Trump’s former White House chief advisor told The Daily Beast that he is setting up a foundation in Europe called The Movement which he hopes will lead a right-wing populist revolt across the continent starting with the European Parliament elections next spring.

The non-profit will be a central source of polling, advice on messaging, data targeting, and think-tank research for a ragtag band of right-wingers who are surging all over Europe, in many cases without professional political structures or significant budgets.

Bannon’s ambition is for his organization ultimately to rival the impact of Soros’s Open Society, which has given away $32 billion to largely liberal causes since it was established in 1984.

Over the past year, Bannon has held talks with right-wing groups across the continent from Nigel Farage and members of Marine Le Pen’s Front National (recently renamed Rassemblement National) in the West, to Hungary’s Viktor Orban and the Polish populists in the East.

After being forced out of the White House following internal wranglings that would later surface in the book Fire and Fury, Bannon is now reveling in the opportunity to plot his new European empire. “I’d rather reign in hell, than serve in heaven,” he said, paraphrasing John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost.

The Movement’s headquarters are expected to be located in Brussels, Belgium, where they will start hiring staff in coming months. It is expected that there will be fewer than 10 full-time staff ahead of the 2019 elections, with a polling expert, a communications person, an office manager and a researcher among the positions. The plan is to ramp that up to more like 25 people post-2019 if the project has been a success.

Bannon plans to spend 50 percent of his time in Europe—mostly in the field rather than the Brussels office—once the midterm elections in the U.S. are over in November.

The operation is also supposed to serve as a link between Europe’s right-wing movements and the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus in the U.S. This week Paul Gosar (R-AZ) was its envoy to Bannon’s operation in London.

Bannon and Raheem Kassam, a former Farage staffer and Breitbart editor, set up shop in a five-star Mayfair hotel for a week while Donald Trump was visiting Europe. Between TV appearances as Trump surrogates, they hosted a raft of Europe’s leading right-wingers at the hotel.

“It was so successful that we’re going to start staffing up,” said Bannon. “Everybody agrees that next May is hugely important, that this is the real first continent-wide face-off between populism and the party of Davos. This will be an enormously important moment for Europe.”

Having seen the shock right-wing victory with the Brexit referendum and Matteo Salvini’s electoral success in Italy, which were achieved on relatively tight budgets, Bannon sees the opportunity to boost radically disparate nationalist parties by deploying a well-financed centralized operation intended to blow local opponents out of the water.

Up until now insurgent populist groups across Europe have often suffered from similar problems: lack of expertise and finances. Le Pen’s party was kept afloat by Russian loans back in 2014, when French banks refused to extend lines of credit for the Front National. Le Pen was back in Moscow shaking Putin’s hand before last year’s French elections, which the NSA  subsequently revealed had been hacked by the Russians.

The Movement plans to research and write detailed policy proposals that can be used by like-minded parties; commission pan-European or targeted polling; and share expertise in election war room methodology such as message discipline, data-led voter targeting and field operations. Depending on electoral law in individual countries, the foundation may be able to take part in some campaigns directly while bolstering other populist groups indirectly.

“I didn’t get the idea until Marine Le Pen invited me to speak at Lille at the Front National,” recalled Bannon. “I said, ‘What do you want me say?’”

The response came back: “All you have to say is, ‘We’re not alone.’”

Bannon was stunned to discover that the nationalist movements in Europe were not pooling skills and sharing ideas with populist parties in neighboring countries—let alone on a global scale.

Bannon said the Front National recognized that he was “the guy that goes round and understands us as a collective.”

Up on stage he told the crowd: “You fight for your country and they call you racist. But the days when those kind of insults work is over. The establishment media are the dogs of the system. Every day, we become stronger and they become weaker. Let them call you racists, xenophobes or whatever else, wear these like a medal.”

The former Trump campaign manager believes the fuse for the global populist revolt—now led from Washington, D.C. by his former boss—was lit 10 years ago during the financial crisis and President Barack Obama’s bailout of the broken financial sector. With income inequality growing, Bannon first championed Sarah Palin and then Donald Trump as vanquishers of the establishment elite who were capable of turning traditional politics on its head.

His next populist heroes can be found in Europe.

He sees Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, as the perfect foil to help accelerate that dynamic in Europe.

Noting Trump’s controversial decision to call out Merkel over her gas pipeline deal with Russia last week, Bannon said: “This is the lie of Angela Merkel. She’s a complete and total phony. The elites say Trump is disruptive but she’s sold out control to Russia for cheaper energy prices.”

He describes Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, the French president who crushed Le Pen in a runoff election last year but has since flagged in the polls, as vulnerable figureheads of establishment Europe. With Britain voting to quit the E.U., Merkel and Macron’s vision of a united continent will be put to the test at next year’s elections.

Bannon is convinced that the coming years will see a drastic break from decades of European integration. “Right-wing populist nationalism is what will happen. That’s what will govern,” he told The Daily Beast. “You’re going to have individual nation states with their own identities, their own borders.”

The grassroots movements are already in place waiting for someone to maximize their potential. “It will be instantaneous—as soon as we flip the switch,” he said.

The sight of Brexit virtually upending the entire European Union with a campaign spending cap of £7 million ($9 million) was a great inspiration. “When they told me the spending cap was £7 million, I go, ‘You mean £70 million? What the fuck?!’ £7 million doesn’t buy anything. It doesn’t buy you Facebook data, it doesn’t buy you ads, it doesn’t do anything.”

“Dude! You just took the fifth largest economy in the world out of the EU for £7 million!”

This week, British officials ruled that the Brexit campaign had not stuck to the legal limit—overspending by more than $600,000. There were also unofficial campaigns which spent additional millions arguing that Britain should leave the E.U.

Nonetheless, Britain’s GDP is around $2.6 trillion and leaked government figures estimate that Brexit could wipe 10 percent off that figure, meaning the impact of the democratic decision vastly dwarfs the scale of the investment by the campaign.

“The first thing they teach you at Harvard Business School is operating leverage,” said Bannon. With his expertise, contacts and financial backing, he is convinced that he can have an outsized impact all across Europe.

Bannon went to Italy to observe the campaign earlier this year as populist parties surged in the polls despite their tiny operations. “Look at Five Star and the Northern League,” he said. “They used their own credit cards. They took control of the seventh largest economy in the world—on their credit cards! It’s insane.”

The two anti-establishment parties reached a coalition agreement that made Matteo Salvini deputy prime minister and put him in charge of the interior ministry two months ago. He has since shut Italy’s ports to NGO ships carrying rescued migrants and called for a census of the Roma community that may lead to mass deportations. Last year, he called for a radical crackdown on immigrants. “We need a mass cleansing, street by street, piazza by piazza, neighborhood by neighborhood,” he said.

Bannon sees Salvini as a model for his future Movement partners to follow. “Italy is the beating heart of modern politics,” he said. “If it works there it can work everywhere.”

He admitted that the scale of his right-wing coalition could be limited by the extreme positions of some of The Movement’s potential partners. “Some people may opt out because they think some of the guys may be too immigrant focused,” he conceded.

“We’re not looking to include any ethno-nationalist parties in this although guys like the Sweden Democrats or the True Finns are perfect casting.”

Kent Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats was one of those who met Bannon in Central London in the last week. The party, which had its roots in the Neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements of the 1980s, has shot up to almost 20 percent in recent polls after adopting a more conventionally populist, anti-immigration message.

Jérôme Rivière of Marine Le Pen’s Front National (Rassemblement National since June) also made the pilgrimage to London’s Mayfair, as did Mischaël Modrikamen of the People’s Party of Belgium, Nigel Farage of UKIP and Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang, a Flemish nationalist party formed in 2004 when its predecessor was found to be in breach of a Belgian law on racism and xenophobia.

Bannon said Farage and Le Pen would take the lead in figuring out the logistics of creating a new European parliamentary grouping that could be home to all of these parties and more.

Gosar, the Republican congressman, also stopped by Bannon’s London hotel. He was in Britain to attend a rally for the street protester and alt-right provocateur Tommy Robinson, who was recently jailed for contempt of court for breaching reporting restrictions on a trial. During his trip, Gosar accused the British government of jailing Robinson as part of a cover up of rapeperpetrated by “disgusting and depraved individuals” from Muslim immigrant communities, which he described as a “scourge.”

Bannon’s ambition is no less than to take a stranglehold on Europe in the same way that he believes Soros has been able to dominate proceedings in recent decades.

“Soros is brilliant,” he said. “He’s evil but he’s brilliant.”

Bannon wants to fulfil that role on the right and he is not ashamed to assert his objectives. “I’m about winning. I’m about power,” he said. “I want to win and then I want to effectuate change.”

He is not afraid of being caricatured in the way that Soros has been vilified by the right. He compared it to the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “Look at Chris Wylie [the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower]. He is saying ‘Bannon made psychological weapons.’ He’s literally made me the most brilliant evil genius. I’m a Bond villain. I kind of dig it.”

Kassam, who worked closely with Bannon at Breitbart and followed him out the door of the populist news site, said The Movement was shaping up as a force that would subsume national politics.

“Forget your Merkels,” said Kassam. “Soros and Bannon are going to be the two biggest players in European politics for years to come.”

___________________________________________

written by NICO HINES

source: https://amp.thedailybeast.com

The post Inside Bannon’s Plan to Hijack Europe for the Far-Right appeared first on Void Network.

Indeed the reluctance to face squarely and explore fully the phenomena of terror and their implications is itself a lingering phenomenon of the terror.

Those who live with terror are under powerful compulsion not to speculate about it or to increase their knowledge of it. But this does not explain the remarkable reserve and resignation displayed in the face of totalitarian terror by the fact-loving Western world. The West shrank from the facts of the fascist terror, though they were available from reliable sources, until they were forced upon it in the unmasked horrors of Buchenwald, Oswiecim, Belsen, and Dachau. It shrinks today from the facts of the terror which is succeeding the end of the military war. The self-preserving numbness of the terror-ridden countries seems to be matched by a psychological mass-repression, an unconscious flight from truth, in the countries where civilization survives.

Essentially, the modern system of terror amounts to the atomization of the individual. We shudder at the tortures inflicted on the physical bodies of men; we should not be less appalled by its menace to the spirit of man. Terror accomplishes its work of dehumanization through the total integration of the population into collectivities, then depriving them of the psychological means of direct communication in spite of—rather because of—the tremendous communications apparatus to which they are exposed. The individual under terrorist conditions is never alone and always alone. He becomes numb and rigid not only in relation to his neighbor, but also in relation to himself; fear robs him of the power of spontaneous emotional or mental reaction. Thinking becomes a stupid crime; it endangers his life. The inevitable consequence is that stupidity spreads as a contagious disease among the terrorized population. Human beings live in a state of stupor—in a moral coma.

Let us examine more closely the main phenomena of terror in action.

1. Directness And Omnipotence. One of the basic functions of terror is to wipe out the rational connection between’ government decisions and individual fate. The wholesale arrest of people during the first stages of totalitarian terror, the mixing in the concentration camps of the most diverse elements of the population for the most diverse reasons, fulfills precisely this function of elimination of individual differences and claims before the apparatus of power. The qualitative difference between the imprisoned lawbreaker and the rest of the population does not exist between the victims of terror within the concentration camps and those outside. The principle of selection of the forced workers of the camps is direct terroristic calculation. They are in the majority trapped in mass arrests, with no question of individual guilt involved and no hope of limited punishment.

That the concentration camps are far more representative of the population at large than the traditional penal institution is made ominously clear by the fact that they are supervised not by a specialized body of civil servants but by units of that same secret police which oppresses the population at large.

This interruption of the causal relation between what a person does and what happens to him fulfills one of the chief aims of modern terror, namely:

2. The Breakdown of the Continuum of Experience. With the breakdown of legal rationality and its clear relation to the individual fate, this fate itself becomes so enigmatic as to lose all meaning. The individual does not know what he may experience; and what he has already experienced is no longer important for his person or his future. The normal rhythm of youth, manhood, old age, of education, career, success or failure, is completely disrupted. The creative faculties of fantasy, imagination, memory, become meaningless and tend to atrophy where they can no longer bring about any desired change in the individual’s fate.

Of course this transformation of a human being from an individual, whose essence is continuity of experience and memory, into a unit of atomized reactions is carried further among the trapped victims than among the population at large. But the difference is only in degree, and if we only cite examples from reports from the detention camps, it must always be remembered that the population at large was aware of both mass arrests and the terror within the concentration camps. Thus the terror actually visited upon the bodies of Jews, “radicals,” Poles, etc., terrorized the minds of all, which was indeed its primary function.

The breakdown of memory and experience has been described by a German psychologist, Kurt Bondy, who was himself in a concentration camp for a time:

This uncertainty about the duration of the imprisonment is probably what unnerves the men most. . . . They try to forget. The past becomes uncertain and nebulous, the picture of their family and friends indistinct. . . . Here are the roots of hopelessness, apathy, indifference, despair, distrust, and egocentricity. (“Problems of Internment Camps, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1943.)

Thus life becomes a chain of expected, avoided or materialized shocks, and thus the atomized experiences heighten the atomization of the individual. Paradoxically, in a terrorist society, in which everything is most carefully planned, the plan for the individual is—to have none; to become and to remain a mere object, a bundle of conditioned reflexes which amply respond to a series of manipulated and calculated shocks.

3. The Breakdown of Personality. In a system which reduces life to a chain of disconnected reactions to shock, personal communication tends to lose all meaning. The super-ego—the agency of conscience—in which people have stored the mechanism of moral decency, is repressed by what I may call a Hitler-ego, meaning that the inhibitions produced by conscience yield to inhibitions or drives produced by mechanical reactions and imitations. Neither the terrorized nor the terrorist is any longer a personality in the traditional sense. They are mere material conforming to situations created by a power utterly independent of themselves. An underground report by a prisoner escaped from Oswiecim tells how the camp system “destroyed every social tie in a victim and reduced his spiritual life to a fear-driven desire to prolong existence, be it only for a day or an hour.” And a keen observer with personal experience in two camps, Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, now with the University of Chicago, has studied this deterioration to its end in loss of the vital passions:

This outside world which continued to live as if nothing had happened was in the minds of the new prisoners represented by those whom they used to know, namely: by their relatives and friends. But even this hatred was very subdued in the old prisoners. It seemed that, as much as they had forgotten to love their kin, they had lost the ability to hate them . . . they were unable to feel strongly about anybody. (“Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1943.)

A similar shrinking of the personality to a cluster of conditioned reflexes has been observed among the guards. In his report, A Year in Tremblinka, Yankel Wiernik describes the practitioners of terror as automata devoid of passion or remorse, who performed their given tasks as soon as some higher-up pressed a button. Bettelheim describes their dehumanization in these words:

Having been educated in a world which rejected brutality, they felt uneasy about what they were doing. It seemed that they, too, had an emotional attitude toward their acts of brutality which might be described as a feeling of unreality. After having been guards in the camp for some time, they got accustomed to inhuman behavior, they became ‘conditioned’ to it; it then became part of their ‘real’ life.

And there is, above all, the corroborating evidence provided by these automata themselves in the trials currently being held in Germany. They admit the most atrocious crimes but show not the slightest sense of guilt. Their inhuman conduct was justified, they maintain, because it was ordered by their superiors.

4. The Struggle for Survival. The old system of culture, from abstract philosophical metaphysics to the institutions of religion and education, had the result of permeating mankind with the idea that only rational behavior which included respect for the rights, claims and needs of others could guarantee one’s own survival. Under terror such behavior may be equivalent to self-annihilation. Terrorism wipes out the causal relation between social conduct and survival, and confronts the individual with the naked force of nature—that is, of denatured nature—in the form of the all-powerful terrorist machine. What the terror aims to bring about, and enforces through its tortures, is that people shall come to act in harmony with the law of terror, namely: that their whole calculation shall have but one aim: self-perpetuation. The more people become ruthless seekers after their own survival, the more they become psychological pawns and puppets of a system which knows no other purpose than to keep itself in power.

Former inmates of Nazi detention camps confirm this regression to sheer Darwinism—or perhaps one should say infantilism:

The urge of self-preservation, bestial fear, hunger and thirst led to a complete transformation of the majority of the prisoners. . . . In many cases the sense of responsibility towards others disappeared entirely, as well as the least feeling of consideration of their common lot. Many a prisoner carried on a wild, ruthless, and thoroughly senseless struggle for his individual survival. (Bondy, op cit.)

5. Reduction to Natural Material. What the terrorist masters fear most is that their victims may recover their awareness of belonging to a whole, to human history. The complete victory of totalitarianism would be identical with the complete forgetting of history; that is, with a mankind become void of reflection, or in other words with a mankind solely become natural material. To quote Hitler:

A violently active, dominating, intrepid, brutal youth—that is what I am after. Youth must be all those things. It must be indifferent to pain. There must be no weakness or tenderness in it. I want to see once more in its eyes the gleam of pride and independence of the beast of prey. . . . I intend to have an athletic youth—that is the first and chief thing. In this way I shall eradicate the thousands of years of human domestication. Then I shall have in front of me the pure and noble natural material. With that I can create the new order. (Hermann Raüschning, Hitler Speaks, 1939.)

Here, if we discard the flowery adjectives, is a classic admission of fascist aims and ends. Mankind, having become domesticated again, becomes part of the over-abundance of nature. It thus becomes material indeed, for exploitation where needed and for annihilation where not—in any case, mere material to be processed. Modem terror always looks at people with the eyes either of the big monopolist surveying raw materials or of the undertaker anticipating the disposal of the useless human corpse.

This attitude is perfectly illustrated in reports describing the initiation of inmates in the Nazi concentration camps of Eastern Europe:

At the one side we surrendered our baggage; at the other side we had to undress and to surrender our clothing and pieces of value. Naked then, we went into another barrack, where our heads and beards were shaved and disinfected with lysol. When we walked out of this barrack each of us was given a number. . . . With these numbers in our hands we were chased into a third barrack where the reception took place. This ‘reception’ consisted in that our numbers were tattooed on the left breast. Then they proceeded to take the data of each person and brought us, divided in groups of hundreds, into a cellar, later into another barrack, where we were given striped prisoners’ clothes and wooden shoes. (Die Judenausrottung in Polen. Augenzeugen-berichte. Dritte Serie. Geneva, 1944.)

There is a striking analogy between this treatment of human beings and that of merchandise shipped into the inventory rooms of a large department store or factory. It is a planful handling of materials for certain purposes. According to the witnesses, the system became so streamlined that only the really useful human merchandise was tagged. He who got no number was a reject; he was disposed of. And as in any oversized administrative unit, no one cared to take the blame for mistakes. Even if the merchandise had been rejected by mistake, it was destroyed:

Since the prisoners were checked according to numbers and not according to their names, an error could easily be made which would be disastrous. If the ‘block-writer’ had marked ‘dead’ a number which in reality was still alive—a thing which can happen in these extreme cases of great mortality—the mistake was corrected by putting to death the holder of the number.

Wiernik describes the reduction of the human being into nothing more significant or valuable than a potential cadaver:

It was a continuous coming and going, and death without end. I learned to look at every live person as a prospective corpse in the nearest future. I appraised him with my eyes and thought of his weight; who was going to carry him to his grave; how severe a beating would he get while doing it? It was terrible, but nonetheless true. Would you believe that a human being, living under such conditions, could at times smile and jest?

These are hard facts, and they justify one’s saying that within the logic of terror, man has himself become a fact of raw nature. And death gains the rationality of putting surplus human material to use:

The Germans carried out mass round-ups of Jews in the city. They spared neither men, women, nor children. The adults they simply murdered, while the children were given away to the Hitler Jugend squads as shooting targets. (Quoted in News Bulletin, Representation of Polish Jewry, American Division, 1945.)

6. Assimilation to the Terrorists. Terror reaches its peak of success when the victim loses his awareness of the gulf between himself and his tormentors. With the complete breakdown of the personality the most primitive historical force, imitation, becomes openly prevalent in the dehumanized atmosphere of totalitarianism. This ultimate stage in regression is described by Dr. Bettelheim:

A prisoner had reached the final stage of adjustment to the camp situation when he had changed his personality so as to accept as his own the values of the Gestapo . . .

Old prisoners who seemed to have a tendency to identify themselves with the Gestapo did so not only in respect to aggressive behavior. They would try to arrogate to themselves old pieces of Gestapo uniforms. . . . This identification with their torturers went so far as copying their leisure-time activities. One of the games played by the guards was to find out who could stand to be hit longest without uttering a complaint. This game was copied by the old prisoners, as though they had not been hit often enough without needing to repeat this experience as a game.

Other problems in which most old prisoners made their peace with the values of the Gestapo included the race problem, although race discrimination had been alien to their scheme of values before they were brought into the camp.

Can one imagine a greater triumph for any system than this adoption of its values and behavior by its powerless victims? When we again recall that the difference between the effect of terror upon the population within and without the concentration camp is one of degree rather than kind, we have here an appalling index to the magnitude of the so-called problem of re-education in Central Europe.

_____________

So much for the atomization of the individual. What are some of the social consequences of a regime of terror?

It is characteristic of a terrorist regime that its tools and practices increase in efficiency, quantity and cruelty. Terror grows by what it feeds on—its excesses beget the need for ever greater terror. Under this increasing oppression the victims cease to anticipate an end of terror; they hope only for its alleviation.

Thus terror, by its own inner dynamics, perpetuates its sovereignty. Its victims lose the power to envisage a different order of life. They become absolutely dependent, materially and spiritually. They are receivers of doles, from such rewards as the “Strength through Joy” benefits all the way down to the spoiled food and contaminated water of the concentration camp.

This, I think, explains the behavior of a good many Germans toward the Allied armies. It is a continuity of frozen reactions. The aloofness of some and the abject toadying of others to the military powers are alike the result of their long alienation from genuinely experienced values and convictions.

Another result is the emergence of an infantile collectivity. Terrorist atomization has resulted in almost complete destruction of the old institutions of society. Most important, because the family was the basic unity of society, is the weakening of family ties. The complete dependence of parents on the whims of the terrorist hierarchy; the state policy of training children to inform on their parents; the regimentation of youth; the “social engineering” which shifts masses of people about with as little respect for family ties as in the worst phases of chattel slavery; the creation of millions of orphans through mass extermination of adults; all these are practices which the totalitarian governments have made horribly familiar. And all these practices inevitably and designedly disrupt family relationships and deprive the young of reliance upon the warmth and security of family life.

The result is an upsurge of a feeling of adolescent collectivity, rootless and ruthless, in which the concept of the family is supplanted by the image of a cynical, tough, destructive, joyfully cruel and extremely resentful community, frighteningly reminiscent of Hitler’s vision of brutally domesticated and therefore brutal natural material.

Finally, the pattern of terrorist oppression has had its influence on the behavior of liberated groups and individuals. Without moralizing about the legitimacy or appropriateness of revenge, it must be said that reprisals which betray a resort to the means of the totalitarian enemy have a deep significance for the tasks of peace. It has been truly said that the system of terror which Mussolini introduced into Western Europe enjoyed a sinister triumph in the orgy of vengeance over the dead bodies of the fascist dictator and his mistress. It triumphed when French girls were paraded with shaved heads before a vituperative populace in punishment for intimate relations with German soldiers. The “humane and orderly” transfer of Germans from liberated Poland was foreshadowed in the remark made to Jan Karski by a girl member of the Polish underground:

The moment the Germans are defeated, a ruthless mass terror must be organized. The imported Germans must be expelled from the vicinity by the same methods by which they were settled here—by force and ruthless extermination.

_____________

What is there in modem civilization that has set this terror loose among us?

I should like to venture this thesis:

Mankind today has so tremendously improved its technology as to render itself largely superfluous. Modern machinery and methods of organization have made it possible for a relatively small minority of managers, technicians and skilled workers to keep the whole industrial apparatus going. Society has reached the stage of potential mass unemployment; and mass employment is increasingly a manipulated product of the state and state-like powers which channelize surplus mankind into public works, including armies and official or semi-official political organizations, in order to keep it at once alive and under control.

This is to say that large masses of workers have lost all creative relation to the productive process. They live in a social and economic vacuum. Their dilemma is the pre-condition of terror. It provides the totalitarian forces with a road to power and an object for its exercise. For them, terror is the institutionalized administration of large strata of mankind as surplus.

Certain cultural tendencies emerging from the crisis of the liberal era may be cited as contributing to the rise of terror.

Under the impact of mass production, people have learned to live in patterns, not only material but also spiritual. They tend to accept uncritically entire systems of opinions and attitudes, as if ideological tie-in sales were forced upon them. To be a progressive is ipso facto to be for democracy, for the New Deal, for the Negroes, for the Jews, for Soviet Russia, and many other things. To be an isolationist is, or was, to be ipso facto against Great Britain, against Soviet Russia, against the intellectuals, against the Jews, and many other things.

It is not so much that people believe in these configurations of stereotypes as that they themselves become stereotyped appendages of this or that big cultural or political monopoly. Reason, consistency, personal experience no longer matter. One might say, for example, that there are no true anti-Semites any more, because anti-Semitism is not so much a reaction to anything experienced as specifically Jewish as it is a behavior-pattern tied in with adherence to a certain cultural ticket. And this shrinking of genuine experience makes it all the more difficult to counteract distorted and fallacious stereotypes. The cultural monopoly, integrating a whole chain of attitudes, itself exercises a psychologically terroristic impact to which the individual yields.

The fearful discrepancy between the moral traditions of individualism and the mass crimes of modern collectivism has left modem man in a moral no-man’s land. He still holds to the moral concepts of middleclass society—conscience, decency, self-respect, the dignity of man. But the social foundations of these concepts are crumbling. The overwhelming scale of power, size, destruction, extermination in the modern world make individual moral scruples, problems and conflict seem puny and irrelevant.

_____________

To cite a drastic example, the ethical issue involved in Hamlet, which may be considered a classical document of morality after the dissolution of medieval culture, is the question whether or not a time “out of joint” can be righted if Hamlet becomes the judge and executioner of his father’s murderer. In the face of present-day physical and moral catastrophe this issue is almost ridiculous.

The individual today realizes, more or less consciously, that his moral values do not greatly matter, because not much depends any more, either materially or spiritually, upon his decisions. He feels alone, deprived of the material and moral heritage which was the basis of his existence in liberal society. He is exposed to tremendous fury and aggression. He has become a potential paranoiac. In this condition he is ready to accept the most insane ideologies and patterns of domination and persecution.

The fascists were the first to spot the connection between potential material poverty and real spiritual poverty, and to exploit it rationally and systematically on a mass scale. They realized that in order to subjugate and control the surplus population it was necessary to bum into their minds the awareness of physical and spiritual menace, and to extirpate the whole frame of moral and emotional reference within which men had traditionally attempted to survive personal calamity. Hitler himself, in a conversation with Rauschning, once expressed the fascist need of terror and brutality. According to Rauschning:

He had not the slightest liking for concentration camps and secret police and the like but these things were simply necessities from which there was no getting away. ‘Unless you are prepared to be pitiless, you will get nowhere. . . . Domination is never founded on humanity, but, regarded from the narrow civilian angle, on crime. Terrorism is absolutely indispensable in every case of the founding of a new power. . . . Even more important than terrorism is the systematic modification of the ideas and feelings of the masses. We have to control those’ (Hermann Rauschning, op cit.)

Hegel once said, “How fortunate the institution which has no history.” Our age of terror is history, and one of its blackest chapters. But the dreams of freedom and happiness which terror would destroy are also part of history.

It is only by applying the efforts of reason—in its theory and practice—to the phenomena of terror, their roots and their consequences, that mankind can hope to wrest itself from the most sinister threat and ultimately pathetic fate in which it has ever become involved.

The dreams of Western civilization may still become reality if mankind can free itself from its use of human beings as surplus or commodities or means. Otherwise we too may face the terror.

LEO LOWENTHAL (essay published in 1946)

source: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-crisis-of-the-individual-ii-terrors-atomization-of-man/

The post Terror’s Atomization of Man- LEO LOWENTHAL (1946) appeared first on Void Network.

Asheville Fm radio, based in western North Carolina, aired a fascinating interview with an anarcho-syndicalist named Denys, from the Autonomous Worker’s Union in Ukraine. In the interview, Denys debunks many of the myths surrounding the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and explains motives behind the stories and propaganda being circulated around the protests.

Why is the Free Association Agreement with the EU (which would mostly benefit the ultra-rich oligarchs of Ukraine) deliberately being construed as actual integration? Ukrainian leaders backed off from signing it at the last minute. Meanwhile, Russia is trying to pull Ukraine into her Customs Union by offering Kyiv a deal for promised purchases of billions of euro of Ukrainian products, and a 30 percent discount on Russian Natural Gas.
Denys explains that when the protests broke, the political class of Ukraine was taken by surprise. However, the opposition, a coalition leaning towards far-right (with fascist Svoboda being the most visible of them all) quickly regrouped and turned the street into their PR machine. The opposition had massive demonstrations in their plans, as fascist Svobodas leader declared in an interview in March 2013. Evidence emerged of the opposition leaders plans to overthrow the current government with the financial and political support of Germany’s conservative Angela Merkel, the EU leaders from Brussels, and with visible support of the United States, whose envoy, conservative John McCain was the guest star of the Euromaidan.
Two months after they started, Euromaidan protests started to wane, despite being forcefully encouraged by the conservative political elites and governments of Europe and the United States. These protests have been controlled by the politicians who took over the Kyiv City Hall, and in this video, we can see a neo-nazi white pride Christian cross, proudly displayed by the opposition in their “Revolutionary HQs,” the City Hall of Kyiv which they occupied earlier in December.

 
It’s hard to say who is more desperate – the government or the opposition, but the latter announced they would focus on the upcoming presidential elections, due in 18 months, though it’s not quite clear what candidate they’ll support. Fatherland sided with the ruling Party of Regions of the current president Viktor Yanukovych in backstabbing Vitali Klitschko, most likely to make room either for their man, Arseniy Yatseniuk, or for the leader of Svoboda, Oleh Tyahnybok (or maybe for Tymoshenko for whose release from prison, the West makes huge pressures).
Klitschko, already promoted by the conservative leaders of Europe as their favourite, announced he would run in the March 2015 presidential elections, a month before the Euromaidan.
However, Svoboda’s leader exposed their plans to take over Kyiv in a March 2013 interview which a month later was followed by street protests which failed to call for early elections for the mayor of Kiev, which would have led to the ousting of one of the allies of President Viktor Yanukovich from a powerful post.
7 months later, the opposition used the street protests against the government to gain power in Ukraine. The results have been very fruitful for the Svoboda party. On January 1st, the Svoboda party led a march of over 15,000 nationalists to celebrate the birthday of long dead nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

 
 Klitschko attempted to disassociate Euromaidan from the Bandera march, but this lacks meaning as he has allied with Tyagnybok and demonstrated his willingness to collaborate with the Svoboda party. Many participants in Euromaidan have expressed their disapproval of the Bandera march, yet many of the same people have expressed their desire to not split the protests, meaning they will still willingly collaborate with nazis. This has essentially allowed Svoboda to establish hegemony among Euromaidan attendees as well as the capital.
In this interview, Denys explains what are the real facts and how are they reflected in a labyrinth of deformed mirrors, which one must remove from their way to understand the reality of life in Ukraine, a country where “people are ill because the State is a Ministry, Court, Oligarch, Scoundrel and non-accountable Parliament all at once, with all the same personalities over and over again.”
The transcript of the interview with Denys has been slightly edited from the spoken language into the written one, for more clarity. The edited parts are in brackets. You may also listen to it here.
Denys: You must distinguish between the two Euromaidans. (In) the first one which (took place) on November 21st, middle class people (participated), who mostly wanted the signing of that European Union agreement. However, today (our note – two months later), most of the people who are on the streets are concerned with rather more practical issues, such as police brutality, which was shown on the night of December 1st, and generally they are not happy with the government and the president. So the European integration remains a wider issue, but today it’s kind of the second place.
(As far as) the pro-government protests (are concerned): the people (who participated in them) were taken by the government on busses and (brought) to Kyiv for the weekend. (These) protests were not honest. Many people who work for the government, like teachers, doctors and so on, were told by their bosses that they have to do it. So, it was like mandatory for them. I would not say this (was) a real protest. But (regarding) the people who support the Union with Russia and Belarus and Kazahstan, yes, there is such an opinion and, as a whole, the country is divided more or less 50-50 regarding the integration into the European Union or the Customs Union.
The problem is that the second position is just not very represented in mass media which lean towards the other direction (pro-EU). And generally those people (who support the Customs Union) do not have the habit of protesting. They live in smaller towns and therefore they are not (represented in the media as much as those who live in the capital).
Also (the supporters of the Customs Union) have very stupid political leaders, for instance the main political force, which had organised those protests (in favor of) the Customs Union, (had) as their main point of anti-EU propaganda (the claim) that the European Union will bring about the same-sex marriage, and non traditional things which supposedly would not be welcomed by the Ukraian population. They even invented the term “Euro-sodom,” like (in) Sodom and Gomorrah.
And the other political force which supports the Customs Union is the Communist Party of Ukraine, which for many years has had nothing to do with communism, its political programme and agenda (can be) rather described as conservative, just like a regular social conservative party. If you compared (them) with Marie Le Pen, you would not find much difference between them.”
Asheville Fm radio: Is in their wording and imagery a sort of call back towards the Soviet era and rejoining with other Eastern European countries?
Denys: “Yes, of course they speculate about it, because the bonds between regular people are still very strong. You know many people have relatives (in Russia), (not to mention things) like the common mass-culture. Many people watch the Russian TV channels, so that is much more common in the regular lives of people in central, eastern, and southern regions.
People in the Central and Southern region have many things in common with the Russians, in their lifestyle, and they don’t feel they are the same as the European people.
But at the same time, a large part of the (Ukrainian) population is now currently living abroad, in the European Union, especially in Spain, Italy, Poland and Czech Republic and Portugal. Mostly these are people from Western regions, but not exclusively.
Asheville Fm radio: With the supporters versus the detractors of the EU inclusion, I can see a dividing up according to social norms, as you mentioned, so people who are maybe more social liberal (are) maybe leaning towards the West with its more progressive laws and same sex marriages, and then on the right side you have more conservative, more orthodox leaning – it will be a different orthodox church than the Russian orthodox – I’m sure that, depending on where you are in the country or what industry you’re in, you’re going do more business generally with the East or the West. But would you say that both the positions are basically more towards liberalizing the economy and weakening workers’s rights within Ukraine, or is it sort of a false bind for workers in Ukraine?
Denys: First of all you talked about the prevailing social liberalism among the pro-EU (Ukrainians). I would not really agree with that. There is such an impression because the pro-EU protests are headed by the educated middle class people who do have a (sort) of more social liberal agenda.
But still it’s more like cultural right versus cultural right.
So, for example, regularly, people at the Euromaidan pray publicly like together, all together. Then again, (regarding) the same sex marriages (issue): most people who stand for the EU integration would never accept it.
(Indeed) the social issues regarding the workers’ rights are not on the agenda at all. The working class, as a class, does not take part in these events at all. The workers naturally do take sides, but they are not organized in class-like organisations, in unions, as such they just don’t participate in these events. And they have good reasons for this, because both sides just talk about the cultural, political issues, which don’t have any direct connection to needs of an average worker.
The protesters who support the EU have the utterly false impression about Europe as some paradise where everything is all right, everything is much better than in Ukraine or anywhere else. It’s useless to tell them about the protests within the EU, about the austerity programs. They just don’t listen and they would say, “Ah, so you would better join Russia, wouldn’t you!”
So this false choice is just overwhelming and I think the same could be said about the opposite side. The leftist agenda, the workers’ rights agenda, is just not present at any of these squares (where people protest).
Asheville Fm radio: That must be a rather a frustrating position. All right, I guess, as an anarchist, it might open all sorts of possibilities and questions, (when they say) “Well, you must be pro-Russia if you’re against this”, (could you say) “Well, actually there’s another way.” Do you find that opens up a lot of conversations for you?
Denys: “No. The people are very hyped-up, they are very nervous. Today and maybe all the other days of last weeks, you could be in real physical danger, if you start saying something like this because you’d be immediately considered a provocateur from the ruling party. Actually, there were a couple of such incidents at the Euromaidan, when people from different leftist groups were trying to do exactly what you’re saying, and some of them were beaten quite harshly, others were just pushed out. (This is) because regular people do show some interest sometimes, but the other problem is that the whole situation in the rank and file in the euromaidan, the security and the local managers (organisers of the protests), who do stuff, they are heavily infiltrated by the far right groups that actually have their own things to say to the left. And they have the trust of the normal, the political people, so if some new Nazi whom we know says, “Oh my god, look, these are communists, these are like provocateurs, I think they just support Yanukovych,” nobody would listen to you anymore. You’d be like pushed away.
This is the mass hysteria in which I do not think it is possible to do much agitation, although I think during the next year we’ll have much more possibilities, because given the awful state of Ukraine’s state finances, I think during the next couple of months, the protests could be transformed into something (closer to a) more of a social economical agenda.”
Asheville Fm radio: Let’s hope so. 
Can you talk a bit more about the Ukrainian political system, and what the spectrum looks like? What kind of parties should our listeners know about to get a basic understanding about the dynamics, and what the stances are on the Ukraine joining the EU or the Custom’s Union?
Denys: “The Ukrainian parliamentary politics basically consists of two large (political) parties – these two parties have pretty identical social, political and economical agendas. They both can be described as centrist-right populists. One party is the Party of Region, which is the ruling party, president Yanukovych is their chief, and the government consists of the Party of Regions’ members. The opposition consists of a bloc of three parliamentary opposition parties, which are basically the same, the only difference is that they speak Ukrainian. (These opposition parties) have their electoral base in the Central and Western Ukraine, while the Party of Regions (people rather) speak Russian, and they speculate on these cultural differences, since their voters live in the South and in the East. These are the parties which gather perhaps 60 percent of all votes. Also there is the “Communist” party of Ukraine, which I already told you about. And one of this so-called National Democratic Opposition is the Svoboda (party), which is translated as “freedom”, but actually is a far-right party, identical to the other far-right populists from the European countries actually. Most of the political parties which I described do support the integration into the European Union, including most of the businessmen who support the Party of Regions (the ruling paty of president Yanukovych).
Actually, during this year, there emerged an opposition, based on pro-Russian conservative grounds, inside the Party of Regions, but it was very severely suppressed. The would-be leader of that opposition, a member of the parliament, was expelled from the Parliament, on grounds that he rigged the elections in his constituency.
Up until the end of November everything said that Ukraine would sign that Association Agreement (with the EU) because everybody is interested in it.
Then things changed rapidly, as far as can be understood, when the president and the prime-minister looked at the figures and they just realized that they can’t do it because the trade was with Russia and because (of the situation of) the State’s finances – we don’t have money and the budget is just empty and we can’t afford the losses which would be brought about by that association Agreement. Obviously nobody read that agreement at all (until at that moment), because (until the moment they backed off), the prime-minister and the president were the main euro-optimists in the country.
Overnight then they became the main euro-skeptics.”
Asheville Fm radio: Was the International Monetary Fund’s restructuring plan a part of getting into the European Union, or was that a separate thing that suddenly came up about the same time for the Yanukovych’s party? 
Denys: “These are two separate things, which are united by the fact that the Ukrainian government badly needs money. So they’ve decided to press the European Union in order for them to help Ukraine negotiate for better conditions of (getting) a credit fund from the IMF.
This is because the IMF demands (the same measures) as they usually do for many countries. (They impose) very harsh conditions, such as rising the gas price for the population, and the devaluation of the national currency. And the government refused to do that that over the past years, and it would be certainly political suicide for any politician who would try to do that now, when there is one year left before the presidential elections.”
Asheville Fm radio: From what I understand the IMF demands a 40 percent increase of the price of natural gas in a country that is quite cold, right? 
Denys: Yeah.
Asheville Fm radio: That seems like political suicide. I can see that for sure. 
Denys: “The main political force in the far right scene in Ukraine today is undeniably the Svoboda party, if I would have to seek some comparison I would compare them to other eastern european far-right parties such as Hungarian Jobbik party (more on Jobbik: documetary, news report, and article) which I think American listeners may be aware of. There was a huge scandal when they got lots of votes a couple of years ago in Hungary. Svoboda (is) pretty much the same thing, it’s a political party which has its own project of a so-called “national constitution” (which would bring about) many awful things, such as the death penalty for the so-called “anti-Ukrainian activities,” without further comment. Basically anything contrary to that parties spirit could be considered “anti-Ukrainian.”
Today in the Euromaidan they are calling for a political strike, but actually what most people just don’t realize is that, in the Svoboda’s project of (a new) Constitution, the political strike is a criminal offense.”
Asheville Fm radio: It’s a state of exception for them, I’m sure. 
Denys: “Yeah. The paradox is that they’ve become extremely popular among the educated liberal middle class in urban areas, especially in Kyiv. So today Kyiv votes for Svoboda, as the Western regions of Ukraine do, because they just say, “Well, I don’t know what is their program like. I did not read anything (about it), but they look so harsh, they are such cool guys, and I’m sure that at least they would break the necks of those corrupt people who are now in the party (holding) power.”
This is, of course, very much reminiscent of the historical situations in other countries in 21st century.
I don’t want to sound too much in panic, but there are some similar traits, because regular bourgeois people from the middle class just don’t see anything wrong with it. And, to some extent, they are right, because, if the far-right wins over the country, these people would not feel any major difficulties (in their life). The main difficulties would be directed towards the far left, towards all the left parties and movements, and towards the ethnic minorities and racial minorities.
But normal people would not feel anything for some time (at least), and that’s the problem.
Also another interesting fact about (the Svoboda) party: they (went through) a rebranding, and now (they) call (themselves) “freedom”.  This is a generic word for the European right, but up until 2005 or 2004, they called themselves the Socialist Nationalist Party of Ukraine.” (our note: Actually the current Svoboda leader said at one point that every Ukrainian must become a Socialist-Nationalist.)
Asheville Fm radio: Do you have anything to say about the Ukraine National Assembly party?
Denys: “They’re not very influential now. They used to be a very powerful far-right party (back) in the `90s, when they really had their own para-military soldiers, and even a semi-army, and their fighters (participated in) the war in Chechnya, and in other Caucasus wars and in Transnistria, and, yeah, they were very scary. But today they are just mostly a club for the nazis who don’t like Svoboda.
Asheville Fm radio: I came across the website of Dimitrov Kutchinsky, that guy is crazy. There are also references to national-anarchism.
Denys: “Are you familiar with that concept at all?”
Asheville Fm radio: Yeah there are some idiots claiming to be that in the United States. In San Francisco, and New York and Chicago. Are they much of a thing in the Ukraine?
Denys: “Yes, actually yes. Because unfortunately this is a very popular trend – to mix with the leftist things, like (in adopting an) anticapitalism (narrative). The anarchist (position) is very trendy, cool and gives you some points immediately, but people mix it with national things, which also look very trendy and cool with the youth, mainly with teenagers who just don’t see any problem in trying to combine these things. And it’s especially funny in Ukraine because we have a very big myth about Makhno.
Today he’s an integral part of the national myth, he’s considered a nationalist, actually, because, well, he fought the Bolsheviks, therefore he must be for Ukraine, for independent Ukraine, and for the rule of the nation and so on. Obviously this is total bullshit, but this mythology is very popular and it adds to the popularity of that left-right synthesis, the third position actually, like Terza Posizione, (which is) the Italian fascist tradition.”
Asheville Fm radio: Yeah that’s the same phrasing that they use in the United States: third positionists. There’s also a lot of overlap of nationalism and regional bio-centric ecology, so that they seem to make invasions into Green Anarchism before they start to make it into the mainstream or before a lot of people became aware of who they were and what they were doing. 
Denys: “I understand that, but here in Ukraine, apart from the New Age things, they are also very fascinated by the proper fascists, such as Mussolini, for example. They somehow are trying to mix it with anarchism.
Also you may be aware of the split in the Russian anarchist movement recently?
Asheville Fm radio: No, I’m not actually.
Denys: “Well there was a big split and that is repeated in Ukraine too.
It’s the split between the anarchists who support the minority rights, the feminist struggle, they pay attention to general issues, to the minority rights to the ethnical minorities, and the other macho-anarchists who don’t like all this ‘feminist b….t.’ They say, ‘We are cool guys, we do lots of sports and we are the proper anarchists, we don’t want anything to do with those pussies.’
Unfortunately, this manarchism is also gaining a lot of popularity lately.”
Asheville Fm radio: Is that a phrase you use in Ukraine, manarchism?
Denys: “Oh, we know that it’s originated in the United States, but for the lack of better word, yeah.”
Asheville Fm radio: It was quite surprising to hear it, I mean your English is very good but also the colloquial, the subcultural terms that you’ve pulled, they’re quite good. It seems in the United States that that’s always been a trend, that’s a possibility and that’s happened over and over again where people split off and say, “Oh, we need to have action now, no, these other ideas will happen after the revolution, we can wait to talk about race or sexism after the revolution and we’re gonna make the revolution right now so that we’d get on to those conversations,” and it seemed to a lot of people, starting about 10 years ago maybe in the United States among insurrectional currents of anarchism that that was a thing that people were tending towards, but I don’t think that there was actually a split in the United States, thankfully, I think there are people who have that perspective but usually they get put in their place by other people pretty fast. 
They get called manarchists, and then internet videos are made about them and they are made fun of in public and then they don’t want to be that person anymore, hopefully.
Denys: “The difference is you don’t have such developed fascists, do you?”
Asheville Fm radio: No. 
I mean we have a lot of far-right leaning groupings in the United States, some of which are para-military such as militias, or the KKK, though they’re not very big anymore, there are large pockets of neo-nazi subcurrents, but for the most part these groupings are at the political fringes, and the mainstream of America would not listen to them, although there have been large upsurges in anti-immigrant perspectives over the last 10 years that have led to armed groups on the border with Mexico for instance that have been deputized in certain states. In a way that kind of reflects from what I understand the Kozaks as an armed civilian militia that’s trained and armed by the state in Russia? 
But, yeah, the integration of rasist and fascist elements, as (openly) fascists is not really a thing although people make the argument that the United States is a fascist State it’s definitely not Mussolini’s Italy and definitely not Hitler’s Germany. 
Denys: “We have an additional pressure from the right and more people just tend to confuse these things. You know, all these things are against the power, against the government and, yeah, (they are like), “I’m too lazy to read anything about it yeah, so I should go into the street, and not even go into the street, but merely go into the gym.” There is a (Denys told Revolution News that this is a true story) joke, (about) the Kyiv manarchist (and it goes), “The day before yesterday they’ve issued a call of unity among the Kyiv left in the face of the Euromaidan like “We should be united and go together and do something social to raise some social issues and so on, but that call for unity contained one note: that if we see people with a black violet flag they would be considered provocateurs and all the necessary measures will be upon them.”
Asheville Fm radio: And black and violet being the color spectrum from the anarcha-feminist?
Denys: Yeah, right.
Asheville Fm radio: To bring you back to the protests initially as it is the Euromaidan began November 21st with 2000 people gathered in occupying Kyiv’s Maidan, it is the Independence’s square, right?
Denys: Yeah.
Asheville Fm radio: And Maidan means square? 
Denys: Yeah.
Asheville Fm radio:  Can you talk briefly about the Orange revolution and the comparisons that have been made between the protests that are going on right now and the scale of these protests and maybe the lack of scale in the demands of the people on the streets?
And compare that to the Orange revolution?
Denys: “Well, one thing which was prominent in the Orange revolution events was (the focus) on one person.
Everybody was shouting, “Yushchenko” the name of the candidate for the presidential position and at that time all the left were criticizing the Orange revolution for this, (because) they did not pay any attention to other vital problems, they just shouted “Yushchenko” and they thought that he was the Messiah who’d get things done.
But today they don’t have even this and still they don’t pay any attention to the bread and butter issues. Large masses of people just have the illusion about the fairytale of Europe, which they want to join, like personally. And nobody says anything about the actual content of that (EU) Association Agreement.
Yes, now the mobilization of what I understand is already larger than in 2004 events, so potentially the opposition holds a vast resource, but the problem is they don’t really know how to use it.
We can read in the interviews of their politicians who took part in the Orange revolution, at that time, (how) the politicians controlled the crowd much more tightly.
For example, one politician recently gave an interview, and he said, “Do you know why at that time the euromaidan was entirely orange and now they have different flags of different colors? Well, that’s not a coincidence. It’s just because everyday (back in 2004) we brought there 300 fresh orange flags.”
They’ve controlled the crowd, they were giving them the flags and doing their organisational work more efficiently than now. Today the parliamentary opposition was just responding to a spontaneous mobilization, they did not order it and then they just did not know what to do, in the first few days. In this situation, then, again, the most prepared party turned out to be the Svoboda. Which is the only party that has its own rank and file activists, who can do things in the field. So they get the most benefit as for today, as it looks now.
Asheville Fm radio:  How has the media in Ukraine dealt with, interacted with the Euromaidan movement and what is the ownership structure like with the media in Ukraine. What sort of influences do different stations have?
Denys: Oh it’s a very interesting story because in 2004, during the Orange revolution, all the media were heavily censored in that regard and all the people were watching Channel 5. (This) was the only TV channel (broadcasting) all these events, because its owner was Petro Poroshenko, an opposition politician. Today the ownership structure is not any better for the opposition, but still all the main TV channels and generally all the main mass media are covering the story very closely. When it was that bloody crackdown all the main channels belonging to the richest oligarchs covered it almost live, showing these riot police beating up people and saying how awful this is and so on and so on.
This shows that the owners of the media are really not happy themselves with the current president, and this was a big news for most Ukrainians as well. Because there is a popular (belief) that all the oligarchs are behind the (current) president, but, as we can see now, recently, the business advisers of the Ukrainian President Yanukovych have really irritated the media moguls, who are the owners of large portions of the Ukrainian GDP. They are not really happy about the president’s family doing things they should not do with their business.”
Asheville Fm radio:  Talk about the group that you’re with, or the organisation. 
Denys: “It was founded two years ago, and it’s still not super big. But I would say that we really have had some development in quality as well as in quantity, because today we have two local (branches), one in Kyiv and one in Harkov – (this is) the second largest industrial city in Ukraine.
We have about 20-25 people in Kyiv and maybe like 15 people in Harkov.
These are not astronomical figures, but they are larger than they have been initially and I think we are growing. We see ourselves not as a political propaganda group, more as a class union.
We are guided by the revolutionary syndicalism principles, although lately our group is becoming more and more just anarcho-syndicalist. Earlier we had some trotskysts and some marxists but now I think that most of them are already anarchists.
But unfortunately we still don’t have any workplace organisations, because, according to the Ukrainian law, you must have at least 3 people at every local workplace. We have people from different areas who often don’t work anywhere officially at all, like seasonal workers or construction workers and so on.
That’s the problem and today we function in actuality more like a propaganda group, although we want to be an actual union more like IWW, that’s the model we look up to.”
Asheville Fm radio:  For any listeners who are not familiar with anarcho-syndicalism, would you lay that down, briefly, and how it compares and differs from revolutionary syndicalism?
Denys: “Syndicalism as a method (stands for the) negation  of parties and parliamentary politics, as an instrument of reaching any political goals. The main accent is laid on direct action instruments, such as strikes, demonstrations, occupations and so on.
The main issue of syndicalism per se is the strategy, which lies in connecting the political and economical struggle in the struggle of syndicates, of unions.
So, unlike trade unionism, the labor movement, or laborism like in Britain, syndicalists believe that unions should pursue political goals together with the economical goals, they should fight, for example, for high wages and together they should keep in their mind that they are fighting eventually for communism, for the downfall of capitalism.  In the syndicalist theory, this is called revolutionary gymnastics.”
Asheville Fm radio:  I’ve never heard that phrase before.
Denys: “The revolutionary gymnastics is everyday struggle for similar reformist things which at the same time develops the muscles of the working class. After these struggles, the workers come out of them more organized and higher level of class conscience.
During strikes and demonstrations, the working class consolidates and sort of trains itself for class battles, and for more important and more vital political battles which will come.
The revolutionary syndicalism unites basically any left anti-capitalist, while anarcho-syndicalism also implies that all the members of the movement share anarchist views.
Personally, I don’t think that anarcho-syndicalism is contradictory in any way to other forms of social anarchism.
Anarcho-synthesism is a school of thought which combines anarcho-communism as an ideal, anarcho-syndicalism as a method of reaching that ideal and anarcho-individualism as a base from which you evaluate your actions.”
Asheville Fm radio: Criticism that people might come up with is that it’s difficult to keep doing reformist work in the short-term even though it can get you better working conditions or less repression from the state, and keeping an eye towards conducting a revolution or not, just buying into the system you have to make better. 
Is that the criticism that you hear?
Denys: “Well, our answer today is putting forward unrealistic demands. For example, one of our program’s points is to demand the lowering of the retirement age for men and women equally to 50 years, making longer the yearly vacations (pensions), and shortening the working hours to 35 hours a week.
These demands are postulated in the social context in which the government tries to raise the pension age and (increase) the working hours.
But still it does not look as utopian to most people because they can sympathise with this – everybody wants to have longer vacation. This helps us to get in a situation, into a zone where our demands are not considered some lunacy while at the same time obviously if our government would try to make them real any government would collapse.
Another example is our current campaign for free communal transport in Kyiv.
It was a response to the Kyiv government’s decision to raise the price of metro and buses (fares) (by) 50 percent. Nobody is willing to protest, the left groups who want to capitalize on this they just say, you know, the regular stuff, “We are against the raising of the tarifs, we don’t see it as a necessary step.”
I think our tactic was better because we put forward the offensive demands, not the defensive ones. We said, “Actually, we want free transit.” And here is the budget of the Kyiv government and we can see that here and here are the money which can be redirected and spent so that it can grant all the inhabitants of this city free transit.
Of course, this demand is still “unrealistic” in terms of real politics.
But it creates some space where you can be revolutionary and reformist at the same time.”
Asheville Fm radio:  Your explanations have reminded me of the IWW’s push for the 4 hour work day, which they’ve played with for a long time. It’s like you say that to someone and they say, “That’s totally unrealistic, it’s not going to happen.” But then you break down the numbers and if everyone was actually working and profit would be redistributed in a certain way then that could work and that begs the question of what’s wrong with the system that makes us have to work so much.
How can anyone of the listeners outside of Ukraine support the work of the Autonomous Workers’ Union and support the people struggling against the EU and the Ukrainian government and Russian intersession.
Denys: “I think the most useful thing would be to actually do what you’re doing now – to try to dispel the myths about our current situation because as far as I can understand most of the anarchists in the Western countries are just super optimistic about the protests, they see it as the right path to the EU and (they think) we shall overcome. But, as I’ve tried to explain, the situation is not that simple, so I think first and foremost everybody should try to learn as much they can about every other struggle in the world. This is what I’ve tried to do and of course it’s not an original answer but the international solidarity can help. We know from our own experience that when some groups from other country stage solidarity protests however small it can be and it is very helpful. Our group has also staged lots of actions, demonstrations in solidarity with Greek comrades, Polish comrades and not only it raised up spirits, but it is a useful thing for building up networks and organisational cooperation. There is a thing called Red and Black coordination, I think it only unites Western Europeans in libertarian movements, but still it is potentially very useful and our union I think it’s going to join, by the way.
It would be good just to start communicating with each other directly and seeing the needs of each other.
Asheville Fm radio: You yourself just got back from a solidarity protest. Can you talk about that cause I was not aware of this massacre either. 
Denys: Two years ago, in 2011, all workers in several oilfields in Kazakhstan staged a strike. Their first demands were just higher wages and better working conditions. But after they were totally ignored by the government and by the employer, they were radicalized by the local trots and they’ve started organizing a national network of militant collectives, demanding the nationalization of the whole oil industry and the workers’ control, and putting forward some political demands as well. Anyway they were still largely ignored until August after their strike has lasted for half a year, the government started repressing them. First they’ve beaten up some activists, they’ve locked up behind bars the woman who had given them legal advice, but still they were holding on the main square of Zhanaozen, which is a small workers’ town, in the West of Kazakhstan. But on december 16th there was a huge celebration of Kazakhstan’s independence day. And exactly on that day the strikers were attacked by a group of thugs obviously financed by the governor of that region who opened fire on the crowd. And 17 people were dead, several dozens were injured. That’s the perfect example of the unity of the capital and the state. If an anarchist wanted to talk about how the capitalists and the state support each other there can be no greater example in the recent history.
Especially since it was the main state holiday, Independence day.
After that the government started closing even the liberal media and repressing even the established bourgeois opposition. (more on the massacre)
Also this massacre was just the starting point for the Kazakhstan’s regime to turn into something much more brutal than it was before that. Also in the sphere of workers’ rights just recently the Kazakh government has come up with new proposals. They want to ban all the independent trade unions, so if you have a union cell in a factory, this cell should be controlled and governed by the National Federation of Trade Unions, the relic from the Soviet state, which is obviously heavily controlled by the government. If you don’t have any relations to that federation, your union is just illegal.
The other “great” initiative is that they want to raise the pension age again for women to make it 63 years, and to put a legal ceiling on the wages – not of top managers, but on the wages of relatively well off working people in such sectors such as oil and gas, where the wages are on average higher than in other sectors.
And the funny thing, but of course nobody cares in the West about it, no capitalist democracy can be bothered by this at all, the Kazakh state owns companies that are listed (at the western stock exchanges, like the London SE).
and they have huge success on the stock markets, then again it shows that there’s no big difference between the capitalism in the West and the capitalism in the former second world, because this point is often made by liberal experts here in Ukraine. They say something like, “You have a wild capitalism in Ukraine, but somewhere in the realms of Western paradise there is a true humanist capitalism.”
As you can see this is all the global unified system.”
Asheville Fm radio:  If people want to learn more about you what website should we send them to?
Denys: It’s avtonomia.net.
http://avtonomia.net/
More reading: Euromaidan: The solution to Putin, or another fascist political coup?

Other earlier interesting interview of Dennys:
http://pratelekomunizace.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/maidan-and-its-contradictions-interview-with-a-ukrainian-revolutionary-syndicalist/

For those interested in listening to archived episodes from Asheville Fm radio, check them
out at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org. You can contact them with
content suggestions at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net

source: 

The post Ukrainian anarchist dispels myths surrounding Euromaidan protests, warns of fascist influence appeared first on Void Network.

When US Senator John McCain dined with Ukraine’s 
opposition leaders in December, he shared 
a table and later a stage with the leader 
of the extreme far-right Svoboda party 
Oleh Tyahnybok.

This is Oleh Tyahnybok, he has claimed 
a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” rule Ukraine 
and that “Germans, Kikes and other scum” 
want to “take away our Ukrainian state.”

This is the party’s logo, it can be seen on 
flag throughout the crowds in Kiev every day. 
Svoboda is Ukraine’s fourth biggest 
party holding 36 seats out of 450 in parliament.
 They’re also part of the 
Alliance of European National Movements along 
with the BNP and Jobbik. 

This is their old logo, a Wolfsangel rune, 
a common symbol for European neo-Nazi 
organizations. It was also the symbol 
of the Patriots of Ukraine,
a paramilitary organisation that Svoboda 
went hand in hand with until 2004. 

A typical crowd shot of Kiev’s protests, 
Svoboda and their fellow travellers have been 
present throughout the protests.

Here we see a battalion of Patriots of Ukraine 
paramilitaries tooled up in the midst 
of the protests.

Pro-EU protesters took over the town hall, 
we learned from  international news reports 
in December, demanding the government resign. 
While it is a broad movement, 
mainly of the right, it’s hard to see 
a BNP or Golden Dawn led takeover 
of a town hall getting quite the same publicity. 

Here a white power flag takes pride of place 
centre stage, black  circle with a plus sign 
through it. You can always check the top 
of stormfront.org if you don’t buy it.

Here protesters clash with riot police, one 
carries a homemade  shield painted with 
a white power symbol and the numbers 
14 and 88. These numbers are common 
neo-Nazi slogans;
with 14 standing for David Lane’s slogan 
(We must secure the existence of our people 
and a future for White Children) and 88 
as code for HH, or Heil Hitler.

Patriots burn flags, while white power flags 
are flown throughout the crowd. 
In almost every action shot from these protests 
far-right symbols are clearly visible. 
National socialist group Wotan Jugend 
has described the experience they are gaining 
from the protests; “Leaderless resistance. 
What is happening now in Kiev – is a lesson, 
a lesson to all those who so eagerly watching 
national revolution taking place in Ukraine, 
blowing drool with envy at the keyboard.” 

Originally posted on imgur.com

The post Neo-Nazis and far-right protesters in Ukraine appeared first on Void Network.

Void Network: Day after day the conditions of life and death in Russian society becomes worst. It is obvious for all internationalists and social aware people that the Russian State is the worst neo-fascist / neo-capitalist State of the planet for this moment. The totalitarian neo-fascist capitalist regime of president Vladimir Putin and his buiseness friend’s protecting neo-nazi gangs, feeding Russian fascism as their last weapon to supress the social revolt. The number of organized attacks and assasinations of social activists, journalists, radical writers, young punk-freaks, guys, gypsis and poor homeless people is vast, the biggest of all Europe. The regime use fascistic “patriotism” to hypnotize the Russian people offering to them a pseudo-identity of proud and honour during their life-time that includes nothing that offers real pride, happiness or freedom for them… This is the story of Ivan Khutorskoy, an antifascist commrade that offered his life in the fight against European Nazism and for Happiness and Freedom of all of Us on this Planet.

Yesterday evening, Monday the 16th of November, 26 year old anti-fascist Ivan “Vanya Kostolom” Khutorskoy was shot to death at the entrance to his home at Khabarovsk street in the east side of Moscow; according to some information with two shots to his head.

Vanya was a great figure in the Russian anti-fascist movement, and I am sure many people will write down their memories of him in thedays, months and years to come. But as of today most of his friends are too angry and too shocked, at the loss of this friend and comrade.

My first memories of Vanya are from around 2004, I was running anarchist distro at a concert in R-Club. By that time I wasn’t going to gigs too often, so most of the faces were unknown to me. It was before the period when after the murder of Sasha Ryukhin when Moscow hardcore went completely underground. Thus the concert was openly announced, and you could not be sure who was around. So I was a bit wary of the skinhead crowd, especially this one big guy. But there was no reason to worry, Vanya being there was actually the best guarantee that any trouble would be handled.

I do not know where Vanya got his nickname “Kostolom”, “Bonecrusher”. Maybe it was some kind of joke, as it is hard to imagine a more friendly and humorous guy than Vanya.

Last time I saw Vanya was at the “No surrender” mixed martial arts tournament, organised on the 10th of October this year in Moscow. The tournament was organised in memory of another murdered anti-fascist, Fyodor Filatov. Vanya was the referee, as seen in the photo above. Vanya was well-trained in Sambo, a martial arts developed in Soviet Union which is still popular in the region. He he had some success in tournaments and he achieved the degree of Candidate for Master of Sports of Russia. He also competed in arm-wrestling. This was one of the reasons that made him especially feared and hated among Nazis, since they attempt to picture their enemies as weak alcoholics and junkies. Few Nazis could match up to Vanya in a fair fight, this is why they attacked him with razorblades, screwdrivers and knives, and when even that did not work out, with a gun.

Before that my last meeting with him was outside the Ska-P concert last May. None of my friends had enough money to pay 30 euros for a concert of Spanish ska-punkers, but we decided to give out free anti-fascist papers outside. After all, on the concert poster the group was in anti-fascist t-shirts – not a big thing in Spain, but something for which a musician may have to pay with his life in Moscow. Thus handing stuff outside was not any worse than leafletting random people at the street. Vanya and a number of other people were asked to cover us.

The reaction of semi-yuppie clubbers and punks to our papers was mixed – obviously many were there just to party. Then a phonecall – another group of comrades was in a trouble few kilometers south, followed by a larger mob of Nazis. Our cover had to move to clear things out. I had no plans for a fight that evening, but I had little choice – having distributed anti-fascist papers to hundreds of people, going wandering around afterwards alone could easily end up with 5 inches of steel between my ribs. So I had to stick with the crew.

We met with the other mob and regrouped. Vanya warned about not attacking as soon as Nazis were in sight due to the fact that they would figure out that they were outnumbered and just run away and never get caught. But people could not hold themselves back. 100+ meters was way too much distance to close the gap, Nazis ran to alleys and jumped over some fences, no one was caught. I was in bad shape so I could not run as fast as the rest, Vanya simply didn’t run because he knew it was pointless. So we were left behind the mob with some girls who avoided being in the frontline, and together we took a look around if any Nazis had hidden in an alley to our side.

Later that evening, another regroup – some asses kicked, some more missed opportunities. But it would be pointless to tell all these stories – while I was an unusual guest, for Vanya beating up Nazis was as routine as waking up in the morning. To tell one of these stories would be to tell nothing, as there are hundreds of them.

Vanya was a common face in the punk scene since the beginning of the century. Anti-antifa websites have large galleries of him, the oldest photos with a mohawk hairstyle. He was not in the first Moscow Antifa generation which got together around spring of 2002, but when he joined up in 2003-2004 he stayed for good.

Sometimes, after such tragedies, there is a kind of sad body-snatching match going on where everyone wants to claim a dead hero – that was the case for example with Stanislav Markelov, who, while still alive was a prankster who told to anarchists that he was a social-democrat, and to trotskists and stalinists that he was an anarchist, just to frustrate everyone.

With Vanya, any such post-mortem claims would be a misrepresentation any way you look at it, as every clique and crew in the scene considered him one of their own, and he was respected and loved by absolutely everyone. Vanya considered himself a RASH skinhead, which did not hold back the apolitical and patriotic Moscow Trojan Skinheads from considering him as one of them. Anarchists of course considered Vanya one of the anarchists, and it is true that Vanya had an anti-authoritarian and social position and was always ready to provide security for anarchists events. But he did not live for activism – he lived for the streets and for punk rock.

He was as sharp as a razorblade, and he finished his juridical studies at the Russian State Social University with a “red diploma”, that is a diploma “with excellence” given to students in the region of the former Soviet Union who have almost exclusively the best possible grades. As there are few people with juridical studies in the scene, I had some hopes that Vanya would join the ranks of the activist lawyers when he would retire from street fighting one day – even before he was murdered, Stas Markelov was overhelmed with legal cases from our movement and had trouble in dealing with them alone. Vanya and Stas knew each other well, and Vanya also provided security to some press-conferences held by Stas. Most recently Vanya worked as a lawyer in “Deti ulitsy”-center (“Children of the street”), which works with street children and other children with difficulties.

Of course people now ask why he went to his flat that evening, although his address was posted all around in the Nazi websites. Vanya often stayed in other places. Maybe he had some important business with his family, maybe he just spit in the face of death, having survived so many attempts on is life.

Vanya was jumped the first time in 2005 and his head was cut with a razorblade. This incident was recorded with a CCTV camera and used in a TV documentary of NTV channel, which is available online here:

http://rutube.ru/tracks/663741.html?v=242f56ae5e0dca6e5c9d77cc8558fb5d . Next time, in the autumn of the same year, they attempted kill him – his neck was punctured 6 times with a sharpened screwdriver, which is a popular weapon among Russian Nazis as it punctures deeper than a knife. Any of these strikes could have been lethal, but miraculously none of them hit arteries and he survived. This incident was also recorded to a CCTV camera, but cops had little interest in investigatingand they didn’t even check the recording! It took more than half a year for Vanya to fully recover from this attack.

In January of this year, Vanya was stabbed in his stomach during a street fight, this wound was almost lethal as well but he survived. And now, when everything else failed, Nazis decided to use guns – they finally succeeded. .

written by S2W

Vanya’s father died a few years ago, he is by his mother and his sister. Donations to support friends and family with funeral costs are welcome, you may use Yandex-money account 41001411894609, or in case you do not know what that is, you may donate through ABC-Moscow: http://www.avtonom.org/donate. But in this case write to ABC-Moscow about your plans (abc-msk AT riseup DOT net, and also indicate in transfer that it is “for Kostolom friends and family”.

article originaly appeared in:

http://avtonom.org/index.php?nid=2857

The post The life and death of Ivan Khutorskoy, Russian Antifascist murdered in November 2009 appeared first on Void Network.