We Are Not Fascists, and If You Call Us Fascists, We Will Arrest You

it's much more complicated than that. i don't want to turn this thread into a flame war so i'll try my best to contextualize my point.

foreign media have consistent pattern of putting together Ukrainian nationalists and actual nazis. It's not even an oversimplification - it's basically apples and oranges kind of thing. While they both are on the right wing spectrum, they are so far apart - nationalists are basically centrist as most of them stand for gradual continuous transformation of state institutions through multi-stage reforms. The biggest political nationalist organization of the past People's Movement (Narodny Rukh) was like that and even they had limited representation within state institutions. The thing is - Ukrainian politicians for the most part use nationalism as a gimmick to get into offices and do their shady dealings under guise of greater good "for the people long term let it play out" bullshit. European Solidarity led by former president Poroschenko are like that, current ruling party Servant of the People is like that, long-running populist cockroach Tymoschenko's Fatherland is literally a clickbait party that just want to hold office and steal money and they will publicly say whatever helps them with that. Even former eastern juggernaut Party of Regions used the same rhetorics while literally being a bunch of robber barons feigning legitimacy mixed with full-on collaboration. Now these guys are a problem because they can bullshit their way into decision making.

the other big thing is how nationalists and nazis define nation. nazi goes for ethnic-only definition which is fucking stupid in a historically multi-national state - their whole shtick is literally meaningless the moment you look at the ethnic layout of Ukraine through the ages until now. So we group together these sets of people who live here - Boykos, Polischuks, Lemkos, Bukovinians, Slobozhan as Ukrainians because the language is somewhat common but Kirimli, Romanians, Hungarians, Jews, Poles, Greeks, even russians etc - they also live here but they don't count and don't belong even though they're born and raised here, living here, paying taxes, doing business, literally dying to protect their homes - their whole thing falls apart quite fast because of that. Meanwhile modern nationalists define nation as political entity first bound by society, culture and territory - which is a far cry from traditional definition of nationalism. I hope I cleared this up.
These days nazis get their media exposure because they are at the frontlines fighting the enemy. basically, they exploit noble cause privilige to push their agenda but their attempts to capitalize on their newfound notorious come with mixed success and there is always a moment when the media personality with nazi leanings says something stupid and fades away. Back in the yanukovych era - those guys were literally brought to political talk shows to says wild shit so that everybody else could go - see these guys are krayzee. that's the moden nazi media cycle in Ukraine. Politically, nazis consistently lost elections on every level, they have no representation within government institutions and have niche public support that mostly exists on social media within their bubbles. And any time they actually found their way into public offices in the regions - it ended being a same old corrupt mess as every other politician - so that's that.

Dude is 40 going on 55. Evil rots from within.

What a fucking loser