{"id":41564,"date":"2014-03-31T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=41564"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:35:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:35:08","slug":"ukraines-inconvenient-neo-nazis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/03\/ukraines-inconvenient-neo-nazis\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine\u2019s Inconvenient Neo-Nazis"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Ukrainian neo-Nazis \u2013 infuriated over the killing of an\u00a0ultranationalist leader \u2013 surrounded the Parliament in Kiev, the incident presented a problem for the U.S. news media which has been trying\u00a0to airbrush the neo-Nazis out of the Ukraine narrative.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Far-right<\/a>

Far-right militia members demonstrating outside Ukrainian parliament in Kiev.
(Screen shot from YouTube video)<\/p><\/div>\n

The U.S. media\u2019s take on the Ukraine crisis is that a \u201cdemocratic revolution\u201d ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, followed by a \u201clegitimate\u201d change of government. So, to mention the key role played neo-Nazi militias in the putsch or to note that Yanukovych was democratically elected \u2013 and then illegally deposed \u2013 gets you dismissed as a \u201cRussian propagandist.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Ukraine\u2019s neo-Nazis are not some urban legend. Their presence is real, as they swagger in the paramilitary garb through the streets of Kiev, displaying Nazi insignias, honoring SS collaborators from World War II, and hoisting racist banners, including the white-power symbol of the Confederate battle flag.<\/p>\n

Over the past few days, the neo-Nazis have surged to the front of Ukraine\u2019s unrest again by furiously protesting the killing of one of their leaders, Oleksandr Muzychko, known as Sashko Bily. The Interior Ministry reported that Muzychko died in a Monday night shoot-out with police in Rivne in western Ukraine.<\/p>\n

But the right-wing paramilitaries claim that Muzychko was murdered in a cold-blooded contract hit, and these modern-day storm troopers have threatened to storm the parliament building if the interim Interior Minister is not fired.<\/p>\n

This renewed disorder has complicated the storytelling of the major U.S. news media by challenging the sweetness-and-light narrative preferred by U.S. policymakers. The New York Times, the Washington Post and other leading news outlets have worked hard to airbrush the well-established fact<\/a> that\u00a0neo-Nazi militants spearheaded the coup on Feb. 22.<\/p>\n

To dismiss that inconvenient fact, the major U.S. media has stressed that the extreme rightists made up\u00a0a minority of the demonstrators, which \u2013 while true \u2013 is largely irrelevant since it was the paramilitary Right Sektor that provided the armed force that removed Yanukovych and then dominated the \u201ctransition\u201d period by patrolling key government buildings. As a reward, far-right parties were given control of four ministries.<\/p>\n

Some U.S. outlets also have picked up on the unsubstantiated U.S. government theme that Russia is dispatching unidentified \u201cprovocateurs\u201d to destabilize the coup regime in Kiev, though it doesn\u2019t seem like Moscow would have to do much besides stand aside and watch the interim government\u2019s unruly supporters turn on each other.<\/p>\n

But reality has stopped playing much of a role in the U.S. news media\u2019s Ukraine reporting as the U.S. press\u00a0continues to adjust the reality to fit with the desired narrative. For instance, the New York Times, in its boilerplate account of the uprising, has removed the fact that more than a dozen police were among the 80 or so people killed. The Times now simply reports that police fired on and killed about 80 demonstrators.<\/p>\n

Fitting with its bowdlerized account, the Times also ignores evidence that snipers who apparently\u00a0fired on both police and protesters before the coup may have been working for the opposition, not Yanukovych\u2019s government. An intercepted phone call<\/a> by two European leaders discussed those suspicions as well as the curious decision of the post-coup\u00a0government not to investigate who the snipers really were.<\/p>\n

Surrounding the Parliament<\/b><\/p>\n

But most significantly, the U.S. mainstream media has struggled to downplay the neo-Nazi angle as was apparent in the Times\u2019\u00a0report<\/a> on President Vladimir Putin\u2019s call on Friday to President Barack Obama to discuss possible steps to defuse the crisis. Putin noted that neo-Nazis had surrounded the parliament.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn citing extremist action, Mr. Putin sought to capitalize on a tense internal showdown in Kiev,\u201d the Times wrote. \u201cThe presence of masked, armed demonstrators threatening to storm the Parliament building offered the Russian government an opportunity to bolster its contention that the ouster of President Viktor F. Yanukovych, a Moscow ally, after pro-European street protests last month was an illegal coup carried out by right-wing extremists with Western encouragement.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Times couldn\u2019t simply let those facts speak for themselves, though they were all true: right-wing extremists did provide the key manpower and organization to overrun government buildings on Feb. 22 and there is no doubt that these right-wing elements were getting Western encouragement, including a shoulder-to-shoulder appearance by Sen. John McCain.<\/p>\n

The Times felt compelled to interject an argumentative counterpoint, saying: \u201cIn fact, the nationalist groups, largely based in western Ukraine, had formed just one segment of a broad coalition of demonstrators who occupied the streets of Kiev for months demanding Mr. Yanukovych\u2019s ouster.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, that has been a consistent pattern for the supposedly objective U.S. news media. If the Russians say something, even if it is clearly true, the point must be contradicted. However, when a U.S. official states something about the Ukraine crisis, the claim goes unchallenged no matter how absurd.<\/p>\n

For example, when Secretary of State John Kerry denounced Putin\u2019s intervention in Crimea by declaring, \u201cyou just don\u2019t in the 21st Century behave in 19th Century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext,\u201d mainstream U.S. news outlets simply let the\u00a0statement stand without noting that Kerry himself had voted in 2002 to authorize President George W. Bush to invade Iraq in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n

You might think that Kerry\u2019s breathtaking hypocrisy would be newsworthy or at least a relevant fact that should be pointed out to readers, but no. The Times also has routinely distorted Crimea\u2019s secession from Ukraine. The Black Sea peninsula,\u00a0a longtime Russian province that was only attached to Ukraine for administrative purposes during Soviet days, asserted its independence after the coup ousting Yanukovych, who had won Crimea overwhelmingly.<\/p>\n

No one seriously doubts that the vast majority of Crimean citizens wanted to escape the disorder and hardship enveloping Ukraine \u2013 and to return to Russia with its higher per capita income and functioning national government \u2013 but the Obama administration\u00a0and the dutiful U.S. news media have pretended otherwise.<\/p>\n

In New York Times speak, Crimea\u2019s popular vote to secede from Ukraine and to join Russia was simply Putin\u2019s \u201cseizure\u201d of Crimea. The Times and other mainstream\u00a0news outlets dismissed Crimea\u2019s\u00a0March 16 referendum as somehow rigged \u2013 citing the 96 percent tally for secession as presumptive evidence of fraud \u2013 although there was no actual evidence of election rigging. Exit polls confirmed the overwhelming majority favoring secession from Ukraine and annexation by Russia.<\/p>\n

IMF\u2019s \u2018Reforms\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n

And, really, who could blame the people of Crimea? As Ukraine\u2019s acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has said, Ukraine \u201cis on the edge of economic and financial bankruptcy\u201d and the International Monetary Fund\u00a0agreed to throw a financial lifeline only if Ukraine imposes \u201creforms\u201d that Yatsenyuk has admitted are \u201cvery unpopular, very difficult, very tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

They will be toughest on average Ukrainians who will face severe public sector budget cuts, slashed pensions, soaring heating costs and rapid inflation due to changes in the exchange rate. The cumulative impact of these IMF \u201creforms\u201d is expected to result in a 3 percent contraction of Ukraine\u2019s already depressed economy.<\/p>\n

Yet, much of the mainstream U.S. media ignores the understandable desire of the Crimean people to bail out on the failed Ukrainian state. Instead, the MSM pretends that Russia simply invaded Crimea\u00a0and now is threatening to do the same in eastern Ukraine, or as the Times put it, Putin has engaged in \u201cprovocative moves punctuated by a menacing buildup of troops on Ukraine\u2019s border.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that the U.S. government and media have constructed a substantially false narrative for the American people, all the better to manufacture consent behind a $1 billion U.S. aid package for Ukraine and the launch of a new Cold War with the expectation of many more exciting confrontations to come \u2013 in places like Syria and Iran \u2013\u00a0all justifying fatter\u00a0military budgets.<\/p>\n

A more objective and less alarmist narrative on the Ukraine crisis would describe Putin\u2019s actions as primarily defensive and reactive. He was distracted by the Winter Olympics in Sochi and was caught off-guard by the violent putsch that removed Yanukovych.<\/p>\n

In light of Yanukovych\u2019s democratic election victory in 2010 and his agreement on Feb. 21 to speed up new elections (a deal that was negated within hours by the U.S.\/EU-supported coup), Russia has a legitimate argument that the coup regime in Kiev is illegitimate.<\/p>\n

The removal of Yanukovych not only was spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias but\u00a0subsequent parliamentary actions did not follow Ukraine\u2019s constitutional rules. The putsch essentially disenfranchised the large ethnic-Russian populations in the east and south, where Yanukovych had his political base.<\/p>\n

Then, the rump parliament in Kiev \u2013 reflecting the intense Ukrainian nationalism in the western section \u2013 passed punitive laws targeting these Russian speakers, including elimination of Russian as an official language. For Putin to be troubled by this crisis on his border \u2014 and to take action \u2014 was neither\u00a0surprising nor particularly provocative.<\/p>\n

If the New York Times and other leading U.S. outlets did their journalism in a professional way, the American people would have had a more nuanced understanding of what happened in Ukraine and why. Instead, the Times and the rest of the MSM resumed their roles as U.S. propagandists, much as they did in Iraq in 2002-03 with their usual preference for a simplistic \u201cgood-guy\/bad-guy\u201d dichotomy.<\/p>\n

In the case of Ukraine, that happy dichotomy has been\u00a0challenged again by the reemergence of those inconvenient\u00a0neo-Nazis.<\/p>\n

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cThe Danger of False Narrative<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America\u2019s Stolen Narrative, either in\u00a0print here<\/a>\u00a0or as an e-book (from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry\u2019s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America\u2019s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here<\/a>.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Ukrainian neo-Nazis \u2013 infuriated over the killing of an ultranationalist leader \u2013 surrounded the Parliament in Kiev, the incident presented a problem for the U.S. news media which has been trying to airbrush the neo-Nazis out of the Ukraine narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-balkans-eastern-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}