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On February 17, a self-declared Nazi group called Blood Tribe marched through the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, waving swastika banners and making Hitler salutes. This event drew heavy condemnation, both domestically and internationally, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accusing the U.S. of “whitewashing” Nazis. Nazism, the ideology behind Germany’s Third Reich, is widely seen as a force of radical evil, especially due to its association with the Holocaust. The charge of Nazism has become a potent invective in political debates and is weaponized in the ongoing information war between the U.S. and Russia.

Russia’s fight against what it perceives as Nazism is rooted in the country’s historic victory over Nazi Germany during World War II, also known as “the Great Patriotic War.” Since 2005, Russia has proposed a yearly U.N. resolution titled “Combating the glorification of Nazism,” which has consistently been passed with a solid majority of votes. However, the U.S. has condemned this resolution as a “shameful political ploy,” dismissing it as a propaganda tool that desecrates the memory of Holocaust victims and those who fought against Nazism.

The Global Engagement Center, a subsidiary of the U.S. State Department, has accused the Kremlin of disseminating false narratives, minimizing the role of antisemitism in Nazi ideology, and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories to justify Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Both Russia and the U.S. invoke the memory of the fight against Nazism in their official rhetoric, with Russia defending its military actions as necessary to eradicate Nazism in Ukraine, while the U.S. accuses Russia of committing an act of aggression similar to that of Nazi Germany.

Despite escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia, both countries agree on the need to condemn and combat Nazism. This shared sense of the moral evil of Nazism shapes the political communication on both sides of the conflict, with accusations of glorifying, rehabilitating, or facilitating Nazism being used as weapons in the information war. Nazism remains a powerful tool in the rhetorical arsenal of both the U.S. and Russia, shaping the discourse surrounding their ideological differences and conflicts.

As historian Carl Müller Frøland points out, Nazism will continue to be a potent weapon in the ongoing global information war, playing a significant role in shaping political communication and ideological debates for years to come. The deep-rooted associations of Nazism with evil and genocide make it a valuable tool for both the U.S. and Russia in their efforts to combat the ideology and shape their respective narratives in the international arena.

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