Ukraine: the crap-storm that keeps on giving

Even when you don't want it to and the drama-llama rears it's ugly head again.

On Friday, Ian McCollum from Forgotten Weapons posted an announcement on his youtube channel that he and his publisher, Headstamp Publishing was going to make a full English translation of the Swedish book "The Foreigner Group - Our War in Ukraine 2014-2015" by some douchebag named Carolus Löfroos. The book being about a first-person account of the war and in the announcement video, the touted a crowd finding campaign needed to get it off the ground and published. 

Immediately a classic internet shit-storm ensued, with reddit and the like freaking out that Ian and his publisher would be helping to finance a self identified and unrepentant neo-nazi and his memoirs about serving in a neo-nazi affiliated, foreign legion-type unit. As a result, Ian posted an apology video later that same day to say they will no longer be making the book, and that they made an oversight by not looking more closely into the author. He also immediately removed the original announcement video, with both videos now being unavailable to view at the moment of writing. 

This is one of those things where I'm actually more than a bit torn between sides here. On the one hand, Ian and his publisher totally made the right PR move, and if his reasoning is to be believed, it was simply a bone headed mistake he and his publisher made. Cancelling the book is the right move to make sure they weren't directly financing a nazi dick-hole, nor glorifying/condoning a controversial Ukrainian unit with confirmed war-crimes and self avowed neo-nazi members. I for one, really don't want my money helping to finance that crap. 

Uh huh. Suuure they deny being neo-nazi. Gross.

On the other hand, it's extremely frustrating for a few reasons. One is that the situation in Ukraine is extremely complex (if not freaking bizarre), and despite the unashamed nazi paraphernalia of the Azov unit, it's really odd to note that they have members who are Jewish (even prominent ones), and they say that Israel is a model country they want to become like, as well as the fact Israel is one of the largest arms suppliers to Ukraine. 

Secondly, is that (as Ian stated) this is a great manuscript with a REALLY unique point of view on a very modern conflict and with extreme levels of detail. That doesn't excuse the author at all, but it's funny how people are raising a big fuss about this neo-nazi author, when many other ACTUAL card-carrying nazis have written and published books on their memoirs and combat experiences, with no one batting a freaking eye (see here, here, and here).

Lastly, there's the suspicion I have that Ian was being a purely neutral academic about the situation, and may have known all along about the author's personal history. I suspect he was thinking it wouldn't matter to those who know that they are buying the book not for politics, but for the first hand account of what happened on the ground and it's affect on the world in it's current state. 

History is ugly, it's often ugly and it will always be that way to us and to future generations.We cannot change the past, but we should still be learning from it's ugliness to make the future better. Sad to see a bunch of whiny brats jyped everyone out of a very interesting look at the Ukrainian conflict, even for those wanting to look at it in an academic sense. Pity we can't just cheat the nazi out of the money in the end.  

I honestly doubt Ian has a single speck of neo-nazi sympathy in his body, and just wanted to make an interesting book to read about modern combat.