Silence amid extremism: Armenia keeps tolerating neo-Nazis activities countrywide Investigation by Israeli journalist

Armenian nationalist figure Hayk Nazaryan, accused of organizing neo-Nazi marches and promoting anti-Semitic propaganda, remains at large in Yerevan, living freely despite incendiary activities, as detailed by "Details" sources.

"The Armenian nationalist who organised the neo-Nazi march in Yerevan and distributed anti-Semitic cartoons and texts on the Internet, Hayk Nazaryan continues to live quietly and freely in Yerevan. According to the sources of ‘Details’ and confirmed by Nazaryan's own blogs, neither he nor his associates in the radical nationalist movement "Khosank" have been detained, and no explicit investigative actions are being taken against them".

As Caliber.Az reports, journalist of the Israeli Russian-language edition ‘Details’ Emil Shleimovich said in his article "Why Armenian authorities do not suppress the activities of neo-Nazis in their country?".

"Nazaryan fervently calls to fight the ‘Jews’ who, in his opinion, were behind the terrorist attack in Moscow's Crocus City Hall; rejoices in the fact that he resembles Hitler; is proud of being a ‘hero’ who fought in Lebanon alongside Palestinian terrorists against Israel. He doesn't hide and posts on social media about where and when he is. For example, on February 29, a photo of him from the Aspar Arms gun shop in Yerevan, which sells modern 7.62 mm rifles, among other things, appeared.

Earlier, on March 9, Nazaryan published a video from an underground passage in the centre of Yerevan. All this is capable of refuting the reports that the Nazi and his comrades allegedly left the territory of Armenia and the law enforcement agencies are allegedly investigating their activities. According to him, he was never even detained.

On January 13, 2024, in an interview with the Hraparak newspaper, Nazarian himself said that after a neo-Nazi rally under a flag with a stylised modified Hitler swastika, during which the participants raised their hands in Nazi salute, the police only warned him that he had to take a permit. "And the next day I found out that you can't perform with such paraphernalia and we are now working on changing the colours of the flag...". Later, on 19 January, he wrote on his Facebook page, "Despite these small external changes, our radical pro-Armenian ideas, will and approaches will naturally remain the same." He himself said earlier that "he was warned that such things create problems for Armenia and one should not behave like that".

"The Zionists are creating chaos all over the world, causing conflicts and wars in different parts of the earth so that they can profit from this chaos with their world banks and black market arms for their national programmes. The sons of Satan are leading the Aryan tribe to destruction and the planet to destruction to turn our beautiful world into hell on earth because that is where they originated. Hell is in their essence, so it must be reflected in our reality," he wrote on Facebook.

In Armenia, they prefer to claim that Azerbaijan is waging a ‘hybrid war’ against their country and that anti-Semitic actions (including attempts to set fire to a synagogue in Yerevan) may have been organised by external forces to defame Armenians.

But even if we assume that Hayk Nazaryan conducts his actions in the interests of the state with which Yerevan is in a state of armed conflict, this all the more does not explain why his neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic activities - marches, statements, cartoons - are not blocked either by the police, the prosecutor's office or the supreme power of Armenia. Especially if we remember that the only state that can be clearly satisfied with such a development is neighbouring and quite friendly to Yerevan Iran", says the article of the Israeli edition.