Russian invasion of Ukraine

[David]

<Can we drag this back onto the topic at hand, please? This discussion is getting a little personal, and points can be made without needing to cast aspersions on one another. Thanks, David for BBMods.>

[David]

On Ukrainian nationalism and the question of who and what is or isn’t fascist, here’s an interesting and informative piece making similar points to my post a couple of pages back, but from someone who (unlike me) actually knows what he’s talking about: Jewish Russian-American writer Yasha Levine, who spent most of his life in the region and has travelled extensively through Ukraine:

https://yasha.substack.com/p/jews-for-killers-of-jewsand-other

[pietillidie]

^David, you undersell yourself, because I know that's exactly what you and I both would expect because we've met a stack of Eastern Europeans and Russians, among all manner of ethnic groups from across the world, and they pretty much all come replete with a mix of new liberal ideas, quaint traditions, horrid old guard nonsense, and a swirl of signs and symbols that really only have meaning at this very moment for those people, and are readily misinterpreted by outsiders.

A laugh to myself when I read about K-Pop and the Korean wave, knowing the gap between what some dimwit on Instagram thinks, and actual Korean culture. Half the time, Koreans simply adapt the meaning to popular misunderstandings, playing along. Squid Game was educational in that regard, at least. (Look up the recent spate of highly publicised teacher suicides driven by bullying parents to see just how slow change can be.).

Meanwhile, our apparent contradictions mystify them every bit as much. That is life for us all.

We've seen these things again and again on Nick's, with major recent phases impugning Muslim peoples and Chinese folk.

I have a Serbian mate who's quite sensitive to anti-Slavic racism, which I hadn't realised was such a big thing until gleaning insight from his comments. Even the Djokovic vaccination fracas at the Australian Open was a sore point for him years after we became mates.

In primary school I had lots of Polish classmates, and their parents could be very harsh, and you could see some of the old authoritarian culture come through. But it was in high school where I was first startled by Slavic nationalism, as I was in the school soccer and indoor soccer teams and played a bit of tennis, two massive sports in the Balkans.

My first exposure to Russian culture came ironically in South Korea, which had major communities in Busan and Seoul (Busan not being far from Vladivostok), and I'd wander into any old nightclub out of curiosity and befriend people back in those days. But we had a really smart and worldly Russian friend in Ireland who gave me a deep insight into Russian culture. Since then I've wondered just what percentage of younger people are like him, grinning and bearing the authoritarianism because there's simply no choice.

(Remind me to tell you about the time I was drugged and disappeared at a Russian bar in Seoul, and somehow dumped on a street corner hours later. I think it was just theft and my cavities didn't feel breached, but god knows what really happened over that four or so hours because I was out the whole time. Took me weeks to stop looking over my shoulder. I'm probably starring in a video on the dark web somewhere!)

I don't buy that people don't get this stuff about the world; they're just being malicious arses, willfully impugning different ethnic groups for whatever reasons of personal indulgence. Growing up in Melbourne was enough to expose me to a huge range of cultural experiences before I even left to see the world. Even Greek culture is different enough to get the gist of the problem. To this day, I can still remember the smell of the different houses of kids from different cultures I played footy, cricket and soccer with growing up, and their parents all treated me amazingly well.

I just don't believe that the average person from the average city hasn't had exposure enough to work these things out.

The sad thing is we can't even get to speaking about Russia and its incredible cultural heritage for matters of practicality and priority, but the hope is that as Ukraine leans in to the EU, new possibilities open up for Russia at some point.

[Magpietothemax]

^The piece that you quote David is extremely informative, because it makes the connection between historical revisionism and the resurgence of fascism. As the writer you quote explains, the barbaric history of Ukrainian fascism has been "spliced", so that contemporary Ukrainian fascists can actually present themselves as "defenders of freedom and democracy". Historical revisionism is always the mechanism through which reaction prepares even more horrific crimes in the future. The Canadian Parliament recently saluted a 98 year old fascist war criminal from the Ukrainian division of Hitler's Waffen SS, Yaroslav Hunka. That such an individual could be welcomed in the Canadian Parliament expresses one two things:
a) Fascists are OK...they really only fought for the freedom of their own country according to the Canadian government (and its allies)
b) NATO will stop at nothing to prosecute the war against Russia, including alliances with fascists who worship Bandera and the OUN, which participated fully in the Holocaust and the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. (This is a warning to Putin. Combined with the celebration of Waffen SS war criminals, the Biden government is sending the latest long range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory in a further escalation of the war.)
The resurrection of fascism is an integral component of the NATO war drive against Russia. In Germany, we see the rise of the AFD into the corridors of power. Extreme right wing academics in Germany over the last 8 years, especially since the Maidan coup in Ukraine, have been minimising the crimes of Hitler, and the capitalist media in Germany has been complicit in publicising their reactionary historical revisionism. Two days ago, Chancellor Scholz gave a speech to the UN in which he condemned any possible ceasefire with Russia. Hitler would have been proud of him. Once again, the German capitalist government is declaring its intentions to wage war against Russia, just like it did in 1941 when it launched a war of extermination against the Soviet Union.
Scholz tried to pretend that his concern was "justice for Ukraine" - one major reason that he can dare to make such a claim is because of the role of historical revisionism in obfuscating the real content of fascism, and therefore the nature of the fascist forces in Ukraine which NATO is mobilising against Russia.
This article describes and explains the salute to a Ukrainian nationalist/Nazi war criminal in the Canadian parliament:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/26/lkoh-s26.html

[pietillidie]

^What unhinged nonsense. Does anyone on earth except Putin's propaganda unit and a few lunatic Landover Socialists think it was intentional? Why would the Canadian parliament or one of the parties intentionally do something so horrifyingly embarrassing and self-defeatingly idiotic to build support for its commitment to Ukraine?

Stupidity and incompetence, or perhaps at a stretch mischief by someone to get at Trudeau or the country, but embarrass the government and entire nation in front of the Jewish leader of a country you're supporting with family that died in the holocaust, knowing the outcry, head rolling and propaganda that would follow?

Apparently, Canada has harboured more than its share of fleeing Nazis, but that's even more reason to avoid attracting scrutiny for past sins.

The world can be bizarre, but disciplined thought doesn't reflexively grab for an extreme and bizarre explanation over a simple one. No one is playing 4D conspiratorial chess here; this was a cringeworthy blunder.

So, now it's Ukraine, the US, NATO, the EU and Canada in the Axis of Evil, with Putin's Axis of Righteousness including Belarus, the Chechen Republic, Iran, Mali, Eritrea and new bestie, North Korea.

Where do we sign up to become part of this new beacon of hope for humanity?

Completely and entirely unhinged, whatever list of sins we can pin on Canada or any nation.

[David]

I think the problem is that the incident didn't come out of nowhere, but, instead, reflective of a country that has a history in this regard – Canada has long had a particularly strong Ukrainian lobby and, as Levine points out in his piece above, the people who've shaped that in decades past were far from politically benign. So in some respects this was a mess waiting to happen.

At the same time, MTTM, I don't agree with you at all that this is some kind of deliberate signal to Russia from NATO or some such. Clearly, it's actually been a huge propaganda free kick to Putin and a massive domestic and international embarrassment for Canada and, for that matter, for the Ukrainian cause itself (though I think Zelenskyy himself seemingly fails to fully comprehend that; this isn't the first blunder of this kind that he's been involved in, and I think Levine is probably right in assessing that there are some domestic machinations at play here).

So you have the wrong end of the stick if you think fascism is being normalised as a way of isolating Russia, because that would require us to accept firstly that Russia is itself anti-fascist, which it isn't; and secondly that Ukrainian nationalism is being deployed to serve the interests of fascism, rather than its fascist elements being subsumed into a broader nationalist agenda. Again, Levine's piece above explains this process perfectly, I think, and it's entirely the opposite of what you're saying here.

[pietillidie]

I especially love the deranged outburst against Germany, turning its begrudging defensive support for an invaded victim into a new reich hellbent on settling old scores.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about Germany knows that its far-right proto-fascist groups love Russia and vehemently oppose any support for Ukraine.

Moreover, the least fascistic parties, such as the Greens, strongly support Ukraine, even as the rest of the world continues to points fingers at the major German parties for having over-indulged Putinism for far too long before this recent turn.

How outright wrong can a set of claims be? It's completely back-to-front in all respects. And in the biggest irony of all, the far-right strongholds of contemporary Germany are centred on — you guessed it — old iron curtain East Germany. They also happen to be enthusiastically pro-Putin, and above all are misanthropically enraged by the taking in of Ukrainian refugees.

The Ministry of Socialist Truth strikes again, claiming black is white and night is day, with that dissociation justified because, well, it's okay to misrepresent with abandon when you're misrepresenting 'capitalists'.

You couldn't make it up. Unhinged on the Canada embarrassment, and unhinged on German politics. As Chomsky rightly often says, but the misanthropic far left avoids like the plague when it comes to the Russian invasion:

[Magpietothemax]

^David
There are a couple of things I would like to reply with respect to your previous comment. First, in no way do you have to believe that Russia is anti-fascist to accept that fascists are being mobilized against Russia. Indeed, there are Russian fascists. But fascists can be mobilized against fascists, (the example of the Chetniks and the Ustasha during WW2 in Yugoslavia comes to mind). Second, there is no such thing as the “interests of fascism”. Fascism is a particular capitalist ideology ,and a particular form of capitalist government which the bourgeoisie utilizes and imposes when its continued rule requires the unrestrained super exploitation of the working class. The hallmarks of fascism, such as the abolition of democratic rights, persecution of ethnic minorities, massacres, ethnic pogroms etc are the means through which the working class is divided and rendered helpless. Fascism has no interests itself: it is a vehicle through which the ruling capitalist class prosecutes its class interests in times of extreme crisis. (The funding of the Nazis by German industrialists is well known, likewise the militia groups and fascists in the US have corporate sponsors, and so on. If I spent the time, I could no doubt find through research the corporate sponsors of the AFD in Germany, Le Pen in France, etc).
Today, we are witnessing the rehabilitation of fascism throughout the world. In Italy, the PM is a fascist; in France, Le Pen was a viable contendor for the Presidency; in Germany, the AFD sits in Parliament; in Spain, Vox members hold political power in certain regional areas; the Polish government is infested with anti-Semites and virulent anti-russian extremists, in the US Trump attempted a fascist coup against the elected government etc. Unlike during the 1930s however, the resurgence of fascism has little or any popular support. Rather, the revival of fascism is being carried out by the mainstream establishment itself. Mainstream political parties, such as the Greens and SD in Germany, the Democrats in the US, etc legitimize fascist parties by forming coalition arrangements with them, by echoing the very same xenophobic propaganda of the fascists themselves, etc; The academic institutions are involved in promoting fascists. At Stanford University recently, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature hosted an event where Professor Francis Fukuyama appeared on the platform alongside key leaders of the Azov Batallion, including one of its military commanders. The event was advertised on the campus using insignia associated with fascism: ie the Azov Batallion symbol, itself modelled on the Nazis’ wolfsangel symbol. The capitalist media is also highly involved in publicizing the views of fascists. In Germany, the media has played a major role in disseminating the Hitler minimizing views of the right wing extremist professor Baberovski (Humboldt University). In the US, everyone is of course aware of the role of Fox media in promoting Trump.
It is in this context that one needs to appraise the recent events in the Canadian parliament. The salute given to the 98 year old Nazi war criminal/Ukrainian fascist was a conscious provocation. To believe the official narrative, that it was a “mistake”, is the height of political blindness. This was a special session of the Canadian parliament, with a foreign leader (Zelensky) present. Every single sentence, every single action, would have been tightly scripted and orchestrated. Every single person who either addressed the assembly or participated in the ceremonies, would have been vetted meticulously.
As you have mentioned, the Canadian ruling class has a long historical alliance with Ukrainian fascism. Canada allowed tens of thousands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators to find refuge in Canada. This included 2000 members of the Waffen SS (Galizia division), of which the 98 year old was a member. To believe that the past of Humka could have passed undetected through the vetting process is political imbecility.

[Magpietothemax]

...and just one final point...
The celebration of a Ukrainian fascist in the Canadian Parliament takes place very soon after the violent prowar speech of German Chancellor Scholz in the UN condemning any calls for an immediate ceasefire, and a speech by Biden also to the UN which likewise rejected any possiblity of a negotiated peace settlement with Russia.
All of these governments, the Canadian, the US and the German, are heavily involved in training and arming Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, who are integrated into the entire Ukrainian military.
To believe that the applause given to a Ukrainian fascist in the Canadian Parliament was a "mistake" in this context is, as I said, political imbecilism.

[pietillidie]

^Your thought process is now officially a concern, MttM.

With that much paranoia and connectivity, you're on an unhelpful path for your own wellbeing.

I hope it's just a garden-variety anger reaction along the lines of Trumpists and avid religion, but I can't tell anymore.

I don't want to drive whatever that process is any harder, and I don't know what your social resources are, so I will just say this: take care of yourself and try to see yourself as just like anyone else, being part of an ugly world you didn't choose, but inherited like the rest of us. It's your inheritance, good and bad alike, but not your fault.

You're eminently more intelligent and capable than this present phase, and I wish you all the best.

[Magpietothemax]

[pietillidie]

This is an intriguing proposal. I haven't thought much about it, so I'm not saying I support it, but widening NATO one step at a time would certainly start providing clarity. Putin, as we know, lives off extending destabilisation as far as he can, trying to wear down entire regions.

[David]

Seems like a pretty bad idea all round to me, tbh – a bit like being offered comprehensive future home and contents insurance right after losing everything in a fire.

Would make more sense as a consolation prize that NATO could offer Ukraine after they’ve given up on winning back the eastern provinces, but even then I can imagine it’d be looked on a bit dimly within Ukraine as it would essentially be looked at as an admission of defeat. If I were Putin I’d probably take that deal (particularly in the knowledge that the supposed fear of NATO encroachment was always a furphy).

This is also a good reminder to Ukrainians that, whatever the strategic security benefits of joining, NATO is ultimately only looking out for its own interests, and that will be whatever suits the US and Western European powers.

[pietillidie]

^Yeah, that's the initial objection, but I'm not sure that's what the strategy has in mind. Will have to find his original thoughts, but I'm assuming it's counterintuitively to keep it a hot war by eliminating vague space, which is a central Putin strategy to wear down support.

European support and determination is far stronger than you might suspect. I don't consider ceding territory a possibility, although I might be being naive. But I just don't pick that up, even reading between the lines of EU commentary.

But again, not saying I support it without knowing a lot more.

[pietillidie]

^Briefly checked things he's said before and my interpretation seems right, while he ensured there was no misunderstanding on Twitter. Have a fish around and see if you can get a better sense of what he's saying. It also looks like Rasmussen has worked far more closely with Ukraine than you might realise. (I've only had a cursory look admittedly, but nothing immediately jumped out).

And be sure to get the direction of incentives right. The EU is incentivised to bring the whole of Ukraine into the fold, including it's Eastern food belt, which is exactly what Ukraine wants. If you've been reading, you'll see that NATO and thd EU are actually fighting against parochial rural and far-right opposition in countries like Poland and Hungary which fear Ukraine's agriculture competing with their own. Moreover, the EU wants to penalise autocratic regimes like Azerbaijan, in addition to Belarus, which further benefits Ukraine.

In other words, the suspicion ought to be running in the complete opposite direction because Ukraine and the EU are naturally economically aligned, hence the tantrum from Russia, unless you think Russia's Eurasian Economic Union trade bloc is preferable for Ukraine, which is obviously nonsense.

That misunderstanding of incentives, and the alignment of both Ukrainian and EU desire, is subject to massive propaganda drives from the Putin and his allies, the backward far left and far right.