On 2014-04-02, at 11:16 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: > On 4/2/14 11:11 AM, Marv Gandall wrote: >> These are precisely the talking points used by Western politicians >> and pro-Western commentators to portray the Ukrainian right >> nationalists and their EU-US sponsors as the targets of Russian >> aggression, rather than as the instigators of the current crisis. > > Sorry if it discomfits you if it is revealed that Putin's chief > ideologist is fraternizing with Golden Dawn and Jobbik. When you lie > down with dogs, you get fleas. It doesn't matter the source of the > revelation but the revelation itself. I had no idea that the Kremlin was > networking with filth like Golden Dawn and Jobbik. If that is of little > interest to you, so be it.
it's a mistake to see the behaviour of the Russian government as being driven by an "affinity", as Louis puts it, for fascism - as much or more of a mistake as to exaggerate the influence of the far right on the centre-right government of Ukraine. Each preside over capitalist states based on rapacious oligarchs who switch sides with abandon whenever they perceive a shift in the balance of forces. They differ only in the degree of their independence from the US and the EU. They each appeal to traditional nationalism and enjoy a high level of mass support. The liberal left is very weak and the revolutionary left virtually absent in both countries. In other words, they are much more alike than dissimilar at the level of both the state and mass political culture. I became interested in this discussion because I don't believe, as I said at the time, that we have a dog in this fight. Louis and others believe that we do, having idealized the Euromaidan as a class movement rather than an ethnocentric one dominated by right-wing nationalists inviting confrontation with Russia and the Russian-speaking Ukrainian provinces in the east. In effect, they've thrown in their lot behind a process which has both dangerously destabilized the region and will almost certainly lead to a further lowering of living standards for the mass of the population in both halves of the country. I can't disagree with Louis' last sentence, however. Whether Putin has or has not some nebulous "connection" to European far right individuals or parties is beside the point. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
