A resurfaced video from 2024 reminded social media users of the time Yale historian and best-selling author Dr. Timothy Snyder gave Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene a blunt fact-check after she touted the rise of "Nazis in Ukraine" during a recent congressional hearing.
The video is more relevant than ever following a contentious White House meeting last month between President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Vice President J.D. Vance. The meeting turned heated when Vance berated Zelenskyy, leading the Ukrainian president to leave without signing an agreement for U.S. security guarantees in exchange for access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals.
In light of these facts, Greene's remarks last year were aimed at a leader whose country has endured three years of unprovoked invasion, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands between both Ukrainian and Russian forces. Moreover, Russian state media has repeatedly and without evidence characterized Zelenskyy as a "Nazi" to lend legitimacy to the invasion ordered by Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.
Snyder, a leading scholar on Ukraine who is the author of the comprehensive analysis On Tyranny and also serves on the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, challenged Greene after she asked him to respond to allegations of "recruitment efforts" of "Nazis in Ukraine."
He responded:
"On the question of Nazis, I've written two books as a historian on Nazis and the Holocaust. On the question of Ukrainian nationalism, I am the leading scholar on that subject in North America and I've been writing about it for 20 years. If the chamber is interested in the degree of far-right participation in Ukrainian politics, you can be assured that no far-right party has ever crossed 3% in a Ukrainian election."
"Of course there are bad people in any country, but by any comparative standard it is a very small phenomenon. In Russia on the other hand, the army includes openly Nazi formations ... the government itself is fascist in character and carrying out a war which includes deportation of children by the tens of thousands, the open intention of destroying a state as well as mass torture."
"If we're looking for fascism and if there's anyone who is sincerely concerned about fascism and racism, you should sincerely halt Russia."
You can watch what happened in the video below.
Their memories refreshed, people praised Snyder's response and were quick to criticize Greene's promotion of conspiracy theories and lies about a war-torn nation.
It's worth noting that at the time of this hearing, Greene was also called out by Florida Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz.
His remarks followed Greene's decision to display a news story, entitled, “Inside a White Supremacist Militia in Ukraine,” as well as a photo of what appeared to be two smiling Ukrainian soldiers holding their right hands raised in a salute. A satisfied Greene said the picture "looks like something you’d see out of Hitler’s Germany from Ukraine."
In response, Moskowitz noted that "there are no concentration camps in Ukraine," that Ukrainians are "not taking babies and shooting them in the ear because they’re Jewish," and that Ukrainians, unlike the Russian invaders, are not "trying to erase a people."
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