Who are the anti-fascists in Ukraine?

10Jun14

This is from Shiraz Socialist:

The following warning to the Left comes from Gerry Gable of Searchlight, the UK’s longest-established anti-fascist publication. It was published on 1st June, the day before the inaugural meeting of ‘Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine’:

The so-called Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine has called a meeting on the evening of Monday 2 June at SOAS. The British left and anti-fascist movement has been canvassed to take part.

The warning below, which exposes these political crooks, comes from genuine anti-fascists in Ukraine. President Putin’s media Trojan Horse, the Russia Today TV station, presents as commentators Nazis from Germany and the UK, and people involved in the far-right LaRouche cult group without explaining who they really are.

Over the past few weeks RT has featured Paul Weston from the tiny Islamophobic Liberty GB party, who has been associated with the English Defence League. Weston was described on screen as a civil rights activist. Also on was Manuel Ochsenreiter, editor of Zuerst!, a glossy German Nazi magazine. Then came the man from LaRouche’s international Executive Intelligence Newsletter, the happy hunting ground of several intelligence services. This is the group responsible for the death in 2003 of the British student Jeremiah Duggan in Germany, a death that will be subject to a new inquest in the North London Coroner’s Court next February.

Our comrade who has written the paragraphs that follow, is one of the most experienced investigators of what really goes on in Moscow and  Kiev. He expresses his sorrow, as do I, about the way part of the British and European left are being manipulated by these enemies of the true anti-fascist struggle.

The so-called “Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine” is simply a scam.

Borotba, which “represents” the Ukrainian side (their guy will address the meeting on Skype), is a fake left-wing organisation the representatives of which are now travelling across Europe to get funding for their dodgy activities. No decent left-wing group in Ukraine is cooperating with them. This is very much worth reading:

http://avtonomia.net/2014/03/03/statement-left-anarchist-organizations-borotba-organization/

At the same time, Borotba has been cooperating with the so-called “Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine”. Its leader, Natalya Vitrenko, is a long-time associate of LaRouche:

http://schillerinstitute.org/lar_related/2009/lyn_russia_antiglob.html

http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2014/140407_vitrenko_appeal.html

Borotba also supports the self-proclaimed Donetsk People Republic, the “constitution” of which proclaims an authoritarian clerical regime.

It’s really painful to see that so many people fall victim of the idiotic propaganda.

***************************************************************************************************

H/t to Comrade Coatesy for drawing our attention to this bizarre affair. Coatesy also gives more detail about Lyndon LaRouche (aka “Lyn Marcus”):

The name LaRouche should send alarm bells ringing.

I will just cite this (there are thousands of pages on the Net about him) about this creature, ” Why is LaRouche considered a crank in some circles? Consider the following tidbits drawn from numerous similar statements over 30 years. According to LaRouche, The Beatles (who “had no genuine musical talent”) were created by the “British Psychological Warfare Division” and promoted “by agencies which are controlled by British intelligence.”

Furthermore, the Queen of England and the British royal family run the global drug trade. 37 LaRouche asks: “Who is pushing the world toward war?” It is “the forces behind the World Wildlife Fund, the Club of Rome, and the heritage of H.G. Wells and the evil Bertrand Russell.”38 Having a hard time as a political activist? LaRouche has the cure! He is “confident and capable of ending your political-and sexual-impotence; the two are interconnected aspects of the same problem….I am going to make you organizers…by taking your bedrooms away from you….I shall destroy your sense of safety….” From here.

We urge you to read Coatesy’s account, which is rather more even-handed than we’re inclined to be, and includes a link to a statement from the ‘Anti-Fascist Resitance in Ukraine’ campaign and from Borotba, putting their side of the argument. But there can be no doubt that this so-called “anti-fascist” campaign is a quite extraordinary rotten blocof genuine dupes of Putin, sub-Stalinists, degenerate ex-Trotskyists and far-right conspiracy theorists with Nazi links.

See also: Dale Street on the Prime Minister of  the Donetsk People’s Republic

Comment: I don’t trust Searchlight one bit; they are themselves old tankies, and their collusion  with the security state puts has meant the militant ant-fascist movement has come to regard them as toxic. However, on this issue, they are absolutely correct.

Here are some comments from Coatesy’s comment thread, which add more details, and below that (at the bottom of the post) are links to genuinely anti-fascist voices from Ukraine.

Dagmar:

“the EU/US/British backed fascist Kiev junta “. What percentage did the far-right get in the Euro elections again, in many countries of the EU? And what percentage of the vote did they get in Ukraine on the same day?

I also find it curious that I have seen public meetings advertised in Berlin with a speaker from “Borotba”, organised by people who have no interest in Ukrainian independence from Russia and politically – until now – have been actively and publicly working against it. Curious to say the least. On that front, Gerry Gable’s warning seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The “traditional” German Communist Party, DKP, turned up on May Day in Berlin with a huge banner proclaiming “Hands Off Ukraine!”. It was also a slogan on their Euro-election placards.

Both used an image to accompany the slogan, it was a map of Ukraine – curiously including Crimea – which was being attacked, yes, by two hands, which were grabbing the country. One hand was in the colour of the EU flag, the other was a US flag. Here’s an image (not my photo):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dblackadder/14112332340 – German readers will note that the other slogan is politically better than the likes of the CPB and No2EU – “Vote against *this* EU”

Related to this, on the recent LabourStart event in Berlin (not my report): There was controversy in some workshops. In “Workers’ rights and labour organisations in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet countries” a row broke out over the attitude to take to events in Ukraine. The Ukrainian participants, who were, in the main and broadly speaking, “third campists”, were told by some German and Russian participants that the country was run by fascists.

A Canadian participant who lives in Ukraine pointed out in reply that in that day’s presidential elections, the far-right Svoboda and the “right sector” were likely to get 2-3% of the vote, significantly less than the expected vote of fascists in many countries in the EU on the same day’s elections to the European parliament.

One participant questioned why some people are ready to accuse Ukrainians of “fascism” while at the same time supporting the actions of the Putin government.

Despite the very heated and emotional debate it remained — by and large — comradely, as a speaker from the IUF union federation confirmed in the closing plenary. – http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2014/05/30/forging-global-solidarity

The speeches of the Russian and German participants, from the floor, in that workshop – arguing against a straw-man that was not present, making pre-prepared speeches in reply to things nobody there had said – reminded me of current ‘pacifist’ posters currently on display (flyposted) here: “Never Again War! Peace With Russia! For the truth on Ukraine: Watch Russia Today, Read Junge Welt, Visit Counterpunch” (and so on). Incidentally, they were both either members of (the main German speaker certainly) or associated with (one Russian speaker, in her own words) Workers’ Power/The League for the Fifth International.

Dagmar:

The meetings here on Ukraine, organised by those who support the Russian annexation of Crimea, after long-denying that it was happening and had anything to do with Russia, who now support the likes of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk”, and are all too-ready to use the insult “fascist” at anyone they don’t like, and seem to support Putin on everything as if he is the leader of the CPSU that doesn’t exist any more (i.e. basic anti-Americanism), these meetings have not just called for “an end to the fascist junta in Kiev” but also for “support for the socialist movement in Ukraine as represented by Borotba and the Communist Party of Ukraine”.

That, along with Andrew Murray in an unlikely alliance with Rob Sewell and Alan Woods, should ring some alarm bells, regardless of Gable’s article.

Maybe Maduro hasn’t invited Comrade Woods onto Telesur and Alo Presidente lately, and Socialist Appeal have realised that Russia Today might give them a bigger audience (and a 2am half-hour slot to pontificate in, without much editorial interference, maybe in the style of what once was my favourite Arte programme, Mit offenen Karten / Le dessous les cartes?)?

Andrew Coates:

This is relevant on one aspect of the ideological confusion in these areas,

Aleksandr Dugin – Radical Conservatism dressed up as Revolution – A Critique by Nickglais – Part 1 The Ideological Roots of Duginism

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aleksandr-dugin-radical-conservatism.html

Wikipedia says,

“Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ге́льевич Ду́гин, born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political scientist, traditionalist, and one of the most popular ideologists of the creation of a Eurasian empire that would be against the “North Atlantic interests”. He is known for his fascist views,[1][2][3][4] and had close ties to the Kremlin and Russian military.[5] Dugin serves as an adviser to State Duma speaker (and key member of the ruling United Russia party) Sergei Naryshkin.[6]“

There was a report of the meeting on the Workers Liberty website. For further information, follow links from BfB. Key reading includes: Cathy Young “Fascism comes to Ukraine – from Russia”; Doug Saunders “Vladimir Putin’s fifth column in the West“; Bob From Brockley “Ukraine: the Truth War“; Timothy Snyder “Ukraine: the Antidote to Europe’s Fascists?”, “The Battle in Ukraine Means Everything: Fascism Returns to the Continent it Once Destroyed” and “Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine”. For voices from Ukraine, the best sites are People and Nature, Libcom, Avtonomia,

 

Filed under: Left-right convergence   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Aleksandr Dugin, Borotba, Donetsk People Republic, Gerry Gable, Lyndon LaRouche, Natalya Vitrenko, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, russia, Russia Today, Schiller Institute, Searchlight, Ukraine