https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
Tuesday 22 February 2022
Russia’s Far Right Cheerleaders
After Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin made the decision to send what he called “peacekeeping” troops into Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions of Ukraine partly occupied by separatist forces since 2014, there was condemnation of his gangsterist régime from those across the political spectrum. But out there on the right, there was rather less condemnation. Rather, there was acceptance bordering on support.
When, as the BBC has reported, “Putin said Ukraine was an integral part of his country's history, and described eastern Ukraine as ‘ancient Russian lands’”, there was the alleged “Bad Boy Of Brexit” Arron Banks blaming, er, the EU. “The EU encouraged Ukrainian membership & expansion [of] NATO to the Russian border. The EU started this mess & let’s hope common sense prevails”. They did? And there was more.
“The EU chose to meddle in Ukraine & push NATO membership, 300 miles from Moscow. I don’t approve of any hostile military action but the expansion of NATO eastwards to the Russian border was dumb”. France is no more than 100 miles from London - quick, we must send peacekeeping troops to Calais, and maybe Lille and Amiens, too!
Banksy is not alone: his old mucker, former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, has also been quick to blame someone else for Putin’s decisions. “I’ve thought for 30 years that the Nato policy of expanding ever eastwards was a huge strategic error” he told Gammon Broadcasting News (“Bacon’s News Channel”).
Next day, he expanded on that sentiment in the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph. “The Revolution of Dignity in 2014 brought down Ukraine’s democratically-elected leader, Viktor Yanukovych. He may well have been corrupt, but the pictures in Kiev at the time of crowds waving EU flags spoke volumes in his deeply divided country. The EU had pumped aid money into Ukraine and some EU leaders urged this developing nation to join the bloc. Like it or not, this so-called EU peace project helped to provoke the present crisis because it was guaranteed to anger Putin”. Yes, the EU done it!
He is not the only one on GB News pushing what might be called an alternative view of the conflict. As the people at Stop Funding Hate have noted, this included “Just a GB News commentator suggesting that NATO are ‘trying to lance the boil of the fall of Kabul by holding a fake war somewhere in the general vicinity of Russia’”.
Sad to say, however, that NATO have made clear that they are not involved in this one, whatever the organisation’s detractors may claim. Nor is the EU (ditto). Nor is the USA (ditto again). And nor does saying “look over there at what the US did in Vietnam, Chile and elsewhere” excuse the actions being taken by Putin right now.
And nor does trying to cause punters to look at groups on the left who may oppose the conflict. It keeps coming up right wingers: as Byline Times’ political editor Adam Bienkov has observed, “On GB News, the former Brexit Party MEP, and Reclaim Deputy Leader, Martin Daubney, says that war in Ukraine is ‘inevitable’ and the fault of NATO”.
Expect far-right parties across Europe to take the same line as Banks, Farage and the rest. Authoritarianism is their goal; democracy, while loudly proclaimed, is in the end merely optional. Rule of law is whatever their hero says it is. Reality is a state of mind.
Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by becoming a Patron on Patreon at
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
No, the EU didn't "done it".
But NATO did, just as it triggered the missile crisis of October 1962.... when the Soviets reacted to NATO installed Jupiter nukes in Turkey and Italy, plus even more WMD pointed at it from Europe (including Airstrip One of course).
Having suffered four invasions from the West in a century - plus an invasion because its revolution took it out of the mass-homicidal madness of the First World War - Russia tends to take obvious threats to its existence seriously. And that's what present NATO deployment in Europe represents despite promises to the contrary at the demise of the Soviet Union.
Ukrainian "sovereignty" is just another excuse for war mad lunatics in Washington, London and other puppets elsewhere. Ukraine has seriously deep roots in far right nationalism, even to widespread collaboration with the invading Nazis and the Holocaust and mass murder of its own citizens.
All of it is underpinned by the same old far right Western media propaganda peddled by the likes of Frei and Hilsum and their fixed mirthless smirks. The same people who virtually ignore West-sponsored mass slaughter in Yemen. The same kind of people who ignore the lies of WMD in Iraq and the real causes of never ending wars inflicted by the West and its NATO protection racket thugs.
The last thing this horribly dangerous situation requires is the idiocy of morons like Farage and other minor political spivs.
There is good evidence to show the 1962 crisis was only saved from utter disaster by a Russian submarine officer who refused to key in a nuke command. That was in the Caribbean. There is unlikely to be such hesitation this time if the enemy is again at the gates of their homeland. Nor is there any evidence that present "leadership" has learned the same hard lessons of the Kennedy brothers before they were murdered.
Two years ago I forecast there would be another device ID manipulated "crisis" in the East. Well, here it is in all its inglorious, dishonourable horror. History is repeating itself. The same old thieving villains peddling the same old lies and mass murder on the other side of the world.
Let them get away with it again and we'll deserve the inevitable nuclear-crisp fate we get.
big fan of your work over the years Tim. but you forgot another element in your equation.
the pro-russia (or anti-NATO) narrative is strong on the left of Labour too, with Stop the War crowd pretty much playing the useful idiots.
rather than right-wing, I'd say it has more to do with extremist views on both sides who can't see a thug, until they have been thugged or been thugging themselves.
best regards,
@ 15:06.
So you would prefer the Keep War Going crowd? Whose useful idiots always end up dead in a moonscape of bomb and artillery craters and wrecked countries.
https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-university-19630610
John Kennedy learnt a lesson in October 1962 which led to this speech in June 1963.
His successors have defiled and refused that memory as surely as the bullets which ended his life a few months after the speech.
Since then the global situation has gone from bad to worse. Now we have perpetual war instead of perpetual peace. A culture of insane denial and mass-lethal wilful ignorance.
The results are all around you.
You don't have to be a supporter of Putin to think that NATO expansion was a bad idea and has helped cause this crisis.
Such a sorry state when you have gammons on the right and warmongers on the other right... Yes, Banks *is* a Putin stooge and Brexit has Russian money all under it (thanks to Facebook and micro targetedadd, probably the cheapest destabilisation operation in history). But NATO is also meddling in Ukraine, which they shouldn't.
But worse of worse, despite the tough talks from Bozo, the UK is so battered from own goal to own goal it cannot do anything to stop Russia. So we look like fools. Again. Like that time those two soldiers were really interested in cathedral spires.
But Vladimir loves Johnson. The same way we used to love Yeltsin I suppose.
to Anonymous at 15:58
you don't have to recycle the Kremlin's propaganda to be anti-war.
the Stop the War crowd all too often swims with the former, I'm with the latter.
also, Putin's obsession in wrecking ukrainian dreams of independence and prosperity has very little to do with NATO. Russia has colossal economic rent-seeking activities in Ukraine.
Ukrainian and Russian businessmen work daily to screw each other without the need for tanks.
Ukraine is the transit country for 2/3 of russian gas export to Europe.
but Putin does see himself along the likes of great historical figures, with a mission to Make Russia Great Again.
Ukraine has been in the governance and economic doldrums since the 80's, and Putin wants it to continue, so it's easier to control.
it's not even certain that the Kremlin wants to invade anymore.
But it certainly wants to "chastise" those "unruly southern peasants", as it looks like the economic siege and sabotage are going to continue for years to come.
Best regards,
There is no reason for the existence of NATO. It should have been liquidated at the end of the Soviet Union - the original "reason" for its creation. Churchill even ordered a plan to attack Russia WITHIN DAYS OF THE NAZI SURRENDER. Fortunately the military ignored the order.
Europe is not endangered because Russia has neither enough economic or military resources to prevail, nor the intention. The present dispute has roots almost nine centuries old.
This is a needless manufactured "crisis" created by "psychological sets" made in the mentalities of unscrupulous maniacs. Hence "poking the Russian bear". The same lunacy is pursued in the South China Sea - long ago exposed by the inestimable John Pilger.
It is just one symptom of the beginning of the end of Western hegemony. This can either be accepted with peaceful grace or end in global catastrophe. Given history since 1945, would you bet your life against the mindset of people like Boris Johnson and his US puppet masters?
@ 20:56.
There isn't one scrap of evidence to support anything you claim.
The Ukrainian economy has been free of Russian control for decades. Which is why thieves like Hunter Biden have helped loot it. Ukraine's far right long ago sold itself to "globalisation" (a cynical euphemism for capitalism) and now pays the inevitable price, as does Britain with 25% of its population in poverty.
NATO of course has EVERYTHING to do with this horror. Its proposed Eastward expansion was/is the trigger for reviving ancient tribalism. NATO could stop this in a heartbeat by simply declaring it neither seeks or needs further expansion. But it is nothing more than uniformed blood spattered warmongering thugs deployed at the behest of homicidal thieving maniacs. It has always been a threat to global peace. It always will be.
If this horror worsens it will be because that is what the West wants. The usual suspects are at it again. If Osama Bin Laden was Goldstein1, Vladimir Putin is Goldstein2. The only question now is who will be Goldstein3. Perpetual war instead of perpetual peace.
@23 February 2022 at 10:02
I don't know who you are since you hide behind anonymity, but I can recognize an internet troll when I see one.
from recycling right-wing conspiracy theories (ie: smears about Hunter Biden in Ukraine) to antisemitism, you compile all the worst instincts of keyboard cultural warriors.
people like you are the bane of any true anti-imperialism and anti-war movements.
@ 13:56.
I'll take you seriously when your grammar and "use" of capitals improves.
"Starbuck"?.....Tsk, tsk.....
Post a Comment