Weissman writes: "Many on the Internet call Ukraine Fascist and use the deadly fire in Odessa in early May to bolster their claim. But, especially in Eastern Europe, highly-charged historic labels blindside believers, keeping them from seeing the far greater threat ahead."
Russian president Vladimir Putin. (photo: Alexei Nikolsky/AP)
09 May 14
any on the Internet call Ukraine Fascist and use the deadly fire in Odessa in early May to bolster their claim. But, especially in Eastern Europe, highly-charged historic labels blindside believers, keeping them from seeing the far greater threat ahead.
Take, for example, a recent column on Antiwar.com by the libertarian journalist Justin Raimondo. He has long been one of my favorites, both for his keen opposition to George W. Bush’s war in Iraq and his authoritative biography of the right-wing anarchist Murray Rothbard.
“The murder of at least 38 people in the city of Odessa in the midst of Kiev’s ‘anti-terrorist’ offensive last Friday revealed the true face of the fascist regime that has seized power in Kiev,” wrote Raimondo. Righteously slamming Western media for ignoring the undeniable presence of nasty extremists in the Western-backed coup in Kiev, Raimondo implicates “the violent neo-Nazi” Right Sector (Praviy Sektor) and their “Fuehrer” Dmytro Yorash in purposely setting fire to Russian-speaking anti-government protestors in the Trade Unions building in Odessa.
The scene was horrifying. Raimondo felt particularly incensed by a video on YouTube happily showing the incinerated bodies of the “Russian Terrorists.” He also cited a chilling account by USA Today: “Witnesses and journalists reported that as the building burned with people inside, a crowd shouted, ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ and ‘Death to enemies!’”
A hint of what will happen if the world allows Eastern Ukraine to erupt into a full-scale civil war, the blaze grew out of a confrontation between supporters of the Western-backed government in Kiev and Russian-speaking opponents. Most of the pro-government Ukrainians appear to have been football fans showing their support for the government in Kiev. Both sides reportedly threw Molotov cocktails and fired guns. According to the Guardian, members of Right Sector were definitely present. The paper quotes one of them, Dmitry Rogovsky, whose hand had been injured during the fighting. “The aim is to completely clear Odessa [of pro-Russians],” said Rogovsky. “They are all paid Russian separatists.”
The Guardian also quotes another member of Right Sector, but nowhere does the paper give any indication that they or their group started the fire. In fact, I can find no credible account that they did. Some witnesses blame the pro-government forces without specifically naming the Right Sector. Others blame the anti-government militants, who threw Molotov cocktails down from the roof. How, then, does Raimondo know who did it? What evidence does he offer? Some twitter tweets to and from Guardian writer Howard Amos, which the paper never published in its final story.
Raimondo knows better. If readers want unsupported propaganda, they can read Moscow’s global news channel RT, which presented the Odessa fire as “a false flag operation” by Right Sector people. Their goal? “To both create a powerful atrocity to draw Russia into open conflict and intimidate any sort of population that is against the coup government by saying, ‘Look if you continue opposing us, we’ll murder you in the most gruesome manner possible.’”
What a fascinating take! They could be right. So could Raimondo. But neither offers serious evidence to pin the blame for the fire on the thoroughly nasty Right Sector. Nor can they properly characterize the government in Kiev as Fascist, even with its minority of ministers and other officials who continue to celebrate Hitler, adorn themselves with Nazi symbols, despise Jews, and value Europe not for democracy and the rule of law but for its deeply-rooted Fascist past.
A simple thought experiment proves the point. Try to think how the new government in Kiev would tell its enablers in Washington, Brussels, or the IMF that it will institute Fascist rather than neo-liberal economics. Or install as president a Fuehrer rather than a billionaire Oligarch. Or do without elections and the show of parliamentary democracy. Or officially bash Jews rather than Russians. Or drum out of its ranks all the current leaders whom the old-fashioned, die-hard Nazis at The Daily Stormer paint with yellow, 6-pointed Jewish stars, an idiotic rogues’ gallery that includes prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a self-proclaimed Catholic, his very blonde party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, and even the hero of the Maidan protests and likely new mayor of Kiev, the former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, who with his Ph.D. in Sports Science is known as Dr. Ironfist.
Yes, Jews can genuflect, buy peroxide, and box. No, the bad new beast is not the bad old beast, and so far at least, the Nazis and Jews are making nice with each other – and with their imperial overlords, who are using them as shock troops just as they did throughout the Cold War.
This is not just an academic quibble. Buying Putin’s propaganda and putting organized Nazis and Fascists at the center of the story hides a far more terrifying truth about Ukrainian nationalism. Start with Stepan Bandera, who officially remains a “Hero of Ukraine.” As I wrote earlier, “Bandera and his followers – and many less ideological Ukrainians – collaborated with the Nazis and slaughtered Russians, Poles, other Eastern Europeans, and Jews, as well as Ukrainians who opposed fascism.”
Often the killings were every bit as gruesome as the fire in Odessa, as the US National Archive documented in “Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence, and the Cold War.” “When the Bandera gangs seize a Jew, they consider it a prize catch,” wrote one of the survivors. “The ordinary Ukrainians feel the same way…. they all want to participate in the heroic act of killing a Jew. They literally slash Jews to pieces with their machetes….”
Attacks on Poles were every bit as brutal. “Bandera men … are not discriminating about who they kill; they are gunning down the populations of entire villages,” the survivor went on. “Since there are hardly any Jews left to kill, the Bandera gangs have turned on the Poles. They are literally hacking Poles to pieces. Every day … you can see the bodies of Poles, with wires around their necks, floating down the river Bug.”
This is the nationalist tradition still celebrated in Kiev, and Ukrainians do not have to belong to Right Sector, Svoboda, or other organized Fascist groups to unleash the same nationalist fury in their zeal to have a country for their own kind without ethnic minorities. Members of Yatsenyuk and Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party – like Andriy Parubiy, who commanded the defense forces at the Maidan and now heads the National Security and Defense Council – still venerate Bandera’s tradition, though they’ve tried to whitewash away as much as they can. They still talk the same talk, which comes through in Yatsenyuk’s saber-rattling, and the world should expect many of them to walk the same barbaric walk.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
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