Fake “leftists” provide cover for right-wing terror in Ukraine: An Interview with Borotba's Dmytriy Kovalevich
by Susann Witt-Stahl, Junge Welt, via Red Star Over Donbass
‘Left’ Alibi – About camouflaged Ukrainian nationalists and right-wing terror in his country: An interview with Borotba’s Dmytriy Kovalevich
You still publish in left media such as newcoldwar.org and Tlaxcala. But you can no longer engage in your profession as an editor since the change of power in Kiev. Why?
Many left media in Ukraine have been discontinued since the Maidan. Journalists were attacked and imprisoned for their criticism of the new regime. The Ukrainian Ministry of Information has refused to allow our new newspaper, because it is called, after Mayakovsky and Eisler, “Left March.” In my country, a journalist must accept the nationalist course or stop work.
Although the Ukrainian secret service and militant nationalists hunt, detain, and even murder left-wing Marxists, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLS) project coordinator Neila Vakhovska, with their magazine ProStory, and others of the “New Left” launched a campaign against your organization in March 2014 …
… We are talking about an action of a maximum of 15 to 20 people who claim to represent five or six organizations. Many of these alleged left-liberals are in reality nationalists and were very angry when our activists stood in the way of their friends – the militant right. Not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine, there are bizarre phenomena such as “National Bolsheviks” and “National Anarchists” and “leftists” who believe that the EU is “true socialism.”
But in September 2014, Borotba was invited to take part in a conference organized by RLS partner the Center for Social and Labor Research, entitled “The Ukrainian War and Politics of the Left” in Kiev. Why didn’t you participate?
Prior to the conference, there were fierce debates among the organizers. Some nationalist liberals threatened its cancellation if Borotba attended. Only after our offices were devastated by fascist paramilitaries and our members forced to flee Kiev, or at least no longer appear in public, did they invite us — the only left Antimaidan organization invited.
What role do the “New Left” partners of RLS play?
Each coup must be justified somehow as an expression of “popular will.” The Maidan was dominated by a right-wing mob commanded by the founder of the “Social Nationalist Party,” Andrej Parubi, and had to suggest that it represents the “political spectrum.” Notwithstanding the fact that the Maidan ‘left’ – the anti-capitalist left were not tolerated — consisted of not even ten persons. A fake “left” provides the new government with an alibi to heave Ukraine into NATO, to enforce neoliberal reforms and to suppress the opposition.
The RLS pays tribute to its Ukrainian partners for their “differentiated history and world view.”
None of the partners of RLS in Ukraine have “differentiated history and world views.” They only repeat anti-Soviet nationalism. Pro-Soviet positions which still represent the majority of Ukrainians are completely suppressed. This is done in the name of a sharp critique of nationalism, in particular the Ukrainian one. With these “differentiated views,” RLS partners can also support “Pegida.” The result is the whitewashing of the war crimes of the Ukrainian OUN-UPA-fascists — ironically, with the help of a German institution.
Translated by Greg Butterfield. The cover photo shows a Borotba march in Ukraine.
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The sadness of the political debate in post-Soviet Union countries like Ukraine is that it is all about power politics and hardly ever on issues. Different factions constantly challenge each other’s legitimacy, accuse each other of “corruption” (making that a personal problem rather than an institutional one as a side effect), exclude each other from fora and call each other fake.
The sad thing is that even if Borot’ba wanted to present a view on issues, it is simply not possible in such an environment. I am sure that if you’d ask any other group, they would call Borot’ba fake lefties or accuse them of working for Russia/EU/US/whatever. Discourses like the one above have become interchangeable. In the end it doesn’t matter what they say. Democracy is effectively broken.
If they were lucky. More likely, they would just murder them – the way they cheerfully murdered Oles Buzina. Whose death has never been investigated.
In terms of how the Press reports things, the UK is little different. You have two groups of London luvvies, on the one hand the very right wing Press (Express, Sun, Mail, Telegraph) and the pseudo left (Independent, Guardian, Mirror), but there is absolutely nothing which represents what the average voter thinks, if you free from from the group think of the BBC and London media. The Times and the Financial Times are for the rich Establishment….
If you still decide to read a daily newspaper, it does not prove your political views to say you read the Daily Mail ergo you are small-minded petty Tory. It means that, in your opinion, this is the least worst newspaper option available.
There is no newspaper which proposes the following:
1. UK withdrawal from EU and NATO.
2. Promotion of the 19th century civic values of mutualism, particularly in regional financial services, healthcare provision, energy provision etc.
3. Promotion of global alliances with mid-sized nations rather than desperate clinging to a UNSC veto through grovelling to Washington/flirting with China/EU.
4. Rebranding of Britain as a post-imperial nation no longer interested in being a global policeman, rather a peace-loving nation trading willingly around the globe.
5. A distinct disinterest in interfering in the affairs of the Middle East, except when splinters of that region threaten homeland security (which will of course lead to MI5/6 shenanigans shrivelling to a great extent).
6. A Britain as tough on itself when posturing about global democracy as it is on foreigners and terrorists and the rule of law, particularly in regard to its foreign adventurism.
7. A Britain not run for the benefit of London.
8. A national infrastructure plan not spending vast swathes of its budget solely on London and recognising that the NE of England is in need of such spending as well, just to mention one particularly crude example…….
9. A country not obsessed with selling over-priced property to rich foreigners, many of dodgy repute, thereby preventing its own citizens from joining the property ladder.
10. A country not obsessed with speculation, spivvery, asset stripping and electronic theft, instead valuing innovation, hard work, honesty and endeavour.
The reason we just had the voluminous Chilcot report was in no small part due to the media reporting of the proposed intervention of the time. Craven lying by many journalists still in post, all of whom should have been banned for life for wilfully lying to promote the deaths of 100,000 people, just because America told us to…….nothing would be better for Britain than the public execution of 100 shameless ‘journalists’ whose amorality knows no bounds, yet they have the crass hypocrisy to claim that they are Christians…….and all of them continue to peddle their security services drivel to this day…….
I read the Morning Star. Daily paper of the left:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk
A newspaper owned by its readers (it’s a co-operative) and quite unlike the corporate press that you rightly berate.
Thank you for providing this valuable article, in a commendable translation.
The sad thing is, the Western “lefties” (with very few exceptions) do exactly the same.