Ukraine: a Fascist Putsch?

A tentative agreement has been announced, an agreement that was apparently brokered with assistance from Russia, Poland, France and Germany. The U.S., EU and the opposition apparently have secured what they want -- new elections and a commitment to curtail presidential power. But will now everyone pack up and go home?

What is a putsch? It is an attempt to violently overthrow a government by a small group. When we think of "putsch" we usually think of the Beer Hall of Putsch of Hitler and Ludendorff. A putsch is like a coup d'état with the difference being that we usually associate a coup d'état with the capture of the state by the military or a branch of the military.

What we saw last July in Cairo was a coup d'état. Chairman of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces Abdul Fatah el-Sisi ousted the elected President Mohamed Morsi, abolished Morsi's government and installed a new one. What we are seeing in Kiev is a putsch. Street fighters from the western part of Ukraine are attempting to topple the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych.

In both Egypt and Ukraine the popular element in opposition to the elected presidents cannot be discounted. At the same time it is important to recognize that without the intervention of the military in Egypt or the mobilization of far-right, pro-fascist goon squads in Ukraine the people-power uprisings would have amounted to nothing more than another "Occupy Wall Street"-type non-violent protest.

The role of the media in the West is to do all it can to obscure the fact that what we are witnessing in Kiev is a putsch. To achieve this goal the Gray Lady's two reporters, Andrew Kramer and Andrew Higgins, aided by their editors, have mustered all their talents to obscure the fact that the escalation of the violence this week in Kiev is due to the actions of the organized street fighters of the far right.

First, on Tuesday, street fighters attacked security forces in front of Parliament after opposition members were unsuccessful in passing measures to limit presidential power. This caused a spike in violence and many fatalities. Then, after a truce had been struck, street fighters broke the truce and attacked police lines, which led to another spike in violence and even more fatalities.

In neither case has the New York Times been honest in its reporting. In both instances, the Yanukovych government is blamed for a lack of restraint and for the use of excessive force. The esteemed Gray Lady is indistinguishable from any run-of-the-mill administration press secretary who must sing for her supper.

Sensing that their credibility might be tarnished, Higgins and Kramer publish a piece today where they acknowledge the role played by the far right in the uprising. Titled "Converts Join With Militants in Kiev Clash," it is, as one would expect, a mostly tendentious portrayal of right-wing Ukrainian nationalism that airbrushes away its roots in the fascism of ultra-nationalist Stepan Bandera.

Higgins and Kramer fail to mention the Nazi connection, something odd since comparisons to Hitler and Nazi crimes are a favorite theme in the Western media, but they do allow a small window on a reality they are struggling to obscure:

Many Ukrainians, who doggedly oppose the government, look with horror at the use of firebombs, rocks and, on occasion, guns to oust the president, who was democratically elected in 2010 and whose future is scheduled to be decided at the ballot box in 2015. 

Revulsion is particularly strong in the east of the country, where Mr. Yanukovych first made his career in politics, where most people speak Russian rather than Ukrainian, and where Ukrainian nationalist heroes like Stepan Bandera are viewed as fascist traitors. 

“We have a genetic memory of fascism here,” said Anatoly Skripnik, a businessman in the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk.