Several years ago at the annual May Day rally in Newcastle, UK, a local trade unionist spoke about fascism’s insidious nature and the duty that workers have in identifying and curbing the reemergence of this evil before it has an opportunity to take root in society, poison minds and elevate the objectively ridiculous to the level of indisputable dogma. She described the Nazi Party’s rise to power and rhetorically asked how a nation that produced philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Martin Luther and Karl Marx, alongside the music of Beethoven, Bach and Handel, could so easily lose its humanity by committing acts of the greatest barbarity. Two quotes attributed to Adolf Hitler shed light on how millions may be duped into expressing genocidal hatred towards an entire race or ethnic group.
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”
The apparent ease with which fear propagates ideas which might otherwise be easily rejected as absurd is both frightening and baffling.
Recall the speed with which an orgy of violence erupted between Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda’s genocide following the 1994 assassination of Rwanda’s Hutu President, Juvenal Habyarimana.
In the 1990s, propaganda incited Serbs, Croats and Bosnian to turn against their neighbours alongside whom they had lived for decades. Witness how easily far right Israeli politicians stir up anger and angst within the hearts and minds of Israeli settlers.
Pronouncements such as those made by Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, advocating the elimination of Israeli Arabs deemed disloyal to the State of Israel adds fuel to the flames of conflict: “Those who are against us, there’s nothing to be done – we need to pick up an axe and cut off his head,”.
The lie that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had at his disposal the WMD to wreak destruction upon the ‘freedom loving’ Western world within 45 minutes, oiled the wheels of a US driven juggernaut which desolated a nation posing no threat to either Europe or North America.
The fable that hordes of Jihadist extremists seek to destroy our day of life because they “hate our freedoms” conveniently obfuscates the reality that Western support for corrupt Kings and dictators within the Arab world (the Shah of Iran, Gaddafi, Mubarak, the Saudi Royal family, Saddam and Assad in the former days) plays a role in radicalising the poor and oppressed.
More recently, revamped Cold War rhetoric resurfaced to portray the USA’s ideological nemesis led by ‘KGB villain’ Vladimir Putin as the newest imagined threat to Western civilisation.
It appears that pundits and politicians have learnt little over the past decade. Just as a decade earlier no evidence proving Iraq possessed WMD or had any connection to the 9/11 attacks did not stop a war of aggression, the lack of photos or video footage of Russia tanks invading Ukrainian territory is no obstacle to perpetuating the story that Russia invaded Ukraine. In a classical example of Orwellian doublespeak, few would dare postulate that NATO troops invaded Eastern Europe after the collapse of the USSR despite the large numbers of soldiers and military bases in former Soviet territories. Despite former US Secretary of State, James Baker, and various European leaders pledging that NATO would not expand beyond the borders of Germany, this has happened.
NATO has incorporated several Baltic States and seeks to advance into Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and perhaps beyond.The former Warsaw pact countries won their ‘freedom’ in the early 1990s and promptly switched one master for another. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
Russian troops stationed on Crimean territory, by a long-standing agreement with Ukraine, any military manoeuvres taking place squarely within Russia borders, or even the provision of humanitarian aid to residents of the war torn Donbass region are considered acts of aggression by the Kiev regime. Contrast this attitude with the presence of regular NATO military exercises across the Baltic states. Recently military vehicles belonging to the US Army’s Second Cavalry Regiment paraded through the Estonian town of Narva, across a river and only three hundred metres away from the Russia border, as reported by the Washington Post. NATO do not consider this to be a bellicose, or at least a very unwise, act which could easily racket up tensions between The West and Eurasia. WAR IS PEACE.
The openly racist attitudes of some Ukrainian politicians towards their country’s Russian speaking population came to the fore following a US funded and orchestrated coup that ousted President Victor Yanukovich. Far right extremists played a significant role in the coup acting as shock troops. Their actions were praised by many Western politicians who promoted the violence as acts that would usher in an age of democracy and free Ukraine from the shadow of its apparently threatening Eastern neighbour, a country with which it has long been fused culturally and historically. Elements of far right paramilitary formations, such as the Azov battalion and the Right Sector hold Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera in high esteem.
Some of their members have been seen unashamedly wearing Nazi symbols in public. The far right paramilitaries in today’s Ukraine were not only used to spearhead the overthrow of an elected, though corrupt, President, but have since been unleashed against their (former) fellow countrymen and women who wanted no part in the new nationalistic and xenophobic Ukraine which exploded onto the world stage in Feb 2014.
During the Second World War, under Bandera’s leadership, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (or UPA) murdered thousands of Jews and non Jewish Poles and Russians. In the single region of Volyn, the UPA slaughtered an estimated 40,000 Poles in order to ethnically cleanse the region of non-Ukrainians in preparation for a future Ukrainian state as per the 1943 decisions of the UPA’s politician wing, the OUN (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists). In July 1941 OUN militants participated in the Lviv pogrom, alongside the invading German troops, in which thousands of Jews were killed. Last year, modern day Bandera sympathisers went about the task of trying to purify Ukraine of ethnic Russians and ‘traitors’.
The paramilitary organisations that played a role in the invasion of the seceding Donetsk and Lugansk regions make no secret of their ideological inspiration. It is sad fact that for the first time since 1945, militants who admire Nazi collaborators and take inspiration from the ideology of the Third Reich are goose-stepping through a European capital. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Some of those who suffered in the 1940s, such as Ukrainians whom the UPA deemed traitors and persecuted alongside Poles, Jews and Russians, are still alive to see the same evil arise twice within their lifetimes. A small vestige of comfort may be that just as these dark forces failed in their drive against USSR in WW2, they are again failing to occupy control former Soviet territories nowadays.
The Western media talks ad nauseam about Russia’s alleged ‘invasion’ of Ukraine. It is quite plausible that the some Russian agents are on the ground in Eastern Ukraine. This would not be surprising and in many ways logical as the hostile Kiev administration has been working hard to create instability in the border regions between the two countries. Likewise there is scant condemnation of allegations that the US and Canada are planning on sending lethal and non-lethal weaponry and advisors to Ukraine. Not to be outdone, UK Prime Minister David Cameron proposed to send military trainers to assist the Kiev regime.
Just imagine the lengths to which the US would go if a rival nation poured billions of dollars into supporting anti-US groups in a neighbouring country and helped instigate a coup to elevate such groups to power. The British and American media have gone into overdrive spouting myths of Putin’s desire for a new cold war and reminding us that Russia invaded Ukraine (honest!). Despite globalised surveillance and satellites scrutinising every corner of the globe, we are still waiting for evidence that Putin’s tanks are joyriding around Ukraine.
Despite this lack of evidence and the propagation of a myth at least as big as the story that Saddam had WMD, Western politicians, pundits, and unfortunately many people in the West (though perhaps increasingly less so as time goes on) are swallowing the story. The best President Poroshenko’s regime can manufacture in terms of proof was handed to US Republic Senator James Inhofe by Lt. Col. Semen Semenchenko, the commander of the Donbas Volunteer Assault Battalion and a newly elected member of the Ukrainian parliament.
Semenchenko’s photos purportedly showed “Russian troops in T-72 tanks, B.T.R. armoured personnel carriers, and B.M.P. infantry fighting vehicles entering eastern Ukraine”. After months of claims, the ‘evidence’ finally coughed up did not actually depict Russian soldiers or vehicles conducting the much proclaimed invasion about which Porshenko and friends fantasise daily. The pictures reportedly showed separatists from the secessionist regions of the former East of Ukraine as well Russian troops conducting operations in South Ossetia, near Georgia’s border, six years ago.
Epic fail. The US senator was embarrassed at having swallowed Semenchenko’s propaganda. One has to ask, how many US and European politicians actually believe Russian has invaded Ukraine and how many pretend they do just to use Ukraine for their own interests. It seems to me that the US is happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. Meanwhile ‘patriots’ such as Poroshenko are happy to fulfil their side of the bargain and send their citizens to kill and be killed. The USA, of course, always support democracy except when exercised by those whose plans do not fit with the US’ hegemonic agenda.
Dr Tomasz Pierscionek is editor of the London Progressive Journal
