Libs and reactionaries will constantly bring up the Wagner group in response to having the existence of the Azovites pointed out to them. This counterargument strikes me as lazy and equivocating, but I’ve always had trouble responding to it.
What would people here recommend I say to this point? Assuming I say anything at all.
As far as I can tell, the Wagner PMC = Nazis thing is based on two bits of “evidence:”
a VK picture of a guy who looks like Dmitri Utkin wearing some kind of Wehrmacht/SS uniform. Problem is, there aren’t many pictures of Utkin around, and his connection to Wagner is kind of hazy anyway. Even Wikipedia calls him the “alleged” founder of the Wagner Group.
the fact that Richard Wagner, for whom Wagner Group is presumably named, held antisemitic views, and, because he was Hitler’s favorite composer, tends to be liked by neonazis. Of course this doesn’t in itself prove anything either, because Wagner is one of those composers with a pretty massive fanbase; Stephen Fry, who’s Jewish, made a documentary about his love for Wagner’s music. My sense is a lot of soldiers who are into classical music are into Wagner, not neccesarily because they’re Nazis, but because the mythic ethos and the evocation of an heroic death speaks them on a sort of “professional” level.