Stabbed in the Back: What's the Difference Between an "Unabashed Nationalist" and a "Fascist"?

“Fascist”, it appears, is the go-to epithet for characterizing nationalists and racists we don’t like.  “Nationalist” is apparently the go-to epithet for characterizing fascists we do like.

The Western media is coping with the conspicuous and undeniable presence of fascists in the Ukrainian paramilitaries by rebranding them.  A recent case in point was in a Reuters article celebrating the doughty defenders of Mariupol i.e. the Azov Battalion, which discommodes Kyiv-friendly observers by unapologetically  marching under the fascist “Wolfangel” banner:

Many in the Azov Battalion have unabashed Ukrainian nationalist sympathies, prompting rebels to label them neo-fascists.

From time to time, Azov fighters in Shyrokyne greeted one another with ironic Roman salutes and then grinned at their own humor. That kind of idle larking and the battalion's flirtation with neo-Nazi symbolism is seized upon as confirmation of their critics' worst fears.

The infamy appears only partly deserved, however.

Some embrace fervent Ukrainian nationalism as a repudiation of the heavily Russian-dominated Soviet legacy, all while serving with fighters from a wide array of political and ethnic backgrounds. Chit-chat switches casually from Ukrainian to Russian and back again.

Let me offer my back-of-the-envelope guide to discriminating between “unabashed nationalist sympathizers” and “neo-fascists”.  Nationalists let their fervor, their bigotry, and enthusiasm play out in the quotidian realm, along the spectrum from vociferous Internet commentator to soccer hooligan.

Neo-fascists do something about their nationalist convictions, by joining an armed fascist formation which considers implementing a national or racial political and social agenda, by violence if necessary, an existential national imperative beyond state sanction.  That’s been a powerful strain in Ukrainian political thought since the 1930s that flourishes today, and not just in the Azov Battalion.

Trying to submerge “fascism” in the mushy nomenclature of “nationalism” is an exercise in self-delusion that, in my opinion, balks understanding of trends throughout Europe and not just in Ukraine.

A classic German film by Fritz Lang, Die Nibelungen, provides an opportunity to reflect upon the difference between unabashed nationalism and meat and potatoes fascism.  The epic, split into two stand-alone films, Siegfried and The Revenge of Kriemhild, is available on Netflix, so readers interested in film and fascism are invited to have a look.  I’ll wait.

…

For those readers who did not just sit through four and a half hours of black and white silent film, I will mention that this is not Wagner’s Nibelungen.  Instead of the hallucinogenic word salad and musical bombast of the Wagnerian Ring cycle, Lang and his wife and scriptwriter, Thea von Harbou, went back to the ur-text of the Nibelungen Saga, a medieval epic that was rediscovered in the 19^th century and was adopted as the German foundation myth, its Iliad, in order to give age, nobility, and gravitas to the Germanic historical tradition, its recently established Kaiser, and Bismarck’s newly-minted nation.

The original Nibelungen is a simple story of a boy, his dragon, his utterly bugnuts wife, and the interesting folk they encounter.

UFA spared no expense to bring Die Nibelungen to the screen. The artistic and technical resources of German cinema are on full display in the sets, costumes, makeup, and cinematography, as are the expressive power of silent-film acting.  The movie is quite compelling and, to the patient, rewarding.  Remarkably, much of the syntax of modern film—the closeups, cross cutting, establishing shots und so weiter—appears to be fully developed at this early date.

Die Nibelungen was made in 1924, as Germany was still trying to come to terms with the epic calamity of its defeat in World War I, the exile of Kaiser Wilhelm, loss of territories in the east and west, the rise of communism as a potential organizing principle opposed to German nationalism, and the appearance of the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time Weimar Republic.  The explicit purpose of the film was to buck up the German people and assure them that the national mojo had not been lost.

The first title-card in The Nibelungen dedicates the film “To the German People.”

There’s a lot of good writing about the Lang movies.  William Ahearn referenced several important works on his site  and included this quote from Lang:

In 1974, in an interview with Focus on Film, Lang said: “By making ‘Die Nibelungen’ I wanted to show that Germany was searching for an ideal in her past, even during the horrible time after World War I in which the film was made. At that time in Berlin I remember seeing a poster on the street, which pictured a woman dancing with a skeleton. The caption read: ‘Berlin, you are dancing with Death.’ To counteract this pessimistic spirit I wanted to film the epic legend of Siegfried so that Germany could draw inspiration from her past, and not, as Mr Kracauer [author of From Caligari to Hitler; he links the films to Nazi themes—CH] suggests, as a looking forward to the rise of a political figure like Hitler or some such stupid thing as that.”  

Unfortunately, it’s kind of hard not to think and look backward at “stupid things” such as Nazi racial ideology when looking at the depiction of Siegfried’s human and barely-human foils in the picture.

Siegfried benefits greatly from a charismatic turn in the title role by Paul Richter.  Richter is, there’s no other way of putting it, gorgeous.  He’s studly, buff, noble, merry, and with a disingenuous and spontaneous demeanor which is pretty much supposed to embody the positive “German” self-image--as I understand it.  I invite readers to test this generalization, as well as subsequent generalizations about the stereotypes of non-Germanic people (which I do not endorse and carefully identify as stereotypes by the use of “quotation marks”) Lang and von Harbau perhaps chose to depict, by watching the films and drawing their own conclusions.

We first meet the blonde Richter displaying his energy and effervescence while rusticating in the forest realm of Mime the Blacksmith.  Actually, he materializes like a shaft of golden light forging a sword amid a group of slovenly oafs who, I regret to say, may possibly be meant to represent a certain easterly contingent of the northern European woodland population.  Siegfried impulsively decides to seek the hand of Kriemhild, sister of King Gunther of Burgundy, in marriage and jumps on his snow white steed to venture off.  Consider the box for “German” initiative and vigor—in contrast to the lackadaisical deportment of certain neighbors—checked.

Next, Siegfried slays the dragon, in this case an enormous and to modern eyes somewhat unconvincing puppet that weighed one and a half tons and was operated by 32 men.  He bathes in the dragon’s blood, thereby acquiring imperviousness to all weapons—except on his shoulderblade, where a linden leaf alights and blocks the shield-sauce.  (Speaking of sauciness, Siegfried’s rear is on display in the bathing scene, but it is not Paul Richter’s.  Richter refused to do the scene nude and Rudolf Klein-Rogge--another member of the Lang troupe, Thea von Harbau’s first husband and, subsequently, star of Metropolis --stepped up to depict the heroic booty.)

Siegfried then encounters a suspiciously “Jewish”-looking individual, Alberich--depicted as “not a handsome Jew, naturally, but as a vile Jew.”, as one contemporary account put it -- a tricky dwarf from whom Siegfried acquires the treasure of the Nibelungen, in addition to a worrisome curse.  Then it’s Off to Burgundy! To woo Kriemhild with his glamor and treasure.

Burgundy is “Germanic” but also kind of “Frankish”, if you get my drift, with a pervasive and oppressive Christian establishment that contrasts with Siegfried’s apparently joyous, unselfconscious paganism.  Siegfried wins Kriemhild, but also gets embroiled in all sorts of intrigue and betrayal in the gloomy court, culminating in his murder—yes, he is STABBED IN THE BACK—by the king’s henchman, Hagen.

Siegfried ends with Kriemhild vowing revenge for her husband’s murder.

In the second film, The Revenge of Kriemhild, Siegfried’s widow marries Attila the Hun in her quest for revenge and the manpower to inflict it.  Attila is portrayed by the protean Karl Klein-Rogge, who transforms himself from Paul Richter’s butt-double in the first film to a depraved and cadaverous, phrenologically-challenged “Mongoloid” Oriental despot in the sequel.  It is interesting though unfortunately meaningless that the German form of Attila, “Etsel”, was the name Henry Ford gave to his son, Anglicized as “Edsel” (it was the given name of one of Ford’s closest friends).

The Huns are subhuman “Asiatic” hordes (“Slavs” or “Bolsheviks” in my reading) whom Kriemhild (“Spartacist”/”race traitor”, perhaps) is able to wrap around her little finger.  When her brother, the King of Burgundy, and Hagen and a small company arrive at Attila’s encampment in an ill-starred reconciliatory visit, she gins up a massacre that fails, thanks to the Euro-valor of the Burgundians and the fecklessness of the debased Huns.

However, the vastly outnumbered Burgundians are unable to escape and find themselves trapped inside Attila’s castle.  Kriemhild orders wave upon wave of attacks, all of which are beaten back by the doughty knights.  Finally, she orders the hall torched (the inspiration for Wagner’s Gotterdammerung), the roof falls in, everybody dies, THE END.  Well, the King and Hagen make it out, but they choose death instead of dishonor so THE END.  To be honest, Lang missed a trick when he omitted the fate of Kriemhild described in the original edda: an enraged Burgundian retainer cuts her in half as she stands amid the corpses of her brother and her countrymen and she doesn’t even notice until she bends over to pick something up and literally FALLS TO PIECES.  THE END.

 

The Burgundian band of brothers are explicitly identified as the Germans; when the king is offered a dirty deal of safe passage in return for giving up Hagen to Kriemhild’s wrath, the riposte is “You don’t understand us Germans.”  And before the final inferno in Attila’s hall, one soldier speaks longingly of his wish to see “the green waters of the Rhine” again.  At the time the film was released, German audiences were well aware that the Rhine was under Allied occupation and German troops forbidden to approach within 20 miles of the river per the terms of the Versailles Treaty.  They were also aware that the French had occupied the Ruhr, on the “right” or east bank of the Rhine, in retaliation for Germany’s non-payment of reparations.  Not only that, the French were currently engaged in an escapade to try to encourage the creation of a Rhenish Republic to permanently alienate the Rhine Valley from Germany.  The Rhine crisis was the mother of hot-button issues for Germans, all Germans I suspect and not just over-the-top German nationalists, during this period.

For those with an interest in historical parallels, it could be said that the Rhineland represented the “classy, European elite-status schloss und kultur” element of German national identity as Kyiv does today for Ukrainian nationalists; and loss of the Rhine represented loss of caste, and a disastrous descent toward parity with “those people” inhabiting the eastern reaches of northern Europe.

The Revenge of Kriemhild did not find much favor with audiences or critics.  Kriemhild does little more than glower, grumble, and occasionally point a minatory finger as the ape-like “Huns” caper about; the characters are universally unsympathetic and viewers are unable to develop a sporting interest in their fates which, it transpires, are universally dismal.  One critic described The Revenge of Kriemhild as a “vast, spectacular pageant of boredom.” 

On the other hand, everybody loved Siegfried.  Including Hitler, who cried at the ending. 

The character of Die Nebilungen as a national/nationalist rallying cry is indisputable, and its rather nasty nationalist/racialist approach to Germany’s relationship with its neighbors, though implicit is, I think, genuine.

Nationalism/racism themes inform both halves of Die Nibelungen, and both films fed into the unsavory theme of “dolchstosse”, the idea that Germany could only have been defeated in the Great War by the unpatriotic machinations of socialists and Jews in the homeland.

The general theme of the film is superior Teutonic stock gets cut down thanks to its inferior numbers, its hubris, and its quixotic devotion to noble ideals, especially when confronted with the duplicitous scheming of its enemies.  It’s not just the tragedy of Siegfried, the invincible German hero vulnerable only to treachery; The Revenge of Kriemhild recapitulates his death at the collective level.  

In fetishizing German martial valor, the film reflected broadly-held attitudes in Germany after World War I.

As Friedrich Altrichter, author of a widely-cited 1933 work on “the soul of the German Army” put it (h/t to the website Long Story Short Pier for the quote):

He had become painfully aware of the enemy’s overwhelming firepower, of his superiority in the air, of the countless tanks against which one could oppose nothing of equal force. Everyone recognized that Germany, economically exhausted and lacking important raw materials, helplessly faced the enormous harnessing of the world’s resources. But all this had nothing to do with the feeling of superiority as person, soldier, and fighter. The fact that this feeling of superiority was retained after the war’s conclusion is of utmost significance for the German future. It preserves a feeling in society that the battlefield was not left as loser, despite the lost war and the mighty collapse. 

But the movie doesn’t quite qualify as “fascist” for a variety of reasons.  First off, it was made too early—1924-- to be part of the Nazi bandwagon.  It was a Weimar product, approved by Weimar censors.

Second, Lang was not a fascist.  Lang elaborately overstated his anti-fascism after he left Germany and emigrated to the United States, but the fact is he did leave Germany after the Nazis took power.  Goebbels had actively recruited him to lead the Nazi cinema program on the strength of Die Nibelungen & Lang’s overall stature in the German film industry.  But Lang demurred and left the country, maybe not the next morning as he endlessly declared in his potted autobiography, but soon after. 

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse may not have been, as Lang pretended, his conscious riposte to the rise of Hitler (see David Kalat's book, The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse for an in-depth discussion of the gestation of the movie and its repurposing as part of Lang's self-cultivated anti-fascist mythos), but it was a brilliant and unsettling look at a monomaniacal genius declaring “I am the state” and mobilizing a secret army of thugs and fanatics to destroy Weimar Germany through street terror, intimidation, and sabotage of its political and economic institutions.  And it was banned by Goebbels (who secretly loved the film and frequently screened it in private) because its depiction of individuals and an entire society spiraling into madness worked against the will-exalting/subconscious and psychoanalysis-detesting Nazi program for social renewal.

Finally, Die Nibelungen doesn’t fit the fascist script.  The movie acknowledges, explores, exalts and panders to nationalism and racism.  But nationalism and racism ultimately are the instruments of annihilation, not rebirth and triumph.

At the end of the day, the dolchstossing of Siegfried is committed by another German, Hagen, enabled by the spinelessness of King Gunther and the gullibility of Kriemhild.  And the calamity that befalls the Burgundian party in the second film is entirely the work of Kriemhild, who basically has to take over from an initially conciliatory and remarkably disengaged Attila the Hun to organize the massacre.

Taken as a whole, in other words, Die Nibelungen was not a fascist infomercial effectively advocating exclusionary racial unity over democracy and socialism as the indispensable recipe for national survival, unless the definition of “national survival” includes “burning your nation to the ground” (which, interestingly enough, is exactly what Hitler did!).  

Eventually the Nazis had their chance to revisit Die Nibelungen.

In 1933, with Hitler in power, Siegfried was re-released in a truncated form, Siegfrieds Tod (Death of Siegfried), with passages of Wagner finally chunked in (the notoriously protective and contentious Wagner estate had denied music permissions to the film when it was first made).  Netflix viewers can rest assured that they have watched a careful reconstruction of the original 1924 version—released on BluRay by Murnau Stiftung in 2012—and not the Nazified release.

According to scholar Adeline Mueller (in Joe & Gilman, Wagner and Cinema, Indian University Press, 2010)  the 1933 version was re-edited without Lang’s input to shift focus away from the fecklessness of the Frankish king and the role of his cowardice in Siegfried’s death —after all, his royal seat stood on the shores of the hallowed Rhine at Worms!  Can’t irresponsibly disparage German leadership!—in order to put the onus on one Burgundian bad apple, Hagen, for the demise of the Teutonic paragon.

 And the entire second half of the opus—The Revenge of Kriemhild—the downer-bloodbath in which Germanic back-biting, vindictiveness, and stubborn malice effect the destruction of the entire Burgundian nobility—got ditched. 

Ironically or perhaps understandably the Nazis had no appetite for Lang’s vision of self-annihilation of a group of obtuse, violent, and vicious German nationalists.

It is also amusing, I suppose, that Hitler was recapitulating American artistic judgment.  For the 1924 release in New York, only Siegfried made the cut; The Revenge of Kriemhild stayed in the can and sank virtually without a trace on its US release three years later.  And to reduce the “embittered-loser” vibe that would have set Americans’ teeth on edge, the last few minutes of Siegfried—Kriemhild’s vengeful mutterings that set up the second movie—were reportedly excised.  Instead, Siegfried died heroically and pitifully…and then, in a tacked-on live-action epilogue, was transported to Valhalla by the Valkyries to the tune of the funeral march from Wagner’s Gotterdammerung! The pit orchestra was recruited from the Metropolitan Opera, and the arrangement apparently represented a flank attack on the Met’s ban on Wagner & indeed all sung German opera in place since World War I.

Mueller writes:

One practical explanation for this epilogue is that it provided a more conclusive ending to Siegfried, given the absence of Part 2.  Another motivation was that American preference for happy endings…the renunciation of revenge suggests that the New York version of Siegfried sought to rewrite…history itself…to “speed the healing of the wounds of war”.

In other words, Siegfried got to go to Valhalla early using the EZPass lane of youthful martyrdom, so no biggee, right?  Bygones be bygones?

Of course, Hitler didn’t feel that way, and decided to do something about it.  That “something” was transforming his nationalist and racist inclinations into a political and paramilitary movement, fascism.  

 

I expect a lot of members of the Azov Battalion feel the same way.

Ukraine is Chockablock with Fascist Formations; Better Deal With It

 The Guardian published an adulatory feature on “The Women Fighting on the Frontline in Ukraine”.

One of the women profiled was “Anaconda”, fighting in the Aidar Battalion bankrolled by Igor Kolomoisky:

Anaconda was given her nickname by a unit commander, in a joking reference to her stature and power. The baby-faced 19-year-old says that her mother is very worried about her and phones several times a day, sometimes even during combat. She says it is better to always answer, as her mother will not stop calling until she picks up.

 “In the very beginning my mother kept saying that the war is not for girls,” Anaconda says. “But now she has to put up with my choice. My dad would have come to the front himself, but his health does not allow him to move. He is proud of me now.”

…

 Anaconda was photographed in combat dress resolutely holding an assault rifle in front of a rather decrepit van.   

 

The caption read: 

“Anaconda says she is being treated well by the men in her battalion, but is hoping that the war will end soon.”

As reported by the gadfly site OffGuardian, several readers posted critical observations on the van’s insignia in the comments section of the piece.  One, “bananasandsocks”, wrote:

“We learn from Wikipedia that the image on the door is the “semi-official” insignia of the 36^th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS…” and also pointed out the neo-Nazi significance of the number “1488”.

“bananasandsocks” seemingly temperate comment was removed by the Guardian for violating its community standards, as were several others, apparently as examples of “persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and our journalists”.

But then the Guardian thought better of it.  While not reinstating the critical comments, it quietly deleted the original caption to the photo of Anaconda and replaced it with: 

Anaconda alongside a van displaying the neo-Nazi symbol 1488. The volunteer brigade is known for its far-right links.

Problem solved?  Maybe not.  Maybe it’s more like “Problem dodged”.  Specifically, the problem of the pervasive participation of “ultra-right” paramilitary elements in Kyiv military operations, which even intrudes upon the Guardian's efforts to put a liberal-friendly feminist sheen on the debacle of the recent ATO in eastern Ukraine.

As to “1488”, I’ll reproduce the Wikipedia entry:

The Fourteen Words is a phrase used predominantly by white nationalists. It most commonly refers to a 14-word slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children."  It can also refer to another 14-word slogan: "Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth.”

Both slogans were coined by David Lane, convicted terrorist and member of the white separatist organization The Order. The first slogan was inspired by a statement, 88 words in length, from Volume 1, Chapter 8 of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf:
…
Neo-Nazis often combine the number 14 with 88, as in "14/88" or "1488". The 8s stand for the eighth letter of the alphabet (H), with "HH" standing for "Heil Hitler".  

Lane died in prison in 2007 while serving a 190 year sentence for, among other things, the murder of Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg.  David Lane has considerable stature within global white nationalist/neo-Nazi/fascist circles as one of the American Aryan movement’s premier badasses (in addition involvement in to the Berg murder—in which he denied involvement—and a string of bank robberies to finance the movement—also denied, Lane achieved a certain martyr’s stature for enduring almost two decades in Federal detention, frequently in the notorious Communications Management Units).

And David Lane was a big deal for the “ultra-right” & fascists in Ukraine, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Lane's death touched off paeans from racists around the country and abroad. June 30 was designated a "Global Day of Remembrance," with demonstrations held in at least five U.S. cities as well as England, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine. 

Judging by this video, the march/memorial on the first anniversary of his death, in 2008, organized by the Ukrainian National Socialist Party in Kyiv, was well enough attended to merit a police presence of several dozen officers.  The sountrack to the clip, by the way, is an elegy to David Lane performed by Ukraine's premier white nationalist metal band at the time, Sokyra Peruna.

There is a photograph of a shield inscribed “1488” at Maidan. 

 

More significantly, perhaps, the name of the armed wing of the Svoboda Party, C14, apparently invokes Lane’s “14 words” .  

It should be said that Lane’s views, including those that inspired the 1488 tag, are esoteric even within the fascist/Neo-Nazi/white supremacist world he inhabited. 

In a letter from prison, Lane wrote:

You know that the three greatest movements of the last 2,000 years have been Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Judaism allowed Jews to conquer and rule the world. I believe only a religious fervor can save our kind now. The 14 Words must be a divine command of Nature's God whom we call Wotan Allfather.

…

As the 666 man, and the Joseph Smith of Wotanism my rewards will be zero. Death in prison, scorn from those with no vision, and hate from the stupid goyim and their kosher masters. But sometimes a man is condemned to a higher cause. And cheerfulness in adversity is still a virtue. Take care. 14 - 88

Lane composed his “88 Precepts” to instruct believers in the ways of white nationalism.  While apparently riffing off the 88 word Mein Kampf passage and “88=HH=Heil Hitler”, it also refers to Lane’s numerological/messianic preoccupations.

Ukrainian fascists’ admiration for Lane is a reflection of the pervasiveness of indigenous Ukrainian fascism, which looks for models and partners internationally while drawing plenty of strength and inspiration from its own profoundly deep historical and ideological local roots. 

 

As I wrote in a piece for CounterPunch, Ukrainian fascism seems almost inevitable:  

Ukrainian fascism is more durable and vital than most.  It was forged in the most adverse conditions imaginable, in the furnace of Stalinism, under the reign of Hitler, and amid Poland’s effort to destroy Ukrainian nationality.

Ukrainian nationalism was under ferocious attack between the two world wars.  The USSR occupied the eastern half of Ukraine, subjected it to collectivization under Stalin, and committed repression and enabled a famine that killed millions.  At first, the Soviets sought to co-opt Ukrainian nationalism by supporting Ukrainian cultural expression while repressing Ukrainian political aspirations; USSR nationalities policies were “nationalist in expression and socialist in essence”.  Then, in 1937 Stalin obliterated the native Ukrainian cultural and communist apparatus in a thoroughgoing purge and implemented Russified central control through his bespoke instrument, Nikita Khrushchev.

Meanwhile, the western part of the Ukraine was under the thumb of the Polish Republic, which was trying to entrench its rule before either the Germans or the Russians got around to destroying it again.  This translated into a concerted Polish political, security, cultural, and demographic push into Ukrainian Galicia.  The Polish government displaced Ukrainian intellectuals and farmers, attacked their culture and religion (including seizure of Orthodox churches and conversion into Roman Catholic edifices), marginalized the Ukrainians in their own homeland, and suppressed Ukrainian independence activists (like Bandera, who spent the years 1933 to 1939 in Poland’s Wronki Prison after trying to assassinate Poland’s Minister of the Interior).
Ukrainian nationalists, therefore, were unable to ride communism or bourgeois democracy into power.  Communism was a tool of Soviet expansionism, not class empowerment, and Polish democracy offered no protection for Ukrainian minority rights or political expression, let alone a Ukrainian state.

Ukrainian nationalists turned largely toward fascism, specifically toward a concept of “integral nationalism” that, in the absence of an acceptable national government, manifested itself in a national will residing in the spirit of its adherents, not expressed by the state or restrained by its laws, but embodied by a charismatic leader and exercised through his organization, whose legitimacy supersedes that of the state and whose commitment to violence makes it a law unto itself.

It’s not just a matter of historical sentiment or inclination.  Ukraine’s contemporary fascists share a direct bloodline with the fascists of the Soviet era, especially in the matter of Roman Shukhevych, the commander of Ukrainian nationalist forces fighting with the Nazis during World War II and also responsible for horrific atrocities while attempting to cleanse Galicia of Poles in the service of Ukrainian independence.   From my CounterPunch article:

In February 2014, the New York Times’ Andrew Higgins penned a rather embarrassing passage that valorized the occupation of Lviv—the Galician city at the heart of Ukrainian fascism, the old stomping grounds of Roman Shukhevych and the Nachtigall battlaion, and also Simon Wiesnthal’s home town—by anti-Yanyukovich forces in January 2014:

Some of the president’s longtime opponents here have taken an increasingly radical line.

Offering inspiration and advice has been Yuriy Shukhevych, a blind veteran nationalist who spent 31 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps and whose father, Roman, led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army against Polish and then Soviet rule.

Mr. Shukhevych, 80, who lost his sight during his time in the Soviet gulag, helped guide the formation of Right Sector, an unruly organization whose fighters now man barricades around Independence Square, the epicenter of the protest movement in Kiev.

Yuriy Shukhevych’s role in modern Ukrainian fascism is not simply that of an inspirational figurehead and reminder of his father’s anti-Soviet heroics for proud Ukrainian nationalists.  He is a core figure in the emergence of the key Ukrainian fascist formation, Pravy Sektor and its paramilitary.

And Pravy Sektor’s paramilitary, the UNA-UNSO, is not an “unruly” collection of weekend-warrior-wannabes, as Mr. Higgins might believe.

UNA-UNSO was formed during the turmoil of the early 1990s, largely by ethnic Ukrainian veterans of the Soviet Union’s bitter war in Afghanistan.  From the first, the UNA-UNSO has shown a taste for foreign adventures, sending detachments to Moscow in 1990 to oppose the Communist coup against Yeltsin, and to Lithuania in 1991.  With apparently very good reason, the Russians have also accused UNA-UNSO fighters of participating on the anti-Russian side in Georgia and Chechnya.

After formal Ukrainian independence, the militia elected Yuriy Shukhevych—the son of OUN-B commander Roman Shukhevych– as its leader and set up a political arm, which later became Pravy Sektor.

There’s plenty of indigenous fascism to go around. Interviews with Ukrainian ultra-rights reveal a welter of views befitting the country’s fraught and contested status in central Europe, ranging from “autonomous nationalists” (whose demeanour and tactics mirror on the right mirror those of European anarchists on the left); ultras who emerged from the football club wars; and determinedly theoretical scientific fascists.  The common thread of the diverse and syncretic Ukrainian fascist movement is the conviction that the survival of the Ukrainian people is under threat from a multitude of forces and mechanisms (Russians, Jews, the EU, democracy, capitalism, communism etc.), and can only be assured by autonomous armed force under charismatic leadership; and yes, apparently a shared belief that Adolf Hitler showed how it could and should be done.

Rooting fascism out of Ukraine’s cultural, social, and political matrix is going to take a lot of work.  Unfortunately, the opposite is going on right now.

The leading Ukrainian observer of Ukrainian ultrarights, Anton Shekhovstov, did not deny the presence of ultraright formations at Maidan, but tried to square the circle philosophically by characterizing the Ukrainian conflict as an anti-imperialist/anti-colonial struggle that might elicit and safely incorporate fascist activism.  Then, when the Russian threat had been dealt with, Ukrainian civil society could neutralize the fascist factor.  In January 2014, when Maidan was white-hot, Shekhovstov wrote:

Thus, a fight against fascism in Ukraine should always be synonymous with the fight against the attempts to colonise the country. Those who separate these two issues or crack down on the Ukrainian far right without recognising the urgent need for national independence will never be successful in their attempts to neutralise the far right. Moreover, they can make the situation worse.

However, Ukrainian fascists have not been disempowered and marginalized by the circus of defeat and dysfunction that is the current Kyiv government.  In fact, “ultra-right” is trending upward in Ukraine governance, as Shekhovtsov glumly observed in a recent post discussing the emergence of yet another powerful ultra-right formation:

[T]he electoral failure of Svoboda and the Right Sector [in the recent parliamentary as well as presidential elections] did not mark “the end of history” of the Ukrainian far right…

… The recent developments in Ukraine marked by the rise of the previously obscure neo-Nazi organisation “The Patriot of Ukraine” (PU) led by Andriy Bilets’ky…

… the PU formed a core of the Azov battalion, a volunteer detachment governed by the Ministry of Interior headed by Arsen Avakov. From the very beginning, the Azov battalion employed imagery such as Wolfsangel and Schwarze Sonne that in post-war Europe is associated with neo-Nazi movements…

The political perspective raises troubling questions: Why did Ukrainians elect a neo-Nazi into the parliament? Why did the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior promote the leaders of the neo-Nazi organisation?...

Shekhovtstov finds an explanation for Avakov’s footsie with the PU in the cronyism (and demand for extra-legal street muscle) that permeates Ukraine business and politics.  His conclusion is not a particularly happy one:

Conclusion

Avakov may consider the PU-led Azov battalion as his “private army”, but not everybody in the PU and Azov see the current cooperation with the Ministry of Interior as a goal in and of itself. The PU may benefit from this cooperation, but it still has its own political agenda that goes beyond this cooperation. The PU has also started advertising employment in the Security Service of Ukraine on their webpages. [emphasis added]

Further infiltration of the far right into the Ukrainian law enforcement and other institutions of the state will most likely lead to the following developments. First, the coalescence of the police and the far right who were engaged, inter alia, in the illegal activities will necessarily increase the corruption risks. Second, the growth of the far right within the law enforcement will lead to the gradual liberation of the PU from the personal patronage of Avakov that will likely result in the PU’s independent action.

While Svoboda and the Right Sector have failed in the 2014 parliamentary elections, the infiltration of some other far right organisations in the law enforcement is possibly a more advanced long-term strategy in their fight against not particularly well established liberal democracy in Ukraine.

One of the awkward facts of Ukrainian politics is that Ukraine’s fascists have the ambition if not yet the demonstrated capability of opportunistically using the current regime’s need—and factions’ desires--for effective armed formations to catapult the extreme-right into power.

And it seems that the West has zero strategy for dealing with this problem.  In fact, if disorder and discontent escalate in western Ukraine as a result of the US insistence on confronting Russia and the ethnic Russian opposition in the West, I expect the fascist problem will get worse before it gets better.

And it isn’t going to be solved by ignoring, downplaying, wishing away, or dismissing Ukrianian fascism as an irrelevant historical and political anachronism...or by discretely recaptioning some of its embarrassingly blatant manifestations.  

It’s not just amusing or disturbing that the Guardian appears determined to graft a misleading liberal, Europe-loving image onto the fascist friendly Ukraine adventure; it’s downright dangerous.

I'm trying to avoid the TL;DR trap so I abridged my original piece to supply the excerpt posted above.  But I try to err on the side of inclusiveness and context whenever I can--especially since sources vanish off the web and the Google algorithm sometimes gets dodgy--so I've included the complete original piece below the fold for readers who wish to go deeper.

Ukrainian Fascism Article Up At CounterPunch Weekend Edition

CounterPunch is very kindly featuring an article I wrote for them titled "The Durability of Ukrainian Fascism".

First, a correction.  In the piece, I give credence to allegations that the Nachtigall Battalion (Ukrainian nationalists, largely Banderites, organized into a military unit under the direction of German military intelligence) participated in the first Lviv pogrom.  These allegations are apparently false and the result of a Soviet forgery and disinformation campaign.

In the piece, I take issue with the desire of some supporters of the Kyiv regime to downplay the role of fascism and fascist parties such as Pravy Sektor a.k.a. Right Sector and Svoboda in the current political mix.  Fascism, I conclude, is not just part of Europe's past; it's part of its present...and future.

Fascism is particularly strong in the Baltic republics (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), and in Ukraine.  Post-Soviet governments in these frontline states have, in a rather gingerly fashion, rehabilitated native fascists who fought with the Nazis against Stalin as rallying points for anti-Russian nationalism.

Rehabilitating fascists has also required poormouthing the Holocaust and its unique moral significance, primarily because World War II fascists and nationalists abetted the German occupation and liquidation of Jews, provided manpower for the "Final Solution" and enthusiastically and savagely participated in local pogroms that the arriving Germans permitted during the brief "honeymoon" period of the occupation.

Traditional strains of local anti-Semitism were amplified by the identification of Jews, rightly or wrongly, with Soviet occupation and administration.  When the German armies first entered the Baltic and eastern European states and liberated them from Soviet rule, elements of the local population enthusiastically engaged in horrific pogroms against Jews, especially in Lithuania and in Ukraine. In July 1941, using the massacre of thousands of prisoners in Lviv's prisons by the retreating Soviets as an excuse, residents of Lviv humiliated and murdered Jews in the city, with a death toll of over 3000.   German film crews recorded the episode in order to educate the homeland as to the desperate and savage struggle with "Judeo-Bolshevism".  Some footage was incorporated into newsreels and can be found on the Internet.  The raw footage ended up as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.


A careful and persuasive study by John-Paul Himka concludes that the July pogrom was facilitated and executed primarily by the local militia of Stepan Bandera's OUN-B faction.

In Origins of the Final Solution, Christopher Browning Jurgen Matthaus describe the second, Fall 1941, Lviv pogrom executed as part of the ghettoization effort:

...ghettoization was combined with decimation.    Access to the ghetto was limited to passage under two railway bridges, where German and Ukrainian policemen seized valuables from the incoming Jews and conducted a selection...Many thousands of Jews were killed in the so-called bridge of death Aktion...women were for the first time the primary victims.




After the inaugural frenzy, the Germans reserved for themselves the responsibility and grim honor of engaging in the actual execution of Jews; but Baltic and eastern European auxiliaries were always there, to dig the graves, bury the dead, control the victims, and police the camps. In Lviv, by the end of the war the Jewish population had dwindled from the 1939 high of 200,000 to around 300.

Exalting fascists, therefore, involves downplaying the moral claims of the Holocaust.  This involves giving suffering at the hands of the Soviets at least equal stature with the program of annihilation local fascists helped visit on the Jewish population of Eastern Europe.

In Ukraine, this means elevating the Holodomor, the massive loss of life in Ukraine inflicted by Stalin as part of his program of collectivization, suppression of local resistance, and the ensuing famine.  The direct death toll was bad enough, somewhere on the order of 3 million; through various statistical jiggery-pokery, Ukrainian nationalist historians have tried to boost this figure to ten million dead, thereby eclipsing the canonical Holocaust figure of six million for all of Europe.


And, to the outrage of Jewish groups, the Baltic states' lobbying arm was able to prevail upon the US Congress this week to do this:

Legislation designating August 23 as a “Black Ribbon Day” commemorating the victims of both Soviet communist and Nazi terror passed yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives. It is a culmination of an ongoing two-year effort by the Joint Baltic American National Committee, Inc. (JBANC) seeking passage of this legislation.

Congressman John Shimkus of Illinois, the co-chairman of the House Baltic Caucus, sponsored the legislation and effectively shepherded its passage in the House. The legislation, part of a National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4435), will now be taken up by the Senate. A conference committee of both houses will work out differences...
 

In Hungary the rightist/nationalist government is currently in the midst of a wrangle with liberal-democratic, Jewish, and pro-EU groups concerning its insistence on erecting a statue commemorating the suffering of Hungarians at the hands of Hitler, depicting an eagle (Germany) attacking the Archangel Gabriel (Hungary).

Just as Austria smoothed over the rough edges of its collaboration with the Nazis by portraying itself as "Hitler's first victim", it would seem that Hungary--which saw a belated occupation by the Nazis in 1944 to forestall their ally's efforts to negotiate a separate peace as the German war effort collapsed--is trying to repackage itself as "Hitler's last victim."

The real Hungarian victims of Nazi Germany, were of course, the Jews of Hungary, none of whom are particularly identified with the Archangel Gabriel--the symbol of the divine sovereignty of the Roman-Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Hannah Arendt relates that Eichmann was able to achieve the unimaginable task of transporting 450,000 Hungarian Jews to the overworked death chambers of Auschwitz in two months only because of the assistance of the local Hungarian bureaucrats: "Everything went "like a dream" as [Eichmann] repeated every time he recalled this episode..." (Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Viking Press, pg. 125)


I argue that European fascism is not just bigotry, xenophobia, and nostalgia for the Russian-bashing practices of Nazi Germany; it's also a nationalist response to the perceived excesses and failures of transnationalized, globalized neo-liberalism.  But it's also determinedly and shamefully anti-Semitic.