As
I wrote elsewhere (http://mltoday.com/tragedy-in-ukraine),
Ukraine is a great tragedy for the people. Caught in the web of
imperial powers, many Ukrainians were seduced by the European Union
and the US into collaborating in the overthrow of the elected
government. While the US and European media depicted events as
reflecting a yearning for Western values and culture, they
conveniently sidestepped the questions of constitutionality and
electoral legitimation. The fact that the former leaders of Ukraine
came to power through mechanisms worshiped in the West as the
foundations of civility and the rule of law counts for nothing in the
carving up of spheres of influence.
Even
at the last moment, when the Ukraine government struck a deal with
the opposition favorable to the anti-government insurgents and
guaranteed by the EU, the Western media ignored the blatant betrayal
of that agreement and the complicity of the guarantors. Shamefully,
the media masked the critical role of the hyper-nationalist,
Jew-baiting fascists in the front lines of the opposition’s street
fighters.
In
the US, the intellectual courtiers-- the obsequious academics--
dutifully filled the airwaves and newsprint with tributes to the
heroic, democracy-loving opposition. They assured us that the
opposition represented exactly what the US State Department said they
were. How convenient!
Before
the coup against Yanukovych, the Washington Post's Anne
Applebaum wrote a column (Ukrainian smears and stereotypes,
2-20-14) promising to explain the Ukrainian “crisis” to those who
might foolishly believe an illegal coup was brewing (“the Ukrainian
crisis can seem murky”). She mocks the language of those
questioning the legitimacy of the opposition in Ukraine and paints
the Russians with vulgar Cold War invective and Russo-phobia: “At
the same time, those who throw these terms [“fascist” or “Nazi”]
around should remember that the strongest anti-Semitic, homophobic
and xenophobic rhetoric in this region is not coming from the
Ukrainian far right but from the Russian press, and ultimately the
Russian regime.” So if the Ukrainian right are fascists, we should
overlook it because the Russians are worse. Tu quoque!
It
is a measure of our times that the Washington Post, on whose
editorial board she serves, fails to reveal that Applebaum is married
to the Polish foreign minister and is herself a Polish national,
relationships that link her with the regime most ardently supportive
of the opposition.
Others
will know her as the Pulitzer prize-winning author of numerous
“histories” of the Soviet era, all marked by an unconcealed
hostility towards socialism. Her zeal for damning every aspect of the
Soviet experience has earned her a place in the hearts of old Cold
Warriors and on the pages of such rabid anti-Communist publications
as The New York Review of Books. Her newly found status as a
major media gas bag of the Bill O'Reilly school of historiography has
apparently not tarnished her intellectual reputation among liberals.
Reaching
for the same stature, her colleague, Timothy Snyder, is equally
notorious with his histrionic and unfortunately celebrated book,
Bloodlands, another victim-counting effort meant to equate
Hitler and Stalin. Like Applebaum, Snyder is among a newer generation
of offspring of Robert Conquest, the Cold War hack who gathered
anecdotes and inflated them into millions of deaths at the hands of
“blood-thirsty Bolsheviks.” We now know from Soviet archives that
Conquest's numbers were vastly exaggerated. We now know from further
revelations that Conquest enjoyed sponsorship from US security agents
in his efforts to rally gullible minds in the West. Unfortunately, no
one with sufficient credentials and major media access will today
counter the similarly inflated horror stories of Applebaum and
Snyder.
But
we can wonder why Amy Goodman would invite Snyder on her radio/TV
show, Democracy Now! (2-24-14) for his opinion of
events in Ukraine. From a promising beginning as a Left media voice,
Goodman has too often given credence to those fawning after US
imperial posture in her coverage of Eastern Europe, Libya, Syria and
other imperialist ventures.
Predictably,
Snyder mounts a vigorous defense of the opposition:
It
[the opposition] included people from—included Muslims. It included
Jews. It included professionals. It included working-class people.
And the main demand of the movement the entire time was something
like normality, the rule of law.
Strange
that Snyder could paint such a diverse, liberal picture of the
opposition from his perch at Yale University, particularly when
Goodman's other guest, Professor Petro, reporting from his vantage
point in Ukraine, depicted an opposition welded together by fervent
Ukrainian nationalism. Interestingly, the opposition-in-power's first
acts, as reported by Professor Petro, were to restrict local use of
the Russian language and a resolution to outlaw the Communist Party--
hardly an endorsement of diversity or liberalism. Snyder did not
dispute this claim.
And
Snyder demonizes Yanukovych:
And
the reason why this demand [for the rule of law] could bring together
such people of different political orientations, such different
regional backgrounds, is that they were faced up against someone, the
previous president, Yanukovych, whose game was to monopolize both
financial and political as well as violent power in one place. The
constitution, the legitimacy of which is now contested, was violated
by him multiple times, and most of the protesters agree to that.
What
a tangled argument! Snyder charges the former Ukrainian president
with seriously violating his constitution which is immediately
dismissed as “contested”! Which is it? Inviolable or not?
Nor
does his concern for constitutionality and the rule of law lead him
to condemn the opposition for ignoring the constitutionally
sanctioned mechanisms for removing a president. Yanukovych's alleged
“monopoly” on violence fails to account for the street violence
conceded by Western media through lurid pictures of masked
“protesters” throwing fire bombs and attacking police. Snyder
treats Goodman's listeners to a dose of propaganda rather than a
truthful commentary.
Professor
Petro gently challenged Snyder's account, returning again and again
to the fanatical Ukrainian nationalism of the opposition. Snyder
responded patronizingly:
Yeah,
I mean, as Professor Petro probably knows, that’s the subject of my
specialization. And, of course, I share his concern. Svoboda takes
its example from the history of the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists, an interwar, extreme-right party which I would not
hesitate to call fascist. The Pravi sector also refers to the same
historical symbolism. Both of them speak of the necessity for a
national revolution, especially Pravi sector. They are significant.
An
honest “specialist” would note that the OUN was not merely
extreme-right or even fascist, but made up of Nazi collaborators
responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent
Soviet civilians including much of the Jewish population. The OUN's
equation of Judaism and Bolshevism invited its identification with
the Nazi occupiers. One would think that Snyder's “specialization”
in Eastern European history would demand that he call out the
opposition on this point. At the very least, he should issue a demand
to purge the coup-installed government of such elements. One would
think, as well, that Amy Goodman would call out Snyder on this
failing.
As
Ukraine moves towards becoming the flash point of a regional or even
broader war, my colleagues remind my of the similarities with Europe
in 1914, with imperial powers elevating threats and demands, with a
reckless empowering of forces beyond anyone's control, and with
nativist sentiments rabidly unleashed.
Unfortunately,
we lack a significant anti-imperialist front in most European
countries and the US. Even Samuel Gompers, the reactionary leader of
the AFL at the turn of the last century joined US writer Mark Twain
and numerous other luminaries in founding a US Anti-Imperialist
League. Today, our labor movement leaders are complicit in or silent
on US meddling in Ukraine and numerous other countries. And US
liberals, in all too great numbers, endorse US imperialism as a
crusade for democracy and the vaunted “rule of law.” With peace
so desperately needed, we lack a vibrant peace movement to counter
the threat of war.
We must
aggressively act to change this confusion and complacency before it
is too late.
Zoltan
Zigedy
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