{"id":6179,"date":"2015-02-22T00:20:50","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T07:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6179"},"modified":"2015-02-22T00:21:05","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T07:21:05","slug":"6179","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6179","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine’s Descent into Fascism and How the West Turns a Blind Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ukrainian fascism is a rampaging reality. The West’s refusal to acknowledge it may be setting the scene for genocide<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Vladimir Golstein<\/a> \"Subscribe<\/a><\/div>\n

opinion \/ analysis<\/span><\/span> <\/span> Wed, Oct 22 | <\/span> <\/span> 21203<\/span><\/span> <\/span> 37<\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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Vladimir Golstein\u00a0is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages at Brown University, an American Ivy League university.<\/em><\/p>\n

We \u00a0have decided to publish this article in full, since it is by far the best description we know of the rise of fascism in Ukraine. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The author, who is a top US scholar, shows that Ukrainian fascism is not the fringe phenomenon that western governments and media say it is, but that is central to Ukrainian politics and is the key to understanding Ukraine\u2019s political crisis and the way that crisis is evolving as the situation in the country worsens. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

He shows by drawing on the latest academic scholarship that the fascism currently loose in Ukraine is fascism in its classic form, identical to the fascism of that existed in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and that like that fascism it disguises its racist and genocidal agenda behind slogans of anti-communism. \u00a0\u00a0He describes how the racist hatred that drives Ukrainian fascism is focused on Russia and Russians and expresses itself \u00a0with the same genocidal language against Russians that fascists of the 1930s and 1940s used against Slavs and Jews. <\/em><\/p>\n

The author shows that western governments and media, their judgement already clouded by their hostility to Russia, have allowed themselves to be beguiled by Ukrainian fascism\u2019s anti-communist slogans and insincere \u201cEuropeanism\u201d so that they turn a blind eye both to its reality and to its actions, with potentially disastrous results as the situation in Ukraine worsens. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

How does one interpret recent marches<\/a> of Ukrainian nationalists in two main Ukrainian cities, Kharkov<\/a> and Kiev<\/a>?<\/p>\n

To an outsider, these marches look like Nazi bacchanalia intended to intimidate both local population and the government. Indeed, the marchers demanded<\/a> the status of national heroes for the wartime Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) notorious for its violent extermination of thousands of Jews<\/a> and Poles.<\/p>\n

Yet, one would wait in vain for the N-word to be mentioned by Western press. BBC coyly reported that: \u201cnationalists demanded that MPs pass a law to recognize a World War Two nationalist group which opposed Soviet forces.\u201d UPA, the organization responsible for the murder of thousands is presented as \u201cthe opposition to Soviet forces.\u201d The BBC\u2019s squeamishness is very typical of western coverage of Ukrainian violence: as long as any group has challenged the evils of Stalin\u2019s bolshevism <\/a>, their Nazi collaboration is to be ignored. It is this privileging of anti-communism at the expense of anything else that enables the press to insist that \u201cThere are no Nazis in Ukraine– it is all the invention of Kremlin propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

The western media, never squeamish about pointing a finger at Russian nationalism, or decry Russia\u2019s covert and overt attempts to interfere in Ukraine, becomes surprisingly timid when describing Ukraine\u2019s turmoil. Of course, it will admit the growing pains of Ukraine\u2019s pro-Western democratic turn, including the activity of violent groups or parties<\/a>, like Right Sector, that flaunt Nazi paraphernalia and expound bizarre and racist notions<\/a>. But this acknowledgement<\/a> is quickly modified by the insistence on the marginal nature of these groups<\/a>. Rather than being marginal, these groups, however, constitute the tip of the ultra-nationalist iceberg that is going to crush the modern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The nature of this iceberg is simple: Ukraine is rushing headlong to create a modern day fascist society. It might try to disguise itself as pro-European liberal democracy, as the country eager to resist Russian control or Soviet legacy, but behind this double dose of Ukrainian spinning and western Cold War narrative, lays a very menacing reality. It includes pervasive rhetoric focusing on the myth of heroic Ukraine that must be restored, its champions honored, and its enemies vanquished. It also includes a forced imposition of such a myth upon the whole population of Ukraine resulting in the series of violent actions of genocidal character, be it the May 2 massacre in Odessa, or relentless shelling of civilians in the East of the country.<\/p>\n

What remains hidden in the plain view of recent Ukrainian politics is a highly recognizable pattern shared by numerous fascist regimes.<\/p>\n

A school of current historians of fascism (Emilio Gentile, Roger Griffin, George Mause, Stanley Payne, and Robert Paxton) has established generic features of the fascist phenomenon. Fascism for these scholars does not necessarily imply its Nazi variant with anti-Semitism, yellow stars, and concentration camps. It is first and foremost a cultural phenomenon, a \u201ccultural revolution in nationalist key\u201d (Comparative Fascist Studies, Routledge, 2010: 114) as the result of which society embarks on a new mythic course. It \u201csacralizes earthly entity –the nation\u201d (Gentile in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 2004: 18); it re-imagines its past and articulates utopian future that remains out of reach only because some group serves as an obstacle. It also targets and utilizes the inexperience and alienation of youth by providing it with the sense of belonging, direction, and \u201cdestructive emotions against a hallucinatory enemy\u201d (Griffin, Radical Right, 1999: 298). According to Payne\u2019s A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, London, 1997: 487-95), in order for a country to embark on a fascist course, it has to exhibit a series of cultural, political, social, economic, and international elements. Majority of these elements are fully deployed in Ukraine: be it preexisting strong currents of nationalism; a comparatively new state; a political system that approximates liberal democracy but existed only for a single generation; economic crisis of dislocation or underdevelopment; politically neutralized military; fragmented or polarized party system, status humiliation (loss of Crimea) and the apparent danger from the left (cf. Self-proclaimed People\u2019s Republics in eastern Ukraine).<\/p>\n

In other words, cultural, political, and social pre-conditions of fascism has already crystalized in Ukraine. In particular, it worth stressing the following: the political vision that drives violent youth<\/a> organizations like Right Sector and that is being embraced by more and more Ukrainians, is the myth of a strong unified Ukraine located both in the past and in the future. It includes the embrace of mythic champions of that vision, such as UPA leaders, Stepan Bandera<\/a> and Roman Shukhevich<\/a>, who are supposed to inspire Ukraine toward its glorious future, while it is the enemy, Russians in particular, who preclude Ukraine from reaching its mythical paradise. During the last twenty years, the education in Ukraine, the teaching of history<\/a> in particular, was organized as to drive home this simplistic mythology.<\/p>\n

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