Only US and Ukraine voted against anti-nazi resolution at UN in 2020 | Hacker News Reader

Only US and Ukraine voted against anti-nazi resolution at UN in 2020

digitallibrary.un.org

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I am a bit dumbfounded. Is there a reasonable explanation for US and Ukraine explicitly voting against UN resolution titled "Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" in 2020?

It was a Russian poke at the volunteer neonazi Azov brigades - the only openly nazi batallion in any army in the world (AFAIK). It has the explicit support of Ukraine and the implicit support of the west and was instrumental in Ukrainian state's ability to hang on to Mariupol.

The BBC said they voted against it because the motion was done for "propaganda purposes" and because neonazis are a "small proportion of ukrainians":

https://www.bbc.com/news/60292915

It's a weird justification coz voting against it because it targets Azov is kind of making Russia's case for them.

See the abstentians. Almost all western countries at a fast glance. I don't have the time to dig into the resolution, but it seems as something russian targeted at something ukrainian that was wrapped in enough sugar to seem generic.

And the rest of the world is just too dumb to notice that I guess...

Someone else copied the US position that mentioned the freedom of speech and freedom of gathering. Many of these countries don't mind breaching those freedoms for any pretext, so I'd say that they are not dumb, just self-interested enough. Plus, nazis are universally hated, so anything targeted at them usually sticks, which, btw, created the need to name the at hitlerum fallacy.

Votes can be bought in the UN.

That goes both ways. Partisan voting by "the west" is not much better than explicit trading in votes (imo).

You’ll note that the countries which voted yes are mostly bottom of the barrel, with most (all?) western countries abstaining.

So yeah, perhaps you’re right.

> Is there a reasonable explanation for US and Ukraine explicitly voting against UN resolution titled "Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" in 2020?

The title is fine; the US didn't vote against the title.

The actual content specifically calls for a positive and universal obligation of nations to criminalize expression that is protected under the US Constitution (a protection recognized as essential to a free society in IS case law extending the federal protection against states); no government faithful to that Constitution could even consider voting for it as it was written. (And as every version has been every other year for many years.)

https://usun.usmission.gov/explanation-of-vote-at-the-third-...

>The United States Supreme Court has consistently affirmed the constitutional right to freedom of speech and the rights of peaceful assembly and association, including by avowed Nazis, whose hatred and xenophobia are vile and widely scorned by the American people. We nevertheless firmly defend the constitutional rights of those who exercise their fundamental freedoms to combat intolerance and express strong opposition to the odious Nazi creed and others that espouse similar hatreds.

>We have again attempted this year to improve this resolution by engaging in negotiations on the draft text. Despite consistently expressing our concerns with the Russian delegation and proposing revisions to improve the text and protect against unacceptable restrictions on freedom of expression, most of these recommendations were ignored. We discourage States from invoking Article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in order to either silence unwelcome opinions or to excuse their failure to combat intolerance. For these reasons, the United States has voted against each new version of this resolution since 2005 and is, again, compelled to vote “No” on this resolution, and calls on other States to do the same.

Thanks a lot. The position of the US is clear. And I was amused by the "explanations" of the Lithuania's foreign minister in the second link.

If anyone will be reading this. There is another passage in the US explanation which I didn't notice at the beginning. It has quite a different tone:

> Today, however, the United States must once again express opposition to this resolution, a document most notable for its thinly veiled attempts to legitimize Russian disinformation campaigns denigrating neighboring nations and promoting the distorted Soviet narrative of much of contemporary European history, using the cynical guise of halting Nazi glorification.

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