I want to understand them. There are fascists and there are fascists. It's not like you get a "fascist kit" and, when you open it, every bit of the software self-installs and you start goose-stepping and saying "Heil, Hitler" instead of "hi, honey" to your wife.
Even Bandera, that boogey-man of the Stalinists, wasn't a "good fascist". He and his worked with the Nazis when it suited them. The Germans didn't much like him--they used each other. He and his also fought the Germans when it suited them. They hated the Jews--keep in mind that the Jews where he was from had been largely transplanted there a century before to keep Russia Judenrein. They hated the Poles, but keep in mind that the Poles had been the prior set of oppressors and had disproportionate power. They had a single goal: a safe, national homeland in their original territory for their people. (Sounds like the PLO, to be honest. And those on the left used to want the same for Tibet. And, not long ago under Clinton, for the Kosovar Albanians.)
Also keep in mind that their mindset was "the" mindset for the time. The Allies had no problem with keeping Jews in refugee camps for years after WWII ended. They had no problem with shifting Poland, which involved ethnic cleansing of Germans in the "new West" of Poland or with Russia's ethnically cleansing Poles from what became USSR. Italians were cleansed from Slovenia; Slovenians cleansed, under Allied supervision, from Italy. Few noticed when the Sudeten Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia.
Rather than thinking at the level of labels, I want to know what Svoboda actually stands for now. As far as I can tell, apart from having a rather wide-ranging set of "principles" that it's adopted and sidelined in the last 22 years or so, there are two. The first boils down to this: Ukraine for Ukrainians, and if others want to stay they accept that Ukrainian language and culture is going to be dominant--which makes sense, since most of the country speaks Ukrainian and is ethnic Ukrainian. All the anti-Semitism is stock boilerplate that you hear from the Party of Regions, from Edinaya Rossiya, and from most other parts of society in the area. If that makes Svoboda fascist, then PR is fascist, Yanukovich was fascist, Aksenov is fascist, and Putin is fascist. If everybody's fascist, then all that's left are other factors.
A dominant Ukrainian culture and language would be a break from what was before 1991. Then Russian was dominant. You had to know Russian. You were taught Shevchenko, but more importantly Pushkin. You could speak Ukrainian--but if you wanted to be highly educated, if you wanted a government job, if you wanted to do a lot of things, you needed to know Russian. If you didn't know Russian, it was like not knowing English in the US. You could stay in the barrio, in your ghetto, but outside you were at a disadvantage. It's the kind of thing that makes French into nationalists--having areas of Paris where French is pointless and you need to know the dominant language there. Czechs were the same way when English took over some bits of it. And I imagine that if there were pure-English areas of the DF (not there to attract tourists) there'd be a bit of outrage. It's a natural group reaction to having your group's turf usurped.
In "regions" this is still the case. Yes, Ukrainian is official. But the Russians that enjoyed "Russian privilege" really don't want to give it up. It's possible to treat Ukrainian like Americans treat French in school--you take a few classes, pass tests, and that's it. That wasn't legal, but it happened, and was defended. (That's part of it.) Russians have higher income, higher birthrates, better living standards overall. Their language and culture are okay pretty much everywhere. And they remind Ukrainians that they saved Ukraine, built Ukraine, mentored Ukraine, and Ukrainians had damned well better be appreciative of the Russian man's burden. Even in standard Russian speech, "gutsul" may not be cultured but you get civilized, respected people referring to kholopy. Imagine Obama getting up and saying that "Kykes should have their own state so he supports Israel" or "Beaner-dreamers should pay in-state tuition and a path to citizenshp." It would be intolerable. But it's not noticed when kholop is used, except by Ukrainians. There's no stigma for denigrating Ukrainians. (But Russians get really upset at being called moskali and decry it as fascist. It's like racist whites being pissed at being called whitey in return.)
The other part of it is that the west was pretty much ignored by the Russians. Agrarian, not trustworthy, all the emphasis was on the proles. Not the farmers. Kiev, the south, the east got a lot of attention. More Russian areas. The result was economic imbalance. Ukrainians again discriminated against in their own land--this time by Russian-speakers, who don't want to give up their perks as dominant. From having a few percentage of the electorate support Svoboda in the early '90s, when Svoboda was really a lot more fascist than just nationalist, "freedom" just showed the Ukrainian "nationalists" that more was needed. Under politicians that were pro-Russian and pro Russian areas nationalism grew.
It would be interesting to see what would happen in 15 years if ethnic tensions ratcheted down and wealth and prestige were better shared. Probably the same that would happen in the US as far as class tensions go if wealth and prestige were better shared. You'd be left with core agitators, but most would move on. Just as the fascist elements in Allied thinking also mostly went away.
The second Svoboda principle and, I think, the one that rankles many DUers, is that they are firmly anti-communist. (Remember the Lenin statues taken down?) They're not nearly as large corporatist as billed, nor pro-oligarch, but they are in favor of a state that is less controlling. From their POV, the state has almost always strongly favored Russian. Now, this is a bit of weirdness: You can't be as firmly totalitarian as people say you are and also be against a really strong state . The idea for increased federalism has been floated and is compatible with Svoboda.
All of this turns into, oddly, a conundrum. If you're firmly ultranationalist, how can you favor European integration, which is Svoboda's big selling point these days? Because in the EU you *can* have Ukrainian as a national language with less international threat and the economic "prime real estate" will be in the West, where Ukrainians are more culturally non-Russified. The way it's working now is that Russia is still dominating much of the Ukraine and that will eventually work its way over into Galicia. Cultural and economic imperialism is ongoing, even under "non-fascists" like, um, Putin (?).
So, yeah, Svoboda is fascist. But that's a label; Mugabe was nearly as fascist and Abbas is as fascist. It's like "Democratic", a label. We're not all Blue Dogs, we're not all so left that the Blue Dogs think we're Leninists. Heck, some of us aren't particularly democratic, or certainly not liberal democrats (even if we are liberal Democrats). Labels can hide as much as they reveal, and never more so than in a heated argument, and never more so when there's a propaganda campaign going on.
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You can dish it out but when you're called on it... it's time for the whine.
