The definition of insanity, it is said, is doing the same thing and expecting different results. In which case, the US Deep State must be out of their ever-lovin’ minds. Because, despite a half-century losing streak of their machinations coming back to bite them on the arse, they just keep doing it.
During the Second World War, for instance, the OSS (predecessor of the CIA) trained a young Vietnamese guerrilla named Nguyen Sinh Cung. Nguyen later become known to posterity as Ho Chi Minh. A bit later, the CIA helped overthrow Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, in favour of the Shah — whose autocratic rule led directly to the Khomeinist revolution. In the 1980s, the CIA decided to arm and train anti-Soviet Mujahideen in Afghanistan: ex-Mujahideen formed the seed of the Taliban (although, despite common legend, Osama bin Laden himself denied ever receiving CIA funding or training).
More recently, the US and its allies supported anti-Assad rebels in Syria. Many of them later flocked to ISIS.
Still, surely they’ve learned their lesson by now? And absolutely the last people the US Deep State would be channeling money and training to is actual neo-Nazis.
According to a recent Yahoo! News report, since 2015, the CIA has been secretly training forces in Ukraine to serve as “insurgent leaders,” in the words of one former intelligence official, in case Russia ends up invading the country. Current officials are claiming the training is purely for intelligence collection, but the former officials Yahoo! spoke to said the program involved training in firearms, “cover and move,” and camouflage, among other things.
2015… why, that would be the Obama administration, right? Where Joe Biden was VP at the same time that his crackhead kid was raking in millions from Ukrainian entities. Where Biden was also bragging about pressuring the Ukrainian government to drop corruption investigations.
And 2015 was also the year the Obama administration modified US law, specifically to allow them to fund and train neo-Nazis.
Given the facts, there’s a good chance that the CIA is training actual, literal Nazis as part of this effort. The year the program started, 2015, also happened to be the same year that Congress passed a spending bill that featured hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of economic and military support for Ukraine, one that was expressly modified to allow that support to flow to the country’s resident neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Regiment.
Make no mistake: the Azov brigade is not your average Twitter liberal’s “Nazis”, they’re the full-on, real deal. Its former commander put its mission statement as to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival” in “a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen”.
You don’t get more Nazi than that, folks.
Still, surely these Nazis are just an irrelevant fringe. Well, no: they were officially incorporated into Ukraine’s defence forces in 2014. From there, they’ve often led the defence against the Russian invasion. Those brave Ukrainian fighters holed up in Mariupol for weeks? Azov neo-Nazis. Its first commander, Andriy Biletsky, was documented leading attacks against minority civilians in Ukraine. From 2014-19, Biletsky was a member of Ukraine’s parliament.
Ukraine’s connections to modern Nazism are far from Russian fake news, and are in fact extensive and well-documented.
But the same people who gibber incessantly about alleged “Nazis” and “white supremacists” in the US are quite happy to cosy up to very real Nazis in Ukraine. Facebook lifted its ban on Azov and its Nazi regalia shortly after the war began. And the Biden administration is fighting a proxy war against a supposed “New Hitler” by funnelling millions of dollars and truckloads of weapons to actual Nazis.
And now the blow-back begins. Again.
“A number of prominent individuals among far-right extremist groups in the United States and Europe have actively sought out relationships with representatives of the far-right in Ukraine, specifically the National Corps and its associated militia, the Azov Regiment,” states a 2020 report from the West Point US Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. “US-based individuals have spoken or written about how the training available in Ukraine might assist them and others in their paramilitary-style activities at home.”
A 2018 FBI affidavit asserted that Azov “is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States–based white supremacy organizations,” including members of the white supremacist Rise Above Movement, prosecuted for planned assaults on counterprotesters at far-right events, including the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally that Joe Biden later co-opted as a rationale for his presidential campaign.
Another creep who had a hard-on for Ukrainian Nazis is Christchurch killer Brenton Tarrant. Tarrant claimed to have travelled to Ukraine to train with the Azov Nazis. While there is considerable doubt that that actually happened, Tarrant did use Azov symbols while carrying out his murder spree.
It’s no small irony that the US president, elected in large part to halt the perceived march of fascism at home, is continuing long-standing US support for literal Nazis in what might well be the nexus of international fascism. And if these Ukrainian Nazis really are among the insurgents being trained by the CIA, it will be no small tragedy if they one day take the same career trajectory as Osama bin Laden.
Jacobin
Starting with Christchurch, it looks like they already have.
Meanwhile, the US and its hand-wringing allies are flooding Ukraine with rivers of weaponry. Ukraine, for its part, is openly bragging about handing out weapons to anyone who wants them.
But I’m sure it’s all going to work out fine, this time.