It’s not even an octopus
“Haha silly vatnik, you just got OWNED! Now I shall go back to cyberbullying some minor-celeb over a toy squid”
Several layers to unpack in that explanation:
- “The idea of the nation” is “Ідея Нації” in Ukrainian, so the symbol would have to be superimposed I and H, not superimposed I and N which doesn’t even exist in Ukrainian alphabet. Trying to derive it from the stylised medieval Cyrillic calligraphy is frankly laughable cause it still looks nothing like Latin N.
So this is false on the face of it, the symbol is just an SS Wolfsangel.
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This symbol was used by neo-Nazi, self described “National Socialist” political groups in Ukraine since the late 90s, and there is direct lineage from them to Azov. It’s simply the same people still using the same symbol.
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He seems to think N is a Ukrainian letter for S, or that the fascist slogan “idea of nation” would have some Ukrainian words starting with S, when it’s simply “ideya naziyi” cause neither word is of Ukrainian origin. In fact, them choosing to use “naziya” instead of much more commonly used Ukrainian word “narid” is particularly telling.
They try to reverse-explain a nazi symbol and can’t come up with anything better than a fascist slogan.
Need to point out this guy has also gave endorsement to a group called “kraken” and used insane racialist slurs in this text.
This nazi german arsehole is deliberately spreading fascist propaganda while accusing others of his same level of inhuman decency. Ukraine supporters are nothing but fascist enablers in my eyes.
I’ll also take an issue with the whole “vatnik” meme which is very classist.
Vatnik is a quilted coat with extremely simple design: cotton wadding sewn between two sheets of fabtic, square torso, patch pockets sewn through with stiching showing on the other side, much like French chore coats. It originates from Cental Asian quilted robes and was worn in Russia since the 19th century.
It was mass produced in the USSR since 1932, initially for the Red Army but quickly became ubiquitous - it was warm, sturdy, cheap, easy to produce, so it was used by hunters, construction workers, street sweepers, night watchmen, farmers, and virtually anyone who had to spend a lot of time outdoors in the Russian weather. It quickly spread all over Eastern Europe and Asia, widely used from Poland to Mongolia. As an item of the Eastern Block “heritage workwear”, vatnik is as iconic as denim for yanks.
https://cdn.ren.tv/cache/960x540/media/img/05/7f/057f370d0d9f5874b99e367779d398637edddddc.jpg
People wearing this cheap, crude coat pushed Nazis all the way back to Berlin. Incidentally, Hugo Boss designed Nazi coats didn’t fare quite as well in the Russian winter.
https://topwar.ru/uploads/posts/2014-07/1405566239_3366354.jpg
In the 60s and 70s as the USSR economy provided better looking winter garments for its army and citizens, vatniks lost some of their use, but were still common in the rural areas, amongst poorer urban population, and as workwear, well after the dissolution of the USSR.
People who use this word as an insult simply hate the workers and the poor.
widely used from Poland
Confirm, it’s called “waciak” in polish, and it was absolutely everywhere and is still in various form standard working wear for anyone working outside in winter. In non working use it’s less popular now, as the classist stigma you mentioned work here too, but a lot of winter jacket designs are still more or less derived from it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatnik_(slang)
The meme was created by the Russian artist Anton Chadskiy under the pseudonym Jedem das Seine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedem_das_Seine
In 1937, the Nazis constructed the Buchenwald concentration camp, 7 km from Weimar, Germany. The motto Jedem das Seine was placed in the camp’s main entrance gate.
This was the only hidden reply to that tweet:
People with Ukraine flags calling anyone else Nazis are fucking top of the line comedians.
Oh, I know these! They are “evertable” plushies, where you can turn the inside out. It has an angry face on what is currently the outside, and on the inside it has a happy face. They’re really cute, but I think this one is supposed to be a jellyfish
When anticommunists nitpick like this to miss the point, it makes me feel like my obsessive–compulsive disorder is justified.
I deliberately wrote ‘On this day in 1935’ so that I could avoid writing the number eighty‐eight.
