Slate: Russia Says the Ukrainian Protesters Are Fascists and Nazis. Are They?

[cthulu2016]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/02/20/russia_says_the_ukrainian_protesters_are_fascists_and_nazis_are_they.html

Doesn't reduce well to 4 paragraphs. Worth reading at the link. It's fair... doesn't sugarcoat Svoboda, doesn't overstate Svoboda's influence.

"The movement" in Ukraine cannot be sensibly described as primarily or predominantly Nazi, neo-Nazi or even fascist.

This seems a fair statement: "...it is important to be attentive to the far right in Ukrainian politics and history. It is still a serious presence today, although less important than the far right in France, Austria, or the Netherlands."

...One of the three figures who form the Maidan movement’s unlikely leadership coalition, along with boxer Vitali Klitschko and former Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the nationalist Svoboda party who has a habit of doing things like referring to the country’s government as a “Jewish-Russian mafia.” The party traces its roots to a Nazi-allied partisan army during World War II and was known as the Social-National Party—in reference to National Socialism—until 2004. Last month the party held a torch-lit march in honor of Stepan Bandera—a controversial figure viewed by some as a Nazi collaborator.

...It’s clear that the protests against the government by supporters of European integration started before Svoboda showed up and that the party's presence does not represent all—or even most—of the protesters in Kiev, which include a fair number of Jews. But Tyahnybok’s role has certainly made things awkward for the movement's international supporters...

All the same, the charges that Euromaidan is defined primarily by fascism and anti-Semitism is a little rich coming from the people making it, as Timothy Snyder discusses in the New York Review of Books:

The protests in the Maidan, we are told again and again by Russian propaganda and by the Kremlin’s friends in Ukraine, mean the return of National Socialism to Europe. The Russian foreign minister, in Munich, lectured the Germans about their support of people who salute Hitler. The Russian media continually make the claim that the Ukrainians who protest are Nazis. Naturally, it is important to be attentive to the far right in Ukrainian politics and history. It is still a serious presence today, although less important than the far right in France, Austria, or the Netherlands. Yet it is the Ukrainian regime rather than its opponents that resorts to anti-Semitism, instructing its riot police that the opposition is led by Jews. In other words, the Ukrainian government is telling itself that its opponents are Jews and us that its opponents are Nazis. The strange thing about the claim from Moscow is the political ideology of those who make it. [Vladimir Putin’s proposed] Eurasian Union is the enemy of the European Union, not just in strategy but in ideology. The European Union is based on a historical lesson: that the wars of the twentieth century were based on false and dangerous ideas, National Socialism and Stalinism, which must be rejected and indeed overcome in a system guaranteeing free markets, free movement of people, and the welfare state. Eurasianism, by contrast, is presented by its advocates as the opposite of liberal democracy...

[aristocles]

1. Yes, they are. Putin is correct.

[EmilyAnne]

2. Nope. Not true. Sorry.

Find some new tropes.
These old, familiar ones just aren't useful in this situation.

[cthulu2016]

3. Does it trouble you that you are simply wrong?

Have you moved past right and wrong into some dynamic new realm of pretend?

[Behind the Aegis]

4. I agree...some "funny" stuff.

"All the same, the charges that Euromaidan is defined primarily by fascism and anti-Semitism is a little rich coming from the people making it,...

Yeah, the sudden concern over anti-Semitism is almost comical.

"This seems a fair statement: "...it is important to be attentive to the far right in Ukrainian politics and history. It is still a serious presence today, although less important than the far right in France, Austria, or the Netherlands." "

I agree and will add Greece and Hungary.

[JVS]

5. How large a contingent of right wing radicals and racists is it ok to have in a political coalition?

I'm sure the republican party and the teabagger subgroup will be particularly interested to know at what point participation by such groups can be brushed off as negligible.

[jakeXT]

6. The article is a couple of weeks old, now the founder of the party is head of defence

How the far-right took top posts in Ukraine's power vacuum

In the new Ukrainian government politicians linked to the far-right have taken posts from deputy prime minister to head of defence. We profile the nationalists filling the power vacuum.

The man facing down Putin's aggression as secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council is Andriy Parubiy. He oversees national security for the nation having previously served as security commandant during the anti-government protests in Kiev.

Parubiy was the founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler's Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.

http://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right

So it's going to be interesting to see how those forces, who feel a sense of entitlement for fighting in the streets, will behave.
They probably have just a small chance to win in a real election, I wonder if they think they could keep more power by escalating.