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its pretty obvious that beyond the primary motivation of the normal people on the streets for freedom and representation this is also a conflict between different bourgeois factions, the traditional miners and industrialists who are depended on russia and another faction who make money on open borders with europe, the latter, who also overlap with organized crime (both factions do though) is funding the nationalist protesters.
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free
What is fascism if not the "realist" protecting his profits
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The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
i think its obvious both bourgeois sides suck, one is basically establishing a dictatorship, the other makes a pact with the devil of fascism where history has shown us that this is force that is almost impossible to rain in when unleashed.
that said i think, from behind my safe computer half a continent away, it is important for revolutionary leftist to participate as much as possible in the uprising without making dirty hands with the fascists and bourgeois, to present an alternative path to the people.
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free
Ukraine and the Rebirth of Fascism in Europe
The violence on the streets of Ukraine is far more than an expression of popular anger against a government. Instead, it is merely the latest example of the rise of the most insidious form of fascism that Europe has seen since the fall of the Third Reich.
Recent months have seen regular protests by the Ukrainian political opposition and its supporters – protests ostensibly in response to Ukrainian President Yanukovich’s refusal to sign a trade agreement with the European Union that was seen by many political observers as the first step towards European integration. The protests remained largely peaceful until January 17th when protesters armed with clubs, helmets, and improvised bombs unleashed brutal violence on the police, storming government buildings, beating anyone suspected of pro-government sympathies, and generally wreaking havoc on the streets of Kiev. But who are these violent extremists and what is their ideology?
The political formation is known as “Pravy Sektor” (Right Sector), which is essentially an umbrella organization for a number of ultra-nationalist (read fascist) right wing groups including supporters of the “Svoboda” (Freedom) Party, “Patriots of Ukraine”, “Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defense” (UNA-UNSO), and “Trizub”. All of these organizations share a common ideology that is vehemently anti-Russian, anti-immigrant, and anti-Jewish among other things. In addition they share a common reverence for the so called “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” led by Stepan Bandera, the infamous Nazi collaborators who actively fought against the Soviet Union and engaged in some of the worst atrocities committed by any side in World War II.
While Ukrainian political forces, opposition and government, continue to negotiate, a very different battle is being waged in the streets. Using intimidation and brute force more typical of Hitler’s “Brownshirts” or Mussolini’s “Blackshirts” than a contemporary political movement, these groups have managed to turn a conflict over economic policy and the political allegiances of the country into an existential struggle for the very survival of the nation that these so called “nationalists” claim to love so dearly. The images of Kiev burning, Lviv streets filled with thugs, and other chilling examples of the chaos in the country, illustrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the political negotiation with the Maidan (Kiev’s central square and center of the protests) opposition is now no longer the central issue. Rather, it is the question of Ukrainian fascism and whether it is to be supported or rejected.
For its part, the United States has strongly come down on the side of the opposition, regardless of its political character. In early December, members of the US ruling establishment such as John McCain and Victoria Nuland were seen at Maidan lending their support to the protesters. However, as the character of the opposition has become apparent in recent days, the US and Western ruling class and its media machine have done little to condemn the fascist upsurge. Instead, their representatives have met with representatives of Right Sector and deemed them to be “no threat.” In other words, the US and its allies have given their tacit approval for the continuation and proliferation of the violence in the name of their ultimate goal: regime change.
In an attempt to pry Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence, the US-EU-NATO alliance has, not for the first time, allied itself with fascists. Of course, for decades, millions in Latin America were disappeared or murdered by fascist paramilitary forces armed and supported by the United States. The mujahideen of Afghanistan, which later transmogrified into Al Qaeda, also extreme ideological reactionaries, were created and financed by the United States for the purposes of destabilizing Russia. And of course, there is the painful reality of Libya and, most recently Syria, where the United States and its allies finance and support extremist jihadis against a government that has refused to align with the US and Israel. There is a disturbing pattern here that has never been lost on keen political observers: the United States always makes common cause with right wing extremists and fascists for geopolitical gain.
The situation in Ukraine is deeply troubling because it represents a political conflagration that could very easily tear the country apart less than 25 years after it gained independence from the Soviet Union. However, there is another equally disturbing aspect to the rise of fascism in that country – it is not alone.
The Fascist Menace Across the Continent
Ukraine and the rise of right wing extremism there cannot be seen, let alone understood, in isolation. Rather, it must be examined as part of a growing trend throughout Europe (and indeed the world) – a trend which threatens the very foundations of democracy.
In Greece, savage austerity imposed by the troika (IMF, ECB, and European Commission) has crippled the country’s economy, leading to a depression as bad, if not worse, than the Great Depression in the United States. It is against this backdrop of economic collapse that the Golden Dawn party has grown to become the third most popular political party in the country. Espousing an ideology of hate, the Golden Dawn – in effect a Nazi party that promotes anti-Jewish, anti-immigrant, anti-women chauvinism – is a political force that the government in Athens has understood to be a serious threat to the very fabric of society. It is this threat which led the government to arrest the party’s leadership after a Golden Dawn Nazi fatally stabbed an anti-fascist rapper. Athens has launched an investigation into the party, though the results of this investigation and trial remain somewhat unclear.
What makes Golden Dawn such an insidious threat is the fact that, despite their central ideology of Nazism, their anti-EU, anti-austerity rhetoric appeals to many in the economically devastated Greece. As with many fascist movements in the 20th Century, Golden Dawn scapegoats immigrants, Muslim and African primarily, for many of the problems facing Greeks. In dire economic circumstances, such irrational hate becomes appealing; an answer to the question of how to solve society’s problems. Indeed, despite Golden Dawn’s leaders being jailed, other party members are still in parliament, still running for major offices including mayor of Athens. Though an electoral victory is unlikely, another strong showing at the polls will make the eradication of fascism in Greece that much harder.
Were this phenomenon confined to Greece and Ukraine, it would not constitute a continental trend. Sadly however, we see the rise of similar, albeit slightly less overtly fascist, political parties all over Europe. In Spain, the ruling pro-austerity People’s Party has moved to establish draconian laws restricting protest and free speech, and empowering and sanctioning repressive police tactics. In France, the National Front Party of Marine Le Pen, which vehemently scapegoats Muslim and African immigrants, won nearly twenty percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections. Similarly, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands – which promotes anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant policies – has grown to be the third largest in parliament. Throughout Scandinavia, ultra nationalist parties which once toiled in complete irrelevance and obscurity are now significant players in elections. These trends are worrying to say the least.
It should be noted too that, beyond Europe, there are a number of quasi-fascist political formations which are, in one way or another, supported by the United States. The right wing coups that overthrew the governments of Paraguay and Honduras were tacitly and/or overtly supported by Washington in their seemingly endless quest to suppress the Left in Latin America. Of course, one should also remember that the protest movement in Russia was spearheaded by Alexei Navalny and his nationalist followers who espouse a virulently anti-Muslim, racist ideology that views immigrants from the Russian Caucasus and former Soviet republics as beneath “European Russians”. These and other examples begin to paint a very ugly portrait of a US foreign policy that attempts to use economic hardship and political upheaval to extend US hegemony around the world.
In Ukraine, the “Right Sector” has taken the fight from the negotiating table to the streets in an attempt to fulfill the dream of Stepan Bandera – a Ukraine free of Russia, Jews, and all other “undesirables” as they see it. Buoyed by the continued support from the US and Europe, these fanatics represent a more serious threat to democracy than Yanukovich and the pro-Russian government ever could. If Europe and the United States don’t recognize this threat in its infancy, by the time they finally do, it might just be too late.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine...europe/5366852
"Of all the politicians and political people with whom I have had conversations, and whom I have had conversations, and who called themselves followers of Connolly, he was the only one who truly understood what James Connolly meant when he spoke of his vision of the freedom of the Irish people."
- Nora Connolly, daughter of James Connolly, speaking of Seamus Costello shortly after his assassination
good statement by the AWU, ill post it in full for discussion in the other thread: http://avtonomia.net/2014/02/19/zaya...sii-v-ukraine/
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free
Laughable interview at NPR. http://www.npr.org/2014/02/21/280759...ism-in-ukraine
Is it treason to lie to your own people about foreign policy being carried out on their behalf? At least the comments there aren't as ignorant as certain NPR honchos would want:
Snyder reproduces yet another widespread media malpractice regarding Russia, the decline of editorial fact-checking. In a recent article in the International New York Times, he both inflates his assertions and tries to delete neofascist elements from his innocuous “Ukrainian extreme right.” Again without any verified evidence, he warns of a Putin-backed “armed intervention” in Ukraine after the Olympics and characterizes reliable reports of “Nazis and anti-Semites” among street protesters as “Russian propaganda.”
Is the world really so susceptible to such obvious, crude propaganda?
Omissions of facts, by journalists or scholars, are no less an untruth than misstatements of fact. Snyder’s article was full of both
Perhaps the largest untruth promoted by Snyder and most US media is the claim that “Ukraine’s future integration into Europe” is “yearned for throughout the country.” The now exceedingly dangerous confrontation between the two Ukraines was not “ignited,” as the Times claims, by Yanukovych’s duplicitous negotiating—or by Putin—but by the EU’s reckless ultimatum, in November, that the democratically elected president of a profoundly divided country choose between Europe and Russia. Putin’s proposal for a tripartite arrangement, rarely if ever reported, was flatly rejected by US and EU officials.
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The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/08/35_c...crime_partner/
The U.S. is backing Ukraine’s extreme right-wing Svoboda party and violent neo-Nazis whose armed uprising paved the way for a Western-backed coup. The ugly reality behind the mirror is that the U.S. government has a long and unbroken record of working with fascists, dictators, druglords and state sponsors of terrorism in every region of the world in its elusive but relentless quest for unchallenged global power.
Behind a firewall of impunity and protection from the State Department and the CIA, U.S. clients and puppets have engaged in the worst crimes known to man, from murder and torture to coups and genocide.
Afghanistan
the U.S. worked with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to overthrow Afghanistan’s socialist government. After Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew Soviet forces in 1989, these U.S.-backed warlords tore the country apart and boosted opium production to an unprecedented level. The Taliban government cut opium production by 95% in two years between 1999 and 2001, but the U.S. invasion in 2001 restored the warlords and drug lords to power. President Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was well known as a CIA-backed drug lord. After a major U.S. offensive in Kandahar province in 2011, Colonel Abdul Razziq was appointed provincial police chief, boosting a heroin smuggling operation that already earned him $60 million per year.
Albania
the U.S. and U.K. set out to overthrow the government of Albania, the smallest and most vulnerable communist country in Eastern Europe. Exiles were recruited and trained to stir up dissent and plan an armed uprising. They included former Interior Minister Xhafer Deva, who oversaw the deportations of “Jews, Communists, partisans and suspicious persons” (as described in a Nazi document) to Auschwitz. Declassified U.S. documents have since revealed that Deva was one of 743 fascist war criminals recruited by the U.S.
Cuba
The United States supported the Batista dictatorship. the U.S. was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American Ambassador was the second most important man, sometimes even more important than the Cuban president. CIA-backed operations against Cuba included the bombing of a Cuban airliner (78 killed) planned by Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who remain free in America despite the U.S. pretense of waging a war against terrorism. Bosch was granted a presidential pardon by the first President Bush.
France
at the end of World War II, advancing allied forces found that communist resistance forces had gained effective control of large areas as German forces withdrew. In Marseille, the CGT communist trade union controlled the docks. after the OSS merged into the new CIA, it used its contacts to restore Corsican gangsters to power in Marseille, to break dock strikes and CGT control of the docks. It protected the Corsicans as they set up heroin labs and began shipping heroin to New York, where the American-Sicilian mafia also flourished under CIA protection. the CIA’s infamous French Connection brought a new wave of addiction, organized crime and drug-violence to American cities.
Greece
When British forces landed in Greece in 1944, they found the country under the effective control of ELAS-EAM, the leftist partisan group formed by the Greek Communist Party after the Italian and German invasion. ELAS-EAM welcomed the British forces, but the British refused any accommodation with them and installed a government that included royalists and Nazi collaborators. The British recruited members of the Nazi-trained Security Battalions to hunt down and arrest ELAS members. In 1947, the bankrupt British asked the U.S. to take over their role in occupied Greece. ELAS-EAM fighters laid down their arms in 1949 after Yugoslavia withdrew its support, and 100,000 were either executed, exiled or jailed.
Guatemala
The CIA recruited and trained a small army of mercenaries under Guatemalan exile Castillo Armas to invade Guatemala, with 30 unmarked U.S. planes providing air support. U.S. Ambassador Peurifoy prepared a list of Guatemalans to be executed, and Armas was installed as president.
Honduras
The 2009 coup in Honduras has led to severe repression and death squad murders of political opponents, union organizers and journalists. U.S. officials used semantics to avoid cutting off U.S. military aid as required under U.S. law. two Wikileaks cables revealed that the U.S. Embassy was the main power broker in managing the aftermath of the coup and forming a government that is now repressing and murdering its people.
Indonesia
In 1965, General Suharto seized effective power. U.S. diplomats admitted providing lists of 5,000 Communist Party members to be killed. Robert Martens said, "They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad."
Iraq
Qasim was killed in a CIA-backed Baathist coup in 1963, and the CIA gave the new government a list of at least 4,000 communists to be killed.
Korea
The U.S. flew in Syngman Rhee, a conservative Korean exile, and installed him as President of South Korea in 1948. Rhee became a dictator on an anti-communist crusade, arresting and torturing suspected communists, brutally putting down rebellions, killing 100,000 people.
Nicaragua
Anastasio Somosa ruled Nicaragua as his personal fiefdom for 43 years with unconditional U.S. support, as his National Guard committed every crime imaginable from massacres and torture to extortion and rape with complete impunity. After he was overthrown by the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, the CIA recruited, trained and supported “contra” mercenariesto invade Nicaragua and conduct terrorism to destabilize the country. the International Court of Justice found the United States guilty of aggression against Nicaragua for deploying the contras and mining Nicaraguan ports. The court ordered the U.S. to cease its aggression and pay war reparations. The U.S. response was to declare that it would no longer recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ.
***
The doctrine that was taught was that if you want information you use physical abuse, false imprisonment, threats to family members, and killing. If you can’t get the information you want, if you can’t get that person to shut up or stop what they’re doing, you assassinate them—and you assassinate them with one of your death squads.
A huge amount of human suffering could be alleviated if the United States would make a genuine commitment to human rights and the rule of law, as opposed to one it only applies cynically and opportunistically to its enemies, but never to itself or its allies.
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The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
It seems to me like there is a very real possibility that a fascist state could easily come about through all this turmoil, considering it is the dominant ideology in Ukraine. I think we should support Putin in crushing the fascist uprising. It would just be too detrimental to the region if a fascist state was to come to power in Ukraine, which I fear may be soon.
"Traitors to Marxism-Leninism, agents of imperialism and intriguers like Josif Broz Tito, try in a thousand ways, by hatching up diabolic schemes like the creation of a third force, to mislead these people and the newly-set up states [in Africa and Asia], to detach them from their natural allies, to hitch them up to U.S. imperialism. We should exert all our efforts to defeat the schemes of these lackeys of imperialism"- Enver Hoxha
"Ours is a just cause; victory will be ours!" -Josef Stalin
You know russia is importing serbian fascist chetnik militia's in to the Ukraine? both sides are as guilty as the other, no war but the classwar.
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free
'Support' is a strong word....
In the absence of a stronger revolutionary leftist presence I'd say that any Russian anti-fascist intervention might be tacitly *tolerated*.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2014/0...nian-coup.html
emails from a Lithuanian government advisor to opposition leader and former boxer Vitaly Klitschko regarding plans to destabilize Ukraine:
“Our American friends promise to pay a visit in the coming days, we may even see Nuland or someone from the Congress.” 12/7/2013
“Your colleague has arrived … his services may be required even after the country is destabilized.” 12/14/2013
“I think we’ve paved the way for more radical escalation of the situation. Isn’t it time to proceed with more decisive action?” 1/9/2014
What Nuland did not reveal was that her meetings with ‘key Ukrainian stakeholders’ included neo-Nazi Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyahnybok and prime minister wannabe Arsenly Yatsenyuk of the Fatherland Party. The Svoboda party which has roots with extreme vigilante and antisemitic groups has since received at least three high level cabinet posts in the interim government including deputy prime minister.
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The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
“Stalingrad” confronts the disturbing realities of fascism and war
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2014/3/...ascism-and-war
Dossier: Crimea, Ukraine, and the March 16 Referendum
http://socialistorganizer.org/dossie...16-referendum/
Protest at Chicago Ukrainian Consulate slams fascists
Protest at Chicago Ukrainian Consulate slams fascists
Confrontation with right-wing Ukrainians
By staff
Chicago, IL - In a rally to mark the International Day Against Fascism and Racism, 35 people stood against a right-wing crowd of more than 100 at the Ukrainian Consulate in Chicago. Chanting, “Obama, McCain, no fascist Ukraine,” the small crowd braved the anger from the Ukrainian nationalists.
In the right-wing Ukrainian crowd was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) flag. That flag flew alongside the Nazi flag in World War II, when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army carried out attacks against Jews and ethnic Russians. The UPA was responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Polish people. That same flag was present at the marches of the Right Sector, the neo-Nazi organization that played a leading role in the violent assaults in the Euromaidan protests in Kiev that overthrew the democratically elected government in February.
The anti-fascist protest wavered in the face of the hostile Ukrainian crowd for 15 minutes because of the influence of the International Socialist Organization (ISO). Others, including Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and other anti-fascists, including the Workers World Party, finally started leading chants to stand up to the reactionary nationalists. The ISO was unwilling to confront the right-wing crowd because they largely agree with their views.
The ISO continues to support the fascist-led Ukrainian protest movement that overthrew the government of former President Yanukovich. At the Chicago protest, ISO leaders refused to start chants. One ISO member objected to a FRSO sign that opposed U.S. government sanctions against Russia. Another leader repeatedly said no to chants because she was concerned that, “We have to be all on the same page.”
In the face of the Ukrainian rightists, the ISO refused to recognize the fascist nature of the movement that overthrew the government of Ukraine.
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Yeah, at a push, but only at a push, that's about as far as I would go. But no further. I certainly have no illusions about Putin's Russia.
Where Has All the Money Gone? No to U.S. Intervention in Ukraine!
http://rt.com/news/yarosh-nationalis...n-killing-157/
We cannot watch silently as the Interior Ministry works to undermine the revolution," Interfax reported Yarosh as saying. “We demand the immediate resignation of the Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, and the arrest of the commander of the Sokol Special Forces and those guilty of [Muzychko’s] murder."
Earlier Tuesday, right-wing militant leader Muzychko, also known as Sashko Bilyi, was killed in a police raid against his gang in Rovno, western Ukraine, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.
http://rt.com/news/ukrainian-nationa...ko-antics-093/
Background story to this nazi fuck.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...-killed-police
people dressed in the uniform of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) got into carriages and began a ‘document check’. People who showed Russian passports were then made to hand over their money and jewelry
Moscow also said it was “bewildered” by the refusal of the Ukrainian police to take any action when the victims attempted to file a report.
Ukrainian right-wing militant leader Aleksandr Muzychko, also known as Sashko Bilyi, has been shot dead during a police raid against his gang, confirmed Ukraine’s Ministry of Interior.
Muzychko was killed in Rovno, where he coordinated actions of local groups belonging to the Right Sector movement.
A former senior official at the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) told RIA Novosti that the objective of the operation was to kill Muzychko, rather than to detain him.
"We will take revenge for the death of Arsen Avakov our brother" - said the coordinator of the "right sector" in Rivne region Roman Koval.
Ukraine Police now claims they didn't kill the Right Sector Leader Muzychko. He has commited suicide.
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The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
reminiscent of Night of the Long Knives and the assassination of Ernst Röhm.
Looks like Muzychko has lived out his usefullness and was now seen as a publicity train wreak.
