The Media’s Disinformation Campaign on Ukraine:
“There are No neo-Nazis in the Interim Government”
Since the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in Ukraine at the end of February 2014, the mainstream media en masse has attempted to whitewash the nature of the current Ukrainian government. This has occurred even in some progressive publications and websites, e.g., a recent two-part series in Rabble.ca.
As soon as this government took over, the New York Times referred to it as a new wave of democracy, and this then set the tone for the media in the West. Although here and there it’s sometimes mentioned that Svoboda, a member of the coalition government, “once had some quasi-fascist inclinations,” that’s as far as it goes. All else about Svoboda and the paramilitary Right Sector has been effectively swept off into Orwell’s memory hole.
This is not to say that no one on the Internet has commented on the true nature of Svoboda. To their credit a number of well qualified observers have had no problem spelling out that Svoboda has a solid neo-nazi fascist basis, and not just “inclinations” towards these beliefs. For example, consider the views of Max Blumenthal, Professor Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Francis Boyle,Professor Michel Chossudovsky,Dr. Inna Rogatchi, David Speedie, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Oleg Shynkarenko, Andrew Foxall and Oren Kessler.
Rather than simply plead ignorance about the depth of fascist-racist beliefs in the Svoboda membership, the least the mainstream media could have done was to mention that the European Parliament took the unusual step in December of 2012 to pass a resolution of concern about the unsavory nature of Svoboda.The Parliament’s resolution #8 states as follows:
[The European Parliament] is concerned about the rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support for the Svoboda Party, which, as a result, is one of the two new parties to enter the Verkhovna Rada; recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU’s fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.
Svoboda was founded in 1991 as the
Social National Party of Ukraine – its name unmistakably being an
intentional reference to Adolph Hitler’s National Socialist party and it
used the Nazi Wolfsangel logo which closely resembles a swastika.
In 2004, with the arrival of OlehTyahnybok as leader, the party changed
its name to Svoboda to somewhat moderate its image while nevertheless
retaining its neo-Nazi core. Also to soften its image it changed its
Nazi logo to a stylized three-finger salute.From its very beginnings as the Social National Party, Svoboda has idolized Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator who formed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and organized the Ukrainian Waffen SS Galician Division – from 82,000 initial Ukrainian volunteers, the Nazis trained only 13,000 for battle. The division was then sent to fight the Russian and Ukrainian Soviet army, but this unit was decimated at the 1944 Battle of Brody, leaving only 3,000 who went on to form the nucleus of a further rebuilt SS division, later to become the core of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
