap nonsense. If women really cared about women athletes being paid as much as men, women would start watching women’s sports and support those athletes, but they don’t.
All the media has to do to change what stories get the most attention is to … change what stories get the most attention. They are the only ones to blame for this. No one else controls what stories get covered. Maybe stop constantly trying to demonize middle America and Trump for 5 minutes and focus on all of those non-white missing person cases you didn’t know about before lamenting the coverage of Gabby Petito. May she rest in peace and her family get justice.