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Ukraine’s anti-Roma pogroms ignored as Russia blamed for far right resurgence

Max Parry

Hate crimes against Ukraine’s Roma community are on the rise with concern growing among human rights groups.

Last month, former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a lecture at Trinity College Dublin made remarks condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin, blaming him for the resurgence of far right politics in the European Union and United States. Clinton stated that Putin…

…has positioned himself as the leader of an authoritarian, white-supremacist and xenophobic movement that wants to break up the EU, weaken America’s traditional alliances and undermine democracy. We can see this authoritarian movement rippling out from the Kremlin, reaching across Europe and beyond. It’s emboldening right-wing nationalists, separatists, racists and even neo-Nazis.“

Before addressing the deceitfulness of her comments, the one part of them that is true needs to be recognized. At this point, it is universally acknowledged that there is a significant revival in far-right and neo-Nazi political activity being experienced in America and across the EU. It is also increasingly present in other countries such as India and Turkey, and even Brazil’s current leading candidate for President is being called a fascist. However, not only is Putin’s more traditional conservatism not in line with the rabidly anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and anti-immigrant orientations mobilizing in the West, according to a recent study the actual determinant of such activity is historically contingent with austerity implemented by neo-liberals like Mrs. Clinton.

There is also one country in Europe facing a regrowth of far right nationalism which throws her narrative about Russia into disarray when considered. While not yet an EU member, the Ukraine was promised a still pending entry into the trade bloc and has undergone the same drift towards fascism. Recently, hate crimes committed by ultra nationalist gangs against its large Roma community have become increasingly widespread to the point where Human Rights Watch, an organization often politicized with a pro-Western bias, has even voiced concern. Forced evictions and violence against the Romani have been occurring under the post-Maidan authorities since 2014, but the attacks have sharply escalated in recent months. HRW reports that:

since the beginning of 2018, human rights groups have documented at least two dozen violent attacks, threats, or instances of intimidation by radical groups such as C14, Right Sector, Traditsiya i Poryadok (Tradition and Order), Karpatska Sich and others against Roma people…”

In April, members of C14 burned down Roma encampments in Kiev. After torching their homes, the vigilante mob terrorized Romani women and children with rocks and mace, posting cell phone video footage bragging about it on social media and vowed more attacks in the future. In late June, masked assailants carrying knives and bats assaulted a Roma camp in Lviv, killing one man and hospitalizing several others. On July 2nd, the body of a Romani woman was found with her throat cut after another siege by masked assailants. Rights groups say the perpetrators are enjoying freedom from any liability from authorities, perhaps because C14 is the recipient of state funding from the Ukrainian government.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Chief Military Prosecutor made publicized anti-Semitic statements in the midst of the violence that “Jews want to drown Ukraine in blood.” It’s no wonder that with such officials in charge of criminal investigations how hate crimes against ethnic minorities could go exempt from punishment. Many of these groups (particularly Right Sector and C14) played a significant role in the Maidan protests that led to a coup ousting the democratically-elected government of Viktor F. Yanukovych after he rejected an EU Association Agreement in favor of an austerity-free bailout from Russia. Their hatred of Russia is a shared interest with U.S. foreign policy, rooted historically in the collaboration between Ukrainian nationalists and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during WWII. Their hostility toward Moscow also eclipses their Euroskepticism as the Maidan brought the prospect of Ukrainian entry into the EU, but the same groups now regularly burn its flag in public demonstrations as well. The extremist militias were used as provocateurs during the protests, and they are now committing hate crimes against ethnic minorities like the Roma.

Ukrainian nationalists in C14

A minority of Romani people, known in the English-speaking world by the exonymic slur ‘gypsies’, have lived in the Ukraine as far back as the 14th century. With mysterious ancestral roots due to their lack of recorded history, the Roma are believed to have originated in Northern India because of their dialect’s linguistic similarity to Hindi. This has been corroborated by recent genetic findings pinpointing their origins and migration, though they are still not considered part of the Indian diaspora. Their history is tainted with extreme persecution nearly everywhere they have traveled, as well as a widespread misunderstanding about their origin and identity.

The term “gypsy” itself even stems from the mistaken belief once held by early Europeans that the Roma descended from Egypt, as does the term “bohemian” when they were thought by the French to have descended from the Kingdom of Bohemia (modern day Czech Republic). The French perception of the Romani was a derogatory view of them as cheap, promiscuous vagrants living in self-imposed poverty. In English ‘bohemian’ is used to denote a free spirited and unconventional lifestyle as the French extended the term to include artists who dwelled in lower class Romani neighborhoods. Today, Roma minority communities can be found across the continent but they are the highest concentrated in Eastern Europe, especially in the Balkans. In each country, the culture and language of the Roma varies, absorbing influences and forming sub-groups within each respective nation while preserving their many traditions and heritage. A beautiful cinematic portrait of the Romani and their rich culture is the 1993 film Latcho Drom.

The popular imagination in the West of the Romani still consists of the practice of divination (fortune telling) and other stereotypes like the licentiousness of Roma women, most of it racist invention with little resemblance to their actual culture. In the Ukraine, there are an estimated 120,000 to half a million Roma who face deep poverty and discrimination that has been characteristic of their community’s status throughout history. Societal integration and protection of their rights and property have always been a difficulty everywhere they have voyaged, in part because of their fundamentally itinerant lifestyle. Their rejection of assimilation and nomadic culture has led to perpetuated stereotypes of them as beggars and thieves, and it has historically made them a target for scapegoating. Their migratory nature has likely contributed to their frequent indigence and lag in education, resulting in a mixture of both real and excessively perceived propensity toward crime. The worst cases of their persecution resulted in enslavement in previous centuries as well as ethnic cleansing, most notably by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

Romani in Ukraine circa WWII

Roma in Ukraine during WWII met the same fate as the Jewish population not only at the hands of the occupying Germane but their local Ukrainian collaborators in Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The number of Roma killed in mass executions at Babi Yar alone is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. Following the Holocaust, their reckoning for the Romani has not been as swift due to their continued social status and lack of nation state, even though their fate nearly paralleled that of the Jews. The German government paid war reparations to the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust but not to the Romani, as there were never any deliberations at Nuremberg regarding them. Groups like C14 carrying out the current anti-Roma pogroms are self-proclaimed ideological followers of Bandera and the OUN, who are also celebrated and whitewashed by the Ukrainian government as national heroes who fought for independence.

Prior to the Maidan, the fascist Svoboda party which co-organized the protests had even been barred from entering the U.S. because of their anti-semitism in 2013, but just months later then-Vice President Joe Biden and Senator John McCain were shaking hands with its leader, Oleh Tyahnybok. This past month, Andriy Parubiy, a current speaker in Ukraine’s parliament who co-founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine with Tyahnybok (which became Svoboda) spoke at an event organized by foreign policy think tanks at a US Senate building in Washington, DC. Parubiy was welcomed even as human rights groups sounded alarms about the attacks against the Romani by C14, which was formed in 2010 as the youth wing of Svoboda.

The Social-National Party of Ukraine was founded immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union which granted Ukraine its sovereignty. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union had divided the world, but for a brief time that changed following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991…or so we thought. Russia spent the next decade weakened by a collapsed economy, with the introduction of ‘freedom and democracy’ resulting in the average life expectancy being reduced by a decade, possibly of diseases that had been nonexistent in the Soviet times like tuberculosis.

While Russia’s state infrastructure was auctioned off to the free market by Boris Yeltsin, the U.S. spent the decade carving up the former Yugoslavia into a NATO fortress. Yet by the time the American empire had expanded to the Middle East, the Russian economy had been rapidly rebuilt under Putin whose model of multi-polar non-hegemony began to slowly confront the United States. Suddenly, Russia’s economy no longer needed sizable IMF loans to remain afloat and its foreign debts were erased. Many point to the Russian intervention in Georgia as the first sign of their willingness to push back, but it actually began earlier when Putin blocked American attempts to expand it’s ‘axis of evil’ to include Belarus, Zimbabwe and Burma as ‘outposts of tyranny.’

While the Maidan was portrayed as a spontaneous movement, Clinton apprentice Victoria Nuland pulled the strings of the coup in Kiev as part of the global chess game between U.S. hegemony and Russia. The new Cold War is not so much about competing ideologies as it is American dominance of the post-Soviet world, regardless of whether the obstruction to its plans are socialist or conservative. Putin actually moderated the extent of the privatization and robbery of state enterprise by the ruling class in Russia that had occurred under Yeltsin, ironic considering the inverted portrayal which has made his name synonymous with the word oligarch itself. Despite high inequality and corruption, Russians have seen their income levels overall rise significantly under Putin.

After NATO had gobbled up the Soviet bloc, Baltic states, the Balkans and Georgia, the Ukraine became its next target as the wealthiest and most industrial part of the former USSR in its continued effort to surround Russia. Four years later, the Trump administration is now sending anti-tank javelin missiles to the Poroshenko regime fighting against the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass. A newly released film, A Sniper’s War, is an absolute must-watch for anyone interested in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Although it is more of a gripping psychological portrait of a Serbian volunteer sniper who joins the rebels than a political film, it does depict both the personal motivation of its subject who despises the U.S. and NATO for the bombing of his native country and reveals the communist political convictions of many of the separatists.

A Sniper’s War the story of a sniper whose anti-U.S. views lead him to join the pro-Russian rebels in the ongoing Ukrainian conflict—a primary source of political …

According to campaign insiders, the Clinton campaign deliberately chose to scapegoat Russia for its embarrassing election loss. Meanwhile, its media surrogates had constructed a fraudulent and simulated reality which completely collapsed on election day and desperately need to account for their failure. They both have given only one possible explanation for the difference between what they predicted and the results of the vote— a still undefined ‘meddling’ by a foreign power and ‘collusion’ between it and the Trump campaign which somehow changed the outcome. The admittedly undoctored dirt released by WikiLeaks is said to have come from a Russian source, based on the word of the intelligence community which routinely meddles in the elections of other countries (including Russia) over that of WikiLeaks which has never had to retract a single publication in its history.

Mueller is somehow able to indict Russian nationals for ‘hacking’ the DNC’s computers which the FBI still has yet to examine, while the evidence itself points to a leak by a whistleblower rather than a hack. Meanwhile, Paul Manafort was indicted for having tried to lobby his client, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, to accept the EU Association Agreement he rejected which led to his ouster in the Maidan. In other words, he was indicted for lobbying against Russia’s interests, not for them.

The Mueller probe and the media have shown no proof as to what effect the release of the emails had on the vote itself. How can the same argument which says the contents of Clinton’s emails were negligible also contend it was significant enough to affect the outcome? Not only are collusion and meddling not defined, but it is unclear whether they believe the vote itself was legitimate or that only an increase in Trump’s support came from the result of Russian interference. If cyber warfare sowing division in America and the spread of “fake news” on social media was enough to tip the voting scales, this still would not explain the gap between the media’s universal prediction of a Clinton victory and the outcome of the vote.

Brexit, the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, has been given a similarly confusing account. On the one hand, Russia is alleged to have meddled with “fake news” in the campaign that brainwashed British voters into wanting to leave the EU. They were still unable to accurately predict the outcome of the referendum — does this mean the vote itself was also illegitimate? It cannot possibly be both explanations simultaneously, and in reality it is neither. This is also nearly an admittance by the establishment that the role of the media is not to inform the public, but to manufacture consent and keep the population in check. The system is breaking down, and likely the real reason they were unable to keep their fingers on its pulse.

Now Clinton is alleging that the rise of the far right entirely originates from Russia with Putin as its “leader.” To be clear, Putin’s brand of conservatism is not consistent with the ideological character of the far right in the West, including that which contributed to Brexit and Trump’s election. While it is true that zealots such as Marine Le Pen, Richard Spencer and Nigel Farage have professed affinity for Russia based on their perception of its supposed lack of multiculturalism, it is because they are as ignorant about life in Moscow as Russophobic liberals like Clinton. While European countries and the United States are restricting immigration, Putin’s policies are relatively relaxed in comparison. Russia is home to the world’s 2nd largest number of immigrants at more than 11 million foreigners present in the country. In fact, it is more likely that Trump, Ukip or National Front would be the opposition to Putin in an election in Russia, not part of his support or his political party (United Russia).

The Islamophobic character of the far right in the EU and US would be inconceivable as an electable majority in Moscow, considering Muslims make up nearly nearly 20% of the Russian population at 25 million people. Contrary to their misconception, Russia is inherently multicultural — it consists of more than 120 different nationalities, with V.I. Lenin once famously describing it as “the prison house of nations.” Finally, the biggest irony of Clinton’s claims is that the opposition figure who is frequently touted by the West, Alexei Navalny, is far more anti-immigrant and xenophobic in a way that resembles Donald Trump than Putin.

Navalny has strong ties to Russian ultranationalists like Dmitriy Demushkin from the Slavic Union and has participated in demonstrations advocating the separation of the Muslim-majority North Caucasus from Russia. He even coined the slogan, “Stop Feeding the Caucasus!” which became a rallying cry for Russia’s far right nationalists who scapegoat the ethnic and religious minorities in the region plagued by a history of Chechen terrorism for Russia’s woes. Trump would probably consider Navalny’s supporters “very fine people.”

It is a reductionist narrative to say that the rise of the far right is purely a reaction to the influx of immigration and refugees by conservatives who fear the loss of their national identity to an ‘inclusive’ form of capitalism and globalism. It discounts completely the enormous contribution of the global financial crisis, particularly from the European debt which saw the largest public sector cuts made in a generation. Did Putin cause the debt crisis in Greece where the Golden Dawn made gains in parliament thereafter as well? The same neo-liberal regimes cutting social programs using the Eurozone’s arrears as a pretext are the same ‘humanitarian interventionists’ who have destabilized the Middle East causing the influx of refugees being scapegoated by the far right.

The combination of these factors according to the National Bureau of Economic Research historically form the conditions necessary to increase far right political support in Europe and the circumstances across the Atlantic have been no different. Meanwhile, the US and the EU had no qualms cynically propping up the same kind of far right forces in the Ukraine when it suited their interests in the Maidan.

In order to receive economic bailouts from the IMF, the Ukrainian government has since raised taxes, slashed pensions, increased the price of gas and electricity, and opened the country up to Monsanto and Western agribusiness. As Ukraine has become debt enslaved to predatory international creditors, the far right has only grown and now the Roma are paying the heavy price. In fact, it is likely that the far right will continue to grow everywhere as long as those controlling the narrative about why it is happening are the ones responsible for the failure of global capitalism.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His work has appeared in publications such as The Greanville Post, OffGuardian, CounterPunch and more. Read him onMedium. Max may be reached at [email protected]

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kevin morris
kevin morris
Jul 27, 2018 10:43 AM

I have no illusions about Hilary Clinton’s self deceit, nor about the racism that has emanated for years from the Ukraine, where many welcomed the Nazis as liberators, and assisted in the rounding up of jews and gypsies at the Porajmos, but I do take exception to the following:

‘A minority of Romani people, known in the English-speaking world by the exonymic slur ‘gypsies’, ‘

The World Romani Congress may have condemned the term, ‘gypsy’ as a slur, but many gypsies themselves do not. As a musician myself, I have a great love of Balkan Gypsy music and of course the music of the Manouche. Balkan gypsy musicians, their management agencies and their record companies all refer to their music as gypsy music, whilst the term ‘gypsy swing’ is the universal term for the manouche jazz of Django Reinhardt and his successors.

I have the greatest respect for the Romani people and their culture and do understand the World Romani Congress’ decision. I deplore the racism and worse that is still employed against them in the Ukraine and their appalling treatment in several countries of the former Soviet block prior to the collapse of the Iron Curtain. But thoughtless, some would say, politically correct, criticisms of the historical term ‘gypsy’ has the potential to damage the livelihoods of those artists employed within gypsy culture.

Arrby
Arrby
Jul 20, 2018 6:55 PM

“…has positioned himself as the leader of an authoritarian, white-supremacist and xenophobic movement that wants to break up the EU, weaken America’s traditional alliances and undermine democracy. We can see this authoritarian movement rippling out from the Kremlin, reaching across Europe and beyond. It’s emboldening right-wing nationalists, separatists, racists and even neo-Nazis.“ – Hillary Clinton

What a great example of projection!

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Jul 17, 2018 1:08 PM

Good article. It omits that during WW2 a great many ethnic Polish people too were ethnically cleansed by the Banderas from what is now western Ukraine but then was south eastern Poland. Whole villages were raised to the ground as well as countless executions by a knock on the door followed by bullet to the head.

Given this context it’s shocking that the current Polish right wing government seems to be supportive of their right wing neighbour. I guess that the HQ of fascism in Washington DC is dishing out the orders and they must be followed regardless.

vexarb
vexarb
Jul 17, 2018 7:13 PM

Frankly, I agree. Polish govts throughout the ages have been disastrous at picking potential allies; I think because they let a neighbourhood feud distort their judgment: supported Napoleon against Russia, supported Hitler against Russia, supporting NATZO against Russia, and as you have said, supporting Banderista ethnic cleansers against Russia.

ps, Razed to the ground; like a razor sharp scythe swooping through tall grass. Very apt metaphor for some of the ethnic cleansing that unfortunate Poland has seen.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 18, 2018 12:01 AM

It’s not as if the Ukronazis try to forget the genocide of the Poles in 1943-4. It is celebrated every year in Western Ukraine!! ‘Our Moral values’ at their finest.

Jen
Jen
Jul 18, 2018 12:35 AM

There may be another reason why the current Polish government appears supportive of its neighbour Ukraine and it has nothing to do with supporting or even condoning the Nazi slant of its government, and everything to do with glorifying itself or a particular view of Poland that should have been buried far back in the 20th century.

“Create and Rule: What’s Behind Poland’s Idea for a Central-European Federation”
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201706211054830020-poland-three-seas-initiative/

‘… The “concept of Pilsudski” was a plan pursued by Polish leader Jozef Piłsudski. He was Chief of State (1918–22), “First Marshal of Poland” (from 1920), and de facto leader (1926–35) of the Second Polish Republic as Minister of Military Affairs.

He pursued his plan, known in English as Intermarium, following the end of World War I, with the intention of creating a federation of Central and Eastern European countries. Invited to join the proposed federation were the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland), Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia …

… The proposed federation was meant to emulate the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, that, from the end of the 16th century to the end of the 18th, had united the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

[Polish political scientist] Adam Wielomski explained that the concept initially suggested that Poland would de facto become the guiding force of this project. Hence it could not and did not eventually get any due support because in that interbella period it was perceived as manifestation of Polish imperialism, which actually corresponded to reality.

“I think that everyone who knows the history of Poland and Polish political thought sees the same thing when they look at the Three Seas Initiative: Poland strives to create a federation under its informal authority. It triggered alarm among the Czechs, who took the idea very skeptically,” the political scientist said …’

Good luck to the Polish government in thinking that a “federation” that can provide a bulwark against imagined Russian aggression and hostility, work with the US and Canada over whatever western Europe might do, and rein in such habits of the Ukrainians such as walloping defenceless Roma, holding torch-lit processions at night (for the exercise and because electricity has become extinct) and defacing Soviet war cemeteries (at least until such time as the Ukrainians can no longer read and write because education is becoming extinct).

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 20, 2018 9:21 AM
Reply to  Jen

The whole Intermarium ideology was pushed by the Holy Roman Catholic church, as part of its centuries old war with the Orthodox Church. During WW2 Catholic clergy were leading allies of the fascists in eastern Europe, particularly Croatia and Slovakia, and, after the war, the Vatican was deeply involved in the rat trail that allowed fascists like Pavelic to escape, often dressed as priests, on Vatican passports or hiding out en route in the Vatican. Then they reached safety in good Catholic states like Spain and Argentina. Then, in the 80s, as fascism returned to Croatia, the Vatican, under the clerico-fascist and Godfather of priestly paedophiles, Wojtyla, the Holy See was among the first to recognise the Croatian fascist revanchist state.

Jen
Jen
Jul 20, 2018 12:01 PM

‘Tis whispered in some parts of the Internet that one Karol Wojtyla sought refuge from arrest (for apparently selling cyanide to the German government during WW2 while employed as a sales representative by IG Farben) by Allied forces, by entering the priesthood in the Catholic Church. The rest as the cliche goes is history.

Antonyl
Antonyl
Jul 17, 2018 9:31 AM

One day healthy nationalism (= admiring each other’s cultural / sportive / technical etc. highlights) can bring back good mutual relations between nations. Hitler misused nationalism’s energy negatively, while Islam and Communism want to get rid of it completely; we are all one ocean of similar beings – mission impossible for today’s human psyche, which needs a smaller identifiable “families”. Real nations are like individual beings: with ~ 200 we can respectfully interact.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 18, 2018 12:06 AM
Reply to  Antonyl

The very essence of the Zionist ethno-state, Israel. I see that the Knesset has passed a real outright apartheid ‘law’ legitimising the confinement of Arab Israelis in specified ‘neighbourhoods’ (or ghettos, if you prefer)because your Chosen contfreres don’t like living next door to untermenschen. How enlightened! How redolent of ‘Western Moral Values’ at their finest! And how easy to round them up for expulsion, when the time comes.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Jul 17, 2018 8:42 AM

” … drift towards fascism.” Drift! More like a stampede. The whole Maidan episode was an organized ultra-nationalist coup financed by the US and enabled by the EU. Fascism in Ukraine has never been a peripheral force but a core, brazen, and quite open political reality. It has become impossible to hide this repugnant regime although this doesn’t stop the liberal media trying. Luke Harding in particular describes Svoboda, Right Sector and the rest of the neo-Nazi riff-raff, as ”an eccentric group of people with unpleasant right-wing views.’’ Yes, harmless really.

Yet the reality is beginning to seep out.

Yet again we see the soi-disant humanitarian liberals aligning themselves with the most reactionary elements in Europe.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 17, 2018 9:19 AM
Reply to  Francis Lee

Harding, in my opinion, like so very many other Russophobe thugs, is a fascist sympathiser. He likes Ukronazis. They do things eg garrotte eight month pregnant women, ethnically cleanse people, attack Roma, desecrate Soviet war cemeteries etc that I believe Harding would love to do himself.

Arrby
Arrby
Jul 21, 2018 6:56 PM
Reply to  Francis Lee

“Drift” Absolutely. That mushiness about the words ‘fascism’ and ‘nazi’ (and variants) continues, as I expect it to. On the other hand, you’re now seeing more and more blunt talk. Which isn’t to say that the blunt talkers get it all right and vice versa. Ghali Hassan’s article titled “Defending Israel’s Fascism” (http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_80458.shtml“) Elsewhere (Axis of Logic), Ghali, while making the claim that Noam Chomsky gets Syria wrong (which he has), also asserts that Chomsky is a defender of Nazi Israel, an incredibly wrong assertion (excepting his Syrian position, which may or may not have been corrected).

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Jul 17, 2018 6:30 AM

One can only tremble in fear and marvel at the super powers of Vladimir Putin – in the fevered minds of the idiocracy running the West that is. Behold! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! – It’s Super-Putin, scourge of NATO and the Western military/industrial complex! Who, oh who, will bravely step forward to save our endless sacred Wall Street led war profiteering scam? Who will act to protect our corrupt and absolutely obscene U.S. “defense” budget from being lowered by the madness of this Putin monster and the unimaginably evil, bad, no good, not so great – multi-polar world – he represents?! And where, oh where, pray tell are our heavily armed Western supported head-chopping radical jihadists (errr, uhh, I mean “moderate rebels”) when we really need them?! Oh the horror, the horror!

I won’t speak for situation anywhere else, but here in the U.S. mass paranoid delusions have rather quickly become the “new normal.” While rationally discussing events that actually can be shown to have occurred in the “physical world” – is the new “heresy.” I must say I never anticipated a Putin-inspired mass outbreak of Saint Vitus Dance occurring the West, but hey, I don’t believe in “magic bullets,” or steel & concrete buildings that disintegrate into thin air either, so what do I know?

Vlad the Inhaler
Vlad the Inhaler
Jul 17, 2018 11:00 AM
Reply to  Gary Weglarz

‘..here in the U.S. mass paranoid delusions have rather quickly become the “new normal.” While rationally discussing events that actually can be shown to have occurred in the “physical world” – is the new “heresy.”’
Lol. Here in the UK too.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 18, 2018 12:19 AM

The world faces at least three cataclysmic threats, bearing down on humanity. The ecological Holocaust caused by neo-liberal capitalist neoplasia. The economic implosion of end-stage capitalism under insatiable elite greed and parasitism, record inequality and debt. And the death-throes of the dying US Reich, sanctioning, subverting, invading, destroying and killing across the planet to ensure the ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ of Western Moral Values epitomised by Trump, Clinton, Netanyahu, May et al. The global ruling Western elite are not even attempting to address these problems, but, instead, are looking, as ever, for scapegoats, enemies without AND within, to blame, so as to keep the great unwashed masses from finally waking up to the manner in which they have been brought to the very killing-floor of the neo-liberal slaughter-house. But somewhere in the reptilian labyrinth of the ‘liberal’ psyche, they know that not only are they doomed, but their power is at an end, one way or the other. They can hear the rumble of the tumbrils drawing near, smell the sulphurous stench of their funeral pyres and hear the clash of pitch-forks, sickles and scythes, and it is plainly driving them ape-shit insane. The once admirable Guardian has been transmuted to a bedlam of inchoate rage and mendacity, of hypocrisy so hypertrophied that it defies belief. This ruling oligarchy is preparing the way for a Gotterdammerung, a global ‘Samson Option’, that favourite Zionist device so often threatened, where the Masters will destroy humanity if they cannot any longer rule over it, utterly.

vexarb
vexarb
Jul 17, 2018 5:27 AM

From Syria, a foretaste of bittersweet rebirth in the Ukraina deloused from the NATZO plague:

,Canthama
As we move forward in the next 4-6 weeks, we will hear more and more that the Syrian Government employees have started to fix, run and manage key facilities inside occupied north, NE and eastern Syria, such as dams, power station, pumping stations, water treatment etc…as well as major investments in oil and gas.

Some large infra structure investments are being analysed, among them, the crisis management of Raqqa city, where de mining is needed, no running water, limited power supply, no bridges to cross the Euphrates and believe or not, hundreds if not thousands of dead burials needed (public health issue).

The above doesn’t mean the presence of the SAA at the moment, but it is a step forward toward country’s unity.

+28 Reply

summitflyer
summitflyer
Jul 16, 2018 6:35 PM

” reparations to the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust but not to the Romani, as there were never any deliberations at Nuremberg regarding them.” Not entirely sure about this but I would submit that the zionists would vehemently have opposed including the Romas into the Holocaust . Victims forever.
Just my thoughts on it.
Good work by Max Parry.

Antonyl
Antonyl
Jul 17, 2018 3:18 AM
Reply to  summitflyer

Absurd that “facist” is stamped on about anyone no agreeing here, but anti-antisemitism is rife in the comments…..

This way real neo-nazis like a number in Ukraine get lost in the artificial crowd.

Hero of the European antifas – Obama – was US president during this Ukraine drama, plus during Libya and Syria. Memories are selective…

vexarb
vexarb
Jul 17, 2018 6:43 AM
Reply to  Antonyl

@Antonyl: “Memories are selective…”

As are your comments. What you call “rife antisemitism” are a preponderance of valid complaints against the baleful influence of a “mighty handful” of Anglo Jewish Zionazi Capitalists on recent events — including the selection of POTUS candidate Obomba (known as “the Jewish Candidate”), of his Jewish VP Joe Biden (now investing in Ukraine gas), of his corrupt SOS Kilary Klingon (soon to be Grandma Goldman Sachs) and the corrupt Jewish junta which these 3 corrupt Leaders installed in Ukraine after Obomba’s Jewish agent Victoria Nudelman-Cohen had distributed $5 Billion of cookies and bullets to set up a Neo-Nazi rebellion against the democratically elected President. The Ukraine is now a country where a tiny minority of dual citizen Jews in Parliament are in precarious alliance with a larger minority of Ukrainian-speaking Neo-Nazis to wage ethnic war against the Russian speaking half of this artificial country. Face facts: in Ukraine we now have Jews in command of Nazis who persecute Roma.

cybergrace
cybergrace
Jul 17, 2018 8:21 AM
Reply to  vexarb

Good grief, your comments are appalling and anti-Semetic. “In Ukraine we now have Jews in command of Nazis…”! Obama = Jewish?! That’s delusional and not cool, dude.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 17, 2018 9:35 AM
Reply to  cybergrace

Regretably, grace, it is all true. Just shrieking, as ever, false claims of ‘antisemitism’ won’t change the facts. I would prefer to say ‘Zionists’ rather than ‘Jews’, because not all Jews would support the actions of the Zionist elites in Israel or in the Jewish Diaspora, particularly in Ukraine. The prime purpose of the ‘antisemitism’ industry is NOT to combat Judeophobia, which is pretty rare these days in much of the West, and is as stupid and immoral as all other such racisms and xenophobic hatreds, like Islamophobia, Sinophobia and Russophobia etc. The real purpose of the ‘antisemitism’ industry, as we see so plainly in the attacks on UK Labour and Corbyn, is to outlaw, and criminalise if possible, ANY and ALL criticism of the racist terror state Israel, of its supremacist, racist, ideology, Zionism, and the actions of any Jew, anywhere, no matter how justified that criticism would be, and unexceptional, if directed at a goy behaving similarly. It is the manifestation of the ideology of the Zionist elite and their Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox allies, that asserts a unique status for Jews and Israel, in that they are incapable of crime or even mistakes, and that any assertion that they are thus guilty, is everywhere and always nothing but bigotry driven by hatred of all Jews. In other words, deranged garbage.

Vlad the Inhaler
Vlad the Inhaler
Jul 17, 2018 11:07 AM
Reply to  cybergrace

I’m confused. Is merely stating that someone is Jewish ‘anti semitic’ according to you? Just totally ‘not cool’ eh dude?

JudyJ
JudyJ
Jul 17, 2018 2:57 PM
Reply to  cybergrace

@cybergrace – would you, or would you not, concede that the fact that such a number of prominent people are actively prepared to support and promote the advancement of extreme neo-Nazis (either directly or indirectly) is in itself inherently anti-Semitic behaviour? It is not just the fact that the US has actively supported representatives and adherents to the neo-Nazi cause in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe which is of note and deplorable. It is even more notable and paradoxical that the greater number of these ‘benefactors’ are Jewish themselves. That alone makes the observation of their Jewish heritage anything but meaningless or gratuitous.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
Jul 17, 2018 6:37 PM
Reply to  cybergrace

Obama is no longer US president He is not in Ukraine. It’s you that’s delusional, and very seriously.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 17, 2018 9:21 AM
Reply to  Antonyl

No-what IS rife is fraudulent accusations of ‘antisemitism’ from the likes of YOU.

summitflyer
summitflyer
Jul 17, 2018 2:09 PM
Reply to  Antonyl

Just so you know , there are different views on Semitism and just who is a Semite and who is not .You have much to learn and just to entice your research ,you could start here .An interesting article by a Rabbi no less.
https://ahtribune.com/religion/2332-yaakov-shapiro.html

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 18, 2018 12:27 AM
Reply to  summitflyer

The Ashkenazi elite in Israel were markedly hostile to Middle Eastern Jews for decades. Israel itself is the second most unequal economy in the OECD, even among the Jews. The habitual, modest, claims of Jewish intellectual supremacy amongst humanity, always emphasise that they are speaking of Ashkenazi Jews only. Jewry is not monolithic, as the Zionists and the ‘antisemitism’ industry would have us believe. Indeed, among the Diaspora, and particularly the young, support for Israel is crashing, because the barbarity and odiousness of Israel under the racist Right is plain to see. If your community is being led into the wilderness by Evil monsters, you don’t just sit back and cheer them on, not if you are sane.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Jul 17, 2018 4:28 AM
Reply to  summitflyer

‘[The German government paid]” reparations to the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust but not to the Romani, as there were never any deliberations at Nuremberg regarding them.” Not entirely sure about this but…

There were no Roma witnesses called at the Allied-run Nuremberg Trials because, although we hate the fucking gypsies nearly as much as we hate the fucking kikes and pretended to hate the krauts, there’s no business like shoah business.

In the multiple gastarbeiter camps where the Nazis accommodated foreign nationals and other wartime security risks the Roma and Sinti were given single black or brown triangles to wear as their identity badges, chosen to match their souls and their shit as well as save on fabric.

‘I would submit that the zionists would vehemently have opposed including the Romas into the Holocaust . Victims forever.
Just my thoughts on it.’

A typo there, surely?

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219

Yonatan
Yonatan
Jul 16, 2018 5:31 PM

Borislav Bereza, the leader of Pravy Sektor, one of the right wing neo-Nazi outfits, is ‘Jewish and proud of it’.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/187217/borislav-bereza

This caring, sharing outfit even provides synagogue access for its fighters near the front line.

https://imgprx.livejournal.net/e2c9f1c026d6c719608801ce5608446727d03345/bg0rkw_pVOkkLzpQVo4bYpHHkDYYQFoUA2RCk92qUbJye4T0HLq81iD0ZjXTWuzeY3LMbzXbgNssuFrvoiNbi8ttZt9d_03buM7LFd71Cz8X1FbF4KjPRe33i_Fpincc

The other main political outfit, Svoboda (=Freedom), used to be called the Social Nationalist Party before the US regime change artists were called in. They implemented the name change/re-branding exercise as they thought the original name was a little too close to unpleasant truths.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Jul 17, 2018 9:40 AM
Reply to  Yonatan

Jews can be fascists, too, like members of any group. German Zionists did co-operate, for a time, with the Nazis, to transfer young Jews to Palestine. Jabotinsky, the godfather of the Likud tendency, was a fascist and open admirer of Mussolini. His followers,Begin, Shamir, Sharon, Netanyahu, father and son, are racists and fascists (or were) by any definition. And the Israeli Right today, particularly the settler Judaic Taliban and their Orthodox allies and friends in the Knesset, are fascists, pure and simple.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Jul 17, 2018 12:10 PM

You may care to distinguish between the original Zionist settlers (from the 1880s onwards, as distinct from the steady stream of pre-Zionism diaspora Jews who had been returning to and integrating back into Palestine – particularly the areas of 9Canaan and Judea – for centuries), with their historical, nation-building and collectivist idealisms, and the Mandate settlers (from 1917 onwards, particularly those pouring in after the annexation of the West Bank) with their increasingly paramilitary gang-inspired thuggeries of national conquest and disruption.

Of course, the seeds of the latter were there from Herzl’s politicized fantasies onwards, like the old Jew on his balcony on Saturday evening, waiting for the first star to appear before turning to shuffle off to the packet of fags left waiting for him because, by the time he reaches them,the third star – which signals the end of his Shabbat – will have become visible and he can light up at last. But then, to the founding fathers of the United States, the dawning years of the Constitution looked pretty good, too…

Maggie
Maggie
Jul 19, 2018 9:55 AM

Not only Fascists, but were and are still the IRGUN TERRORISTS..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun

A fact that Netanyahu is now attempting to erase from the History books.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/230783

What is conveniently forgotten now is that it was the Zionists who negotiated with Hitler to re patriate the Wealthy Jews to Israel.

It was a Zionist plan long before Hitler became involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl

vierotchka
vierotchka
Jul 16, 2018 4:33 PM

Note that such pogroms against the Roma have been going on for many decades in the Ukraine, in Bulgaria, in Slovakia, in the states of the former Yugoslavia, in the Czech Republic and in Romania.

vexarb
vexarb
Jul 16, 2018 5:44 PM
Reply to  vierotchka

@vierotchka. And especially in Germany. The same forces at work now as then. Capitalism creates inflation, economic destabilization and mass unemployment; cynically builds up far right forces to break resistance — and ethnic minorities suffer the consequences. As with the U$, UK and France supporting Fascism in prewar Europe, so with the EU$A in Ukraine today according to the present author: “Meanwhile, the US and the EU had no qualms cynically propping up the same kind of far right forces in the Ukraine when it suited their interests in the Maidan.”

summitflyer
summitflyer
Jul 16, 2018 6:50 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Not to mention the involvement of US big business in Germany prior to the war and even after the war had started .

Jen
Jen
Jul 17, 2018 5:22 AM
Reply to  summitflyer

Including the involvement of one Prescott Bush, a one-time US senator and father and grandfather of two US presidents.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/bush-grandpa-traded-with-enemy-for-3-years-before-assets-seized/article/424715

vierotchka
vierotchka
Jul 17, 2018 12:12 PM
Reply to  vexarb

At least in Germany, the people don’t set fire to the homes of Roma at night when the Roma family is asleep, deny Roma decent homes but condemn them to living in isolated villages in half-ruined hovels without electricity, running water and sewers, rape Roma women, deny Roma children education, as is happening in the countries I mentioned above.

summitflyer
summitflyer
Jul 17, 2018 2:16 PM
Reply to  vierotchka

As we don’t do this in most civilized countries .Times have changed somewhat .
Cheers.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
Jul 17, 2018 7:40 AM
Reply to  vierotchka

The fascist government now in power in Italy has already begun an ethnic cleansing operation directed against the Romani. Il Duce would have been proud.

https://youtu.be/JoVPAaO0wsA

Dave m
Dave m
Jul 16, 2018 4:28 PM

Unless the Russians fiddled / hacked the US voting machines (still used?), it’s all a load of Buffalo manure…
And very patronising of the ‘establishment’ toinfer ordinary people can’t think and see things for themselves!

bevin
bevin
Jul 16, 2018 4:19 PM

Excellent and scholarly work, Max.