NEO-NAZI THREAT in UKRAINE -- BBC NEWSNIGHT REPORT

[KoKo]

This troubling racist element of the “inspiring” Ukrainian uprising has been mostly airbrushed from the U.S. media’s narrative, but more honest sources of news have reported this disturbing reality. [For instance, watch this report from the BBC.]
Neo-Nazi threat in new Ukraine: NEWSNIGHT

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Crimea’s Case for Leaving Ukraine
Virtually everyone in Official Washington is condemning Russian “aggression” in Ukraine and demanding a belligerent U.S. response to Crimea’s desire to secede and join Russia, as a new Cold War hysteria grips U.S. pols and pundits
by Robert Parry
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/09-7

If you were living in Crimea, would you prefer to remain part of Ukraine with its coup-installed government – with neo-Nazis running four ministries including the Ministry of Defense – or would you want to become part of Russia, which has had ties to Crimea going back to Catherine the Great in the 1700s?

Granted, it’s not the greatest choice in the world, but it’s the practical one facing you. For all its faults, Russia has a functioning economy while Ukraine really doesn’t. Russia surely has its share of political and financial corruption but some of that has been brought under control.

A map showing Crimea (in beige) and its proximity to both the Ukrainian mainland and Russia.A map showing Crimea (in beige) and its proximity to both the Ukrainian mainland and Russia.

Not so in Ukraine where a moveable feast of some 10 “oligarchs” mostly runs the show in shifting alliances, buying up media outlets and politicians, while the vast majority of the population faces a bleak future, which now includes more European-demanded “austerity,” i.e. slashed pensions and further reductions in already sparse social services.

Even if the U.S.-backed plan for inserting Ukraine into the European Union prevails, Ukrainians would find themselves looking up the socio-economic ladder at the Greeks and other European nationals already living the nightmare of “austerity.”

Beyond that humiliation and misery, the continuing political dislocations across Ukraine would surely feed the further rise of right-wing extremists who espouse not only the goal of expelling ethnic Russians from Ukraine but Jews and other peoples considered not pure Ukrainian.

[2banon]

1. Some brush this off as insignificant. I don't agree

K & R ..


Thanks for posting.

[rdharma]

2. Nor do I...... The neo-nazis are the "muscle" behind the Ukrainian putsch.

Eerily similar to the SA (Brown Shirts) in Germany in the 1930's.

[2banon]

12. I don't know how much muscle they have..

but I do understand that it's not the sole reason for Moscow to take "preemptive" security measures.. I'm thinking if Moscow set up shop in Tijuana, I'd take certain security actions in response. We've set up NATO surrounding Russia's Western borders over the past several years, to Moscow's continued protest and alarm.

If we cared so much about the freedom of people in Ukraine, we should have stayed the hell out of their country's internal politics, and prevented NATO installations from the region including the Baltic States.

That's what's really at issue.

[levp]

3. Is the Ukrainian Revolution really fascist?

"Is the Ukrainian Revolution really fascist?" AMERICAblog (by John Aravosis)

""

The Russians claim that one of the main reasons they are preparing to annex Ukrainian Crimea, and may end up occupying all of Ukraine in the coming weeks, is that Nazis have run amok in the nation on their southwestern border.

You’ll hear a similar argument from some on the American left, who don’t want to see the United States and Europe take any serious steps to counter the Russian incursion.

So I decided to look into the question – and as the BBC notes, in an excellent article, it’s a mixed bag. More on that in a moment.
(...)
Has the Ukrainian revolution been co-opted by fascists? Not quite.
(...)
The second seminal piece on the matter was written by Timothy Snyder in the New York Review of Books.
In a rather long, but comprehensive, piece Snyder makes a similar case as the BBC: There is far-right influence, it’s not nearly as pervasive as some are alleging, its involvement is, to a degree, understandable, and people should keep an eye on it.
(...)
Europe’s peculiar embrace of parties considered “extreme” in America
(...)
The thing is, lots of Europeans countries have far-right parties that get more than 5% of the vote.

There’s “Sweden Democrats,” a group of – you guessed it – former neo-Nazis that won 5.7% of the national vote in 2010, which earned it 20 seats in parliament, enough to deny a governing majority to the sitting conservative government.

Then there’s the neo-Nazi “Golden Dawn” party in Greece, a party that won 7% in nationwide parliamentary elections in 2012, giving it seats in the Greek parliament.

Or the far-right “Danish People’s Party” (they all have such “nice”-sounding names). The DPP won 12.3% of the vote in 2011, which was actually a decline in support from the previous election.

And last, but not last (there are numerous additional examples), there’s my personal favorite, “France’s “National Front,” which got a whopping 18% in the first round of presidential elections in 2012, and whose leader is now at 24% in the national polls.

What percent of the national vote did Ukraine’s far-right Svoboda party get? 10%.

None of this is to downplay the extremism in any of those parties. And my friends in Europe tend to share my (our) concern about each of them. But it’s not enough to warn that the far-right got 10% in the Ukrainian election when it gets nearly twice that in France.
(...)
So what’s their point exactly?

So what point exactly is the “they’re all fascists” crowd trying to make?

It sounds like they’re arguing against the US and Europe doing anything significant to stop the Russian onslaught because Ukraine doesn’t have “clean hands,” as we say in the law.

But Saddam Hussein didn’t have clean hands, and it sure didn’t stop many of those same critics from (rightly) blasting George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. In fact, Saddam’s hands were a lot less clean than anything Svoboda has done, or wants to do, in Ukraine.
(...)
And my question for them is: How perfect does a government have to be before its citizens have the right to live free?

""

[War Horse]

4. Good post

One might also want to consider this, in this context:

http://www.infowars.com/bbc-now-admits-armed-nazis-led-revolution-in-kiev-ukraine/

[levp]

5. No, thanks.

Infowars.com = crazy Alex Jones = not reading that.

[War Horse]

6. Kinda my point...

Same headline.

[levp]

8. Oh... got it. n/t

[KoKo]

9. This is from the BBC, though and NOT "Info Wars" ....Just Saying...

However maybe "Info Wars" took their headline from the BBC so that would mean they used their info. So ........who knows. But, BBC is more approved around here than IW... so that's what it is.

I'm not a Joe McCarthy type...so I'm not dissing if you read "Info Wars" site. I just didn't want folks to start trashing my thread that it wasn't on DU's Readers "Approved Sources" reading list.

Just saying.

[BelgianMadCow]

14. You're safe, as long as RT doesn't copy the beeb's headline

[Purveyor]

7. kick. Thanks for posting. +1 eom

[KoKo]

10. Thanks for checking it out. Thought it was interesting...

[iamthebandfanman]

11. so simple minded

folks are on DU to think that recognizing the nationalist and neo Nazi surge in eastern Europe is somehow pro-Russia or pro-putin.. couldn't be further from the truth. its just reality. their movement is on the rise.
I hate putin and his invasion of crimea is crossing the line..
but its true that the Nazis are attempting to gain power in the Ukraine... that's just fact.
Russia knows because it has its own problem with it.


whether people like it or not, the Nazis have taken the protests as opportunity to destroy and take over as much as it can..
those are the folks who decided to tear down lenin statues... other Ukrainians were just caught up in it and thought it was giving it to Russia by being disrespectful to lenin.. but Russia doesn't care about lenin..
the neo Nazis care about him and what he stood for tho.. so of course they go after statues of leftists (and sadly when it first started occurring, some folks on DU cheered it happening)..

[Catherina]

15. European Parliament resolution of 13 December 2012

European Parliament resolution of 13 December 2012 on the situation in Ukraine, Thursday, 13 December 2012 - Strasbourg

8. Is concerned about the rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support for the Svoboda Party, which, as a result, is one of the two new parties to enter the Verkhovna Rada; recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU's fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party;

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2012-0507+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

But somehow that was all forgotten overnight. It's the same mistake the European Industrialists, especially German, made in the 30s when they thought they would control these people.