> “Wagner” is literally a Nazi dog whistle. Wagner group are not just small-n “nazis”
and
> Or at least some of them are.
This isn't the type of substantive comment that HN is looking for. It definitely leans towards "flamebait" while lacking substance that the rest of us can work with or learn from. I don't even necessarily disagree with you, but I would argue that this comment doesn't add anything helpful to this discussion.
It’s like calling the group “88 Division”. Sure, not all of the grunts working for them are dyed-in-the-wool Nazis, but the leadership sure are.
Wagner was never a Nazi – he died six years before Hitler was born. Wagner isn't my thing, but not all fans of his music (even today) are Nazis. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was a big Wagner fan–of course, he knew Wagner was a rabid antisemite, but he managed to look past that and appreciate his music in spite of his antisemitism. In 2001, the Israeli conductor Mendi Rodan–a Holocaust survivor–conducted the first public performance of one of Wagner's works in Israel since before the Second World War. If a Holocaust survivor can separate the artistic value of Wagner's music from Wagner's Jew-hatred, can others?
I wouldn't recommend naming something after him–especially in contemporary English-speaking culture which is very focused on the historical associations of names–although it is easy to forget how specific that (relatively recent development) is to a particular cultural sphere, something alien to much of the globe–but I wouldn't assume someone who did so was necessarily motivated by any sympathy for Nazism or antisemitism, especially someone coming from a culture which lacks that focus.
Actually, here's an open source project named Wagner, and obviously in reference to the composer – https://github.com/spite/Wagner – maybe an unfortunate choice of name, but I see no reason to accuse the author of sympathy for Nazism or antisemitism
> It’s like calling the group “88 Division”. Sure, not all of the grunts working for them are dyed-in-the-wool Nazis, but the leadership sure are.
"88" can mean a lot of different things. To Australians of a certain age, it may make them think of Australia's bicentenary celebrations in 1988. Some in the UK may remember "Charter 88", a left-of-centre constitutional reform pressure group founded in that year. In Chinese culture, 88 means good luck–and as someone who lives in a country with a significant Chinese minority, I've seen it used in that sense a lot over the years. I have no idea what (if anything) "88" means in Russia, but I wouldn't assume a hypothetical Russian group with "88" in its name necessarily had anything to do with Nazism. "88" as a neo-Nazi code is part of American culture, in other cultures 88 means completely different things, or nothing at all. Even in US culture, it has meanings unrelated to Nazism (amateur radio, NASCAR)
I'm no fan of Wagner PMC – they are brutes guilty of war crimes – but why bother with this worthless "dog whistle" criticism of them when there are lots of real atrocities we can condemn them for?
Who are you talking about here? Yevgeny Prigozhin? Dmitry Utkin?
And what is the evidence either of them is a "nazi sympathizer"?
As I said, I'm no fan of either man – I expect the day will come when the ICC indicts both of them for war crimes – but I don't see the point of labelling them as "nazis" on the basis of flimsy evidence. The case that they are war criminals is much stronger than the case that they are Nazis – and surely being a war criminal is a lot worse than being a Nazi (not all of whom were guilty of war crimes/crimes against humanity/genocide–Franz von Papen joined the Nazi Party and served Nazi Germany as its ambassador–first to Austria and then to Turkey–but the Nuremberg Trial acquitted him of all charges)
The site guidelines [0] explicitly say "Assume good faith". So this comment of yours does not appear to be in compliance with them.
Also, "88 = Heil Hitler" doesn't make a lot of sense in Russian, since H is not the 8th letter of the Russian alphabet (it is Ж, normally transliterated as zh), and "Heil Hitler" in Russian is хайль гитлер – х is the 20th letter of the Russian alphabet not the 8th.
14/88 doesn't make a lot of sense in Russian, doesn't stop it from being plastered all over the place by different militias (Including, but not limited to, Wagner).