• eatmyass [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Dmitry Utkin (who was also on the plane) is definitely a nazi, and Wagner has a lot of links to far-right elements in Russia. Wagner itself is supposed to reference Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer

            so Prigozhin is definitely in bed with nazis but idk anything about his actual beliefs

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Richard Wagner

              Also the guy Nietzsche ghosted because he couldn’t stand his antisemitism.

              …sorry random association the first existentialist gets maligned all too often. “Talks about nihilism and how it needs to be overcome == nihilist”, yeah sure.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  The antimodernism thing is like the least charitable take one can have on Nietzsche but at least it’s not one that’s based on his sister’s stuff.

                  Some quick thoughts:

                  His stance on democracy has to be understood in the context of its days, much less developed than now, and in the Kaiserreich also very much class-based, ruled more by mass psychology than consideration of what actually good politics would be – on both sides, though I won’t deny that the nobles and bourgeois of course needed their wings clipped. At the same time he’s very much an elitist in the sense of, erm, personal improvement, sees the need for the individual to transcend the forces acting around them and develop their own path as sublation of everything, contrast that with the political forces in parliament being not even close to that but simple thesis-antithesis with no sign of actually starting to go beyond that and you have an easy case for “Nietzsche simply didn’t believe in the process democracy”.

                  To all this he prefers “hierarchy” [Rangordnung]

                  Is that really the term Anglos use as a translation. “ranking” or even “precedence” might’ve been a better choice. Honestly just translate it literally: “Rank order”. In any case and I won’t dwell on it: Nietzsche always describes these rank relations as in flux, not set in stone, and makes fun of tying it to inheritance. I don’t see him at odds with Bakunin, here, who will readily bow to the authority of the bootmaker.

                  At the same time he warned of the dangers of not having such a thing, of insisting on some moral-metaphysical notion of inviolable human equality, and we just recently had the opportunity to see that kind of thing in action: I’m speaking of the masses of people unwilling to bow to the authority of virologists and epidemiologists, going “nu-uh I did my own research”, meaning they read some bullshit blog somewhere. Nietzsche himself might’ve rather thought about the Jacobine terror and stuff.

                  Overall, when reading Nietzsche I recommend starting with Thus spake Zahatrustra, as a work of philosophical mysticism, get to grips with what it means for the individual mind, and interpret the rest in that light, and specifically consider whether he might not have framed a lot of things very differently had he witnessed Nazi Germany.

                  A parallel which comes to mind here is Plato, who likely would be similarly at odds with the modern scientific method as Nietzsche is with the democratic process, stressing the importance of intuition as to not de-humanise the process: Are we, as peoples, really engaging in democracy, or do we let a system of mass psychology rule us?

                  Lastly, my psychological armchair: Was he someone who often felt alone in a crowd? Yeah, probably. Clowns to the left, jokers to the right.

                  • One more point here, made clearly by Marx, is that understanding how systems shape humans both as individuals and as a society is not de-humanising, it’s possibly the most humanising something can be. To be human is to be shaped entirely by your environment and your reactions to it simultaneously, and mass psychology is how we come to have anything remotely psychological to be. It’s finding how to live as both a human individual and a human who partakes in, creates, or grows away from mass psychologies. This misunderstanding is exactly Nietzsche hate for the masses. He attempted to understand HIMSELF as not human in this way and create a philosophy around it, while he himself was calling back to individual, anti-change philosophies from the Greeks who did the same (Plato as opposed to Aristotle)

                  • I’m not sure what your intention is with this comment if I’m being honest but it just seems like a broad defense of Nietzsche based in misunderstanding the claims of Losurdo, honestly. Nietzsches obsession with the individual in that way and unwillingness to accept change outside of growing toward his übermensch are a basis for the most anti-communist philosophy.

                    If I’m honest, I just doubt you’ve really read Nietzsche as deeply as Losurdo

          • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Thug for hire is more like it. And now Wagner is exporting it to Africa, thugging it up for dictators, military or otherwise.

      • Kangie@lemmy.srcfiles.zip
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        1 year ago

        Probably because of this:

        Dmitry Valerievich Utkin … was a Russian army officer. He served as a special forces officer in the GRU, where he held the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is alleged to have founded the Wagner Group

        According to several news outlets, Utkin is an admirer of Nazi Germany and has multiple Nazi tattoos, including Schutzstaffel (SS) insignia.

        The tattoos are visible in multiple public photos.

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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        1 year ago

        Putin’s propaganda is that the invasion of Ukraine is to denazify Ukraine. Basically any of his violent action is justified by calling his enemies Nazis and referring to the Soviet war against Nazi Germany (same as when the USA call others terrorists). So if he shot the plane, it’s because it had Nazis. Top comment may support this way of thinking.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Both can be true at the same time, with the caveat that actual Nazis aren’t called Nazis in Russia but nationalists, patriots, suchlike.

            But in the end Prigozhin might not have been a Nazi – in the ideological sense – but simply a crook. You don’t really need a racist or such ideology to build a colonial empire in Africa.

          • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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            1 year ago

            He is/was despicable as the leader of mercenaries ready to sell their services to any authoritarian regime, but I don’t see clear relationship with Nazism, do you have sources? It seems weird to me that a Nazi would accept to work for African juntas for example.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              I find it weird that the former liberal consensus was that Wagner was effectively a Nazi PMC group but now I guess it isn’t?

              • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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                1 year ago

                If you think I follow the ideology a specific movement, I’m afraid to tell you I don’t. So I’m not sure what the former liberal consensus was. The Wikipedia article (generally consensual, I guess) does mention that a sub-group in particular is: the Rusich unit. It seems ironic that Putin pretends to fight Nazism by using Nazis, unless the goal is that they self-destruction, but I guess that’s a fantasy.

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Putin never said he sought to annihilate Nazism in general, at least not that I know of. He said that among his goals is to denazify Ukraine, which I believe is true simply because the Ukrainian Nazis are his most hardliners opponents there. He does also crack down on Russian fascists when they become inconvenient to him (like darling of the west Navalny), but I don’t think he ever claimed to be an antifascist.

            • eatmyass [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              copied from above

              Dmitry Utkin (who was also on the plane) is definitely a nazi, and Wagner has a lot of links to far-right elements in Russia. Wagner itself is supposed to reference Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer

        • LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          Putin’s propaganda is that the invasion of Ukraine is to denazify Ukraine.

          No that’s Biden’s propaganda. Putin only mentioned it along with a laundry list of reasons. But besides, Ukraine’s ultranationalism is heavily based on Nazism.