The Western media is having a field day with this motley gathering of Neo-Nazis and assorted freaks at the grandiosely named International Russian Conservative Forum – none of the more serious alternative right European parties, such as the National Front or Fidesz, bothered turning up, and neither did serious Russian nationalists – and for once they might just have a point.
The operative word being “just.”
Hypocritical as they might try to make Putin out to be with this, it would be wrong to see the March 22 conference as a Russian endorsement, official or informal, of the European far right.
First off, nobody of any consequence in Russian politics turned up, including even the purported organizers of the event, the newly (re)formed Rodina party see commentator bossel’s correction. It was skipped by serious Russian nationalists when they realized that the affair was going to become a total trainwreck populated by Prussian revanchists, the murderous goons of Golden Dawn, and conspiracy theories ranting about “penguin marriage” as the next phase of the homo agenda. Neither did any high-ranking official from the DNR or LNR turn up, despite the event being supposedly held in support of them.
This already puts this in stark contrast to Western politicians, whose politicians not only meet up with assorted Islamists and Neo-Nazis – John McCain is pictured below with Tyagnibok, leader of the Ukrainian fascist Svoboda Party, which used to be the Social-National Party and is exactly what it used to say on the tin:
… but happily supply them with arms and support Presidents who give them formal honors and decorations:
In August, Ukrainian chocolate sultan Petro Poroshenko awarded the leader of the pro-choice knitting club Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletsky, with the Order For Courage.
Biletsky is not only a courageous Wolfsangel-bedazzled freedom fighter, he is also the head of Ukraine’s creatively named Social-National Assembly, which is committed to “punishing severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lead to the extinction of the white man.”
Close your eyes and try to imagine the font size 72 Caps Lock New York Times front page screamfest if it was discovered that Vladimir Putin had decorated a brain-dead maniac who has promised “to prepare [Russia] for further expansion and to struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race.”
Now change “Vladimir Putin” to “Petro Poroshenko” and “Russia” to “Ukraine” and you will finally understand why we live in an upside down nightmare garbage world where people freak out about a one-day conference of fringe groups in St. Petersburg.
Which all gives a clue as to why Russia allowed the conference to go ahead: “Mr. President, we must now allow a Nazi gap!” Better to have them as your useful idiots instead of the enemy’s; at the very least, they are then less likely to go fight your miners and tractor drivers in the Donbass (/s).
@MikaelSkillt Since you're replying on Twitter… As a neo-Nazi, how do you feel about fighting for neoliberals & Jewish oligarch Kolomoysky?
— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) August 16, 2014
There are a few alternate explanations.
Perhaps the conference was allowed to go ahead because of Russia’s principled regard for freedom of speech, in stark contrast to the hypocritical West. Hah just kidding.
Perhaps – although this is more an addendum to the first explanation – there was just no obvious disadvantage to hosting the conference. If the Western media didn’t have this, it would just think up some other way to besmirch Russia this week or the next; frankly, as long as the current power structures are in place, worrying about Russia’s image in the West is something of a lost cause, and hence maladaptive. Here an earlier example, from Hungary, is instructive. In this supposed Alt Right haven within the EU, an identitarian congress featuring speakers who were on average much more reasonable and intelligent than the wackjobs at the Saint-Petersburg conference, was banned by the ruling party Fidesz. Those people who turned up anyway, including Richard Spencer and a personal friend of mine, were arrested, held overnight, and deported from the country and banned from reentering, Schengen be damned. Predictably enough, the EU and State Department applauded this, since free speech doesn’t extend to you once you leave the Overton window of acceptable discourse under Western neoliberal democracy. If by so doing, however, Fidesz hoped to gain kudos and respectability – or at least non-interference – from the powers that be, they were to be disappointed:
US ambassador identified "observing" the protests in Hungary. http://t.co/v8nbSVvo4D
— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) November 18, 2014
It need hardly be said that in the current geopolitical climate, even the most cringingly venal and submissive Russian “podpindosnik” (transl. “American worshipper”) realizes that sucking up on such matters to Brussels and Washington DC will result in zero rewards or even goodwill.
Perhaps – and personally, I think this is the most likely theory – it was all just a big fuck up, instead of an elaborate geopolitical ploy or troll job on the West. From Egor Prosvirnin, whose nationalism can be thought of as something like a Russian Pegida:
So let’s tally the results: The party Rodina, which the Kremlin is currently trying to revive from suspended animation, tried to organize a 1990s-style event featuring freaks, ziegfags, and marginals, who pretend to be nationalists, in this case – European nationalists. The whole thing tanked, because European nationalists who are gaining in popularity refused the invitation to participate in the Kremlin’s circus, while amongst Russian nationalists all these weird cramps provoked, in the best case, confused bewilderment. I think that as a result, one of the Kremlin’s political technologists will receive a good knock from upper management.
The only ones who benefited from this is the liberal community, which will bring up this dismal event in response to any criticism of the Ukrainian Reich for at least the next year. Maybe it was they themselves who organized it?
I am noticing that my comments only tend to start appearing once I make a comment. Probably some kind of caching issue. Anyway, first comment: Let the discussion begin.
Apropros of that pic, I think it’s a real pity the Roman/Nazi salute has come to be associated with genocide and general nastiness. It’s such a cool gesture and it makes for an awesome political “amen,” at once affirming “I mean what I say” and “my identity matters.” I’d love to see it revived, if only there were some way to get it out of the kooks’ hands.
“nobody of any consequence in Russian politics turned up, excluding even the purported organizers of the event, the newly (re)formed Rodina party.”
Hmm, not sure whether I interpret this right, your “excluding even” confuses me a bit, but if you want to say that no one of the Rodina party showed up, then the German Die Zeit says something else:
“”Dieses Treffen ist der Grundstein für die Errichtung einer neuen Welt, dessen Erbauung unsere Pflicht ist”, sagte Fjodor Birukow von der kremltreuen Rodina-Partei (Vaterland). Da war der Konferenzraum im Holiday-Inn-Hotel in Sankt Petersburg schon voll”
http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-03/russland-nazis-eu-rechte-konferenz-faschismus-europa-usa
& for someone who opposes broad brushes against Russia, you’re using “Western” quite freely:
” stark contrast to Western politicians, whose politicians not only meet up with assorted Islamists and Neo-Nazis – John McCain”
McCain may be a Western politician, but he hardly stands for all of them. He’s a serious nutcase, if anything.
BTW, since I’m at it, the NYT is also not “the Western media”, it’s just one outlet of a pretty varied bunch.
AK: Thank you for the correction, that was quite unprofessional on my part. I was going on “В-четвертых, не приехал никто из высшего руководства «Родины», которая как бы организовала это мероприятие” (Fourthly, nobody arrived from Rodina’s upper leadership, which was the organization that supposedly was organizing the conference”) from here which I misremembered as “no-one from Rodina” when writing my piece. So the event’s organizer Fedor Biryukov, being a “member of the political council of Rodina,” which implies a medium-to-higher rank, did turn up.
If that is supposed to be the fascist salute McCain’s friend is using the wrong hand.
I consider McCain a nutcase and I’m glad that you do too, but it would be very difficult for an American politician to claim to be more mainstream than a runner-up in a presidential race. To do it convincingly he would have to literally win the presidency.
This point is even truer of the NYT. It’s not even A leading voice of the Western media. It’s THE leading voice.
Look, Hillary Clinton is a neo-Nazi!
http://www.thedailyrash.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Hillary-salute-2.jpg
Here is Jared Taylor of American Renaissance on the conference.
http://www.amren.com/news/2015/03/report-from-saint-petersburg/
Instead of pontificating so much that supposedly Putin allows international fascists to back Russian foreign policy up, the Western Left needs to look at itself some. In a conflict where NATO and the Pentagon clearly favor their puppets in power in Kiev against Russia, it is simply wrong to conclude that Russian ‘imperialism’ is on a par with American, as many Western Leftists are now doing. Worse yet, they are taking that position AGAIN, immediately after having taken the same stance that NATO backed ‘revolutionaries’ were/ are struggling to bring revolution to Syria and Libya! In short, we have a Western Left that thinks that counter revolutions are revolutions, and make that mistake REPEATEDLY to back up the military machinations of the US government.
Further, to compound the political error mentioned here, the Western Left CENSORS people who take a counter position to this mistaken stance so many so called ‘socialists’ are embracing. Major sites like Common Dreams, Znet, and alternet seem content to not inform or address the issue of Ukrainian conflict much at all, but rather try to constantly veer away from mentioning that it is even occurring. Other sites, like the Louis Proyect owned ‘marxism list/ marxmail’, in turn expel offline people who do not agree with the supreme leader there, about Syria, Libya, and Ukraine. No discussion really allowed to take place on site, in any free manner what so ever. Owner, Louis Proyect alone, can set the terms for all controlled discussion. Just shut up then…
I myself joined the socialist movement because one tendency in it claimed and seemed to be the biggest builder of the US antiwar movement. Today though, no socialist or marxist tendency is doing that work even as many now parrot US government militarism while calling it marxist to do so. So let us not obsess over those very few neo fascists that supposedly support Russian foreign policy, while what is most disturbing really is those Western marxists who continually are supporting US imperialist war making. That is the real situation on the Left, and it is a sad obstacle to anti capitalist struggle indeed. Open the Left up for rank and file input in our discussions, and not just owners of websites and assorted academic types.professors,media stars and so on. And let’s actually try to rebuild a true antiwar movement in the West, instead of backing up D.C.
The same symbolism didn’t stop the German Stahlhelm from becoming the American pattern of helmet in the 1990’s.
It’s just a coincidence isn’t it? The symbol of the Ave! becoming yet another taboo European-European mark of identity buried.
While I agree with a lot of the points in this article, I think it’s dishonest to refer to them as “Neo-Nazis”. Most of these organisations are nationalist, who merely want their countries to regain their independence and preserve their identity. They have nothing to do with “Nazis” – this is just a slander used by their political enemies to discredit them. In fact, one of the most commonly emphasised points was that they want every country, both in Europe and around the world, to preserve their own culture against the assault of globalism being led by the US – which seeks to destroy all national identities and independence. I also take issue with referring to Golden Dawn as “murderous goons”. The imprisonment of Golden Dawn’s leaders for two years without trial at the request of the American Jewish Committee on trumped-up charges of “belonging to a criminal organisation” is a disgrace. The excuse for this in the run-up to Greek elections was that a “supporter” of the party stabbed a left-wing “anti-fascist” activist to death in unclear circumstances. While the death of this man was a tragedy, no evidence was ever provided that Golden Dawn had anything to do with the crime. If you’re going to declare a political party a “criminal organisation” every time one of its’ supporters commits a murder, you would have to ban virtually every political party in the world. They should start with the Democratic Party in America, after they inspired this savage attack: http://www.thelasttradition.com/2012/08/family-research-center-gunman-and-obama.html
It is also interesting to note that there have been several murders of Golden Dawn members by left-wing groups, but no one has been arrested in those cases and no “Neo-Commie” political parties have been declared criminal organisations for inspiring the murders. It is a shame that you attack people who are actually trying to put an end to the EU and the American domination of Europe – the biggest obstacle to Russia having peaceful relations with these countries. None of these organisations have advocated violence to achieve their goals.