To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
May 9, 2022
Re: “Victory Day”, 2022
by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers' Voice
Victory in Europe Day is commemorated in many countries on May 8. Russia celebrates Victory Day on May 9. Either way, it is a commemoration of the defeat o one of the most vicious mlitarist powers that ever arose in world history, Nazi Germany. But this year, the Russian government is using it to promote its war on Ukraine, thus mocking the original intention of the holiday.
The fascist Axis powers of World War II waged one war of choice after another on their neighbors and were a threat to everyone living on the earth. Their defeat was crucial. And the victory over the Axis powers gave a tremendous impetus to progressive struggles around the world. Among other things, this victory accelerated the national liberation movement in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. And yet, this same national liberation movement had to fight against some of the victorious governments of World War II. It fought against British, French, and US imperialism in many bloody and protracted confrontations that were sometimes won and sometimes lost.
This happened because there was a tremendous gulf between the aims of the people who heroically fought fascism, and the imperialist motives of the governments. Many more examples could be given. The Western imperialist Allies not only tried to maintain colonialism, but they betrayed the left-wing resistance movements that had sprung up in Europe and Asia against the fascists.
And the same thing happened on the Eastern Front in Europe. The Soviet Union was one of the Allied powers. The sacrifice of the Soviet peoples against fascism will never be forgotten. They bore the brunt of assault by the bulk of the Nazi armies. Millions upon millions of Soviet working people — Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Chechen, Tatar, and others — died in this struggle, and they helped save the world. But the Stalinist government stained the anti-fascist banner.
There was the Katyn massacre of over 20,000 Poles in 1940 by the Soviet government; this was a major crime and an embarrassment to the anti-fascist cause. During the war, there was also the mass deportation in 1944 of all Chechens from Chechnya, of all Tatars from Crimea, and of a number of other small nationalities from their homelands. No Chechens were left in Chechnya, or Tatars in Crimea, and their return didn't start until well after Stalin died. Red Army soldiers of these nationalities, soldiers who had fought the fascist Axis, might return home only to find their families gone, and they themselves would be deported. There was also the mass rape of women by the Soviet army during the occupation of its sector of Germany, and to some extent elsewhere in Europe.
Many more examples could be given. The Stalinist government had already betrayed the Russian revolution and Marxism before World War II by building a repressive state-capitalist regime. The Russian revolution had inspired workers around the world, but the Stalinist regime became the government of a new bourgeoisie; and then this could be seen in the way it acted during the anti-fascist war.
The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, but today the Russian government is saying that it bears the banner of anti-fascism and deserves to have a sphere of dominant influence that includes any country that was in the old Soviet Union. It has been shouting about this louder and louder as its wages war against the Ukrainian people, and pretending that devastating cities and herding people into filtration (detention) camps is denazifying Ukraine. It says that anti-fascism is peculiarly Russian, and that its neighbors such as the Ukrainians are fascists. What a lie! The Ukrainian people fought against the fascists as did the Russian people. There are good and bad class trends in all countries: anti-fascism isn't a matter of being Russian. Indeed the present Russian government makes a mockery of the democratic rights of the Russian people, just as Stalin made a mockery of those rights and of socialism. And Putin’s forces make deals with fascist forces across Europe, including the infamous National Front in France, the Italian far right, and the Nazi-loving Golden Dawn in Greece.
As we recall the history of World War 2, let's remember the sacrifice made by millions upon millions of people in this world conflagration that took place not only in Europe but in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere. But let's also remember that both the Western capitalist governments and the Soviet state-capitalist government carried out their own imperialist plans during this war. This didn’t mean that it was irrelevant to the working people whether the Allies or the Axis won World War II. Far from it; indeed, it is the working masses who had the most to lose if the Axis had won and who were the most dedicated opponents of the fascist Axis. But it does mean that the working class has to strive to uphold its own class interests, the interests of the majority of the world’s people, even in the midst of such a war.
If we are going to carry forward the anti-fascist banner today, it would help to be clear about what happened in the past. This will help us separate the hypocritical use of anti-fascist phrases from the real struggle against fascism. And it will also help prevent Stalinist ideas and practices as being taken as socialism or communism, and oppressive regimes as being taken as workers’ or anti-hegemonic states, things that would hold back the anti-capitalist struggle immensely. We must not allow the symbols of the struggle in World War II to be used against the democratic and anti-fascist struggles of today. There is no real commemoration of the anti-fascist victories of the past unless it includes supporting the peoples who fight today for freedom and the right to self-determination against dictatorial regimes or occupiers, and we must do so even though the socialist revolution is not imminent at this time in those countries. This is the only path towards eventual revolution.<>
Michael Karadjis is a long-time Australian activist. Below are
excerpts from his article ”Can the God of global fascists and Nazis
‘de-Nazify’ a country”, April 9, 2022. The full article,
with more examples of the murderous far-right parties in alliance with
Putin, and with many links documenting the text, can be found on Karadjis’s
blog. It ends by pointing out that
"A complete Russian victory would almost certainly solidify the alliance [between Putin and the far-right] and lead to an enormous surge in support for Kremlin-backed and financed fascist and far-right movements globally. In contrast, a humiliating Russian defeat would possibly lead to desertion of a weakened Russia by many fascist groups, and conversely, their long association with Putin, their heralding of him as the great white saviour, may discredit many of these groups and lead them to lose support.”
According to Russian president Vladimir Putin:
“The United States continues to receive more and more immigrants, and, as far as I understand, the white, Christian population is already outnumbered … White Christians have become a minority, less than 50 percent now. … Russia is a vast territory, from its western to eastern borders, it is a Eurasian space. But as regards culture, even language group and history, this all is undoubtedly a European space, as it is inhabited by people of this culture. … we have to preserve all this to remain a significant centre in the world.”
Putin’s appeal to “great replacement” theory, his dog-whistle to the “White Christian” world that must be “preserved” lest it become a minority, demonstrates the clear ideological basis of Putin’s status as demi-God to the global far-right, fascist, Nazi and white supremacist movements. …
The ideological basis of the alliance demonstrates that it is not
simply a matter of expediency as sometimes suggested (eg, that Putin’s
alliance with European fascism only represents a convergence of
interests against the European Union). Nevertheless, this ideological
alliance does relate to the
concrete material interests of Russian imperialism as it challenges
established imperialist powers.
While it is overblown rhetoric to compare Putin’s authoritarian
regime … to Hitler’s totalitarian dictatorship and the Holocaust,
this does not mean there are no parallels. German imperialism had been
the loser of WWI … The rise of extreme German nationalism
embodied in Naziism reflected the struggle of the weaker, defeated,
imperialist Germany, alongside weaker Italian and Japanese imperialism,
against the dominant imperialist powers of the day. These weaker powers
had to rely on direct conquest – unnecessary for British and French
imperialism which still owned all the world they had earlier conquered,
or US imperialism whose economic hegemony was growing. Extreme
reactionary ideologies glorifying the mythical past as the ruling class
crushes the masses while mobilising them for military conquest with
nationalist, racist and militarist slogans fitted well with the needs
of these powers.
In broadly similar fashion, the Russian ruling class emerging
from the wreckage of the USSR, now heading a smaller Russian
Federation, saw itself as ‘defeated’, given the effective domination
Russia had exercised over the USSR. While the USSR was not conceived of
as an empire, for the reactionary oligarchic elite that arose on the
ashes of ‘communism’, the independence of the non-Russian republics was
seen as “loss of empire,” and the mythical past of the ‘Great Russian
Fatherland’ of the Tsarist Russian Empire extolled as something to
aspire to. Of course, there was no unequal treaty a la Versailles
imposed on Russia; while the massive immiseration of the Russian
working class was imposed by the dictates of the International Monetary
Fund and other western state-connected privatisation ‘experts’, the
Russian oligarchy was completely complicit in this gigantic plunder,
indeed it was its main beneficiary. However, the economic collapse this
partnership-in-plunder led to could domestically be blamed on “the
West” alone, as a propaganda device to deceive the masses. … the
rising capitalist elite around Putin strove to overcome its humiliation
and strike out as a new, relatively weak, imperialist power.
. . . .
Given these specific needs of the weaker, emerging imperialist
power, and its ideological emergence from alleged “national
humiliation”, it is logical for the deeply reactionary, revanchist
regime to cultivate ties to other extreme right, fascist parties around
the world, which can act in Moscow’s interests by challenging the
western imperialist leaders from the right without challenging the same
capitalist system they are all part of. Not unlike the role of western
fascist parties as allies of Nazi Germany or fascist Italy.
....
The alliance between Putin’s far-right, uber-nationalist ‘United Russia Party’ and global fascism should already seem obvious from an ideological perspective; but in any case, relations are also mediated by an unabashed leading Russian fascist, Alexander Dugin, “former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016.” Dugin’s ”Foundations of Geopolitics” – which advocates his Russian-led ‘Eurasianist’ empire “from Dublin to Vladivostok” – is “assigned to every member of Russia’s General Staff Academy.” …
In "Foundations of Geopolitics”,
Dugin asserts that “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning. It
has no particular cultural import or universal significance, no
geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness;” hence Putin’s view
that Ukraine has no right to exist and was merely a communist plot by
Lenin to destroy the Russian Fatherland, expressed in a long article,
and then in the speech he gave before his invasion of Ukraine, is
sourced from his fascist philosopher-king.
We will now review the global far-right’s connection to Putin’s
regime; hopefully the next sections can be used as a handy guide when
Putin supporters pedal out the argument that Putin is fighting
“fascism” in Ukraine in the form of the 1000-strong Azov regiment.
Following French National Front leader, Marine Le Pen’s, visit to
Moscow in June 2013 at the invitation of State Duma, discussing “issues
of common concern, such as Syria, EU enlargement, and gay marriage,”
the Front supported the annexation of Crimea, stating that
“historically, Crimea is part of Mother Russia.” She visited again in
2017. Her rival on the French far-right, Eric Zammour, reacted to
Crimea by proposing a “Russian alliance, the only way to kill both the
myth of federal Europe and to finally break away from the American
protectorate.”
Similarly, the Nazi-like Jobbik party in Hungary called Putin’s fake Crimea referendum “exemplary.” Leader Gabor Vona visited Moscow in May 2013 at the invite of right-wing nationalists at Moscow State University, where he was hosted by Dugin. The Moscow visit was considered “a major breakthrough” which made “clear that Russian leaders consider Jobbik as a partner.” Bulgaria’s far right Ataka party similarly “insisted that Bulgaria should recognize the results from the referendum for Crimea’s joining to the Russian Federation.”
Not surprisingly, Putin’s Crimea ‘referendum’ – carried out after Russian military occupation forces staged a coup and placed in power the far-right ‘Russian Unity’ party that had received 4 percent of the vote at the previous Crimea elections – did not bother with many international observers. However, Russia did invite a few. Alongside observers from the French National Front, Jobbik and Attaka, the rest of the invitees list – Austrian Freedom Party, Belgian Vlaams Belang, Italy’s Forza Italia and Lega Nord, and Poland’s Self-Defense – reads virtually like a roll-call of the European far-right.
Other European far-right leaders have followed the National Front and Jobbik in their Moscow pilgrimages. In February 2017, three politicians of the German neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) “flew to Moscow in a private jet paid for by the Russian government,” at a cost of some 25,000 Euro. This was not the only time Moscow was caught funding far-right parties; the French National Front has also been a recipient of Moscow cash which helped finance its 2014 election campaign.
Another far-right leader invited to Moscow by the State Duma, in March 2018, was Geert Wilders, of the arch-Islamophobic Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV). According to Wilders, “Vladimir Putin is a leader, whatever you think of him. … I applaud him as I applaud Mr. Trump for being leaders, who are standing there on behalf of the Russian and the American people … We lack that kind of leadership in Europe.”
The Italian far-right is prominently allied to Putin. Mateo Salvini, head of the far-right Lega Nord (Northern League), signed a cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia Party in 2017; he is famous for wearing Putin T-shirts, and even brokered an oil deal with Russia to feed the League’s coffers. Putin lavished praise on Salvini during his 2019 visit to Italy, when Salvini attended a dinner in his honour. In March 2015, head of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party, Roberto Fiore, attended the “International Russian Conservative Forum” in St Petersburg, along with the ‘League of Lombardy’, a Lega Nord front group, and the Duginite-fascist Italian party ‘Millennium.’
The St. Petersburg “Conservative Forum’ was also attended by the British National Party’s former leader Nick Griffin, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party of Greece, Udo Voigt from the German neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), Jared Taylor of the American Renaissance, former Ku Klux Klan lawyer Sam Dickson and various other fringe lunar rightists, along with Russian fascists led by the Putin-connected Rodina (Motherland) party and the Russian Imperial Movement. The Austrian Freedom Party and Serbian Radical Party were also invited but did not make it. The meeting “was adorned by a line from remarks Putin made in 2013 accusing Europe of backing away ‘from the Christian values at the foundation of European civilization’.”
. . . .
While US attendance at the St. Petersburg forum was limited to
Taylor and Dickson, the US far-right is heavily pro-Putin; not for
nothing did David Duke, former head of the Klan, live in Russia for
five years (while there he sub-let his apartment to American neo-Nazi
Preston Wigginton). Duke believes Russia is “the key to white
survival.” In 2014, fellow white supremacist Richard Spencer, who
believes Russia is the “sole white power in the world,” invited Dugin
to a global conference of the far-right planned to be held in Hungary.
Then there’s Matthew Heimbach, founder of the pro-Confederate
Traditional Workers Party, who believes “Russia is the leader of the
free world” while “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world
and building an anti-globalist alliance.” As widely reported, American
Rinaldo Nazzaro runs the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation The Base from
a Russian apartment. In 2017, far-right commentator Ann Coulter
declared that “In 20 years, Russia will be the only country that is
recognizably European.” On the Christian fascist end, evangelist Pat
Robertson declared that Putin had been “compelled by God” to invade
Ukraine.
. . . .
Then there is the more mainstream, parliamentary, far-right, such as former US president Trump itself, whose Putin connections are well-known. As Ukraine exploded, Trump praised Putin as a “genius.” “Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine independent. Oh that’s wonderful. … How smart is that? And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border.” And of course there’s right-wing ideologue and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who recently declared “Putin ain’t woke” in an exchange with Blackwater founder, Eric Prince, who agreed that “The Russian people still know which bathroom to use;” and Trump’s Secretary of State and Christian rightist Mike Pompeo, who declared his “enormous respect” for the “talented statesman;” while Trump’s first National Security Advisor Mike Flynn claimed that after Biden “ignored and laughed at Putin’s legitimate security concerns … President Putin calculated this strategic, historic, and geographic play and made the decision to move.”
Trump loyalist and white supremacist Fox News host Tucker Carlson went full dog-whistle for Putin: “It may be worth asking yourself… why do I hate Putin.. Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a world-wide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity?”
But what of the Donbas? Putin is God to most fascists and Nazis the world over, but in Ukraine the only Nazis are anti-Russia Ukrainians, like Azov, right? In reality, as one source argues: “On the whole, members of far-right groups played a much greater role on the Russian side of the conflict than on the Ukrainian side.”
Let’s look at some of this galaxy of ultra-nationalist, neo-Nazi, Orthodox-fascist and neo-Cossack parties and militia involved in the ‘separatist’ political and military leadership; of whom most are actual Russians, from Russia, rather than ethnic Russians from Ukraine.
We could start with the preamble to the constitution of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ which calls for the “…establishment of a sovereign independent state, based on the restoration of a unified cultural and civilizational space of Russian World, on the basis of its traditional religious, social, cultural and moral values , with the prospect of becoming a part of “Greater Russia” as halo territories of the “Russian World”. This extreme Russian nationalist vision – in a region where Russians are not even a majority – is highlighted by its double-headed eagle flag – ie, the symbol of Tsarist Russia.
First let’s look at Russia’s leading mercenary gang, its equal to the US Blackwater – the Wagner Group, named by its founder after Hitler’s favourite musician. An extremely vicious militia, but are they fascists? Well, take a look at founder Dmitry Utkin. Pointing to the tattoos on his neck, Idrees Ahmad notes “Those are the Waffen SS rank insignia for a Hauptsturmführer (chief assault leader). And on his chest? That’s the Nazi Reichsadler (imperial eagle) badge.” A candidate to “de-Nazify” Ukraine?
. . . .
The first Russian militias in the Donbas were associated with the
Russian National Unity party, a neo-Nazi organisation; here is its
swastika logo
(http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.com/2014/08/neo-nazi-russian-national-unity-in.html).
The DPR’s first ‘people’s governor’, and founder of the Donbas People’s
Militia, Pavel Gubarev, was a member of the RNU. The RNU’s founder,
Alexander Barkashov, previously led post-Soviet Russia’s first fascist
organisation, Pamyat.
. . . .
Another Russian fascist involved from the outset was the DPR’s first
‘prime minister’, Aleksander Borodai. In the 1990s, he worked for the
newspaper Zavtra, run by idiosyncratic fascist Aleksander Prokhanov,
who believed Russia was the mystical womb of Aryan civilisation. In
2011, Borodai and Prekhanov launched “Djen” TV, which promoted
“anti-Semitism, Russian nationalism, conspiracy theories, homophobia,
misogyny, denunciations of the decadence of European civilization, and
treatises on the ‘fiction’ of a Ukrainian national identity.” Prokhanov
praised Borodai as a true ‘White Russian nationalist’.
Another traditionalist-fascist militia is the neo-Cossack ‘Wolves’
Hundred’, founded during World War II by one ‘Shkuro’, later executed
as a Nazi collaborator. According to one Russian ‘Cossack’ in the
occupation of Slavyansk town hall in Donbas in 2014: “We don’t want
Ukraine. Ukraine doesn’t exist for us. There are no people called
Ukrainians. There are just Slav people who used to be in Kievan Rus,
before Jews like Trotsky divided us.”
. . . .
Various sections of Putin’s global far-right fan club have also
fought in Donbas, including Falanga (Polish fascists), Orthodox Dawn
(Bulgarian clerical fascists), Legion of St Stephen (Hungarian fascists
aligned with Jobbik) and Jovan Šević Detatchment (Serbian Chetniks).
While not fighting, the German neo-Nazi AfD has paid high-level visits
to the Donbas ‘republics’.
Alongside the love of Putin generally, global fascism is also
specifically enamoured to one of Putin’s major projects independently
of Putin: in their support for Syria’s genocidal Assad regime.
Everywhere in the world – in the US, everywhere in Europe, in
Australia, various reactionary governments from India to Hungary – the
far-right, fascists, Nazis, white-supremacists, far-right populists –
almost unanimously support Assad.
. . . the global far-right has lapped up Assad’s propaganda that he is fighting a war for civilisation against “Islamic terrorists” and “jihadists,” protecting Christians and minorities. Assad’s “war on terror”, like that of Israel, the US and Russia, is one global war the far-right fully identifies with.
Not surprisingly, both father and daughter Le Pen have been strongly pro-Assad. In 2012, Jean-Marie Le Pen stated that it was “not abnormal for the Syrian state to defend itself,” so Assad should not be criticised by countries who had fought Nazi Germany! Marine Le Pen in 2015 claimed that Assad is the only person who can rule Syria and save it from chaos. In 2016, former National Front youth leader Julien Rochedy visited Damascus to snap a selfie with his favourite tyrant.
In June 2013, a large delegation of European fascists visited
Damascus to express support to the Assad dictatorship.
. . . .
It is quite hard to find any on the US far-right that have not
defended Assad, whether in the form of chemical war denialism, slanders
of the White Helmets or more general praise for the alleged “defeater
of jihadis,” from Alex Jones and his right-wing conspiracist
‘Infowars’, to far-right commentators Ann Coulter, Mike Peinovich , Fox
and Friends host Steve Doocy, Tomi Lahren (who sought to remind Trump
“that it’s America first”), and of course racist Tucker Carlson. While
some mistakenly see Tulsi Gabbard as part of the “left”, in fact her
praise for Assad comes from the same place as her strong Zionism, her
love for the BJP and her claim to be a “hawk” on the drone wars – ie,
right-wing Islamophobia.
. . . .
Trump was forthright pro-Assad in the lead-up to his election, and
maintained that position until Assad betrayed him by using sarin gas,
leading Trump to launch a theatrical strike which did close to zero
damage to the Assadist military; Trump cut off all Obama-era aid to the
Free Syrian Army and even to the civil opposition and ensured anyone
backed by the US only fights ISIS.
In 95 percent of the above cases of global far-right support to
Assad, these parties, organisations and spokespeople also strongly
support Israel and its war against the Palestinian people, for the same
reason: Israel is another frontier state in the “war on terror”, a
defender of western “civilisation” against “Islamic terrorism.” Given
Israel’s nature as an apartheid state, it will be included here as part
of the global far-right (as would apartheid South Africa if it still
existed), but even for those who don’t accept this, there can be little
doubt about the essentially fascistic character of the parties of the
Israeli right: former prime minister Netanyahu’s Likud, and other
parties of the secular, religious and settler right, such as those of
current prime minister Naftali Bennett, and minister under both,
Avigdor Lieberman.
While the summary above demonstrates that the global far-right has
been overwhelmingly pro-Putin and highlights the nonsense in Putin’s
claim to want to “de-Nazify” anywhere, that is not to deny the presence
of an aggressive far-right, fascist and Nazi sector among the political
and military formations associated with Ukrainian nationalism.
On the one hand, the far-right – Svoboda, Right Sector and political
representatives of Azov – collectively only received some 2.3 percent
of the vote in the last Ukraine elections, so there is an extraordinary
amount of demonisation in calling Ukraine some kind of “Nazi” cause,
equivalent to the racist dubbing of freedom fighters in the Middle East
– in Palestine, Syria and elsewhere – as “jihadis.”
In the other, the far-right – in particular the Azov regiment – has played a somewhat greater role on the military front since 2014, a common impact of military action which tends to empower tough guys and nationalists. The far-right Azov Battalion was formed in May 2014 by members of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly, which had “engaged in xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideals and physically assaulted migrants, the Roma community and people opposing their views.” It gained a lot of initial support due to the relative disorganisation of official Ukrainian forces when suddenly confronted by the Russian intervention that year.
In November 2014, the government incorporated the Azov Battalion into the National Guard, as a means of controlling, or taming it; the government claims it can no longer act outside the discipline of the armed forces. While perhaps a dubious means, it did separate the armed forces from its political leadership. Ideological cadre including leader Andriy Biletsky had to leave Azov, as they allegedly were no longer able to do far-right work in the Ukrainian military, according to Alexander Ritzmann, a senior adviser at Berlin’s Counter Extremism Project. . . .
That doesn’t mean the Azov regiment is now free from fascist
influence, but the reality is far from clear. In 2015, Andriy
Diachenko, a spokesman for the regiment, claimed only 10-20 percent of
regiment members are Nazis as regular non-ideological troops joined.
. . . the vast expansion of military action as a result of full-scale Russian invasion significantly reduces the relative weight of Azov and other fascists, given the “vast popular mobilisation” of millions of Ukrainians – including Russian-speakers – which “has risen up which goes far beyond the state apparatuses” to defend their country’s existence. The Azov regiment is estimated to consist of about 900 fighters; the standing Ukrainian armed forces are 196,000 troops, with another 900,000 reserves! [With the Russian invasion, even people in Mariupol from the left joined the Azov regiment as it was the Ukrainian force fighting there—JG.]
The unexpected nature, ferocity and wide-ranging nature of Russia’s outright invasion of sovereign Ukraine has caused considerable anxiety for Putin’s far-right allies, from quite different perspectives. Although most remain cautiously supportive, some have expressed concern while others are torn between Russian and Ukrainian fascism.
On the one hand, the far-right parties that have some tendency towards “respectability,” due to participation in elections, have been humiliated by the sheer blatancy of Russia’s aggression. So, for example, French National Rally leader Le Pen, her rival Zemmour, Italian Lega Nord leader Salvini, Czech president Miloš Zeman and Hungarian prime minister Orban all had to condemn the aggression; though just days earlier they were still claiming the idea of invasion was just a beat-up and that Russia did have legitimate “security concerns”.
Condemning blatant aggression did [not] make them partisans of Ukraine or born-again Russia hawks; rather, they tended to adopt the same position as the pro-Putin “left,” ie, of course we condemn the invasion, so let’s push for negotiations, compromise, no sanctions etc. Le Pen refused demands to destroy election pamphlets that prominently display her with Putin, explaining the invasion had only “partly changed” her view of him; Zemmour claimed that while “Putin is the guilty one, those responsible are in NATO which has not stopped expanding.” While Orban fell in with the EU and NATO consensus on the invasion, he stressed his opposition to sanctions or sending arms to Ukraine.
Some still entirely blame NATO with no criticism of Putin. For example, Alice Weidel, MP of the German fascist AfD, blamed the failure of the West to assure that Ukraine remained neutral rather than “continuously pushing the frontiers of NATO’s eastward expansion,” which was an “insult” to Russia’s great status. Dutch fascist Thierry Baudet of the misnamed Forum for Democracy claimed “Russia didn’t have much of a choice.”
On the other extreme, much of the more hard-line far-right have been attracted to Putin because he is seen as a firm and tough leader who is not scared to throw his weight around to defend “his nation”, “western civilisation” and the like. Hence their unanimous support for Putin’s backing of Assad’s dictatorship against “Islamists.” They feel none of the “respectable” pressures of the first group, but Putin’s invasion is a huge risk due to the stakes involved: an outright victory of Imperial Russia would greatly embolden the admiration he receives from global fascism, whereas a humiliating defeat could equally lead to a massive loss of support. With the Russian army bogged down, thousands of conscripts returning in body bags, the inability to yet conquer any major city, and the disastrous impacts of harsh western sanctions, humiliating defeat is not out of the question.
. . . .
Thus, despite various articles with headings like “Far right militias in Europe plan to confront Russian forces”, concrete evidence is slim. . . . .
On the whole, therefore, while the edifice of Putin’s global
alliance with fascism has been under strain from opposing pressures,
there has been no drastic change to date. A complete Russian victory
would almost certainly solidify the alliance and lead to an enormous
surge in support for Kremlin-backed and financed fascist and far-right
movements globally. In contrast, a humiliating Russian defeat would
possibly lead to desertion of a weakened Russia by many fascist groups,
and conversely, their long association with Putin, their heralding of
him as the great white saviour, may discredit many of these groups and
lead them to lose support. This is one more, not unimportant, reason to
hope for the defeat of Putin’s bloody gamble in this fascistic
far-right version of late 19th century imperialism. <>
Picture: Michael
Karadjis’s blog on Putin’s alliance with global fascism.
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