Posted on 04/27/2014 12:24:21 PM PDT by annalex
Good survey article. Thanks for posting.
I recommend ‘Victims of Yalta’ by Tolstoi and ‘The Nation Killers’ by Conquest to appreciate the sensibilities of Eastern Europeans regarding noble Wilsonian aspirations from abroad.
Victims of Yalta/ The secret betrayal
Also see this Wikipedia article for an overview: Victims of Yalta
Of course, the betrayal victimized many more people that the Russians caught up in the war. The division of zones of influence, agreed upon in Yalta, sold all countries of East Europe into 40 years of slavery.
The problem with this is that in the minds of the Eurocrats in Brussels, anyone who opposes them is a “fascist” or a “Nazi”. Geert Wilders and his VVP, Liberty GB, and Ukip all get accused of being “fascist”, even though the first is classically liberal on economic issues and liberal in the American sense on social issues but strays from the fold in having the clarity of vision to see Islam as threat to Western civilization whether Christian or secularist, and the latter two are British analogues of the Tea Party and fully in the tradition of Edmund Burke, Lord Acton and Winston Churchill. Any nationalism which opposed subordination of national culture to pan-European regulation from Brussels, including the delusional acceptance of Islam as an ordinary religion and the promotion of homosexuality, is “fascist” even when it isn’t, and any nationalism which embraces Brussels (e.g. the Ukrainian variety) isn’t “fascist” even when it’s fascist.
But EU was quite gracious with Ukraine; at least for now they do not see a problem with Ukrainian nationalism driving the revolution. It is the Russians that go banana with “Banderovzi! Fascists!”.
But not all of us!
It fits in so many ways wouldn’t you agree?
If EU had been that gracious to the Ukraine, they’d have offered a bailout package with sweeter terms than the one Yanukovych accepted from Russia, thereby triggering this crisis, and there wouldn’t be a crisis.
I don’t think so. It is not an economic matter in its basis; it is a cultural matter. Ukraine want to join Europe because of the civilizational values of modern Europe: inviolability of borders, democratic tradition, diplomacy and trade preferred to threats and war, individual freedoms, two thousand year-old culture, co-existence of religions. Twenty years ago Russia could be a European country. It is now clear that Russia is pulling back to its Soviet and Asian cultural choice and it wants to drag its neighbors with it. That is what is at stake in Ukraine.
Worth repeating.
Yup. Inviolability of borders, except when the country in question is called Yugoslavia or Serbia, in which case NATO shows up to violate the borders and carve out new countries; diplomacy and trade preferred for the last 78 or so of those 2000 years you tout, not a long track record that; individual freedoms (unless you’re criticizing Islam, which case you get charged one or another “hate” crime); co-existence of religions, since the Peace of Westphalia, well, most of the time, Jews had a bit of radical non-coexistence thrust on them not that long ago, religions don’t coexist in, say Malmö, Sweden, some neighborhoods of London and many Paris banlieux (I leave you to guess which one is dominant), Scientologists don’t have a very nice time in Germany, and woe to the protestant Christian who thinks the state schools are too secular and wants to homeschool, but pretty much, as long as the religion stays out of the public eye and doesn’t get in the way of the secular elite’s rule from Brussels.
As for a 2000 year old culture, I think the Russians at this point have a better claim to being the legitimate heirs of Christendom than does post-Christian Western Europe.
As I wrote when this first started: unfortunately Ukraine doesn’t have freedom as a choice. It can chose to be a vassal state to the EU or a vassal state to Russia.
I can understand why Latins and Uniates, and maybe even Orthodox who lean toward Constantinople rather than Moscow in our light-duty ecclesiastical power struggles might prefer the former. I’m not sure they are right.
In Yugoslavia, the partition of Kosovo was not done in 1 week by Russian well armed bandits without insignia, but over years , in a negotiated settlement; and certainly, the level of violence in Former Yugoslavia was high, whereas in Crimea — non-existent. I am not defending American involvement in Yugoslavia, but it cannot compare with naked aggression and self-dealing of the Russian Federation.
The European freedoms are indeed eroding, but they have a long way to go before they resemble Putin’s Russia.
The thing is, there is one civilization, not several. That the European Civilization is ill, there is no doubt, — but that does not alter the fact that it is The Civilization, and the rest is barbarity. The Ukies made a good choice.
Actually the NATO intervention in Kosovo can be compared with the Russian seizure of the Crimea, unfavorably.
There were armed bandits without insignia (or uniform) there too: the KLA, who, until Clinton’s State Department adopted a policy of Serbophobia had been classified as a terrorist organization and had some ties with Al Qaeda. And they engaged in banditry for a lot longer than a week.
And the province forcibly detached was the spiritual heartland of the country it was removed from — most of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s monasteries are in Kosovo and have been since the Middle Ages, and the Battle of Kosovo Polje, in which the Serbs saved civilization by sacrificing themselves to stop the advance of Islam, and event key to Serb historical consciousness took place there — and was never part of any other country except when Serbia was part of the Roman or Ottoman Empires, while the Crimea has no great significance to Ukrainian national consciousness — hardly surprising since it had been part of Russia until Khrushchev detached it from Russia and gave it to the Ukrainian SSR a mere 60 years ago.
Yes, but still the autonomy for Kosovo was not decided unilaterally or hastily. Nor was the KLA the only combatant.
That the violence was far worse in Yugoslavia than in Crimea (there simply wasn’t any) is an argument FOR separation of Kosovo and other provinces.
That Albanians now predominate demographically in the historical cradle of Serbia is not exactly EU’s or NATO’s fault.
The Kosovo precedent is baleful enough without deciding on the basis of it that sustained banditry and military responses to put it down form a sound basis for partitioning countries. By that reasoning the Russophile Eastern Ukrainians just need to sustain guerrilla action against Kiev for a few years have Kiev try to restore order militarily and hey-presto there's an argument FOR their secession. (Repeat in Catalonia, Scotland, the Veneto, Sardinia . . .)
Well, sustained violence is indeed one factor, but balancing it should be another: the party with a grievance must have also leadership that restrains violence rather than seeks to profit from it. And there are others: a referendum conducted without haste, with impartial international observers, and an agreement from all the parties concerned to respect its outcome. In Kosovo, — I am not defending Kosovo independence by the way, — we have at least an effort to adhere to the above principles; in Crimea all we have is farce and intimidation.
I had heard that Jobbik was a front for the Iranian government. Interesting that Putin is a supporter as well.
With all these reminders of European neo-Nazi invocation of oppressed "indigenous" ethnic minorities who need to be annexed by their countries of origin, I wonder if I'm the only person thinking of the so-called "left wing" Mexican irridentists in the Southwest?
In its turn, the Northern League stands for independence of Northern Italy and the formation of an independent state Padania . In addition to extreme nationalism, there are some frank slips of racism in the ideology of the party. In particular, the League believes, there are drastic differences between "Northern Italians, adherents of Celtic- Germanic traditions”, and the “lazy Southern-Romans”
This is most interesting. The Northern League is the model for the so-called "League of the South," a neo-Confederate organization whose call for an independent South is based on the alleged "Celtic" identity of Southerners. And if Celts are so great, why are all their nationalist movements left wing?
This is what makes true, capital-F Fascism the most alien of all ideologies in America. While both racism and Marxism are as American as apple pie, the medieval guild rooted ideology of Italian Fascism is simply incomprehensible to most Americans.
However, Italian Fascism was also highly-centralized and totalitarian--in fact, it was Mussolini who coined the term "totalitarian" to describe his Fascist State--though he meant something more along the lines of "we're all in this together" rather than the modern meaning of an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and un-escapable government.
While Mussolini was no Hitler (and it can be argued that his switch from an anti-German to a pro-German position was one of the defining moments of the last century), neither was he a hero. He was an atheist and totally amoral. He basically stole the idea of Fascism from d'Annunzio (taking all the credit) and took more twists and turns in positions than the Comintern. First he was anti-clerical and republican, then he was royalist and Catholic . . . and then he was republican again during the Salo Republic and basically admitted that his royalism had been nothing but a ruse all along. Furthermore, his ideology placed the State (again, not necessarily understood as the government) above all things, including religion. To him (as to most "palaeos") religion is primarily a civilizational achievement and something to be used for purely utilitarian ends. And while he wasn't obsessed with Jews (and even had an all-Jewish military academy at one time) he was certainly not their friend. In June 1919 he published a virulently anti-Semitic screed in Il Popolo d'Italia which he actually had to back away from after being lambasted by hostile blowback from within the Fascist movement! Then in 1938 he officially adopted the whole anti-Semitic, "Aryan" ideology (unfortunately, it is this latter anti-Semitic fascism that is subscribed to by Italian neo-fascist organizations).
Parenthetically, the topic of Jews and Italian Fascism is quite interesting. While there were always anti-Semites in the Fascist Party (such as Roberto Farinacci), there were also philo-Semites such as Italo Balbo, and there were many Jewish members of the Fascist Party--until 1938, that is. While his sincerity was obviously lacking, Mussolini did at one time actually advocate a Jewish state in Israel and was supported by some Zionists (most prominently 'Abba' 'Achime'ir). Then at other times he would warn "Zionists" not to stir up anti-Semitism in Italy by "agitating" for a Jewish state.
Anyway, annalex, I would think that Antonio Oliveira de Salazar would be a more appropriate model for right wing corporatists to follow than Mussolini's Fascism. And Salazar banned fascist parties in Portugal.
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