The conflict in Ukraine grinds on. The recent talks in Istanbul between Ukrainian Kiev representatives and the Russians indicated some small steps to a peaceful settlement.
However the largest stumbling block in the long-term (aside from further American military involvement in Ukraine after the war ends), is the de-nazification of Ukraine.
While Western media frequently displayed concern prior to 2014 of neo-nazi elements in Ukraine, we are now told that nazis are a figment in the imagination of the Russians- an excuse to invade Ukraine. However the history and evidence of neonazis in Ukraine is unequivocal, dating back to the Ukrainian nationalist movements of the late 19th century, where pride in a Ukrainian state was tied to Ukrainian slavic racial identity- unique (and vastly superior) to either Russians or Poles, and most certainly Jews and Gypsies.
The now ‘Hero of Ukraine’ Stepan Bandera is one of many extreme Ukrainian nationalists who espoused the fantasy of genetic superiority of ‘true’ Ukrainians.
The superiority of one or other of the ‘white’ races was an accepted and normative view of many Western populations and governments after Darwin’s “On the Origins of Species” was published in 1859. What else could explain the ease with which European and American forces could over-run, terrorise, enslave and loot countries in Asia, Africa and South America, if it was not that those races were ‘inferior’?
The Empires of Britain, Belgium, France, Holland and Germany and the United States’ colonies, were proof enough of the ‘white’ man’s superiority! A superiority, they reasoned that was timeless. The ‘science’ of eugenics allowed Western citizens to indulge in a fantasy world that explained and validated their brutality of other countries’ citizens.
The German physician and anthropologist Alfred Ploetz first laid out the major assumptions and definition of “racial hygiene” in his book, entitled “Foundations of a Eugenics” in 1895.
Many clinicians in the United States particularly became passionate eugenicists- eager to ensure that only the ‘purest’ survived. The film “Black Stork” of 1917 epitomises the eugenicist approach.
The current American view of the United States as the ‘exceptional nation’ continues to embody much of these bizarre prejudices.
As Samuel Phillips Huntingdon noted in his “The Clash of Civilizations (1996)“; The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values of religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted), but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.
Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ book of 1925 simply piggy-backed on the flawed concepts of eugenics- creating an elaborate fantasy about the genetic superiority of the ‘genius’ Aryan race, of which the Germanic tribes were the ultimate and lesser ‘races’ could be exterminated.
In turn, Ukrainian nationalists seized on the ‘principles’ of eugenics and later the racial aspects of National Socialism (Nazism) as a way to ‘purify” Ukraine from the inferior ‘invader’ races; the Jews, Poles, Gypsies and Russians. The Ukrainian nationalist groups,; the OUN-B led by Stepan Bandera ( established in 1929) , and others vacillated between enthusiastically supporting the Nazis in their brutal occupation of Ukraine , and trying to create a Ukrainian state free of both the German Nazis, communists, Jews and Russian speakers.
While Stepan Bandera and many of the other Ukrainian nationalists were eliminated by the Soviet Union after the second world war, their dream of a ‘pure’ Ukraine lived on- largely in Canada in the significant Ukrainian diaspora there, and in the United States.
With the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1992, new opportunities for the Banderites and other Ukrainian nationalists arose, supported through discreet channels in the United States, British and likely Canadian intelligence communities as a way to undermine and dismantle Russia; (which continued to be seen as a potential threat to Western interests, despite no longer being communist).
Once the United States had enabled the Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014 and eliminated any possibility of Russian speaking eastern Ukrainians having a political voice in Ukraine, those extreme nationalist groups were able to consolidate their power, and their para-military groups were formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military’s structure.
The Azov and Aidar battalions particularly were thus able to access the vast amount of NATO weaponry pouring into the country after 2014. (Note that while Ukraine is not, and likely never will be , a NATO ‘member’, it is formally recognised as a NATO ‘ally’, and its military structures and weaponry are completely aligned with NATO structures).
While extreme nationalist parties have not been able to grab a significant proportion of the people’s votes in Ukrainian elections, their influence on the internal mechanics of the ruling political party, Zelensky’s “Servant of the People”, has been considerable. The Jewish and Russian-speaking Zelensky was voted in as Ukrainian President in 2019 on a platform of ending the war in Eastern Ukraine (the Donbass), but promptly had to reverse his position under threat from nationalist leaders.
The Ukrainian Army war (predominantly via the neo-nazi battalions) against the separatist Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine- (the Donbass), thus dragged on for 8 years after 2014 ,with the loss of 14,000 lives- mainly Russian speakers in the Donbass.
As the war with Russia too drags on, more and more stories and videos are surfacing of the savagery and brutality of those neo-nazi groups and the much feared government ‘Security Service of Ukraine’ (the SBU), in Eastern Ukraine.
The neo-nazi Banderite theology after all, states that morality is not something to take into account when addressing the needs of the state. The goal of a ‘pure’ Ukrainian state takes all precedence over morality, and the ‘cockroach’ Russian speakers can therefore be brutalised and eliminated with impunity, as they are not ‘pure ‘ Ukrainians, if indeed they are really human at all.
Such sadistic and thuggish views have become endemic in Ukrainian society; particularly, but not exclusively in the Western regions of Ukraine. 8 years of white supremacist propaganda have done their work on the population.
Or perhaps this…
Not only has the Ukrainian population been propagandized into accepting Nazi ideology as ‘normal’ and acceptable in the face of the Russian threat, but Western media has, since the beginning of the war, been simultaneously pumping out denials of the existence of Nazis in Ukraine whilst showing videos of them in the war!
As a New Zealander, I am ashamed to note that our government is circulating neo-nazi media stories and videos on its state funded media, while decrying the mass shooting of Muslims in Christchurch in March 2019 by an Australian white supremacist who had explicit connections with the Azov Battalion.
And so, as Westerners, we are astonished as to why the Russians would invade Ukraine, when the Ukrainians are just trying to live peaceful lives with the help of the West and NATO! ( which ‘clearly’ is not a threat to Russia , (despite arming all its neighbours to the teeth with weaponry!)
The level of hostility to all things Russian, along with a complete unwillingness to show a Russian perspective about the war in Western media, would indicate that the white Western world is at war with Russia in all but name.
Putin therefore must be depicted as a cartoon mad-man character whose lust for power has resulted in his deranged invasion of little Ukraine.
This does not mean that we should not condemn the Russian invasion in the strongest possible terms- we most certainly should.
But instead of attempting to re-arm the Ukrainians and prolong a dreadful war where millions have been displaced and thousands killed and wounded, we need to acknowledge the enormous threat that a re-energised nazi movement has; not just for Ukraine and Russia, and as Germany once again, re-arms, but for the world, and remove the possibility of a Nazi party ever coming to power again in the world.
We owe that to our children!
We are all humanly equal in this world; we may not all have the same experiences and opportunities in life- but we are indubitably equal and all worthy of kindness, love and respect.
Postscript:
An in-depth damning report from Jacques Baud: a former colonel of the Swiss General Staff, an ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries, trained in the American and British intelligence services, and a Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. Jacques Baud details the explicit complicity of NATO members in the Kiev government’s war using the Neonazis paramilitaries against Russian speakers in the Donbass since 2014, and their deliberate intent to provoke Russia into military action in Ukraine.
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Links
https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/545134d251854fef65000001
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mein-Kampf
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
https://www.academia.edu/12951527/The_Fascist_Kernel_of_Ukrainian_Genocidal_Nationalism
(SBU) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_detention_centers_of_SBU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_Ukrainian_Nationalists
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/eastern-front
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