I'm glad at least some one in the western press is onto the fact that
Putin's regime is completely fascist / nazi in character and in deeds.
Kudos to Snyder.
On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 2:51 AM, Stefan Lemieszewski <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>
> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117048/crimean-referendum-was-electoral-farce
> New Republic
> 17Mar2014
> *Far-Right Forces are Influencing Russia's Actions in Crimea*
> By Timothy Snyder
>
> Russian authorities claim that their invasion of Ukraine is justified by
> the fascist threat posed by the new authorities in Kiev. The Ukrainian
> government is led by a conservative technocrat called Arseniy Yatseniuk.
> The Ukrainian revolution involved people from all walks of life and all
> political orientations. The far right was overrepresented in the people who
> fought the riot police in its final weeks, as the Ukrainian regime resorted
> to kidnapping, torture, and mass shooting. Members of the right-wing party
> Svoboda hold a handful of portfolios in the new government, although far
> more are held by conventional political parties and people of different
> views. This spring, elections should demonstrate the limited popularity of
> the far right within Ukrainian society. In opinion polls held in
> anticipation of the presidential elections scheduled for May 25, the
> leaders of the Ukrainian far right receive the support of 2 percent to 3
> percent of Ukrainian citizens. None of the leading candidates remotely
> resembles a nationalist. If elections are held, the winner will likely be a
> chocolate magnate or a former heavyweight boxer, neither of them remotely
> nationalist.
>
> Of course, the point of Russian intervention is to make sure that these
> elections never happen. It is deeply strange for an openly right-wing
> authoritarian regime, such as that of Vladimir Putin, to treat the presence
> of right-wing politicians in a neighboring democracy as the reason for a
> military invasion. Putin's own social policy is, if anything, to the right
> of the Ukrainians whom he criticizes. The Russian attempt to control
> Ukraine is based upon Eurasian ideology, which explicitly rejects liberal
> democracy. The founder of the Eurasian movement is an actual fascist,
> Alexander Dugin, who calls for a revolution of values from Portugal to
> Siberia. The man responsible for Ukraine policy, Sergei Glayzev, used to
> run a far-right nationalist party that was banned for its racist electoral
> campaign. Putin has placed himself at the head of a worldwide campaign
> against homosexuality. This is politically useful, since opposition to
> Russia is now blamed on an international gay lobby which cannot by its
> nature understand the inherent spirituality of traditional Russian
> civilization.
>
> The Russian invasion and occupation of Crimea was carried out in a spirit
> that recalled to many, including some Russian observers, that of the late
> 1930s. The argument used was that the Russian state had the right to
> protect fellow Russians. Making the case in this way places ethnicity, as
> imagined and proposed by Moscow, more important that international borders
> and international law. Indeed, Russian authorities have been quite explicit
> that this is their doctrine: Ukraine is no longer a state because they say
> so, and all that matters in the world of international relations is
> ethnicity and history as seen from Moscow. The only "right" that
> individuals have in this logic is to be defined as members of a Volk by the
> Kremlin, and then to be invaded or not as appropriate. That Russians in
> Ukraine in fact enjoy far broader freedoms than Russians in Russia is
> irrelevant, since in this scheme people are not individuals but simply
> numerical arguments for territorial expansion. This sort of dismissal of
> states and laws in favor of ethnicity and invasion is not evidence that
> today's Russia opposes fascism.
>
> Crimea under Ukrainian rule has been an autonomous province inhabited,
> alongside Russians and Ukrainians, by the Crimean Tatar minority. The
> Crimean Tatars were deported by the Soviet NKVD as a totality, every man,
> woman, and child, in May 1944. Those who live in Crimea are surviving
> deportees and their children and grandchildren, people who made their way
> back from murderous exile in Soviet Uzbekistan and reestablished themselves
> in what became independent Ukraine. Their return to their homeland was one
> of the precious cases of multicultural integration in post-Soviet Europe.
> As a result, the Crimean Tatars were quite pro-Ukrainian, in the sense of
> preferring Ukrainian law to any other alternative. The Russian invasion of
> their homeland immediately introduced a new sense of threat, recalling for
> many Tatars the experience of ethnic cleansing. Suddenly their houses were
> marked. The mutilated body of a Crimean Tatar man was discovered a few days
> ago. Crimean Tatar women and children were already being sent to the
> Ukrainian mainland before the "referendum." What will follow now will
> likely be worse.
>
> What happened on Sunday in Crimea was an electoral farce. Referenda cannot
> be held under military occupation. Referenda cannot have two options that
> have essentially the same meaning. Referenda cannot be held when all of the
> propaganda is generated by the state. Referenda cannot be held when the
> local television stations are closed and journalists are beaten and
> intimidated. Even in these conditions, the claim that 75 percent of the
> population took part and more than 96 percent voted for annexation to
> Russia is untenable. We know from years of surveys that a majority of
> Crimeans did not favor incorporation by Russia. One large survey showed 33
> percent support for this idea in 2011, down to 23 percent in 2013. The
> Crimean Tatars boycotted the "referendum," as did many Ukrainians, since it
> was declared illegal and unconstitutional by the Ukrainian government. The
> recorded electoral frequency in the city of Sevastopol was 123 percent.
>
> Yet there were some people on hand to praise the "referendum." Moscow sent
> an invitation to parties of the European far right, and found politicians
> willing to serve as "observers." Enrique Ravello has belonged to the
> neo-Nazi CEDADE and now belongs to the extreme-right Plataforma per
> Catalunya. Luc Michel used to belong to the neo-Nazi F�d�ration d'action
> nationaliste et europ�enne and now supports a blend of fascism and
> Bolshevism that is also popular among Russia's Eurasianists. B�la Kov�cs is
> a member of the Hungarian extreme-right party Jobbik and the treasurer of
> the Alliance of European National Movements. That Alliance characterizes
> Russian intervention in Ukraine as a response to the global neoconservative
> conspiracy, portrayed as the latest attempt at Jewish world domination.
>
> While invading and occupying Crimea, Russia has, according to eyewitness
> accounts, sent some of its own citizens to create unrest in east Ukrainian
> cities such as Kharkiv and Donetsk. In both places, in what was seemed like
> a planned scenario, someone took down the Ukrainian flag from a public
> building and replaced it with a Russian one. In Kharkiv the person who did
> this was a Russian citizen who allows himself to be photographed in Nazi
> uniforms. Perhaps this is simply a personal fashion choice. In Donetsk the
> flag-raiser was Pavel Gubarov, a Russian nationalist (and Ukrainian
> citizen) who declared himself to be the people's governor. After he was
> arrested by Ukrainian authorities, he was presented as a hero and a martyr
> on Russian television. In Donetsk Gubarov was known as a neo-Nazi and as a
> member of the fascist organization Russian National Unity.
>
> If there is still anyone on the Left who takes Putin seriously when he
> portrays the Russian occupation of Ukraine as anti-fascist, now might be
> the moment to reconsider.
>
> *Timothy Snyder is Housum Professor of History at Yale University and the
> author of* *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin**.*
>
> =========
>
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