In Ukraine, fascists, oligarchs and western expansion are at the heart of the crisis

[Swagman]

"You'd never know from most of the reporting that far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings. One of the three main opposition parties heading the campaign is the hard-right antisemitic Svoboda, whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok claims that a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" controls Ukraine. But US senator John McCain was happy to share a platform with him in Kiev last month. The party, now running the city of Lviv, led a 15,000-strong torchlit march earlier this month in memory of the Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whose forces fought with the Nazis in the second world war and took part in massacres of Jews."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/29/ukraine-fascists-oligarchs-eu-nato-expansion

[Igel]

1. You're at least partly right.

It's nationalism.

Then again, if you read the Venezuelan press you see gobs of nationalism. Or the Ecuadorian press. Or the Argentine press. The entire Malvinas/Falklands business is swathed in nationalism.

The Catalonian independence movement is nationalism.

Let's not even talk about the PA and its rhetoric in the I/P conflict.

So it's not that simple. The left is allied with Russia because it needs to be--the "left" being defined as those who like the old order and had a vested interest in it. (This isn't Boston we're talking about. The words mean different things. It's like when people compare conservatives in Europe and find that they're very close in many respects to moderate liberals in the US. Political words need to be defined in terms of local politics--local to the participants, not to us.)

Another problem is that the West has been decried as fascist ever since it chose Hitler over Stalin. Stalin never let the rest of the USSR forget it, and the same tropes are still used as in 1943.

The use of labels can help to understand. Or it can be used to manipulate and oversimplify.