Re: [Marxism] Slavoj Žižek · Barbarism with a Human Face: Lenin v. Stalin in Kiev · LRB 8 May 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == It seems to be both and, not either or. I've spent a lot of time scanning german media lately, mainly because I'm interested in how german public opinion views its relationship with russia. Again, from your fave german rag: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-far-right-developing-closer-ties-with-moscow-a-963878.html The parallels between the political stances of President Vladimir Putin's Russia and European right-wingers are as numerous as they are varied. Skepticism of immigration and a keen worry about the threat posed by Islamist extremism make Putin a natural ally for a xenophobic right whose political bread and butter is their vociferous attacks on European immigration policy. His heavy-handed leadership style and homophobic stance likewise don't hurt. *Fueled by Anti-Americanism* But it is European right-wing populists' skepticism of the EU and the 28-member bloc's close ties with the UShttp://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/ukraine-crisis-exposes-gaps-between-berlin-and-nato-a-962978.htmlwhich provides perhaps the broadest foundation for cooperation with Russia. Vassily Likhachev, a Russian parliamentarian who is deputy chair of the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, blasted the EU at the conference last Wednesday, calling EU resolutions relating to the Ukraine crisis shameful and said it was clear that the protests in Kiev were a project developed by NGOs in the United States. The cooperation between the European far right and Russia has been developing for some time. A report published by the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute in March, called The Russian Connection: The Spread of Pro-Russian Policies on the European Far Right, notes that Moscow has shown an interest in Eastern European right-wing parties for several years now. The paper notes that, while admiration for Russia is not universal in Europe's ultra-conservative scene, there is a widespread ideological and political affinity between the far right and Russia. Russia would like to destabilize and weaken the European political scene, and these parties are all anti-EU. They want to burn down the house, says Peter Kreko, one of the authors of the study. I think that's the obvious goal. That and weakening the European-American alliance. On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 7:52 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: On 4/30/14 7:37 PM, Greg McDonald wrote: And the only reason these other parties support Putin is not out of some ideological allegiance to the great right wing russian leader, but because they want to see the collapse of the EU. It suits their nationalism. That's not true. They identify mostly with his hatred of gays. That Italian ultraright group I linked to before was ecstatic over how gays are getting harassed in Russia. Here's a gay blogger commenting on that: http://gayburg.blogspot.com/2013/09/forza-nuova-sta-con-putin.html Frankly, I find it pretty disgusting how Putin is being hoisted on the shoulders of much of the left after his pushing through anti-gay legislation that not even the Republican right in the USA would have the nerve to propose. I guess his anti-imperialism (arming the murderer Bashar al-Assad) trumps gay rights. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Slavoj Žižek · Barbarism with a Human Face: Lenin v. Stalin in Kiev · LRB 8 May 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The entire European neo-fascist right (in Hungary, France, Italy, Serbia) firmly supports Russia in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, giving the lie to the official Russian presentation of the Crimean referendum as a choice between Russian democracy and Ukrainian fascism. The events in Ukraine – the massive protests that toppled Yanukovich and his gang – should be understood as a defence against the dark legacy resuscitated by Putin. The protests were triggered by the Ukrainian government’s decision to prioritise good relations with Russia over the integration of Ukraine into the European Union. Predictably, many anti-imperialist leftists reacted to the news by patronising the Ukrainians: how deluded they are still to idealise Europe, not to be able to see that joining the EU would just make Ukraine an economic colony of Western Europe, sooner or later to go the same way as Greece. In fact, Ukrainians are far from blind about the reality of the EU. They are fully aware of its troubles and disparities: their message is simply that their own situation is much worse. Europe may have problems, but they are a rich man’s problems. Should we, then, simply support the Ukrainian side in the conflict? There is a ‘Leninist’ reason to do so. In Lenin’s very last writings, long after he renounced the utopia of State and Revolution, he explored the idea of a modest, ‘realistic’ project for Bolshevism. Because of the economic underdevelopment and cultural backwardness of the Russian masses, he argues, there is no way for Russia to ‘pass directly to socialism’: all that Soviet power can do is to combine the moderate politics of ‘state capitalism’ with the intense cultural education of the peasant masses – not the brainwashing of propaganda, but a patient, gradual imposition of civilised standards. Facts and figures revealed ‘what a vast amount of urgent spadework we still have to do to reach the standard of an ordinary West European civilised country … We must bear in mind the semi-Asiatic ignorance from which we have not yet extricated ourselves.’ Can we think of the Ukrainian protesters’ reference to Europe as a sign that their goal, too, is ‘to reach the standard of an ordinary Western European civilised country’? full: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n09/slavoj-zizek/barbarism-with-a-human-face Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Slavoj Žižek · Barbarism with a Human Face: Lenin v. Stalin in Kiev · LRB 8 May 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 8:17 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: The entire European neo-fascist right (in Hungary, France, Italy, Serbia) firmly supports Russia in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, giving the lie to the official Russian presentation of the Crimean referendum as a choice between Russian democracy and Ukrainian fascism. I read as far as the opening sentence. Its first clause is ... crap. Pretty transparent crap, too. I mean, we've got the Internet now. These things aren't hard to check. http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/European_nationalist_parties_by_the_stance_on_Russian_intervention_in_Ukraine The logic in the second clause is pretty crap, too. But with premises that shaky, it hardly matters. -- . Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Slavoj Žižek · Barbarism with a Human Face: Lenin v. Stalin in Kiev · LRB 8 May 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 4/30/14 6:15 PM, Joseph Catron wrote: Pretty transparent crap, too. I mean, we've got the Internet now. These things aren't hard to check. http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/European_nationalist_parties_by_the_stance_on_Russian_intervention_in_Ukraine This is out of date. The Italian fascists do support Putin: http://www.forzanuova.org/comunicati/fn-accoglie-putin-triestedistuggi-leuropa-dei-tecnocrati Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Slavoj Žižek · Barbarism with a Human Face: Lenin v. Stalin in Kiev · LRB 8 May 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 1:39 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: This is out of date. The Italian fascists do support Putin I suppose it would be infantile of me to repeat your normal semantics about fascists? :-D That may well be the case. But the Danskernes Parti ( http://danskernesparti.dk/archives/4719), the German NPD ( http://german.ruvr.ru/2014_03_04/Enge-Zusammenarbeit-zwischen-NPD-und-Swoboda-8170), the Swedish SVP ( https://www.svenskarnasparti.se/2014/02/20/svenskarnas-parti-ger-sitt-stod-till-svoboda) - some of whose returned Ukraine volunteers celebrated their victory with a knife attack on Swedish leftists ( http://libcom.org/news/fascist-knife-attack-malm%C3%B6-sweden-night-international-womens-day-09032014) - etc., etc. are tight with Svodoba. I don't think Rumpelstiltskin could weave Žižek's crap claim about [t]he entire European neo-fascist right into anything but more crap. If he's managed to cherry-pick four countries that favor his argument, let him say that. It wouldn't be a basis for the claim he's made here. -- Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Slavoj Žižek · Barbarism with a Human Face: Lenin v. Stalin in Kiev · LRB 8 May 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == And the only reason these other parties support Putin is not out of some ideological allegiance to the great right wing russian leader, but because they want to see the collapse of the EU. It suits their nationalism. Greg On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 7:22 PM, Joseph Catron jncat...@gmail.com wrote: I suppose it would be infantile of me to repeat your normal semantics about fascists? :-D That may well be the case. But the Danskernes Parti ( http://danskernesparti.dk/archives/4719), the German NPD ( http://german.ruvr.ru/2014_03_04/Enge-Zusammenarbeit-zwischen-NPD-und-Swoboda-8170 ), the Swedish SVP ( https://www.svenskarnasparti.se/2014/02/20/svenskarnas-parti-ger-sitt-stod-till-svoboda ) - some of whose returned Ukraine volunteers celebrated their victory with a knife attack on Swedish leftists ( http://libcom.org/news/fascist-knife-attack-malm%C3%B6-sweden-night-international-womens-day-09032014 ) - etc., etc. are tight with Svodoba. I don't think Rumpelstiltskin could weave Žižek's crap claim about [t]he entire European neo-fascist right into anything but more crap. If he's managed to cherry-pick four countries that favor his argument, let him say that. It wouldn't be a basis for the claim he's made here. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Slavoj Žižek · Barbarism with a Human Face: Lenin v. Stalin in Kiev · LRB 8 May 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 2:32 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: Frankly, it wouldn't matter to me if there was not a single ultraright (a more correct term--you are right to point that out) that backed Putin. Yeah, I didn't get into it before, but that was what I meant by the crap logic of the second clause. Žižek reminds me of Chris Hedges, or Robert Fisk. They're men who have gotten too used to admirers ooh'ing and ah'ing over their Grand Pronouncements, and now feel free to just go around making them, without thinking first about their content or lack thereof. -- Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Slavoj Žižek · Barbarism with a Human Face: Lenin v. Stalin in Kiev · LRB 8 May 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 4/30/14 7:37 PM, Greg McDonald wrote: And the only reason these other parties support Putin is not out of some ideological allegiance to the great right wing russian leader, but because they want to see the collapse of the EU. It suits their nationalism. That's not true. They identify mostly with his hatred of gays. That Italian ultraright group I linked to before was ecstatic over how gays are getting harassed in Russia. Here's a gay blogger commenting on that: http://gayburg.blogspot.com/2013/09/forza-nuova-sta-con-putin.html Frankly, I find it pretty disgusting how Putin is being hoisted on the shoulders of much of the left after his pushing through anti-gay legislation that not even the Republican right in the USA would have the nerve to propose. I guess his anti-imperialism (arming the murderer Bashar al-Assad) trumps gay rights. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
