To the Editor:
After the despicable Buffalo atrocity, many elected officials are loudly (and properly) calling for exposing and eradicating the scourge of white nationalism. So why do these same leaders, seemingly in their next breath, vote to massively arm a foreign government that has served as Ground Zero for this ugly phenomenon for years?
There is no evidence that the shooter had any ties whatsoever to either former President Trump or Fox commentator Tucker Carlson, the designated “Usual Suspects”. But there are strong indications that that he was recruited to an international movement of white supremacist, neo-Nazi networks centered in, yes, Ukraine!
Unlike elsewhere, the race-haters in Ukraine aren’t fringe outliers, but deeply ensconced in governmental power. The explicitly Nazi Azov Battalion’s leader, Andrei Biletsky, was a member of Ukraine’s Rada (parliament) for five years. Biletsky was quoted in the London Guardian, proclaiming his mission to “lead the White Race in a final crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen”. Former Rada Speaker Andriy Parubiy co-founded the Social National Party of Ukraine, a transparent wordplay on National Socialism. Ex-Deputy Interior Minister Vadym Troyan, another Azov enthusiast, systematically condoned and protected gang attacks on human rights activists, African exchange students, and especially, Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The list goes on.
The website Bellingcat has extensive connections to the US State Department, and is anything but chummy with Vladimir Putin. Yet in 2019, they published a major report detailing how some 17,000(!) foreign fighters have come to Ukraine to be trained by the Azov crowd.
This includes the Christchurch, New Zealand shooter who killed 51 in 2019. Azov proudly distributed the disgusting manifesto, laced with racism and ecofascism, written by this sicko, who was also fulsomely praised by his Buffalo counterpart. Robert Rundo, the leader of the white supremacist Rise Above Movement that played a major role in the 2017 Charlottesville outrage, is another Azov admirer, calling it a state within a state, with schools, camps, and military bases at its disposal. Some “marginal” organization!
However, now that everything is subordinated to crushing Putin’s Russia, this all goes out the window. Congresspersons piously denounce white nationalism in Buffalo, but write a $40 billion check to a Kyiv government dominated by the networks that helped recruit the selfsame shooter into this web of racist evil. “Hypocrisy” is just too nice a characterization of this abominable behavior.
Sincerely, Doug Mallouk
