As Fascism Rises Again in Eastern Europe, It’s Quiet in the West

MICHAEL JABARA CARLEY

In the 1930s an important line of Soviet propaganda was that «fascism means war» (fashizm – eto voina). After Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the USSR rang the alarm bells and sought to organise an anti-Nazi alliance with the major western powers, France, Britain, and the United States. Soviet diplomats called it «collective security» but really it was a strategy to contain Nazi Germany, or defeat it in war if containment failed.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be «the alliance that never was». Not because the USSR did not want it, but because the French, British, and Americans did not want it. At least, until it was too late for France which disappeared in 1940, and very late for the three partners of the Grand Alliance who only came together after the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941.

Western historians have built up elaborate, deeply researched rationales for why Britain and France did not join the USSR to confront Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Not enough guns and gold, these historians say: it was practical matters, not ideology which account for failure of the first grand alliance. But of course ideology, or Sovietophobia and anti-communism, did have a great deal to do with the failure to unite against Nazism. Parliamentary democracy was in crisis during the interwar years. The Anglo-French elites, with notable exceptions, seemed to lose their confidence. So they admired the perceived strength and force of fascism. The Nazis knew how to deal with the left and especially with communists. Fascism was like an aphrodisiac for European elites, doubtful of their own virility and power. Fear of victory in alliance with the USSR against Nazi Germany was greater than fear of defeat without it.

Caption: Fascism was like an aphrodisiac for European elites, doubtful of their own virility and power

This is a far cry from how the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) explain the origins of World War II. You know their lines: the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was «an alliance» between Stalin and Hitler, the two chums, who divided up Europe between them? The PACE has even declared a holiday on 23 August to commemorate the non-aggression pact of the «two totalitarians». Just the other day the Ukrainian and Polish parliaments got into the act with resolutions along the same lines, blaming everything on Hitler and Stalin. This is no-nothingism enlisted in the cause of fascism, Russophobia and the New World Order. You really do have to know nothing to believe this bogus «history».

Let’s take the example of Poland, the cry baby of Europe, claiming victimization because of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. In 1934, Poland signed a non-aggression pact in Germany. Thereafter, Poland was a spoiler, the skunk in the wood pile, which sabotaged at every turn Soviet proposals for collective security against Hitler. «Given a choice between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany», Polish officials openly declared to anyone who would listen, «we will choose the latter». During this same period, the deeply anti-Semitic Polish elite contemplated forcibly sending Polish Jews to Madagascar. In 1938 Poland was a Nazi ally against Czechoslovakia. In 1939 in spite of the imminence of war Poland attempted to sabotage Soviet proposals for a defensive, war fighting alliance against Nazi Germany. For Poland, «Ivan» was «a swine» until the very end. The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was the result of the failure of Soviet collective security, not the cause of that failure. If you are looking for the chief culprits for the checking of Soviet proposals for collective security, go to London first of all, and then to Paris and Warsaw.

Caption: Anti-Semitic Ukrainian militias are celebrated, the very same who participated in the mass killings of Jews and fought side-by-side with Nazi Wehrmacht and SS

And what can one say about the Ukraine? Nazis and Nazi collaborators are now national heroes. Their faces, like that of Stepan Bandera, appear on Ukrainian stamps and they are remembered with statues in prominent places. Anti-Semitic Ukrainian militias are celebrated, the very same who participated in the mass killings of Jews and fought side-by-side with Nazi Wehrmacht and SS. Do you remember the photographs of Ukrainian women and girls forced to strip naked, queuing to be executed by the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators? It was at Babi Yar. The Kiev junta has turned murderous beasts into heroes, and the west does not object.

Caption: Do you remember the photographs of Ukrainian women and girls forced to strip naked, queuing to be executed by the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators? It was at Babi Yar

At the end of World War II, it looked like Nazism was dead. Hitler shot his dog, his blond took cyanide and then he shot himself. Red Army soldiers threw down the banners and flags of the Wehrmacht and SS in Red Square. That celebration of victory should have marked the end of European fascism, but it did not. In fact, fascism never really died in Europe; it went underground. Then former fascists were rehabilitated and reintegrated into European politics as the United States whipped up the Cold War, Act II, with Marshall Plan money and the CIA. In the 1950s the Dulles brothers, John Foster, Secretary of State, and Allen, CIA director, made a great team deciding which governments the United States should overthrow and which leaders it should have murdered. President Dwight Eisenhower, with his warm smile for the public, approved it all.

Caption: At the end of World War II, Red Army soldiers threw down the banners and flags of the Wehrmacht and SS in Red Square

Nothing has changed. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the United States ran amuck, plotting against governments it did not like. Arab Spring, colour revolutions, responsibility to protect, democracy exportation are all euphemisms for US subversion and aggression in the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. And fascists who had gone underground, crawled out of their dens in Eastern Europe. Former Nazi collaborators and SS soldiers in the Baltics took their old uniforms out of mothballs to parade in the streets with gold-toothed smiles and signs of victory.

Caption: After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the United States ran amuck, plotting against governments it did not like

They whip up hatred of Russia and taunt Russians and the Russian Federation. Poland has reverted back to a regime redolent of the quasi-dictatorship of Polish Marshal Jozef Pilsudski’s colonels in the 1930s, with the same hatred of Russia, underscored by the destruction of monuments remembering the Red Army victory over Nazism and the vandalism of Red Army cemeteries. After the collapse of the USSR, it was supposed to be the «end of history». Remember? For PACE and OSCE, it is the end of history. Theirs is garish propaganda directed against Russia.

The worst re-eruption of fascism has taken place in the Ukraine. In a so-called colour revolution in Kiev in February 2014, backed by the United States and European Union (EU), fascist bravos overthrew the elected Ukrainian government, installing a junta of fascists and other «nationalist» hooligans who ran roughshod over the Russophone population, looting, burning, and killing. In central and western Europe, the birthplace of fascism, no one seemed to mind the open displays of the swastika and other fascist symbols, the ribbon-draped pictures of World War II Nazi collaborators like Bandera, the torchlight parades and the intimidation of the Russian population.

Caption: In central and western Europe, the birthplace of fascism, no one seemed to mind the open displays of the swastika and other fascist symbols in the Ukraine

What the west did mind was when Russians fought back, first in the Crimea and then in the Donbass. In reaction to the fascist coup d’état, the Russian population of the Crimea armed themselves, and under the protection of the «polite people», voted massively to return to Russian suzerainty. In the East, the Donbass took up arms against the fascist militias and managed to hold a small part of the eastern Ukraine inflicting grievous loss upon the enemy.

The United States and its EU vassals blamed everything on Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. The only Russia the west will tolerate is one which is weak and compliant. Behave like «house negroes», or else we will flog you is the subliminal EU line. Be like us, they mean, since the EU is the «house negro» of the United States, although there are signs of rebellion amongst its members. It’s about time. A candid-speaking Russian president backed by a strong Russian people, refusing to bow before the American Hegemon, must arouse feelings of envy and resentment amongst EU «leaders». No wonder the west refuses to recognise Russia’s right to defend its national interests.

Caption: There can be no doubt that fascist Ukraine is an American client state

So Russians fought back against the Ukrainian fascists. «Aggression», the US government claimed. It’s an old American trick: you know, the aggressor state accusing its intended victim of aggression. When Malaysian Airlines MH17 was shot down in the summer of 2014, the United States and EU accused the Russians of being responsible without a shred of evidence. The idea was to whip up opinion in the western vassal states for hard sanctions against Russia. In fact, a police investigator looking for means, motive and opportunity would undoubtedly see the Kiev junta as the prime murder suspect. But of course the west closes its eyes to the war crimes of its puppets.

There can be no doubt that fascist Ukraine is an American client state. At first glance it might seem paradoxical that Ukrainian «nationalists» would eagerly become western puppets. It is however only a continuation of past history when previous generations of Ukrainian so-called nationalists were willing to sell themselves to France or Germany during World War I or to Nazi Germany during World War II. Nothing has changed. Ukrainian «nationalism» is built on negatives, hatred of Russia, false historical narratives and now… the celebration of fascism and Nazi collaboration.

Russia reacted to the rise of Ukrainian fascism by doing the minimum possible to defend its interests without excessive provocation of the west. It reassumed sovereignty over the Crimea, but not of the eastern Ukraine. It helped the Donbass resistance defend itself and agreed to participate in negotiations leading to the Minsk accords I & II ultimately to settle the civil war. It pretended more or less not to notice the fascists in Kiev. It discouraged the advocates of Novorossiya, accepted two premature Minsk «ceasefires» and prevented the anti-fascist opolchentsy (militias) from exploiting their remarkable military victories against the Ukrainian marauders.

The Russian government is not a signatory to the Minsk accords, but the west treated Russia as though it were entirely responsible for the success of the agreement. Any failure of the accords has been Russia’s responsibility. The western idea was and is to compel Russia to enforce the surrender of the Donbass. In fact, the Ukrainian junta never respected and never intended to respect the Minsk accords, not for a single day. Kiev’s armed forces continue to probe Donbass defences, to bombard civilians and to assassinate Donbass leaders without a word of protest from the west. No western sanctions are ever aimed at fascist Ukraine, which is a Minsk signatory. In Kiev, they must laugh at how they have been able to flaunt the Minsk accords, and Russia is «sanctioned» for it.

The Minsk initiative has proved to be a catastrophe. The Kiev junta continues to build up its military strength with the assistance of US, Canadian, Polish, and various other «advisors». It recruits foreign mercenaries to stiffen the ranks of its forces in the east all the while accusing Russia of aggression. How long can the Ukraine powder keg smoulder before it explodes?

How long can the Russian Federation play along with the Minsk charade, forgetting the inexorable law that «fascism means war»? How can Moscow force the Russian people in the Ukraine to live under a violent, repressive fascist regime? What possible security guarantees could they obtain from the Russophobic Kiev junta? Indeed, what security can the Russian Federation expect to maintain on its southern frontiers? What security will the eventual Kerch straits bridge have against Ukrainian terrorist attacks? The longer the crisis simmers, the more the threat to Russia itself will continue.

Caption: The Ukraine front offers to Washington a splendid opportunity to destabilise Russian security

President Putin is «playing the long game», say analysts, and no doubt he is playing this «game» with great skill. But the US government is a past master of subversion and indirect aggression. The Ukraine front offers to Washington a splendid opportunity to destabilise Russian security. In Moscow the «long game» is apparently to wait for the economic and political implosion of the Kiev junta, and to wait for a cracking of EU unity on sanctions, counting on Europeans and European governments to recognise at last the danger to their own security by continued vassalage to the United States. But will all this happen? Or, will it happen before the Ukraine powder keg explodes at a moment, which is not advantageous for Russia?

The west is turning a blind eye to the rebirth of fascism in Eastern Europe. As in the 1930s, western elites now see fascism, though not calling it by that name, as a weapon against Russia. The erasure of the memory of the Red Army victory over the Wehrmacht has its practical uses. Fascism by another name is being re-legitimised as though the destruction of Nazism was a mistake. The real enemy, or enemy no. 1, if you like, is the Russian Federation. As the Americans might say of the Ukrainian hooligans, «they’re sons of bitches, but they’re our sons of bitches».

Tags: European Union  Germany  Poland  USSR 

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/11/01/fascism-rises-again-eastern-europe-quiet-west.html