German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia.

I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        the only people trivializing fascism are those who see fascism symbology like the swastika, Black Sun, various nordic runes, etc on the soldiers they’re egging on and go “doesn’t look like anything to me!” while advocating for the double genocide theory

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          Have you any pictures of Azov with swastika, black sun, or such after they got integrated into the national guard?

          Or is that just a convenient propaganda line to make you support an imperial aggressor fielding tons of fascist militias, itself being a mafia state slowly but surely turning fascist?

          • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            Have you any pictures of Azov with swastika, black sun, or such since 2014?

            The Black Sun and Wolfsangel have been right on their fucking shit rag of a flag until last year, you fascist turd.

            JFC the entire first page of your comments is nothing but nazi apologia, fick dich du kranke Faschosau.

            • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              Hey rember when they just got those new leopard tanks and some rascal painted a bunch of iron crosses on them, which libs insisted was from obscure world War 1 battalion and not where literally everybody knows the iron cross from, to the point the German government said they weren’t gonna keep giving them weapons if that shit didn’t stop

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one. But, go on, spin random bullshit.

              JFC the entire first page of your comments is nothing but nazi apologia

              Yeah I happen to be arguing with another fascism-trivialising hexbear idiot in another thread.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  Panzergrenadierbattalion 13 of the Bundeswehr (1980-1992, dissolved because cold war over). You’ll find it in more insignia not to mention coat of arms of towns but that one is closest to Azov in the sense that it’s simply a singular Wolfsangel. At least among the ones I could find within 10 seconds of googling.

                  The Wolfsangel is not a Nazi symbol as such. If you want to outlaw everything the Nazis ever used then nothing would be left, including the Antifa flags because they totally did try to appropriate those. They’re getting off on that shit and you seem to be willing to play right into their hands.

                  • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    Weird how they only use symbols that are widely used by neo-Nazi groups.

                    https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/wolfsangel

                    Arguing “well actshually they used a bunch of different symbols” is more Nazi apologia since very few symbols were used as widely by the Nazis as the swastika or the wolfsangel. There’s a reason you don’t see neo-Nazis tattooing antifa flags on their bodies.

              • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one. But, go on, spin random bullshit.

                The Azov Brigade’s official magazine is titled “Black Sun newspaper” which it produces and distributes to several tens of thousands within the Ukrainian military still uses the black sun, because it’s literally the fucking name of the publication.

                Some but not all of them are available here: https://archive.org/details/black_sun/

                Given that this archived collection goes up to 2017, you are full of shit.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  Yeah no that’s indefensible and the original editor in chief is nuts (google translate from the Ukrainian wikipedia page):

                  This is an old Ukrainian sign, which means a force aimed at destroying all the old and restoring the new. There is another version of its origin: the black sun is the period of the year when water acquires special life-giving qualities. This usually happened at night, when there was no sun, but since the nutritional properties were always associated only with it, our ancestors nicknamed this time the black sun. There is no hint of hostile ideology here, this is our Ukrainian symbol, which has a sacred meaning.

                  — Mark Melnyk (“Viry”), editor-in-chief of the publication

                  Couldn’t find out when it was discontinued, the azov.press domain certainly is dysfunctional. Azov’s official news feed seems to be here.

                  Could neither find out how official the whole thing was, either, and especially not in the crucial post-incorporation times. They might just have continued to operate independently.

                  Still, though: Is current-day Azov out there doing Nazi things? Ultimately that’s the only question that matters. Of course from the Russian perspective yes it is according to Russian propaganda everyone opposed to Russia (and that includes being opposed to being invaded) is a Nazi.

                  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                    Couldn’t find out when it was discontinued

                    The magazine is produced by Azov’s political wing, the National Corps as of 2016, which has currently suspended activity during the war. It will spin up its political wing again afterwards. Links and references in the other comment I sent here.

                    the azov.press domain certainly is dysfunctional

                    This started redirecting to Nackor.org in 2016 when the National Corps was started.

              • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                Oh and I can prove Azov are still distributing this free taster archive of the magazine via nackor.org, which is where the previous azov.press site migrated to later on. Here is a January 2022 archived page where you can see Azov are still giving away that selection of the magazine for free via their political spinoff the “National Corps”, this is one of several of their party websites: https://web.archive.org/web/20220409062917/https://nackor.org/ru/z-dnem-sobornosti-ukraini

                Reference for National Corps being directly linked to Azov: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/13/ukraine-far-right-national-militia-takes-law-into-own-hands-neo-nazi-links

                It is the regiment’s official political wing and has only suspended political activity during wartime.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  nackor.org, which is where the previous azov.press site migrated to later on.

                  nackor.org is a gambling website now it seems. Certainly not a news outlet, certainly not from the outside.

                  Reference for National Corps being directly linked to Azov

                  Wikipedia. Yes they’re certainly linked the National Corps is the home of Azov’s Nazis.

                  …squinting at things and considering that National Corps ceased activity in 2022 (to go to the front) it doesn’t seem too unlikely that they gave up on nackor.org and the successor to the Black Sun. I guess (really, guess) that it was run by National Corps for the longest time after Azov got integrated.

                  Anyhow are you seeing those election results. I can’t blame Ukrainians for not being too worried about them getting into power.

                  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                    nackor.org is a gambling website now it seems. Certainly not a news outlet, certainly not from the outside.

                    This is just a landing page that is displayed by the server host when a site can’t be accessed. It’s probably just down, wayback has archives as recently this month.

                    Anyhow are you seeing those election results. I can’t blame Ukrainians for not being too worried about them getting into power.

                    This is an american’s childlike view of politics, in particular it is one that has no understanding of political vanguardism and how absolutely tiny quantities of people can have incredibly outsized influences politically. The UK was pushed into leaving the EU by a political party with 0.2% of the seats that year on year received just 3% of the vote.

                    What you need to do is not view fascists as one political party, they’re several spread out over multiple channels performing vanguardism through multiple methods because it has a far stronger effect. The goal is not to win elections. The goal is to create political forces in motion that move fascists through positions of power in all ways. Liberals think of institutions in the form of “win election and then you get to do your manifesto” but power doesn’t just come from elections. Power comes from all elements of a state. The police. The administrative positions. The civil service. The judiciary. The businesses. Small local electoral positions. The media. The military. Etc etc etc. All of these elements can be hijacked without winning any major elections in any way whatsoever. They allow you to turn a country into whatever you want to turn it into because you are the voice of the country regardless of what you consider to be the intended “power” positions.

                    In essence, if you control the zeitgeist it doesn’t matter who wins elections, all politicians are stuck following the zeitgeist, they are subservient to it. If they do not serve the zeitgeist then they simply get tossed out… or killed.

                    Instead of leaning on these metrics I suggest an alternate method for getting a picture of the influence that fascists currently have in Ukraine and that is looking at the opinions of the total population now vs historic on various topics. One in particular I think you’ll find quite alarming is the shift in public opinion of Bandera, who I reckon you’re quite familiar with. See this article from a major Ukrainian polling agency. It finds that in 2012 support for Stepan Bandera was only 22%, this is a very good measure for us for what kind of influence the fascists had in Ukraine pre-2014 when the Maidan revolution occurred. Today, after the changes and promotion of his fascist beliefs, the lionisation of him and the remaking of Ukraine that has been underway since Maidan, that support is now 74%. Quote:

                    In particular, the attitudes that gradually improved are the ones towards Ivan Mazepa (44% in 2012 and 76% in 2022), Simon Petliura (26% in 2012 and 49% in 2022) and Stepan Bandera (22% in 2012 and 74% in 2022).

                    For any bystanders interested in why this metric is valuable. Stepan Bandera was leader of the OUN (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists), this organisation collaborated with the nazis in ww2 and killed tens of thousands of jews during the holocaust, it was regarded by the Nazi SS as extreme and particularly brutal even by their standards and I should not need to explain to anyone how evil the SS were.

                    This is what vanguardism can achieve. You do not need elections to become the dominant ideology of a country. You take over various non-electoral parts of the structure and become the zeitgeist itself and this is all while ignoring the fact that fascists exist within the main parties as well, you see this with your own eyes in America where people at all levels of the structure are having a major influence in the fascist direction, in both electoral and non-electoral positions.

                    You need to reassess in your head what power actually means. There are many ways to wield it. Liberals often have a misguided perspective that politics = elections when the reality is quite different, elections are a steam valve for society to let off what would be revolutionary energy every few years through a process of giving people “choice”. They’re not what power is though when the choice is created through far greater forces of influence developed across society on multiple fronts. For a more marxist interpretation of them as a whole this is a strong video.

                    I additionally strongly recommend the (now suppressed and hard to find) documentary Ukraine on Fire (not to be confused with the propaganda film created to drown it out, Winter On Fire) which released before the war so it’s largely free of the fog of war propaganda. It’s not marxist but gives a fairly good overview of Maidan and influences within it.

                    There’s another documentary I want to re-find too but am struggling with, might edit if I do find it. There’s also another video I wanted to include in this of the far right occupying the rada, locking the doors and refusing to leave until the vote they want is performed. I can’t find this but if I mention it here someone might remember what it’s in, it’s a good example of what power you can have without electoralism.