On Ukraine:

I recently received an article, "Ukraine and the Rise of Euro Fascism" by Sergei Glazyev, a Russian Academician and advisor to Putin.  The article is by no means a Marxist article in its analysis of fascism or the general crisis today, not to mention its understandably uncritical treatment of post Soviet Russian policies which contributed to the present danger. But it does contain valuable material.   Below I have cut and pasted important introductory material from his article

 "Current events in Ukraine are guided by the evil spirit of fascism and Nazism, though it seemed to have dissipated long ago, after World War II. Seventy years after the war, the genie has escaped from the bottle once again, posing a threat not merely in the form of the insignia and rhetoric of Hitler's henchmen, but also through an obsessive Drang nach Osten policy.

The bottle has been uncorked, this time, by the Americans. Just as 76 years ago at Munich, when the British and the French gave Hitler their blessing for his eastward march, so in Kiev today, Washington, London and Brussels are inciting Yarosh, Tyahnybok, and other Ukrainian Nazis to war with Russia. One is forced to ask, why do this in the 21st century? And why is Europe, now united in the European Union, taking part in kindling a new war, as if suffering from a total lapse of historical memory?"

 The Munich Agreement was British imperialism's answer to the Soviet call for collective security against fascist aggression in Europe.  The British had already established this policy through pro-Franco "neutrality" in the Spanish Civil War while the Soviets aided the Spanish Republic against the fascists. 

At Munich the British and the French empires rejected any policy of collective security against Hitler and Mussolini for a policy of continuing the "quarantine" against the Soviet Union which had been established at the Versailles Conference along with the strong restrictions against any revival of German militarism. 

Glazyev is completely right in his analysis that the aim of the British and French Empires was to use Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union, then the only major anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist state in the world and the center of the global Communist movement, the most significant revolutionary movement in history. 

But Putin's Russia is in its own way as anti-Soviet and anti-Communist as the NATO states.  It is neither revered by peoples' movements struggling for liberation or feared by the forces of global imperialism.  And it in no way represents socialism as an alternative to capitalism and imperialism, either at home or abroad.  So why create this sinister and farcical cold war revival, portraying Putin's Russia as the "aggressor" in its opposition to the "democratic government" in Kiev.  Here, Glazyev is on much more on target in his analysis, which I have cut and pasted below.

 "The Italian word fascio, from which 'fascism' derives, denotes a union, or something bound together. In its current understanding, it refers to unification without preservation of the identity of what is integrated - whether people, social groups, or countries. Today's Eurofascists are trying to erase not only national economic and cultural differences, but also the diversity of human individuals, including differentiation by sex and age. What's more, the aggressiveness with which the Eurofascists are fighting to expand their area of influence sometimes reminds us of the paranoia of Hitler's supporters, who were preoccupied with the conquest of Lebensraum for the superior Aryan race. Suffice it to recall the hysteria of the European politicians who appeared at the Maidan and in the Ukrainian media. They justified the crimes of the proponents of Eurointegration and groundlessly denounced those who disagreed with Ukraine's 'European choice,' taking the Goebbels approach that the more monstrous a lie is, the more it resembles the truth.

Today the driver of Eurofascism is the Eurobureaucracy, which gets its directions from Washington. The United States supports the eastward expansion of the EU and NATO in every way possible, viewing these organizations as important components of its global empire. The U.S. exercises control over the EU through supranational institutions, which have crushed the nation-states that joined the EU. Deprived of economic, financial, foreign-policy and military sovereignty, they submit to the directives of the European Commission, which are adopted under intense pressure from the U.S."

What is important here is that fascism does take many forms, including what I would call "free market fascism"  of the kind that  was first seen in the Pinochet regime in the 1970s.  And more importantly, "free market fascism" is much more sophisticated in my opinion  than Glazyev thinks--it promotes both a homogeneous capitalist political economy while at  the same time actively promoting  the sort of separatist nationalisms that imperialists have always used, that is Czechs against Slovaks, Ukrainians against Poles, Catholics against Orthodox Christians, Shia against Sunni Muslims, Christians of all kinds against Jews, in effect updating and globalizing  the "Culture War" that the Nazis proclaimed against "KulturBolshevismus"(Cultural Bolshevism) and "Jewish Bolshevik World Conspiracy."

Glazyev is very right to be worried by these developments, as are the people of Russia, the U.S. and the world. But he might try harder to understand what the EU and NATO countries want today and why they think they can get it.  Essentially, they want from new Russia what they wanted from old pre-Soviet Russia, control of its raw materials and access to its substantial military power--in effect eliminating it as a potential business competitor.

A caricature of cold war ideology and tactics is their instrument to achieve these ends.  And the present Russian leadership, successor to the Yeltsin leadership which actively dismembered the Soviet Union from the top and destroyed its unifying socialist system, bears responsibility for this.  They also destroyed the Soviet ideal of a family of peoples with ethno-cultural respect and economic and social equality.

Once the Soviet Union was dismembered, and states like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were dismembered, then everything was up for grabs and tens of millions of people, especially ethnic Russians, but also Serbians, Slovaks, and others, were now treated as "foreigners" in what had been their  own countries.  

It would be refreshing if Russian commentators would begin to try to come to terms with what the destruction of the Soviet Union meant and also with their own present enormous weakness, with NATO on the soil of Warsaw Treaty states and former Soviet Republics. 

The only friends that they can reasonably hope to have are those anti-imperialists and advocates of peoples' movements who were friends of the Soviet Union.  But unless they stand for something clearly positive, not simply their tattered "national interest," it will be difficult for them to find such friends in the world, except among those states which would hope to play them against the U.S led NATO bloc.

In that regard, Glazyev forgets the ideal long cherished by communists and socialists, "an injury to one is an injury to all," and shoots himself in the foot and plays into the hands of all enemies of  anti-imperialism when he  writes "But who has tallied up the indirect human casualties from the promotion of homosexuality and drugs, the ruin of national manufacturing sectors, or the degradation of culture?"

The ruin of manufacturing sectors is accurate, but Glazyev should remember that the vilification of homosexuals and the references to "the degradation of culture" is as much a part of Goebbels Ministry of Propaganda as the Big Lie tactic used to promote war and genocide in the name of anti-Sovietism, anti-Communism, and anti-Semitism.  Homosexuals, along with Jews and Roma (Gypsies), were sent to concentration camps because of what they were, examples to the old fascists of "the degradation of culture."

The fascist danger is real and takes many forms.  The economic policies of the European Union, neo colonial economic policies in which "economic integration" massively favors the rich over the poor and "austerity" of the kind that the IMF and World Bank promote in poor countries and that deepens poverty, provide the breeding ground for fascist movements.  In Ukraine and Eastern Europe, these movements are virulently anti-Russian. In France, Hungary, and a number of West European nations, they are virulently anti-U.S., denouncing the very EU integration that Glazyev also criticizes as bringing about millions of unwanted immigrants whom they blame for economic and cultural crisis.  In a world where everything is up for grabs, some, like the fascistic government in Hungary, actually hope to establish economic relations with Russia to solidify their power. It would be in the interests of the Russian people if its present leaders spoke up against the National Fronters in France and their ilk in other West European countries.

 And Iraq:

Meanwhile in Iraq, all sorts of chickens are coming whom to roost in sinister ways.  The Bush administration invasion and occupation of Iraq was widely condemned around the world and actually opposed by two of the U.S. major NATO allies, Germany and France.  The occupation was a surreal disaster in which the U.S. people subsidized U.S. corporations to the tune of hundreds of billions in various projects while unemployed Iraqis looked on as their country became a crazy quilt of bandits, warlord militias, corrupt officials, and anarchic violence. 

The Reagan administration supported Hussein and his Baath party dictatorship through the 1980s in a bloody war against Iran to both weaken Iran and undermine the OPEC oil cartel. 

The first Bush administration went to war against a bankrupt Hussein, who attacked Kuwait to restore his treasury after Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, encouraged by their Reagan administration protectors to loan Hussein billions for his war, refused to cancel the loans.  After an easy victory against Hussein (one that it hoped would refurbish the reputation of the U.S. military industrial complex) the first Bush administration then permitted Hussein's regime to continue, still planning to use him as a counterweight against Iran. 

After the 9/11 attacks, led by the rightwing Muslim elements who came together during the Reagan administration-backed war in Afghanistan, against the Afghan Communist government and Soviet forces, the second Bush administration launched a second war against Hussein's Iraq eleven years ago.   At the time, Barack Obama as a young Illinois State senator, actively opposed the war on the principle that it was based on a series of falsehoods. 

But Obama has not moved effectively against the U.S. military industrial complex, as many of his supporters had initially hoped he would.  Today, in Ukraine, he is engaging in neo cold war threats that worsen the situation and also strengthen his rightwing political enemies in the U.S., who are always comfortable in calling for military action. Today they denounce their opponents as "soft on Russia" just as they once called their opponents "soft on Communism."  It is as if a President whom many hoped would be a new Franklin Roosevelt when he was first elected is ending his second term with rhetoric reminiscent of Harry Truman after WWII.

T he present insurgency, according to Iraqi left and Communist sources who are against both the insurgency and the present U.S. installed and supported regime, has the support financially of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, has former officers in Hussein's army in leading positions, and aims to re-establish the power of the Sunni religious minority which was the leading force in Hussein's Baath regime.  Now, the Obama administration finds itself in a possible "alliance" with Iran, which it still does not recognize, against these developments.

Step one: disband NATO

The only alternative to these policies is a genuine peace policy.  The only way to achieve such a policy is to work for regional economic development policies for Iraq and its immediate neighbors and for Ukraine and its immediate neighbors, including Russia and Poland, while outlawing all forms of ethno-cultural religious chauvinism.  Getting rid of NATO, which serves no real purpose now that the Warsaw Pact has been dissolved, would be a good beginning to a policy that would serve the interests of the American people and the people of the world.

Photo:  monument at a mass grave of victims of fascism in Ukraine       Leshchenko   Creative Commons 3.0