The MSM spent a decade calling the Ukrainian Azov Battalion neo-Nazi’s. Now admire them.

Thread via Glenn Greenwald

Whatever your views on Ukraine, the war and the US role: it’s just amazing that the Western press — which spent a full decade in unison calling the Azov Battalion neo-Nazi fanatics — now speak of them in admiring terms and will only say that their Nazism is a “Russian claim.”
 

Ukraine's Azov commander says civilians, heavily wounded evacuated from Mariupol plant https://t.co/F4rtoehalV pic.twitter.com/2R6fxAXL7A

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 20, 2022

 
The first 3 images: how @Reuters itself described Azov prior to the Russian invasion: as a dangerous neo-Nazi menace.
 
The last image: @Reuters today saying that such descriptions (its own) are merely Russian assertions.
 

 

 

 

 
Here’s is a video on Azov’s neo-Nazism from @TIME – the most mainstream, inoffensive outlet that does nothing but channel conventional wisdom – from 2021: last year!
 
If you say this today, you’re a Kremlin propagandist. That’s a Ministry of Truth:
 

Like, share, recruit: How a white-supremacist militia uses Facebook to radicalize and train new members https://t.co/DXbtDJlljJ pic.twitter.com/cduXSK0vIR

— TIME (@TIME) January 16, 2021

 
This was from the US Security State-supported @Bellingcat in 2019, warning that the Ukrainian neo-Nazi group called the Azov Battalion was becoming a rallying cry for neo-Nazis throughout the West. Again, saying this now means you’re a Kremlin asset. (bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…)
 

 
Here’s an op-ed in the NYT in 2020 — just 2 years ago — by former Congressman Max Rose and FBI agent Ali Soufan which, in the second paragraph, notes that FBI considers Azov “‘a paramilitary unit’ notorious for its ‘association with neo-Nazi ideology.'”
 

 
That op-ed also notes that Azov has been training neo-Nazis around the world. The murderer who carried out the New Zealand massacre at 2 mosques, Brenton Tarrant, claims he trained with Azov. Tarrant was the number 1 hero to the Buffalo murderer, who wore Azov’s Black Sun.
 

 

 
Again, none of this means you should have one view or the other about the US role. But the immediate whitewashing and historical revisionism in the Western press on behalf of Azov is chilling. And, yes, we should be concerned if weapons are going to them. (edition.cnn.com/2022/04/19/pol…) 
 
As I was saying… – I could do this all day, every day.
 

 

 

 
More here on the article from @TIME — the bastion of Western conventional wisdom — about the dangers and neo-Nazism of Azov from 2021.
 
The primary function of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth was to instantly re-write history and facts to serve war aims.
 

Last year TIME Magazine published an article about Azov Battalion's "unrivaled" role in transnational white supremacist extremism networks — and that the New Zealand mosque shooter displayed their Nazi-derived symbol. So did the Buffalo shooter. Will there be any note of this? pic.twitter.com/l0Jxidznrd

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 15, 2022

 
The trajectory of the Squad and many (not all) of their left-wing followers:
 

2016: punch a nazi.
2022: arm a nazi. https://t.co/xR52dQw9YR

— Al Conrad (@alconrad) May 20, 2022