Strange Bedfellows

One of the odder aspects of the Ukraine War has been Western Ukraine supporters embracing the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. As the co-founder of The American Conservative put it last spring,

McConnell's fellow journalist, Michael Tracey, noted the bizarre phenomenon at the same time,

Celebrating Pagans at Christmastime

The latest instance of this was last week, when The Daily Mail offered positive coverage of a pagan ceremony by the Azov Battalion (sometimes called a regiment, which contains two or more battalions) to honor their dead:

A Russian Reaction

 On their Telegram channel, the Russian podcasters "RWAPodcast" noted the contrast between Azov's paganism and Russian peasant's Christianity:

Our war is a spiritual one... Looking at the footage of Azov Regiment's pagan solstice celebration, we see the true frontline, the folk beliefs... From their neolithic swamp cults, the human sacrifices, the cannibalism, the worship of the devouring earth mother, that ancient female archetype, to the Teutonic coldness of neo-paganism, a LARP of a LARP, reminiscent of all that talk about 'occultism in the Third Reich' and whatnot. It is overstated, of course, but I always imagine those Teutonic SS knights, with their white capes, standing in the grand hall of some castle in the Alps, singing chants in forgotten tongues, whispering incantations, carving runes, praying for the destruction of the Land in the East, in the background you can hear the guttural sounds of Tibetan lamas quoting the Kalachakra Tantra, brought back from some Ahnenerbe expedition... And there you have it, the Wehrmacht is on the outskirts of Moscow, the Volga runs red with blood, bombs are falling on Russian village huts... That was then... And now? Billions of dollars, all that fancy technology, the HIMARS they worship as a minor god, we're pulling out of Kharkov and Kherson... But somewhere, whether it's 1942 or 2022, there's a village, maybe in Lugansk oblast, maybe between Mariupol and Taganrog, there's a tiny village, and an old woman, and her icons, and Christ on the Cross, and she's falling to her knees, and she's praying, and she's wailing, "The Blessed Virgin slept in the city of Jerusalem, she saw a marvelous dream...", and there you have it, the Russian winter drops on the heads of the uninvited guests, their tanks are stuck in the mud, it is as if the soil is burning under their feet... And slowly, slowly... What are your Nordic runes compared to this grandmother's lamentations?

RWA Podcast

Hopefully this war isn't still raging a year from now.