I know I shouldn't, but I've been thinking about Naziism again.
It's not really down to me. It's really down to all the other people on social media who constantly use the term as if it's a magic kill shot or something.
It isn't. It's just a word, and like lots of words, it may mean something or it may mean nothing; or it may mean something on one day, to one person, and something else, completely different, to someone else on a different day (or 5 minutes later).
Anyway, it's one of those terms that won't go away, so, if it's going to stick around, which it clearly is, we should at least ascribe some sort of robust meaning to it.
The mainstream meanings that you encounter with this word, are all coated in a sickly goo of extreme hystericism, so none of those meanings will do.
Indeed, if you think about the two main problems in the world today, Ukraine and Middle East (or to be more precise the Russians and the Israelis) and correlate this fact with the now extremely awkward fact that the two groups that Hitler was trying to hardest to remove from the face of the earth were (ahem) the Russians and the Israelis, you can at least say that this whole "Naziism thing" is becoming a little less black and white than it used to be.
It isn't. It's just a word, and like lots of words, it may mean something or it may mean nothing; or it may mean something on one day, to one person, and something else, completely different, to someone else on a different day (or 5 minutes later).
Anyway, it's one of those terms that won't go away, so, if it's going to stick around, which it clearly is, we should at least ascribe some sort of robust meaning to it.
The mainstream meanings that you encounter with this word, are all coated in a sickly goo of extreme hystericism, so none of those meanings will do.
Indeed, if you think about the two main problems in the world today, Ukraine and Middle East (or to be more precise the Russians and the Israelis) and correlate this fact with the now extremely awkward fact that the two groups that Hitler was trying to hardest to remove from the face of the earth were (ahem) the Russians and the Israelis, you can at least say that this whole "Naziism thing" is becoming a little less black and white than it used to be.
Recently there's been a new Naziism spat between online Poles and others over President Zelensky' reported "decision" to allow a Ukrainian military detachment to name itself after Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Bandera is a controversial figure from WWII history whose militia participated in atrocities.
But even though this story is sourced from RT.com and pumped out through fake news sites like The Irish Sun, a lot of Poles fall for it.
But even though this story is sourced from RT.com and pumped out through fake news sites like The Irish Sun, a lot of Poles fall for it.
Of course, Russian propaganda usually pushes on something that is already there, and it is true that some Ukrainian nationalists venerate Bandera as a national icon, even though the Ukrainian state does what it can to distance itself from him, as this association with Bandera plays into fake Russian accusations that the Ukraine is a "Nazi state" and tends to undermine its relationship with Poland, a natural ally in the struggle against Russia.
The awkward fact for the Ukrainian government, however, is that Bandera remains something of a hero for certain Ukrainians and was indeed involved in various atrocities against Poles in World War II even if some of the historical sources, Soviet, etc., are far from reliable.
The broader fact, however, is that East European history between 1914 and the 1945 (when some sort of totalitarian order was imposed by the Stalinist goons) was a total shitshow.
If you take any prominent Russian, Pole, Ukrainian, Ruthenian, Slovak, Croatian, Rumanian, Hungarian, or German active in the Slavosphere in that period, then you have a more than 50% chance that they were involved in some kind of horrifying ethnic atrocity or brutality against somebody. So, even if some Ukrainians do want to brand themselves "The Stepan Bander brigade," reacting to this as if Poles never did anything bad themselves is a special form of snow-flakism.
In fact, just to put this on a historical footing, the Poland that emerged from WWI (and following a short war with the Soviet Union) had rather too much land belonging to other ethnicities, which inevitably involved it in brutalities against those groups. In short, Bandera didn't just happen in a vacuum.
In 1930, in response to unrest in the ethnic-Ukrainian parts of Poland, the Polish government launched the "Pacification of Eastern Galicia" with police and military units conducting mass searches, arrests, beatings, the destruction of Ukrainian community centres, libraries, cooperatives, and property, plus crop damage. This involved widespread brutality and intimidation as well as killings of Ukrainians.
Needless to say, both sides amplify or minimise the atrocities of the other, but the essential difference is that the Ukrainian atrocities against Poles happened during WWII, while those of Poles against Ukrainians happened during a period of relative peace, so, for that reason alone, the Ukrainian atrocities probably edge it.
I won't bother going into what either group did to the Jews, although it probably has a lot of bearing on how Israel turned out as we now see it in 2026.
All this talk about interethnic atrocity under conditions of major geopolitical struggle leads onto what Naziism truly is, and a more workable definition that should be used going forward.
It is clear to any objective person who is not personally involved in the hatreds, rivalries, and complexes of these various groups that many, if not all, of the atrocities that occurred in the Eastern European segment of WWII were directly attributable to the storms and stresses of fighting a particularly nasty war.
This was a war, remember, where it constantly seemed that just one more spurt of ruthless brutality would either slow down the invaders, cause the invaded to implode, or stave off the vengeful victims when they decided to do a bit of invading themselves.
I don't really want to get into the long grass here and start doing tedious historical detail, but to just chuck one example on the pile, the Nazi brutalities that occurred in the Kiev area in 1941 were clearly sparked off by some rather nasty work by the NKVD, whose sappers and engineers had pre-placed radio-controlled mines and delayed-action explosives in key buildings before retreating (or being captured).
These detonated starting around 20th of September 1941, causing significant damage and German casualties. The buildings targeted, included hotels used by officers, the Citadel, the Old Arsenal, and other prestigious buildings that the Germans predictably and quite stupidly occupied.
These little surprise packages, often rigged to have a "double tap" effect, also caused fires that destroyed much of the downtown area of Kiev and killed over 200 German soldiers, some of them middle-ranking officers, and left tens of thousands of Ukrainians homeless.
Yes, what I'm claiming here is that the "poor wittle Nazis" were radicalised by a cunning series of Kremlin-installed booby traps, creating not only direct death and mayhem, but also a severe loss of face (sometimes literally). Remember, this was the same Wehrmacht that had executed and massacred around 6000 Belgian civilians on its passage through peaceful little Belgium in 1914!
This loss of face was a serious problem, as the Germans had little they could legitimately do in response. "The invisible enemy" in this case had already fled or was hidden in the general population. However, doing nothing and continuing to look weak was not an option either in a do-or-die war like that on the Eastern front. Blindly retaliating against the general population, as they had done in Belgium, was an option but not a very good one because it would alienate the general population and make control of rear areas even more difficult. The solution the Nazis hit on was to make use of the pre-existing "racism infrastructure," so to speak, and to scapegoat and "make an example of" the one group who had long fulfilled this function in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
One could get into endless and pointless debates about German racial theories and whether they were "complete bollocks" or "actually on to something," or even if there was anything new in them or not (there wasn't). But the fact is Naziism and Nazi anti-Semitism, such as it was, could have taken quite a different path to the one it took if Germany had not got itself enmeshed in a meat-grinding existential war with three Superpowers.
Possible genuine image of Ukrainians with Stepan Bandera banner.
The broader fact, however, is that East European history between 1914 and the 1945 (when some sort of totalitarian order was imposed by the Stalinist goons) was a total shitshow.
If you take any prominent Russian, Pole, Ukrainian, Ruthenian, Slovak, Croatian, Rumanian, Hungarian, or German active in the Slavosphere in that period, then you have a more than 50% chance that they were involved in some kind of horrifying ethnic atrocity or brutality against somebody. So, even if some Ukrainians do want to brand themselves "The Stepan Bander brigade," reacting to this as if Poles never did anything bad themselves is a special form of snow-flakism.
In fact, just to put this on a historical footing, the Poland that emerged from WWI (and following a short war with the Soviet Union) had rather too much land belonging to other ethnicities, which inevitably involved it in brutalities against those groups. In short, Bandera didn't just happen in a vacuum.
In 1930, in response to unrest in the ethnic-Ukrainian parts of Poland, the Polish government launched the "Pacification of Eastern Galicia" with police and military units conducting mass searches, arrests, beatings, the destruction of Ukrainian community centres, libraries, cooperatives, and property, plus crop damage. This involved widespread brutality and intimidation as well as killings of Ukrainians.
Needless to say, both sides amplify or minimise the atrocities of the other, but the essential difference is that the Ukrainian atrocities against Poles happened during WWII, while those of Poles against Ukrainians happened during a period of relative peace, so, for that reason alone, the Ukrainian atrocities probably edge it.
I won't bother going into what either group did to the Jews, although it probably has a lot of bearing on how Israel turned out as we now see it in 2026.
All this talk about interethnic atrocity under conditions of major geopolitical struggle leads onto what Naziism truly is, and a more workable definition that should be used going forward.
It is clear to any objective person who is not personally involved in the hatreds, rivalries, and complexes of these various groups that many, if not all, of the atrocities that occurred in the Eastern European segment of WWII were directly attributable to the storms and stresses of fighting a particularly nasty war.
This was a war, remember, where it constantly seemed that just one more spurt of ruthless brutality would either slow down the invaders, cause the invaded to implode, or stave off the vengeful victims when they decided to do a bit of invading themselves.
I don't really want to get into the long grass here and start doing tedious historical detail, but to just chuck one example on the pile, the Nazi brutalities that occurred in the Kiev area in 1941 were clearly sparked off by some rather nasty work by the NKVD, whose sappers and engineers had pre-placed radio-controlled mines and delayed-action explosives in key buildings before retreating (or being captured).
These detonated starting around 20th of September 1941, causing significant damage and German casualties. The buildings targeted, included hotels used by officers, the Citadel, the Old Arsenal, and other prestigious buildings that the Germans predictably and quite stupidly occupied.
An NKVD booby trap bomb goes off in Kiev to "welcome" the Germans
These little surprise packages, often rigged to have a "double tap" effect, also caused fires that destroyed much of the downtown area of Kiev and killed over 200 German soldiers, some of them middle-ranking officers, and left tens of thousands of Ukrainians homeless.
Yes, what I'm claiming here is that the "poor wittle Nazis" were radicalised by a cunning series of Kremlin-installed booby traps, creating not only direct death and mayhem, but also a severe loss of face (sometimes literally). Remember, this was the same Wehrmacht that had executed and massacred around 6000 Belgian civilians on its passage through peaceful little Belgium in 1914!
This loss of face was a serious problem, as the Germans had little they could legitimately do in response. "The invisible enemy" in this case had already fled or was hidden in the general population. However, doing nothing and continuing to look weak was not an option either in a do-or-die war like that on the Eastern front. Blindly retaliating against the general population, as they had done in Belgium, was an option but not a very good one because it would alienate the general population and make control of rear areas even more difficult. The solution the Nazis hit on was to make use of the pre-existing "racism infrastructure," so to speak, and to scapegoat and "make an example of" the one group who had long fulfilled this function in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
One could get into endless and pointless debates about German racial theories and whether they were "complete bollocks" or "actually on to something," or even if there was anything new in them or not (there wasn't). But the fact is Naziism and Nazi anti-Semitism, such as it was, could have taken quite a different path to the one it took if Germany had not got itself enmeshed in a meat-grinding existential war with three Superpowers.
For example, under more benign conditions, the Nazis might have taken a leaf out of the book of the Poles themselves, who in addition to the occasional "petty" pogrom, were actively encouraging many of their Jews to relocate to the British mandated territory of Palestine before WWII, while also smuggling weapons to them. These weapons, by the way, were used not just against the unfortunate Arabs, but also the hapless British who were trying to keep the peace down there.
Or else a calmer and less-stressed Hitler might have realised that Jews were actually Germany's "secret superpower" and have decided to use their scientific know-how to help Germany develop the A-bomb first, instead of chasing their scientists off to America to work on the Manhattan project.
So, once you blow off the hysterical and emotional froth, and boil it all down, "Naziism," at the end of the day, is really just the messy and often moronic process of fighting a particularly nasty war; and the two people mainly responsible for that today are a certain Eurasian midget with man boobs in the Kremlin and a slimeball in Tel Aviv.
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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
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