The events currently taking place in Ukraine have an eerie feeling of familiarity about them – indeed, that feeling is becoming normalised in the western media. From Afghanistan in the late 1970s and 80s, to Yugoslavia in the 1990s, to Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine, the pattern of ‘humanitarian’ imperialism is becoming the standard blueprint for the western geo-political agenda.
On the face of it, the events in Ukraine are clear-cut: a corrupt and repressive government, the age-old spectre of the Russian bogey-man in the shadows, and of course, the innocent, peace-loving, flowers-in-gun-barrels forces of democracy and liberty. It really should sound familiar by now. The story was the same in Afghanistan, it was the same in Iraq, it was the same in Libya, it is the same in Syria. Inconveniently for those of the humanitarian-intervention brigade in such influential western liberal institutions (and, by miraculous coincidence, US government puppets) as Amnesty International, these stories were and are, for the most part, propaganda – that is to say, lies, designed to achieve the support of the general public for what would otherwise be barefaced military aggression. This wouldn’t fly – the west has to play the great saviour in order for its unparalleled savagery to be acceptable.
If we look closer at the protesters in Ukraine, closer at least than the western propaganda machine does, we can clearly see a motley crew of fascists, ultra-nationalists, and conservatives; chief among these are the balaclava-clad thugs of the ‘Svoboda’ party, which, for instance, glorifies the WWII-era Ukrainian fascists who collaborated with the Nazis in rounding up and executing Jews, communists, partisans and other undesirables. Photos and videos from the riots in Ukraine show what are essentially camouflage-clad, helmeted and masked urban guerrillas, assaulting and kidnapping police officers, humiliating and beating people on the streets, vandalising government buildings, and whatnot – all the while wearing EU-flag patches on their sleeves and waving the flags of the EU and various neo-fascist slogan side-by-side.