According to (recent) American media (*) there are no Nazis in Ukraine. Check out this Newsweek article: Fact Check: Buffalo Shooting Suspect Misleadingly Linked to Ukraine 'Nazis'.
"Photos shared on social media show Gendron and a Ukrainian soldier, both of which featured a controversial Nazi-associated symbol known as the Black Sun. A deeply racist "manifesto" he is said to have written, and shared online, included the same symbol."
Just to be clear: Newsweek isn't denying that the Buffalo shooter is wearing the same Nazi symbol worn by some Ukrainian soldiers. The symbol they share has not been 'debunked'.
"These social media posts imply that Ukrainian forces and Payton Gendron are ideologically linked. The symbol, known in German as "Schwarze Sonne" or "Sonnenrad," has its origins in ancient Norse pagan pictographics, but was widely adopted in Nazi occultism. It has been used by far-right elements across the globe, including in Ukraine, where it has featured on the official logo of the National Guard's Azov Regiment."
Just to be clear: Newsweek is reporting that this Nazi symbol has in fact been the official logo of the Azov Regiment. That some Ukrainian soldiers wear Nazi symbology has not been 'debunked'.
The Azov Battalion is not the nation of Ukraine. Indeed, the Azov Battalion may well agree that the Kiev gov't is or has been corrupt.
"There is no known link between Payton Gendron and pro-Ukrainian forces. Some of Azov's relatively small group of fighters are on the extreme right and have used the same Nazi symbolism, as the alleged Buffalo shooter, specifically the Black Sun. But this single aesthetic link is as far as any substantive connection between the two goes."
So the Buffalo shooter wears the same Nazi symbol as the Azov Battalion but there's no reason to think there's a connection. He didn't specifically name check Azov and seems to think Ukraine is corrupt (he's not the only one, apparently). But the fact that both wear the same Nazi symbol is not a "substantive connection"? Hmmmmmmmmmm.....okay.
Now check out this NPR transcribed interview titled: What the shooting in Buffalo has to do with Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Kinda sounds like NPR is trying to say there's a connection between Carlson and the shooter. Here's the very first question and answer of the interview:
FOLKENFLIK: Yeah. He's not anywhere in there, not at all.
From then on the Buffalo shooter is never mentioned again! Indeed, the whole conversation is mostly about Trump running for president in 2024, though they do mention a little about Tucker Carlson's babble about the Great Replacement Theory, which the Buffalo shooter also cited.
Is it even worth pointing out that any rational reading of the major thrust of Great Replacement thinking would have nothing to do with killing random strangers at a grocery store? Especially African-Americans, who would theoretically be among those being replaced by the Tucker Carlson interpretation.
The "Great Replacement" will either happen over time or it won't. Time is the only thing that will determine whether this replacement comes to pass or not. The idea that any variation of the theory (and there are many) suggests anything actionable here and now is just not paying attention to the centuries that will have to pass before we will see if anyone has been greatly replaced--which is why Carlson's discussion of it is so pointless (and/or cynical) to begin with!
Whether it is inspiring you to lead a voter registration drive or kill random strangers, you clearly didn't understand that this theory will play out over numerous generations and is not encompassed in any single act (positive or negative). And citing a great replacement in regards to any particular action just shows that you didn't understand it.
While Newsweek wants you to believe that not mentioning the Azov Battalion, though shrouding himself in the exact same imagery, does not link the white supremacist shooter in Buffalo with white supremacists in Ukraine, NPR wants you to believe that because the Buffalo shooter refers to a similar sort of theory as Tucker Carlson (though he doesn't seem to share the same interpretation) is an obvious connection between the two, though he never mentions Carlson either.
If you think Tucker Carlson is responsible for the shooting in Buffalo, then you must repudiate the $40billion that the Congress has pledged to known white supremacists in Ukraine.
To wrap up, let's do a little thought experiment here:
If I wear a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and some dude I never met in Japan wears a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, one could easily say that we have something of a cultural connection even if neither of us knows anything about each other.
On the other hand, if I read, say, Catch-22 and that same guy in Japan read Catch-22. we may have nothing in common in our reactions. He may have hated it while I admired it or he may have loved it for a thousand different reasons that have nothing to do with what I loved about it.
A book or a deeper concept is built to be interpreted in any number of different ways by the wide masses of people who come into contact with it. A t-shirt, on the other hand, or a single symbol, is meant to be basic, to be a quick identifier that people can recognize across oceans.
Christians all over the world, for example, wear crosses to signify a love of Jesus--indeed, the signification for others is the whole point of wearing the cross--when, in fact, their actual worship techniques may be wildly different. Like a Southern Baptist at a St. Patrick's Day parade, there are a multitude of varieties of Christian experience. But the cross is universal to all of them.
I'm not saying that kid in Buffalo was a member of the Azov Battalion (in fact, I suspect he wasn't), but whatever drove him to flash that symbol is surely the same thing that drove the Azov to don it on their gear. On the other hand, if this kid's concept of "Great Replacement" came from 4Chan (yeah, I'm not linking to that, you can find that shit on your own), then there is no reason at all to think that has anything to do with Tucker Carlson, even when he uses similar language. (**)
If Tucker Carlson can be said to have anything "to do with" the Buffalo shooter, then it isn't "misleading" to say that there are Nazis in the Azov Battalion. But, then again, I don't work in the American media, I'm just stuck reading it.
The only thing getting replaced in America is logic. It used to come in handy but that phase seems to have moved on.
(*) Though reporting on Nazis in Ukraine used to be pretty ordinary before the great misinformation crisis of the Biden years: BBC in 2014 (twice) and 2015. And The Guardian in 2017. Then the BBC again in 2018. And Time Magazine in 2019.
(**) Also, just for fun, I'll go ahead and point out something that obviously neither Democrats nor Republicans have realized yet: Hispanics coming into the USA from the South (presumably the folks Carlson sees as the great replacers) are much more likely to vote Republican than Democrat. To grossly generalize, these people (if/when they arrive) are going to want to make money, dress their children modestly but nice, and on the weekends they're gonna go to church and watch sports.
Democrats are deluded if they think they're getting those votes (do you think they're coming here to get abortions?) and Republicans are just being stupid for castigating these people rather than recruiting them (they're coming to this country to save us from ourselves, you morons!). God, I hope these 'replacers' bring a respect for real journalism with them!
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