Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
U.S. fascists debate the conflict in Ukraine
The Ukrainian fascists who helped seize power in Kiev three weeks ago have gotten a strikingly mixed response from U.S. far rightists. Like others across the political spectrum, U.S. fascists are struggling to understand and respond to the complex situation in Ukraine, and their discussions reveal some important fault lines and contradictions. Anti-fascists -- take note.
As discussed in my previous post, the two main Ukrainian fascist groups are Svoboda party, whose electoral support surged in 2012 from less than 1 percent to 10.45%, and Right Sector, a paramilitary coalition of far-right groups that regards Svoboda as too moderate. Svoboda and Right Sector are descendants of the Ukrainian fascist groups that collaborated with the Nazis and murdered tens of thousands of Jews and Poles. Both Svoboda and Right Sector played an important role in the western-backed "Euromaidan" movement that toppled Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in a political revolution with real popular support, and they've been rewarded with key posts in the new government.
So you might expect that American fascists would be cheering on their comrades in Kiev. After all, when the Greek neo-nazi party Golden Dawn won 7 percent of the parliamentary vote in 2012 and ramped up its violent attacks on immigrants, LGBT people, and political opponents, U.S. far rightists were enthusiastic. But for the most part, their responses to the Ukrainian upheaval have ranged from ambivalent to hostile, for several reasons. Some American far rightists are unhappy about the prospect of another war between Europeans. Some of them consider the Ukrainian fascists politically suspect because of their involvement in a movement backed by the U.S. and European Union governments. And some of them support the Russian government and its vision of a greater Eurasian Union including at least part of the Ukraine.
Map of Ukraine with Oblast Krim (Crimea) highlighted
The Ukraine conflict is in some ways a throwback to the Cold War, when many fascists -- including the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists -- joined forces with the CIA against the Soviet Union, despite their misgivings about the U.S. and western Europe's liberal political systems. But even in the 1950s, there were some far rightists -- such as Francis Parker Yockey -- who advocated an alliance with Russian communism against the "decadent" West. This position was known as national bolshevism.
Since the 1980s, and especially since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989-1991, the old Cold War alliances have unraveled. To most western fascists, the main enemy is not Russia (or China) but rather the "Zionist Occupation Government" (ZOG) in Washington or western-based "globalist elites" bent on destroying European civilization. Today the main geopolitical debate among western fascists seems to be whether to stake out a "third position" between West and East or to ally themselves with the new post-communist Russian state.
Some fascists outside Ukraine have turned out in support of Svoboda or Right Sector. The Daily Beast reported on March 2 about a Swedish fascist group's initiative to send people and supplies to "support the Ukrainian revolution." But the article's headline, "Neo-Nazis Pour into Kiev," was absurdly alarmist. The lead organizer for Swedish Ukrainian Volunteers admitted, "If we get 50, all in all, I will be very proud."
On Stormfront, the largest neo-nazi bulletin board in the U.S., one contributor announced that he was heading to Ukraine to volunteer his services to Right Sector, and urged other westerners, especially those with military experience, to "come to the aid of fellow nationalists in Ukraine and help found the first nationalist state in Europe, since 1945." But on the discussion thread that followed, nobody else offered to join him, and only some of the comments were supportive. Criticisms included, "If you help Ukrainian Nationalists invade Russian parts of Ukraine, you will put yourself on the wrong side of history" and "This so called 'Ukrainian revolution' is nothing more than the U.S. and the U.K. stirring up trouble AGAIN, in another country."
Other Stormfront threads took a more neutral approach. A second contributor lamented, "Why do White people kill more White people??! Can't they see that ZOG is manipulating them like sheep going to the slaughterhouse?!" while another urged far rightists to brainstorm ways to prevent war and "loss of white life" in Ukraine, such as the idea that Russia could buy Crimea from Ukraine. "This would prevent Ukraine from going to the International (Jewish) Usury Fund and allow also the ejection of some large section of Tartars [sic] (non-white muslims [sic]) from Ukraine."
On the Traditionalist Youth Network website, Matt Parrott of Hoosier Nation called the Ukrainian conflict "ideologically ambiguous" and said he wouldn't pick a side until "one faction or another may unambiguously align with the global identitarian vision." On The Occidental Observer site, Kevin MacDonald, a prominent white nationalist intellectual, wrote that "Ukraine is a textbook case of the costs of multiculturalism, a story of competing nationalisms," but warned Ukraine against allying with the European Union, since EU anti-nationalism leads to "the obliteration of all traditional European national cultures." "A better solution," he suggested," would be to break up states like Ukraine with large ethnic divisions into ethnically homogeneous societies..."
Many American fascists are suspicious of Ukrainian fascists' right-wing credentials. Aryanism.net declared "Authentic National Socialists do not collaborate with a regime as corrupt as that of the USA, that supports Israel and is controlled by Jews, and do not allow themselves to be used as geopolitical pawns." On the other hand, the same author wrote that Right Sector "seems to represent authentic National Socialism (I really hope I am right about this)," and praised Right Sector's commitment to vigilante justice. But Michael McGregor of Radix (successor to AlternativeRight.com) argued that even Right Sector isn't fascist enough, claiming that the group is "dedicated to a type of civic nationalism where the interests of preserving a state...is more important than that of preserving their race or even that of their own ethnic group."
Writing about the Euromaidan protests before Yanukovych had fled Kiev, Vanguard News Network (VNN) wrote that "the Jews and the internationalists (this of course includes America) are angry because the Ukraine won't 'play ball' with the globalist agenda of free trade, global government, non-white immigration, massive debt via [International Monetary Fund] loans, hate-crime laws, and other horrible things." In a follow-up article, VNN added that "Western governments want to bring the Ukraine under Western influence so they can use it as a possible 'weapon' or at least as a 'watchdog' against Russia [which] too often goes against NWO [New World Order] or Jewish interests, e.g., selling sophisticated missiles to Arab countries like Syria."
Unlike the openly pro-nazi VNN, the Lyndon LaRouche network presents itself as progressive and anti-fascist, and when the Yanukovych government fell, LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review proclaimed "U.S.A. and EU, With Ukrainian Terrorists, Establish Nazi Regime." This is essentially the Russian government line, although the LaRouchites combine it with their own elaborate conspiracy theories, notably that both the EU and the U.S. government are really controlled by the British empire. From this perspective, Ukraine's upheaval was simply a putsch carried out by western government operatives, in which popular forces exercised no agency of their own. The LaRouchites give no credence to the Yanukovych government's corruption and repressive brutality as factors that outraged many Ukrainians and led them to revolt.
A related analysis was offered by U.S. supporters of Aleksandr Dugin, such as Global Revolutionary Alliance. Dugin is the Russian far right's leading intellectual, former theoretician of the National Bolshevik Party, and one of the main figures in the European New Right, which offers a sanitized fascism as a project to defend "difference" and "ethnopluralism." He has close ties with the Russian state and is the founder of the modern Eurasianist movement, which envisions Russia as the center of a new authoritarian "empire." Dugin addressed the Ukraine crisis in a recent interview on the Counter-Currents Publishing website, which blends white nationalism, antisemitism, and European New Right ideology. He argued that members of the anti-Yanukovych movement were united not by a desire for political change or closer ties to the EU, but simply by "their pure hatred of Russia." He also found a way to criticize the Euromaidan movement both for including neo-nazis and for including progressive groups:"The left wing liberal groups are not less extremist than the neo-Nazi groups.... We find especially in Eastern Europe and Russia very often that the Homosexual-Lobby and the ultranationalist and neo-Nazi groups are allies. Also the Homosexual lobby has very extremist ideas about how to deform, re-educate and influence the society.... The gay and lesbian lobby is not less dangerous for any society than neo-Nazis."
Dugin also argued that the hope any Ukrainian fascists might have of pursuing a course independent of major global powers is an illusion:"There is no 'third position,' no possibility of that.... The same ugly truth hits the Ukrainian 'nationalist' and the Arab salafi fighter: They are Western proxies. It is hard to accept for them because nobody likes the idea to be the useful idiot of Washington....
"There is land power and sea power in geopolitics. Land power is represented today by Russia, sea power by Washington. During World War II Germany tried to impose a third position.... The end was the complete destruction of Germany. So when even the strong and powerful Germany of that time wasn't strong enough to impose the third position how [can] the much smaller and weaker groups want to do this today? It is impossible, it is a ridiculous illusion."
However, Counter-Currents also published a sharply different argument by Greg Johnson, who referred to Dugin as the Russian regime's "apostle and apologist...whose credibility with ethnonationalists should be reduced to zero by now." Johnson offered the most sophisticated far right analysis of the Ukraine crisis that I have seen so far. He argued that "The strife in the Ukraine is not, at root, caused by Russian or 'Western' intervention, for these would find no purchase if Ukraine were not already an ethnically divided nation," and that "even in the absence of outside influence, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had to go [because he] is a crook who plundered his country and was essentially selling its geopolitical alignment to the highest bidder in order to retain his grip on power."
Johnson noted that the far right groups Svoboda and Right Sector had played a remarkably prominent role in the Ukrainian revolution, but as part of a coalition "which also included centrists, Leftists, feminists, gay rights advocates, and ethnic minority agitators, including Jews, Tats, and Armenians." He argued (echoing Michael McGregor's point quoted above) that Right Sector "falls far short of National Socialism," and that "of all European nationalist parties, Svoboda is probably the most radical and consistent, yet it is also one of the most successful.... Unfortunately, despite an admirable political platform, Svoboda is at present committed to maintaining the artificial Ukrainian state." And unlike Dugin (or LaRouche), Johnson refused to embrace the Russian government:"Like many White Nationalists, I admire Vladimir Putin because he is an important geopolitical counter-weight to the United States and Israel..., he has sought to address Russia's demographic crisis, and he looks and acts like a real-life James Bond. But Putin is not an ethnonationalist. Indeed, he imprisons Russian nationalists and is committed to maintaining Russia's current borders, which include millions of restive Muslims in the Caucasus."
Johnson conceded that if "Putin were to take back the Crimea, virtually ridding Ukraine of its Russian and Tatar minorities and leaving Ukraine smaller but more racially and culturally homogeneous, it might be a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason." And he hoped that Svoboda and other ultranationalists would eventually bring about "national autonomy for all peoples within the current Ukrainian borders."
These debates highlight the complexity of the Ukrainian upheaval. A popular uprising has replaced a corrupt, repressive government (representing a pro-Russian capitalist faction) with a coalition of “austerity”-promoting neoliberals and fascists (representing a pro-EU capitalist faction), which now faces military intervention in the Crimea by Vladimir Putin’s Russian government. None of these regimes is on the side of Ukraine’s ordinary people. As a coalition of internationalists from Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere has declared, this is a "power struggle between oligarchic clans [that] threatens to escalate into an international armed conflict."
In dealing with this conflict, fascists are all over the map -- some lined up with (or in) the new Ukrainian government, some backing Russia, and some (many in the U.S.) conflicted or wavering in between. This means that calls to support the Russian government in the name of "anti-fascism" are just as misinformed or dishonest as calls to support Ukraine's "democratic revolution."
Posted by Matthew N Lyons at 11:02 PM
)Race is not group anatomy.
Race is not independent of the soil.
Race is not independent of the Spirit of History.
Race is not classifiable, except on an ability basis.
Race is not a rigid, permanent, collective characterization of human beings, which remains always the same throughout history.(13
The hierarchy of races at any given time are historical creations which "can have, of course, no eternal validity"(14).
"Thus the school of Gobineau, Chamberlain...was on the same tangent as the materialists who announced that there is no such thing as Race...The source of a hierarchy of races is History, the forces of happening...Thus, in the subjective sense, there is also a hierarchy of race. Above, the men of race, below--those without race"(15).
"twentieth- century viewpoint on this matter" (in contrast to the biologistic view of 19th- century reaction-LG) begins from the "observed fact...that all strong minorities--both within and without a High Culture--have welcomed into their company the outsider who was attracted to it and wished to join it, regardless of his racial provenance, objectively speaking. The racial snobbery of the nineteenth century was intellectual, and its adoption in a too-narrow sphere by the Resurgence of Authority in Europe between the two World Wars was a grotesquerie."(16)
"...'safeguarding the purity of race' in a purely biological sense is sheer materialism.
Race, in both its meanings, is the material of history, not the reverse...To the twentieth- century outlook, a man does not belong to a race; either he has race, or does not. If the former, he has value to History; if the latter, he is valueless, a lackey."(17)
"...Western policy has the duty of encouraging in its education of the youth its manifestations of strong character, self-discipline, honor, ambition, renunciation of weakness, striving after perfection, superiority, leadership--in a word--Race."(18)
"Provincial patriotism of the nineteenth- century type can evoke no response. The unity of the West which the barbarian has always recognized is recognized at the last hour by the West itself."(19) .
"the engrafting of the outworn nonsense of the vertical race notion onto the glorious European Resurgence of Authority brought about by the European Revolution of 1933 was an enormous tragedy"(20)
"the Europe of 2050 will be essentially the same as that of 1950, viz. a museum to be looted by barbarians, a historical curiosity for sightseers from the colonies; an odd assortment of operetta-states; a reservoir of human material standing at the disposal of Washington and Moscow; a loan market for New York financiers; a great beggars' colony, bowing and scraping before the American tourists."(21)
American Dream » Fri Mar 14, 2014 10:51 pm wrote: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/yockey.html
An American National Bolshevik
by Loren Goldner
Review of:
Kevin Coogan. Dreamer of the Day. Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International. Autonomedia. New York, 1999. 642 p. $16.95.
American Dream » Sat Feb 15, 2014 8:33 am wrote:There is a spooky linkage- one cutting across borders- to the genesis of these Nazi type tendencies which target left/anarchist circles. There is grounds for lots and lots of future research here:
http://www.whomakesthenazis.com/2010/11 ... -troy.html
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Co-opting the Counter Culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction
“If we are to understand molecular biopolitics then we must see it working in the participatory mechanism of fascism and today’s fascism from below… Führers and inspired leaders do not seem to be important anymore — the small fascist icons can be as many and as interchangeable as sitcom actors and second-rate soccer champions. Participation is virtual — but killing can be real; you can order a gun with the click of a mouse, but the bullet can blow you to pieces.’’
— Clandestina, Capital’s Greek Cage
Vratislav: Media commentators initially described those original November protesters as being politically liberal, standing for democratic pluralism, multi-culturalism, etc. Do you agree with this description?
Denis: Definitely not multi-culturalism! I think today everybody is already aware about the role of the far-right in the protests. They are not as ubiquitous as one may think but the fact is that their ideology has really become more acceptable in the mainstream (which had initially been leaning to the right!). For example, just recently Vitali Klitschko (who is the most liberal of all the three opposition leaders) has proclaimed a campaign called “Don’t be afraid, you’re a Ukrainian!” Of course, most protesters really say they want political pluralism, bourgeois democracy instead of the creeping monopolization of power by one party, as the thing look now. But at the same time the crowd at the Maidan revives some deeply buried pre-modern, medieval social practices like whipping post, lynching, reinforced traditional gender roles. This scary readiness to slip into barbarism is born from the general disenchantment with parliamentary politics and the ubiquitous nationalist mythology about the golden past, imposed in schools and media. Mind you, the same things are going on in the opposite camp: social networks of the riot police officers in the internet are full of the same shit.
The original Euromaidan agenda in November was a right liberal one, standing for the EU, “economic liberties” and bourgeois democracy. But even then the issues of multiculturalism, LGBT rights, workers’ rights and freedoms were severely repressed by the politically conscious far-right activists who had joined the protests even though their own political programme had always included critique of the EU’s “liberal fascism”. Actually, the very name “Right Sector” originated after one of such violent clashes. The attackers didn’t represent the majority of protesters, but the majority was very susceptible to their political agenda which they had been aggressively pushing through.
Vratislav: Can we say that following the first police assault, the working class people entered the Maidan? I can imagine all kinds of proletarians are frequenting the Maidan once their working or studying hours are over: people with stable jobs, precarious workers, young and old, men and women. Does any such category compose a majority of the Maidan now? And who are those people inhabiting the Maidan permanently? Are they unemployed, casual workers, who are jobless during the winter, or homeless?
Denis: First of all, you can’t say that “the working class entered Maidan”. Yes, the number of working-class representatives increased, but, as I said, they don’t consider themselves a class, for them it is an irrelevant category. So, there’s no “class-for-itself” at Maidan. And the majority of the working-class population in Kyiv is still apathetic – I mean, you can’t be sure that someone you’ve met in the street supports Maidan. As I said, the class composition is now “universal”. The majority, I think, is still represented by students and petite bourgeoisie plus proletarians from the Western regions of Ukraine. That’s especially true for those who stay there permanently. Homeless people are naturally attracted by the free food and heating but they are frowned upon by many activists.
Vratislav: How that limited “influx” of proletarians (if we identify them on the basis of their position in the capitalist relation of exploitation and not their consciousness) transformed the political landscape of the Maidan? They changed it into an anti-government struggle I guess. But what else? Are they also the most numerous supporters of nationalism and far right ideologies and thus greatly boosted the influence of Svoboda and other fascist organisations within the movement?
Denis: Yes, the protests became more anti-government and pro-democracy, especially after the laws of January 16. Most people were appalled by the authoritarian threat that was their main concern. And no, I’d say that still the most numerous supporters of nationalism and far right forces are not proletarians. It’s intelligentsia and especially students. Therefore, the “democratization” of the class composition of protests led to a temporary weakening of the Nazis, not strengthening them. Although in the long run the rightist political hegemony is being reinforced even though the numerical proportion of hardcore Nazis may now be less.
Vratislav: Well, that is really interesting what you have just said about students and educated people in general being the principal followers of Ukrainian fascists and ultra-nationalists. Could you explain reasons of this phenomenon a bit?
Denis: I think it fits the classic Marxist analysis of fascism quite well, doesn’t it? Indeed, in Kyiv intelligentsia and petty bourgeoisie are main social forces supporting Ukrainian nationalism. In the Western regions of Ukraine Svoboda has a proletarian electoral base, but in Kyiv they gained the record number of votes in 2012 due to intelligentsia’s disenchantment in the “systemic” parliamentary opposition and eagerness to try something more “radical”. And since the basic “common sense” had long ago been established on the nationalist fundamental assumptions, the radicalization goes only further in that direction. Meanwhile, working class is still partly apathetic, partly trusting the major bourgeois populist parties.
Vratislav: Actually, quite recently I have read an analysis of the Maidan protests written by a Czech left-wing ukrainist. He claims that they are “first and foremost middle class protests”, i.e. protests of “relatively educated and successful people”, while “the radical Right represents the voice of poorer strata of the Ukrainian population”. He also says that “a narrow stratum of intellectuals, writers and artists, who otherwise represent the most vociferous voice of protests, has no influence on” the ultra-right. Nevertheless, your account suggests a complete opposite – at least as far as fascists are concerned – doesn’t it? What about explicitly characterising the Maidan movement as “first and foremost middle class”? In your view, would this be a correct description?
Denis: I would agree that the “middle class” definitely plays a leading role in the protests – posing as the “voice” of protesters, even if not dominating numerically (I’m not sure about numerical proportions these days; there has not been serious sociological research since the beginning of December). Anyway, Kyiv bourgeoisie and intelligentsia claims to speak not only for itself but also for everybody else, and there’s no-one around to protest their claim.
Do they have influence on the ultra-right? Vice versa, actually. As I’ve been trying to explain, the ultra-right didn’t fall upon us from the sky, they are a logical product of objective historical factors and of the policies of the ruling class understood in a broad meaning. Today they have evolved to a point when they are a self-sustained political subject, able to dictate their own agenda and to broaden their cultural hegemony.
In the Western regions Svoboda is considered to be “the” proletarian party, a political voice of the working class. I guess that’s what your author was writing about. This is confirmed by the results of the last parliamentary elections. In the Eastern regions, such “proletarian party” is the “Communist” Party of Ukraine. Of course, neither actually represents the working class in any way, it’s just a picture of subjective political sympathies of workers.
Meanwhile, Kyiv is a “transitional zone” between the two macro-regions. Here, in the capital, no one expected the tremendous success of Svoboda at the 2012 elections. And the main electorate of Svoboda turned out to be the “clean public”: educated and relatively well-off “middle class” which hates the current state of affairs and associates it with “communist” residues. Which thinks of EU as some fantasy land where personal virtues are rewarded with material success. Which talks about “internal occupation” by some anti-national elements. Which often speaks Russian but is still devoted to Ukrainian nationalism.
Those people are new to politics, they just “know” they are rightists and nationalists. And therefore they trust the more politically experienced leaders to express their views and formulate their programme for them. It just so happens that those leaders are nationalists or even Nazis. And they shift the centre of the political discourse even further to the right.
This is the political portrait of the middle-class majority of the Maidan. That’s what happens when you don’t have developed left movement and your liberals are too corrupt and ugly!
Vratislav: You have already mentioned that there is also an important percentage of petty bourgeois and even bourgeois people involved. All those parliamentary opposition leaders and their oligarchic cronies. Thus, at the end of the day we get quite an interclass movement with a numerically minoritarian working class component, right? Now, how are political views distributed among this mass? I read that the ultra right activists are a minority within the movement, however an important one. Could you possibly make an estimation how big this minority is and explain what gives them such an importance? And what about liberals? How numerous they are and what is their importance in the movement? I mean even in terms of practice.
Denis: Ukraine has a big problem with liberals – they don’t exist as a self-sufficient strong political trend. Both political camps are dominated by right populist ideologies – a wild mix of conservatism and nationalism. That’s the main problem, because the actual number of the ultra right activists is not that big, it’s even tiny compared to the crowd which at some times consisted of 100 thousand people or even more; while the full mobilization potential of fascists from all Ukraine is approximately 1-2 thousands. But, first of all, their ideas are welcome among the apolitical crowd; second of all, they are very well organized, and also people love their “radicalism”. An average Ukrainian worker hates the police and the government but he will never fight them openly and risk his comfort. So he or she welcomes a “vanguard” which is ready to fight on their behalf; especially if that vanguard shares “good” patriotic values.
Nevertheless, there is a certain distance between Nazi fighters and “normal” protesters, even the physical one. The former are now mostly gathered at the Grushevskogo street, at the barricades, while the regular “citizens” are staying at Maidan.
There is a certain (quite small) number of liberals who don’t support the far-right. Some of them even staged a protest against the Bandera torch march. Other liberals stand behind the opposition party leaders but the opposition is quite unpopular among protesters. I would say that the general mood is patriotic, even nationalist, but many people don’t support Nazis and consider them provocateurs.
Vratislav: From all you have said it seems that the bulk of protesters is somewhere between right-wing populists, disguised as liberals, and fascists; they do not identify themselves with neither of the two poles of the so called national democratic opposition, but at the same time they feel to be both pro-national and pro-democratic and all the three political currents are united on the basis of being anti-Yanukovych. Is this the case or not?
Denis: That’s right!
Except for the parliamentary liberals: rather they are trying to disguise themselves as left populists. Otherwise you just can’t win any support from the working class. Therefore, every major parliamentary political force has a right liberal wing, which always argues for austerity and liberal reforms, and a left populist wing, which demands more government handouts to the impoverished population. The first ones usually get the upper hand when their party is in power and no elections are in sight; the second ones are prominent when their party is in the opposition or during electoral campaigns. The resulting vector of these parties of large bourgeoisie is a ridiculous manoeuvring: for example, during one meeting at Maidan Arseniy Yatseniuk from Batkivschyna party said that Ukraine should urgently accept all the demands of the IMF. A week later he says that now that Russia gave a natural gas discount Yanukovych must cut the equal percentage off the (already heavily subsidized) natural gas tariffs for the population.
Vratislav: It is obvious that conservative views play an important role within the consciousness of a large part of the Ukrainian population. Where shall we look for historical and social sources of such conservatism?
Denis: Yes, I’ve already written about the creepy archaic patterns that are being revived at Maidan. Also, about the reasons: during the last 20 years the humanitarian policies of the state were in the hands of nationalists. And they managed to raise a generation which doesn’t see any problem in phrases like “Ukraine for Ukrainians” or “Ukraine is above all”, in a notion of “gene pool of the nation”. Also, the traditions and the “heroic” past is also considered as something a priori good. Denying the current state of affairs and the Soviet experience, being afraid of all the progressive elements of EU ideology (like tolerance for LGBT, popularity of leftist ideology) they are gladly embracing all the invented traditions they were taught in schools.
Vratislav: Would it be plausible to identify as a reason of this conservatism also the fact that after the initial “shock therapy” in the 1990′s, the capitalist restructuring lost its momentum and since then the Ukraine has tended towards becoming a “world for itself” and preserving a certain social-economic status quo, perhaps, in order to avoid an explosion of so many contradictions (class, national, geopolitical, economical, etc.) that intersect each other in the Ukrainian society? In such a context of a defensive withdrawal from global liberalisation processes, strong and widespread conservative nationalism, with its unquestioning celebration of the “glorious” past, would seem to make sense.
Denis: I don’t know much about how this restructuring went in the “exemplary” countries like Czech Republic; didn’t you have a certain resurgence of conservative values and nationalist “invented traditions”? As far as I know, that has been the case not only in Ukraine and Russia, but also in such countries as Poland, Hungary, Romania, former Yugoslav republics.
I would rather explain it in another way: the crash of the “real socialism” also brought about the crash of the progressive values which had been officially promoted in that society (atheism, feminism, internationalism). The gap has been promptly filled by the wild mixture of nationalism and conservatism (and New Age charlatan philosophy, for that matter). This shift was eagerly supported by the state ideological apparatus. Actually, in many universities at the beginning of 1990s the departments of “scientific communism” were rebranded into “scientific nationalism”! Later they became the departments of “political science” though.
So, this situation is in many ways similar to the wave of conservatism and Islamism which came to the Middle Eastern countries after the downfall of the modernizing bourgeois dictatorships and of the opposing socialist ideology. My hypothesis is that the severity of this process may correlate to the level of urbanization in a given country: the larger the part of urban dwellers, the less the probability of such slide back to conservatism and the depth of this slide.
It’s true that there was a period of certain dominance of Western liberal ideas in the 1990s. But it ended when the state regained its positions and the society stabilized after the initial shock.
Vratislav: Now, let me get back to the ultra-right elements. How much pro- or anti-European isSvoboda? So far I have seen quite contradictory information. Is Tyahnyboh and his MPs really determined to co-manage IMF austerity programmes in case the movement will overthrow Yanukovych and today’s parliamentary opposition will form a new pro-Western government? Would not such a policy possibly alienate their rank and file members?
Denis: As I’ve already said, they treat the EU integration in a purely pragmatic, populist manner. It contradicts their programme, but they (Svoboda) will support it as long as it’s important for masses. In the case the opposition wins over, the right liberals will impose austerity measures while Svoboda will probably criticize their partners. Normally, they are quite sensitive to the social-economic issues, “defending” the workers. But at the end of the day, it’s the old dilemma of Hitlerists versus Strasserians. And there’s no doubt that the former will defeat the latter. Actually, there was already one generation of Strasserian activists in the ranks of Svoboda who were recently expelled; now they are fighting with Svoboda in Lviv. Obviously, if Svoboda at some point in history wins over the country they will follow the examples of their historical predecessors.
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