Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #1091 The Destabilization of China, Part 2

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: The pro­gram begins with an excerpt of AFA #37 (from the fall of 1992), deal­ing with the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. Rely­ing on arti­cles from Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin #35, by Doug Hen­wood and Sean Ger­vasi, the pro­gram reviews both NSC 68 and what Ger­vasi terms “the full court press” strat­e­gy that was its ulti­mate ful­fill­ment.

Using polit­i­cal action focused on pro­mot­ing frac­tious nation­al­ism among tar­get­ed eth­nic­i­ties with­in the tar­get­ed nation and eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic pres­sure to weak­en that coun­try, the strat­e­gy worked very well with the Sovi­et Union.

It is Mr. Emory’s con­sid­ered opin­ion that the same strat­e­gy is being applied to Chi­na. Whether that strat­e­gy will be suc­cess­ful remains to be seen.

Next, we note the role of the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy (an exam­ple of Orwellian Newspeak if ever there was one) in con­tin­u­ing our exam­i­na­tion of the tur­moil in Hong Kong. NED was deeply involved in the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. We exam­ined NED’s role in pro­ject­ing Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments back into Lithua­nia in AFA #37, as well as FTR #858.

In this arti­cle we note: the involve­ment of the NED with the lead­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with the tur­moil in Hong Kong; the net­work­ing between oth­er U.S. “soft-pow­er” intel­li­gence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; the net­work­ing between top Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chi­nese slurs dat­ing to the fight­ing between Japan and Chi­na pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II; U.S. “Alt-right” involve­ment with the Hong Kong unrest; the meet­ing of a U.S. diplo­mat with Hong Kong activists; the use of what–if it were used by peo­ple act­ing in the U.S.–rioting and ter­ror­ism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the vio­lence used in Hong Kong includes throw­ing gaso­line bombs at the police, set­ting fire to sub­way sta­tions, attack­ing passers-by and assault­ing counter-pro­test­ers.

1.The pro­gram begins with an excerpt of AFA #37 (from the fall of 1992), deal­ing with the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. Rely­ing on arti­cles from Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin #35, by Doug Hen­wood and Sean Ger­vasi, the pro­gram reviews both NSC 68 and what Ger­vasi terms “the full court press” strat­e­gy that was its ulti­mate ful­fill­ment.

Using polit­i­cal action focused on pro­mot­ing frac­tious nation­al­ism among tar­get­ed eth­nic­i­ties with­in the tar­get­ed nation and eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic pres­sure to weak­en that coun­try, the strat­e­gy worked very well with the Sovi­et Union.

It is Mr. Emory’s con­sid­ered opin­ion that the same strat­e­gy is being applied to Chi­na. Whether that strat­e­gy will be suc­cess­ful remains to be seen.

2. We note the role of the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy (an exam­ple of Orwellian Newspeak if ever there was one) in con­tin­u­ing our exam­i­na­tion of the tur­moil in Hong Kong. NED was deeply involved in the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. We exam­ined NED’s role in pro­ject­ing Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments back into Lithua­nia in AFA #37, as well as FTR #858.

In this arti­cle we note: the involve­ment of the NED with the lead­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with the tur­moil in Hong Kong; the net­work­ing between oth­er U.S. “soft-pow­er” intel­li­gence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; the net­work­ing between top Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chi­nese slurs dat­ing to the fight­ing between Japan and Chi­na pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II; the use of what–if it were used by peo­ple act­ing in the U.S.–rioting and ter­ror­ism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the vio­lence used in Hong Kong includes throw­ing gaso­line bombs at the police, set­ting fire to sub­way sta­tions, attack­ing passers-by and assault­ing counter-pro­test­ers.

“US Backs Xeno­pho­bia, Mob Vio­lence in Hong Kong” by Dan Cohen [The Gray Zone]; Con­sor­tium News, 8/19/2019.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump tweet­ed on August 13 that he “can’t imag­ine why” the Unit­ed States has been blamed for the chaot­ic protests that have gripped Hong Kong. 

Trump’s befud­dle­ment might be under­stand­able con­sid­er­ing the care­ful­ly man­aged nar­ra­tive of the U.S. gov­ern­ment and its unof­fi­cial media appa­ra­tus, which have por­trayed the protests as an organ­ic “pro-democ­ra­cy” expres­sion of grass­roots youth. How­ev­er, a look beneath the sur­face of this over­sim­pli­fied, made-for-tele­vi­sion script reveals that the fero­cious­ly anti-Chi­nese net­work behind the demon­stra­tions has been cul­ti­vat­ed with the help of mil­lions of dol­lars from the U.S. gov­ern­ment, as well as a Wash­ing­ton-linked local media tycoon. 

Since March, rau­cous protests have gripped Hong Kong. In July and August, these demon­stra­tions trans­formed into ugly dis­plays of xeno­pho­bia and mob vio­lence. 

The protests osten­si­bly began in oppo­si­tion to a pro­posed amend­ment to the extra­di­tion law between Hong Kong, Tai­wan, main­land Chi­na, and Macau, which would have allowed Tai­wanese author­i­ties to pros­e­cute a Hong Kong man for mur­der­ing his preg­nant girl­friend and dump­ing her body in the bush­es dur­ing a vaca­tion to Tai­wan. 

High­ly orga­nized net­works of anti-Chi­na pro­test­ers quick­ly mobi­lized against the law, com­pelling Hong Kong Chief Exec­u­tive Car­rie Lam to with­draw the bill. 

But the protests con­tin­ued even after the extra­di­tion law was tak­en off the table — and these demon­stra­tions degen­er­at­ed into dis­turb­ing scenes. In recent days, hun­dreds of masked riot­ers have occu­pied the Hong Kong air­port, forc­ing the can­cel­la­tion of inbound flights while harass­ing trav­el­ers and vicious­ly assault­ing jour­nal­ists and police.

The pro­test­ers’ stat­ed goals remain vague. Joshua Wong, one of the most well known fig­ures in the move­ment, has put for­ward a call for the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to “retract the procla­ma­tion that the protests were riots,” and restat­ed the con­sen­sus demand for uni­ver­sal suf­frage.

Wong is a bespec­ta­cled 22-year-old who has been trum­pet­ed in West­ern media as a “free­dom cam­paign­er,” pro­mot­ed to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world through his own Net­flix doc­u­men­tary, and reward­ed with the back­ing of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. 

But behind telegenic spokes­peo­ple like Wong are more extreme ele­ments such as the Hong Kong Nation­al Par­ty, whose mem­bers have appeared at protests wav­ing the Stars and Stripes and belt­ing out cacoph­o­nous ren­di­tions of the Star-Span­gled Ban­ner. The lead­er­ship of this offi­cial­ly banned par­ty helped pop­u­lar­ize the call for the full inde­pen­dence of Hong Kong, a rad­i­cal goal that is music to the ears of hard­lin­ers in Wash­ing­ton.

Xeno­pho­bic resent­ment has defined the sen­si­bil­i­ty of the pro­test­ers, who vow to “retake Hong Kong” from Chi­nese main­lan­ders they depict as a horde of locusts. The demon­stra­tors have even adopt­ed one of the most wide­ly rec­og­nized sym­bols of the alt-right, embla­zon­ing images of Pepe the Frog on their protest lit­er­a­ture. While it’s unclear that Hong Kong res­i­dents see Pepe the same way Amer­i­can white nation­al­ists do, mem­bers of the U.S. far-right have embraced the protest move­ment as their own, and even per­son­al­ly joined their ranks.

Among the most cen­tral influ­encers of the demon­stra­tions is a local tycoon named Jim­my Lai. The self-described “head of oppo­si­tion media,” Lai is wide­ly described as the Rupert Mur­doch of Asia. For the mass­es of pro­test­ers, Lai is a tran­scen­dent fig­ure. They clam­or for pho­tos with him and applaud the oli­garch wild­ly when he walks by their encamp­ments. 

Lai estab­lished his cre­den­tials by pour­ing mil­lions of dol­lars into the 2014 Occu­py Cen­tral protest, which is known pop­u­lar­ly as the Umbrel­la Move­ment. He has since used his mas­sive for­tune to fund local anti-Chi­na polit­i­cal movers and shak­ers while inject­ing the protests with a vir­u­lent brand of Sino­pho­bia through his media empire. 

Though West­ern media has depict­ed the Hong Kong pro­test­ers as the voice of an entire peo­ple yearn­ing for free­dom, the island is deeply divid­ed. This August, a group of pro­test­ers mobi­lized out­side Jim­my Lai’s house, denounc­ing him as a “run­ning dog” of Wash­ing­ton and accus­ing him of nation­al betray­al by unleash­ing chaos on the island. 

Days ear­li­er, Lai was in Wash­ing­ton, coor­di­nat­ing with hard­line mem­bers of Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty team, includ­ing John Bolton. His ties to Wash­ing­ton run deep — and so do those of the front-line protest lead­ers. 

Mil­lions of dol­lars have flowed from U.S.  regime-change out­fits like the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy (NED) into civ­il soci­ety and polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions that form the back­bone of the anti-Chi­na mobi­liza­tion. And Lai has sup­ple­ment­ed it with his own for­tune while instruct­ing pro­test­ers on tac­tics through his var­i­ous media organs.

With Don­ald Trump in the White House, Lai is con­vinced that his moment may be on the hori­zon. Trump “under­stands the Chi­nese like no pres­i­dent under­stood,” the tycoon told The Wall Street Jour­nal. “I think he’s very good at deal­ing with gang­sters.” 

 Born to Wealthy Main­land Par­ents 

Born in the main­land in 1948 to wealthy par­ents, whose for­tune was expro­pri­at­ed by the Com­mu­nist Par­ty dur­ing the rev­o­lu­tion the fol­low­ing year, Jim­my Lai began work­ing at 9 years old, car­ry­ing bags for train trav­el­ers dur­ing the hard years of the Great Chi­nese Famine.

Inspired by the taste of a piece of choco­late gift­ed to him by a wealthy man, he decid­ed to smug­gle him­self to Hong Kong to dis­cov­er a future of wealth and lux­u­ry. There, Lai worked his way up the ranks of the gar­ment indus­try, grow­ing enam­ored with the lib­er­tar­i­an the­o­ries of econ­o­mists Friedrich Hayek and Mil­ton Fried­man, the lat­ter of whom became his close friend. 

Fried­man is famous for devel­op­ing the neolib­er­al shock ther­a­py doc­trine that the U.S. has imposed on numer­ous coun­tries, result­ing in the excess deaths of mil­lions. For his part, Hayek is the god­fa­ther of the Aus­tri­an eco­nom­ic school that forms the foun­da­tion of lib­er­tar­i­an polit­i­cal move­ments across the West.

Lai built his busi­ness empire on Gior­dano, a gar­ment label that became one of Asia’s most rec­og­niz­able brands. In 1989, he threw his weight behind the Tianan­men Square protests, hawk­ing t‑shirts on the streets of Bei­jing call­ing for Deng Xiaop­ing to “step down.” 

Lai’s actions pro­voked the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to ban his com­pa­ny from oper­at­ing on the main­land. A year lat­er, he found­ed Next Week­ly mag­a­zine, ini­ti­at­ing a process that would rev­o­lu­tion­ize the medi­as­cape in Hong Kong with a blend of smut­ty tabloid-style jour­nal­ism, celebri­ty gos­sip and a heavy dose of anti-Chi­na spin.

The vocif­er­ous­ly anti-com­mu­nist baron soon became Hong Kong’s media king­pin, worth a whop­ping $660 mil­lion in 2009. 

Today, Lai is the founder and major­i­ty stake­hold­er of Next Dig­i­tal, the largest list­ed media com­pa­ny in Hong Kong, which he uses to agi­tate for the end of what he calls the Chi­nese “dic­ta­tor­ship.” 

His flag­ship out­let is the pop­u­lar tabloid Apple Dai­ly, employ­ing the trade­mark mix of raunchy mate­r­i­al with a heavy dose of xeno­pho­bic, nativist pro­pa­gan­da.

In 2012, Apple Dai­ly car­ried a full page adver­tise­ment depict­ing main­land Chi­nese cit­i­zens as invad­ing locusts drain­ing Hong Kong’s resources. The adver­tise­ment called for a stop to the “unlim­it­ed inva­sion of main­land preg­nant women in Hong Kong.” (This was a crude ref­er­ence to the Chi­nese cit­i­zens who had flocked to the island while preg­nant to ensure that their chil­dren could earn Hong Kong res­i­den­cy, and resem­bled the resent­ment among the U.S. right-wing of immi­grant “anchor babies.”)  

The trans­for­ma­tion of Hong Kong’s econ­o­my has pro­vid­ed fer­tile soil for Lai’s brand of dem­a­goguery. As the country’s man­u­fac­tur­ing base moved to main­land Chi­na after the gold­en years of the 1980s and ‘90s, the econ­o­my was rapid­ly finan­cial­ized, enrich­ing oli­garchs like Lai. Left with ris­ing debt and dim­ming career prospects, Hong Kong’s youth became easy prey to the dem­a­gog­ic pol­i­tics of nativism

Many pro­test­ers have been seen wav­ing British Union Jacks in recent weeks, express­ing a yearn­ing for an imag­i­nary past under colo­nial con­trol which they nev­er per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced. 

In July, pro­test­ers van­dal­ized the Hong Kong Liai­son Office, spray-paint­ing the word, “Shi­na” on its facade. This term is a xeno­pho­bic slur some in Hong Kong and Tai­wan use to refer to main­land Chi­na. The anti-Chi­nese phe­nom­e­non was vis­i­ble dur­ing the 2014 Umbrel­la move­ment protests as well, with signs plas­tered around the city read­ing, “Hong Kong for Hong Kongers.”

This month, pro­test­ers turned their fury on the Hong Kong Fed­er­a­tion of Trade Unions, spray-paint­ing “riot­ers” on its office. The attack rep­re­sent­ed resent­ment of the left-wing group’s role in a vio­lent 1967 upris­ing against the British colo­nial author­i­ties, who are now seen as heroes among many of the anti-Chi­nese demon­stra­tors.

Besides Lai, a large part of the cred­it for mobi­liz­ing latent xeno­pho­bia goes to the right-wing Hong Kong Indige­nous par­ty leader Edward Leung. Under the direc­tion of the 28-year-old Leung, his pro-inde­pen­dence par­ty has bran­dished British colo­nial flags and pub­licly harassed Chi­nese main­land tourists. In 2016, Leung was exposed for meet­ing with U.S. diplo­mat­ic offi­cials at a local restau­rant.

Though he is cur­rent­ly in jail for lead­ing a 2016 riot where police were bom­bard­ed with bricks and pave­ment – and where he admit­ted to attack­ing an offi­cer – Leung’s right­ist pol­i­tics and his slo­gan, “Retake Hong Kong,” have helped define the ongo­ing protests. 

A local leg­is­la­tor and protest leader described Leung to The New York Times as “the Che Gue­vara of Hong Kong’s rev­o­lu­tion,” refer­ring with­out a hint of irony to the Latin Amer­i­can com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion­ary killed in a CIA-backed oper­a­tion. Accord­ing to the Times, Leung is “the clos­est thing Hong Kong’s tumul­tuous and lead­er­less protest move­ment has to a guid­ing light.”

The xeno­pho­bic sen­si­bil­i­ty of the pro­test­ers has pro­vid­ed fer­tile soil for Hong Kong Nation­al Par­ty to recruit. Found­ed by the pro-inde­pen­dence activist Andy Chan, the offi­cial­ly banned par­ty com­bines anti-Chi­nese resent­ment with calls for the U.S.  to inter­vene. Images and videos have sur­faced of HKNP mem­bers wav­ing the flags of the U.S. and U.K., singing the Star Span­gled Ban­ner, and car­ry­ing flags embla­zoned with images of Pepe the Frog, the most rec­og­niz­able sym­bol of the U.S.  alt-right. 

While the par­ty lacks a wide base of pop­u­lar sup­port, it is per­haps the most out­spo­ken with­in the protest ranks, and has attract­ed dis­pro­por­tion­ate inter­na­tion­al atten­tion as a result. Chan has called for Trump to esca­late the trade war and accused Chi­na of car­ry­ing out a “nation­al cleans­ing” against Hong Kong. “We were once col­o­nized by the Brits, and now we are by the Chi­nese,” he declared.

Dis­plays of pro-Amer­i­can jin­go­ism in the streets of Hong Kong have been like cat­nip for the inter­na­tion­al far-right.

Patri­ot Prayer founder Joey Gib­son recent­ly appeared at an anti-extra­di­tion protest in Hong Kong, livestream­ing the event to his tens of thou­sands of fol­low­ers. A month ear­li­er, Gib­son was seen rough­ing up antifa activists along­side ranks of club wield­ing fas­cists. In Hong Kong, the alt-right orga­niz­er mar­veled at the crowds. 

“They love our flag here more than they do in Amer­i­ca!” Gib­son exclaimed as marchers passed by, flash­ing him a thumbs up sign while he waved the Stars and Stripes.

 Xenophobic Propaganda 

Such xeno­pho­bic pro­pa­gan­da is con­sis­tent with the clash of civ­i­liza­tions the­o­ry that Jim­my Lai has pro­mul­gat­ed through his media empire.

“You have to under­stand the Hong Kong peo­ple – a very tiny 7 mil­lion or 0.5 per­cent of the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion – are very dif­fer­ent from the rest of Chi­nese in Chi­na, because we grow up in the West­ern val­ues, which was the lega­cy of the British colo­nial past, which gave us the instinct to revolt once this extra­di­tion law was threat­en­ing our free­dom,” Lai told Fox News’ Maria Bar­tiro­mo. “Even Amer­i­ca has to look at the world 20 years from now, whether you want the Chi­nese dic­ta­to­r­i­al val­ues to dom­i­nate this world, or you want the val­ues that you trea­sure [to] con­tin­ue.”

Dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive Wash­ing­ton-based think tank, the Foun­da­tion for Defense of Democ­ra­cies, Lai told the pro-Israel lob­by­ist Jonathan Schanz­er,

“We need to know that Amer­i­ca is behind us. By back­ing us, Amer­i­ca is also sow­ing to the will of their moral author­i­ty because we are the only place in Chi­na, a tiny island in Chi­na, which is shar­ing your val­ues, which is fight­ing the same war you have with Chi­na.”

While Lai makes no attempt to con­ceal his polit­i­cal agen­da, his bankrolling of cen­tral fig­ures in the 2014 Occu­py Cen­tral, or Umbrel­la move­ment protests, was not always pub­lic. 

Leaked emails revealed that Lai poured more than $1.2 mil­lion to anti-Chi­na polit­i­cal par­ties includ­ing  $637,000 to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and $382,000 to the Civic Par­ty. Lai also gave $115,000 to the Hong Kong Civic Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion and Hong Kong Demo­c­ra­t­ic Devel­op­ment Net­work, both of which were co-found­ed by Rev­erend Chu Yiu-ming. Lai also spent $446,000 on Occu­py Central’s 2014 unof­fi­cial ref­er­en­dum.

Lai’s U.S.  con­sigliere is a for­mer Navy intel­li­gence ana­lyst who interned with the CIA and lever­aged his intel­li­gence con­nec­tions to build his boss’s busi­ness empire. Named Mark Simon, the vet­er­an spook arranged for for­mer Repub­li­can vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Sarah Palin to meet with a group in the anti-Chi­na camp dur­ing a 2009 vis­it to Hong Kong. Five years lat­er, Lai paid $75,000 to neo­con­ser­v­a­tive Iraq war author and U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of Defense Paul Wol­fowitz to orga­nize a meet­ing with top mil­i­tary fig­ures in Myan­mar.

This July, as the Hong Kong protests gath­ered steam, Lai was jun­ket­ed to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., for meet­ings with Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor John Bolton, and Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Ted Cruz, Cory Gard­ner, and Rick Scott. Bloomberg News cor­re­spon­dent Nicholas Wad­hams remarked on Lai’s vis­it, “Very unusu­al for a [non-gov­ern­ment] vis­i­tor to get that kind of access.”

One of Lai’s clos­est allies, Mar­tin Lee, was also grant­ed an audi­ence with Pom­peo, and has held court with U.S. lead­ers includ­ing Rep. Nan­cy Pelosi and for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joseph Biden.

Among the most promi­nent fig­ures in Hong Kong’s pro‑U.S. polit­i­cal par­ties, Lee began col­lab­o­rat­ing with Lai dur­ing the 1989 Tianan­men Square protests. A recip­i­ent of the U.S.-funded Nation­al Endow­ment for Democracy’s “Democ­ra­cy Award” in 1997, Lee is the found­ing chair­man of Hong Kong’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, now con­sid­ered part of the pro‑U.S.  camp’s old guard. 

While Mar­tin Lee has long been high­ly vis­i­ble on the pro-west­ern Hong Kong scene, a younger gen­er­a­tion of activists emerged dur­ing the 2014 Occu­py Cen­tral protests with a new brand of local­ized pol­i­tics.

Joshua Wong was just 17 years old when the Umbrel­la Move­ment took form in 2014. After emerg­ing in the protest ranks as one of the more charis­mat­ic voic­es, he was steadi­ly groomed as the pro-West camp’s teenage poster child. Wong received lav­ish praised in Time mag­a­zine, For­tune, and For­eign Pol­i­cy as a “free­dom cam­paign­er,” and became the sub­ject of an award-win­ning Net­flix doc­u­men­tary called “Joshua: Teenag­er vs. Super­pow­er.”

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, these puff pieces have over­looked Wong’s ties to the U.S. regime-change appa­ra­tus. For instance, Nation­al Endow­ment for Democracy’s Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Insti­tute (NDI) main­tains a close rela­tion­ship with Demo­sis­to, the polit­i­cal par­ty Wong found­ed in 2016 with fel­low Umbrel­la move­ment alum­nus Nathan Law. 

In August, a can­did pho­to sur­faced of Wong and Law meet­ing with Julie Ead­eh, the polit­i­cal coun­selor at the U.S. Con­sulate Gen­er­al in Hong Kong, rais­ing ques­tions about the con­tent of the meet­ing and set­ting off a diplo­mat­ic show­down between Wash­ing­ton and Bei­jing.

The Office of the Com­mis­sion­er of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs in Hong Kong sub­mit­ted a for­mal com­plaint with the U.S. con­sulate gen­er­al, call­ing on the U.S. “to imme­di­ate­ly make a clean break from anti-Chi­na forces who stir up trou­ble in Hong Kong, stop send­ing out wrong sig­nals to vio­lent offend­ers, refrain from med­dling with Hong Kong affairs and avoid going fur­ther down the wrong path.”

The pro-Bei­jing Hong Kong news­pa­per Ta Kung Pao pub­lished per­son­al details about Ead­eh, includ­ing the names of her chil­dren and her address. State Depart­ment spokesper­son Mor­gan Orta­gus lashed out, accus­ing the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment of being behind the leak but offer­ing no evi­dence. “I don’t think that leak­ing an Amer­i­can diplomat’s pri­vate infor­ma­tion, pic­tures, names of their chil­dren, I don’t think that is a for­mal protest, that is what a thug­gish regime would do,” she said at a State Depart­ment brief­ing. 

But the pho­to under­scored the close rela­tion­ship between Hong Kong’s pro-West move­ment and the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Since the 2014 Occu­py Cen­tral protests that vault­ed Wong into promi­nence, he and his peers have been assid­u­ous­ly cul­ti­vat­ed by the elite Wash­ing­ton insti­tu­tions to act as the faces and voic­es of Hong Kong’s bur­geon­ing anti-Chi­na move­ment.

In Sep­tem­ber 2015, Wong, Mar­tin Lee, and Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong law pro­fes­sor Ben­ny Tai Lee were hon­ored by Free­dom House, a right-wing soft-pow­er orga­ni­za­tion that is heav­i­ly fund­ed by the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy and oth­er arms of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.  

Just days after Trump’s elec­tion as pres­i­dent in Novem­ber 2016, Wong was back in Wash­ing­ton to appeal for more U.S. sup­port. “Being a busi­ness­man, I hope Don­ald Trump could know the dynam­ics in Hong Kong and know that to main­tain the busi­ness sec­tor ben­e­fits in Hong Kong, it’s nec­es­sary to ful­ly sup­port human rights in Hong Kong to main­tain the judi­cial inde­pen­dence and the rule of law,” he said.

Wong’s vis­it pro­vid­ed occa­sion for the Senate’s two most aggres­sive­ly neo­con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers, Mar­co Rubio and Tom Cot­ton, to intro­duce the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democ­ra­cy Act,” which would “iden­ti­fy those respon­si­ble for abduc­tion, sur­veil­lance, deten­tion and forced con­fes­sions, and the per­pe­tra­tors will have their U.S. assets, if any… frozen and their entry to the coun­try denied.”

Wong was then tak­en on a jun­ket of elite U.S. insti­tu­tions includ­ing the right-wing Her­itage Foun­da­tion think tank and the news­rooms of The New York Times and Finan­cial Times. He then held court with Rubio, Cot­ton, Pelosi, and Sen. Ben Sasse

In Sep­tem­ber 2017, Rubio, Ben Cardin, Tom Cot­ton, Sher­rod Brown, and Cory Gard­ner signed off on a let­ter to Wong, Law and fel­low anti-Chi­na activist Alex Chow, prais­ing them for their “efforts to build a gen­uine­ly autonomous Hong Kong.” The bipar­ti­san cast of sen­a­tors pro­claimed that “the Unit­ed States can­not stand idly by.”

A year lat­er, Rubio and his col­leagues nom­i­nat­ed the trio of Wong, Law, and Chow for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Washington’s sup­port for the des­ig­nat­ed spokes­men of the “retake Hong Kong move­ment” was sup­ple­ment­ed with untold sums of mon­ey from U.S. regime-change out­fits like the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy (NED) and sub­sidiaries like the Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Insti­tute (NDI) to civ­il soci­ety, media and polit­i­cal groups. 

As jour­nal­ist Alex Rubin­stein report­ed, the Hong Kong Human Rights Mon­i­tor, a key mem­ber of the coali­tion that orga­nized against the now-defunct extra­di­tion law, has received more than $2 mil­lion in NED funds since 1995. And oth­er groups in the coali­tion reaped hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from the NED and NDI last year alone.

While U.S. law­mak­ers nom­i­nate Hong Kong protest lead­ers for peace prizes and pump their orga­ni­za­tions with mon­ey to “pro­mote democ­ra­cy,” the demon­stra­tions have begun to spi­ral out of con­trol. 

Protests Become More Aggres­sive

After the extra­di­tion law was scrapped, the protests moved into a more aggres­sive phase, launch­ing “hit and run attacks” against gov­ern­ment tar­gets, erect­ing road­blocks, besieg­ing police sta­tions, and gen­er­al­ly embrac­ing the extreme modal­i­ties put on dis­play dur­ing U.S.-backed regime-change oper­a­tions from Ukraine to Venezuela to Nicaragua. 

The tech­niques clear­ly reflect­ed the train­ing many activists have received from West­ern soft-pow­er out­fits. But they also bore the mark of Jim­my Lai’s media oper­a­tion. 

In addi­tion to the vast sums Lai spent on polit­i­cal par­ties direct­ly involved in the protests, his media group cre­at­ed an ani­mat­ed video “show­ing how to resist police in case force was used to dis­perse peo­ple in a mass protest.” 

While dump­ing mon­ey into the Hong Kong’s pro‑U.S. polit­i­cal camp in 2013, Lai trav­eled to Tai­wan for a secret round­table con­sul­ta­tion with Shih Ming-teh, a key fig­ure in Taiwan’s social move­ment that forced then-pres­i­dent Chen Shui-bian to resign in 2008. Shih report­ed­ly instruct­ed Lai on non-vio­lent tac­tics to bring the gov­ern­ment to heel, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of a com­mit­ment to go to jail. 

Accord­ing to jour­nal­ist Peter Lee, “Shih sup­pos­ed­ly gave Lai advice on putting stu­dents, young girls, and moth­ers with chil­dren in the van­guard of the street protests, in order to attract the sup­port of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and press, and to sus­tain the move­ment with con­tin­u­al activ­i­ties to keep it dynam­ic and fresh.” Lai report­ed­ly turned off his record­ing device dur­ing mul­ti­ple sec­tions of Shih’s tuto­r­i­al.

One pro­test­er explained to The New York Times how the move­ment attempt­ed to embrace a strat­e­gy called, “Mar­gin­al Vio­lence The­o­ry:” By using “mild force” to pro­voke secu­ri­ty ser­vices into attack­ing the pro­test­ers, the pro­test­ers aimed to shift inter­na­tion­al sym­pa­thy away from the state. 

But as the protest move­ment inten­si­fies, its rank-and-file are doing away with tac­ti­cal restraint and lash­ing out at their tar­gets with full fury. They have thrown molo­tov cock­tails into inter­sec­tions to block traf­fic; attacked vehi­cles and their dri­vers for attempt­ing to break through road­blocks; beat­en oppo­nents with trun­cheons; attacked a wound­ed man with a U.S. flag; men­aced a reporter into delet­ing her pho­tos; kid­napped and beat a jour­nal­ist sense­less; beat a main­land trav­el­er uncon­scious and pre­vent­ed para­medics from reach­ing the vic­tim; and hurled petrol bombs at police offi­cers.

The charged atmos­phere has pro­vid­ed a shot in the arm to Lai’s media empire, which had been suf­fer­ing heavy loss­es since the last round of nation­al protests in 2014. After the mass march­es against the extra­di­tion bill on June 9, which Lai’s Apple Dai­ly aggres­sive­ly pro­mot­ed, his Next Dig­i­tal dou­bled in val­ue, accord­ing to Eji Insight. 

Mean­while, the protest lead­ers show no sign of back­ing down. Nathan Law, the youth activist cel­e­brat­ed in Wash­ing­ton and pho­tographed meet­ing with U.S.  offi­cials in Hong Kong, took to Twit­ter to urge his peers to sol­dier on: “We have to per­sist and keep the faith no mat­ter how dev­as­tat­ed the real­i­ty seems to be,” he wrote. 

Law was tweet­ing from New Haven, Con­necti­cut, where he was enrolled with a full schol­ar­ship at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. While the young activist basked in the adu­la­tion of his U.S. patrons thou­sands of miles from the chaos he helped spark, a move­ment that defined itself as a “lead­er­less resis­tance” forged ahead back home.

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #1091 The Destabilization of China, Part 2”

  1. Here’s some omi­nous news for the Hong Kong protests that ties in to the unfor­tu­nate embrace of Pepe the Frog as a protest mas­cot: Ukrain­ian neo-Nazis appear to have tak­en a keen inter­est in protests and some of them have arrived in Hong Kong to blog about it and net­work with the pro­tes­tors. As the fol­low­ing Gray Zone piece describes, the Ukrain­ian neo-Nazis are just one of a num­ber of dif­fer­ent gar right groups from around the world that have trav­eled to Hong Kong and got­ten involved with the protests. Protests that have become increas­ing­ly vio­lent over time, which is part of what makes these reports of far right involve­ment so omi­nous. The arti­cle cov­ers a group of Ukrain­ian neo-Nazis call­ing them­selves “Gonor” who main­tain a pro­lif­ic social media pres­ence. And as their social media pro­files make clear, these guys are neo-Nazis who fought with the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

    On Decem­ber 1, Ser­hii Fil­imonov post­ed pho­tos on Face­book show­ing him­self and three Ukrain­ian friends arriv­ing in Hong Kong, with the slo­gan, “Fight for Free­dom. Stand with Hong Kong!!” They some­how received press pass­es. One of the oth­er Ukraini­ans with Fil­imonov is a noto­ri­ous far right activist who goes by the name Maliar. Both Fil­imonov and Maliar have large Insta­gram fol­low­ings. Two of the mem­bers of this group also have promi­nent “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la” tat­toos, which hap­pens to be the title of a com­pi­la­tion of writ­ings by David Lane. Recall how Ukraine’s neo-Nazis have a his­to­ry of hon­or­ing Lane. Anoth­er fas­cist Ukrain­ian iden­ti­fied in Hong Kong is Ser­hii Ster­nenko, a for­mer leader of Right Sec­tor.

    But here’s per­haps the most dis­turb­ing part of this sto­ry: these Ukrain­ian neo-Nazis don’t appear to be entire­ly oper­at­ing inde­pen­dent­ly. The Kiev-based Free Hong Kong Cen­ter pub­lished a state­ment on Face­book white­wash­ing the fas­cist nature of Gonor and Azov. The cen­ter described them as “activists of the Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty and as well as vet­er­ans of the defend­ing war with Rus­sia,” and even stat­ed that Gonor “assured us they are real­ly against nazism and anoth­er kind of alt-right ide­ol­o­gy.” And what about all the neo-Nazi tat­toos the Gonor mem­bers proud­ly dis­play on social media? Well, the Cen­ter dis­miss­es the sym­bols, by con­ced­ing that “a lot of peo­ple were dis­ap­point­ed by the tat­toos of these guys,” but that the Gonor insist­ed “that all sym­bols are from Slav­ic pagan­ism.” Yep, all the swastikas and David Lane slo­gans were actu­al­ly just Slav­ic pagan­ism.

    The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter is a project of a an NGO called the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine, which is a pro-EU advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion and a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Lib­er­al Youth and the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Lib­er­al Youth, both a which are fund­ed by the EU. So we have Ukrain­ian neo-Nazis net­work­ing in Hong Kong and an EU-fund­ed NGO run­ning cov­er for them:

    The Gray Zone

    Ukrain­ian neo-Nazis flock to the Hong Kong protest move­ment

    Ukrain­ian fas­cists who pre­vi­ous­ly fought in a US-backed neo-Nazi mili­tia joined the anti-Chi­na protests in Hong Kong, shar­ing their tac­tics and show­ing off their tat­toos.

    By Ben Nor­ton
    Decem­ber 4, 2019

    Neo-Nazis from Ukraine have flown to Hong Kong to par­tic­i­pate in the anti-Chi­nese insur­gency, which has been wide­ly praised by West­ern cor­po­rate media and por­trayed as a peace­ful pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment.

    Since March 2019, Hong Kong has been the site of often-vio­lent protests and riots that have run the city’s econ­o­my into the ground. The US gov­ern­ment has fund­ed many of the groups lead­ing the pro-West­ern and anti-Bei­jing move­ment, and oppo­si­tion lead­ers have coor­di­nat­ed close­ly with con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal fig­ures in Wash­ing­ton like Mar­co Rubio and Steve Ban­non, lob­by­ing for sanc­tions and oth­er puni­tive mea­sures against Chi­na.

    Numer­ous del­e­ga­tions of far-right groups from across the world have trav­eled to Hong Kong to join the vio­lent insur­gency against Bei­jing, in which seces­sion­ists have attacked police with bows and arrows, shot gaso­line bombs out of cat­a­pults, and burned numer­ous peo­ple alive.

    With their flam­boy­ant wav­ing of US and British colo­nial flags and ten­den­cy to belt out the Amer­i­can nation­al anthem on mega­phones, anti-Chi­na sep­a­ratists in Hong Kong have made them­selves a mag­net for the US far-right. Staff of the web­site InfoWars, right-wing social media per­son­al­i­ty Paul Joseph Wat­son, and the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive group Patri­ot Prayer are among those who have made pil­grim­ages to the protests.

    The lat­est col­lec­tion of extreme-right activists to rein­force the ranks of the Hong Kong sep­a­ratists are from Ukraine. They call them­selves Gonor and have tat­toos on their upper tor­sos with unde­ni­able sym­bols of white suprema­cy and neo-Nazism.

    These extrem­ists pre­vi­ous­ly fought in a noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal neo-Nazi mili­tia called the Azov Bat­tal­ion, in Ukraine’s war against pro-Russ­ian mil­i­tants.

    The Azov Bat­tal­ion is an explic­it­ly fas­cist para­mil­i­tary group that orga­nizes around neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. After a West­ern-backed 2014 coup against Ukraine’s demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment, Azov was incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian nation­al guard. It has received sup­port from the US gov­ern­ment, which has armed and advised the neo-Nazis in their fight against Moscow.

    Azov has also helped train Amer­i­can white suprema­cists, who have plot­ted ter­ror­ist attacks back at home in the Unit­ed States.

    ...

    The pres­ence of Ukrain­ian regime-change activists in the Hong Kong protests is fur­ther evi­dence of the alliances that anti-Chi­nese activists in Hong Kong are build­ing with oth­er right-wing, US-backed move­ments around the world, shar­ing tac­tics to weak­en and desta­bi­lize coun­tries tar­get­ed by NATO.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist stand­ing with Hong Kong pro­tes­tors]

    Ukrain­ian fas­cists join Hong Kong insur­gency

    On Decem­ber 1, the far-right activist Ser­hii Fil­imonov post­ed pho­tos on Face­book show­ing him­self and three Ukrain­ian friends upon their arrival in Hong Kong. The images were accom­pa­nied by the anti-Beijing’s unof­fi­cial slo­gan: “Fight for Free­dom. Stand with Hong Kong!!”

    Stand With Hong Kong is also the name of a West­ern-backed orga­ni­za­tion that has been lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ments of the US, Britain, Ger­many, Cana­da, and Aus­tralia to impose sanc­tions and take puni­tive action against Chi­na.

    In a video they post­ed on social media, the Ukrain­ian white suprema­cists revealed that they had obtained a press pass, mis­lead­ing­ly por­tray­ing them­selves as jour­nal­ists.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist show­ing image of the press pass they obtained]

    Join­ing Fil­imonov on the trip to Hong Kong was a noto­ri­ous extreme-right Ukrain­ian activist who goes by the name Maliar. Maliar is pop­u­lar on Insta­gram, under the name xgadzil­lax, where he has more than 23,000 fol­low­ers. (Maliar has a dis­tinc­tive scar on the left side of the neck, which makes him easy to rec­og­nize in pho­tos.)

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist’s dis­tinc­tive head tat­toos and scar]

    Besides the swastikas inked into his skull, Maliar had the Nazi sym­bols tat­tooed on his right leg, next to an algiz rune, anoth­er com­mon white suprema­cist emblem.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist’s dis­tinc­tive leg tat­toos]

    Sev­er­al pho­tos show that at least two of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in Hong Kong have tat­toos read­ing “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la,” the title of a com­pi­la­tion of writ­ings by the noto­ri­ous Amer­i­can white suprema­cist David Lane, whose neo-fas­cist ter­ror­ist group The Order mur­dered a lib­er­al Jew­ish radio host and planned more assas­si­na­tions of left-wing Jews.

    Lane, who was con­vict­ed to 190 years in a US prison for numer­ous crimes, cre­at­ed the most famous white suprema­cist slo­gan, known as the 14 Words — which inspired the name of anoth­er Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi group called C14.

    Fil­imonov, who also has a large fol­low­ing on Insta­gram, where he uses the name Sun­pe­runa, pub­lished a pho­to show­ing the phrase “Vic­to­ry or Vala­hal­la” embla­zoned on his chest.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist with “Vic­to­ry or Vala­hal­la” tat­too]

    The book “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la” is ded­i­cat­ed to “Aryankind.” In its pages, its author says he is com­mit­ted to pre­vent­ing the “immi­nent extinc­tion fac­ing the White Race” and the “Judeo-Amer­i­can/Judeo-Chris­t­ian mur­der of the White race.” The screed is replete with homages to Nazis, and the back cov­er shows a pho­to of Lane’s body in his cof­fin, wrapped in a Con­fed­er­ate flag.

    These Ukrain­ian fas­cists were such fans of the book that they per­ma­nent­ly tat­tooed its title on their bod­ies.

    Maliar, the oth­er mem­ber of Gonor who joined the Hong Kong protests, has “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la” inscribed con­spic­u­ous­ly on his neck.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist with “Vic­to­ry or Vala­hal­la” on his neck]

    Jour­nal­ist Mor­gan Artyukhi­na iden­ti­fied anoth­er mem­ber of the far-right Ukrain­ian con­tin­gent in Hong Kong as Ser­hii Ster­nenko. Artyukhi­na not­ed that Ster­nenko is a for­mer leader of the Ukrain­ian fas­cist group Right Sec­tor, which burned down a trade union build­ing in Odessa dur­ing the 2014 coup, killing 42 peo­ple.

    Neo-Nazis take cam­pus

    On Decem­ber 2, the Ukrain­ian fas­cist vis­i­tors post­ed pho­tos of them­selves on the cam­pus of Hong Kong Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty (PolyU), a site of vio­lent protests.

    PolyU has been a cru­cial base of oper­a­tion for the sep­a­ratist upris­ing. A total of 3,989 petrol bombs, 1,339 pieces of explo­sives, and 601 bot­tles of cor­ro­sive liq­uid were recov­ered at the school, as of Decem­ber 2, accord­ing to reports.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist, includ­ing Ser­hii Fil­imonov]

    Ser­hii Fil­imonov (the first on the left in the pho­to above) has faced legal trou­bles in the past, appear­ing in court for alleged­ly brawl­ing with police.

    The pho­tos Fil­imonov posts on social media make two things abun­dant­ly clear: He is a Nazi and wants as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to see him shirt­less while bear­ing weapons..

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist Ser­hii Fil­imonov hold­ing a rifle]

    Oth­er mem­bers of Gonor have pub­lished pho­tos on Insta­gram hold­ing guns.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cists pos­ing with guns]

    A video post­ed on Insta­gram in 2015 shows Maliar and a friend in a “White Rebel” Con­fed­er­ate flag t‑shirt sur­round­ed by guns and tasers.

    Gonor’s sym­bol draws on many of the same far-right ultra-nation­al­ist themes, with three white knives cen­tered on a black flag.

    Gonor’s Telegram chan­nel offers mem­bers a front row seat to an orgy of vio­lence. It has pub­lished dozens of videos of Hong Kong insur­gents, hero­iz­ing them for shoot­ing arrows and car­ry­ing out bru­tal attacks on state secu­ri­ty forces.

    Both Fil­imonov and Maliar pre­vi­ous­ly fought in the US-backed neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. Maliar has post­ed pho­tos on Insta­gram show­ing the two armed and in mil­i­tary uni­form, wear­ing Azov patch­es.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist, Maliar, pos­ing with guns in a mil­i­tary uni­form with Azov patch­es]

    And Fil­imonov has pub­lished sev­er­al show­ing him and his friends wear­ing Azov t‑shirts.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist Ser­hii Fil­imonov pos­ing with friends in Azov shirts]

    Ukrain­ian regime-chang­ers build net­works with Hong Kong seces­sion­ists

    Despite all of this pub­licly avail­able evi­dence demon­strat­ing the open fas­cism of the Ukrain­ian hooli­gans in Hong Kong, the Kiev-based Free Hong Kong Cen­ter pub­lished a state­ment on Face­book defend­ing and white­wash­ing Gonor.

    The orga­ni­za­tion con­firmed that the extrem­ists did indeed fight with Azov “dur­ing the first peri­od of the war” against pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists, but claimed that they have been unaf­fil­i­at­ed since 2015.

    The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter described the neo-fas­cists as “activists of the Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty and as well as vet­er­ans of the defend­ing war with Rus­sia.” Absurd­ly, the cen­ter declared that they “assured us they are real­ly against nazism and anoth­er kind of alt-right ide­ol­o­gy.”

    “A lot of peo­ple were dis­ap­point­ed by the tat­toos of these guys,” the Free Hong Kong Cen­ter con­ced­ed. But they insist­ed “that all sym­bols are from Slav­ic pagan­ism.”

    The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter is a project of an NGO called the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine. In addi­tion to build­ing links with anti-Bei­jing forces in Hong Kong, the project says its mis­sion is to “counter Chi­nese threats to Ukraine.”

    The Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine is a pro-Euro­pean Union advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion which is a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Lib­er­al Youth and the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Lib­er­al Youth, both of which are fund­ed by the EU.

    The main coor­di­na­tor of the Free Hong Kong Cen­ter is a Ukrain­ian activist named Arthur Kharytonov, who is also the pres­i­dent of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine. Kharytonov was deeply involved in the Euro­maid­an protests in Ukraine, which led to the 2014 US-backed coup. He then set up the league in 2015.

    Kharytonov and his orga­ni­za­tion have been fre­quent­ly ampli­fied in US gov­ern­ment-fund­ed Ukrain­ian media out­lets such as Hro­madske. In these soft­ball inter­views with a high­ly sym­pa­thet­ic press, Kharytonov likens the anti-Rus­sia protests in Ukraine to the anti-Chi­na protests in Hong Kong, and calls for clos­er bonds between them.

    On 6th year anniver­sary of #Euro­maid­an rev­o­lu­tion, Ukraini­ans showed sol­i­dar­i­ty with pro­test­ers in Hong Kong. We invit­ed main coor­di­na­tor of Kyiv-based Free Hong Kong Cen­ter, Arthur Kharytonov to draw par­al­lels between the events in #Ukraine & #HongKong.https://t.co/MMJkPLmeQC

    — Hro­madske Int. (@Hromadske) Novem­ber 25, 2019

    Kharytonov and these West­ern gov­ern­ment-backed orga­ni­za­tions are part of a grow­ing net­work of Ukrain­ian regime-change activists who are orga­niz­ing with seces­sion­ists in Hong Kong, hold­ing and shar­ing insur­gency tac­tics.

    As the US and NATO-led unipo­lar hege­mon­ic order that has dom­i­nat­ed the world since the end of the Cold War begins to crum­ble, and as a ris­ing Chi­na and Rus­sia seek to restore a mul­ti­po­lar glob­al sys­tem, Wash­ing­ton and Euro­pean nations are con­struct­ing a lat­tice­work of move­ments to under­mine their adver­saries on their fron­tiers.

    This glob­al net­work is mar­ket­ed as the advance guard of glob­al lib­er­al­ism, but as events from Ukraine to Hong Kong have revealed, fas­cism is fes­ter­ing at its base.

    ———-

    “Ukrain­ian neo-Nazis flock to the Hong Kong protest move­ment” by Ben Nor­ton; The Gray Zone; 12/04/2019

    Numer­ous del­e­ga­tions of far-right groups from across the world have trav­eled to Hong Kong to join the vio­lent insur­gency against Bei­jing, in which seces­sion­ists have attacked police with bows and arrows, shot gaso­line bombs out of cat­a­pults, and burned numer­ous peo­ple alive.”

    The Gonor group of Ukrain­ian fas­cists is just one of the far right del­e­ga­tions to have descend­ed upon Hong Kong. That’s per­haps the most impor­tant thing to keep in mind with this sto­ry: it’s just one exam­ple of the glob­al far right’s inter­est in the Hong Kong protests. Groups like InfoWars and Patri­ot Prayer have also been send­ing peo­ple to Hong Kong in osten­si­ble sup­port of the protests:

    ...
    With their flam­boy­ant wav­ing of US and British colo­nial flags and ten­den­cy to belt out the Amer­i­can nation­al anthem on mega­phones, anti-Chi­na sep­a­ratists in Hong Kong have made them­selves a mag­net for the US far-right. Staff of the web­site InfoWars, right-wing social media per­son­al­i­ty Paul Joseph Wat­son, and the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive group Patri­ot Prayer are among those who have made pil­grim­ages to the protests.
    ...

    And in the case of these Ukrain­ian fas­cists, they don’t hide their Nazi ide­ol­o­gy at all. Their social media pages are filled with shirt­less pic­tures show­ing off their Nazi tat­toos:

    ...
    On Decem­ber 1, the far-right activist Ser­hii Fil­imonov post­ed pho­tos on Face­book show­ing him­self and three Ukrain­ian friends upon their arrival in Hong Kong. The images were accom­pa­nied by the anti-Beijing’s unof­fi­cial slo­gan: “Fight for Free­dom. Stand with Hong Kong!!”

    Stand With Hong Kong is also the name of a West­ern-backed orga­ni­za­tion that has been lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ments of the US, Britain, Ger­many, Cana­da, and Aus­tralia to impose sanc­tions and take puni­tive action against Chi­na.

    In a video they post­ed on social media, the Ukrain­ian white suprema­cists revealed that they had obtained a press pass, mis­lead­ing­ly por­tray­ing them­selves as jour­nal­ists.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist show­ing image of the press pass they obtained]

    Join­ing Fil­imonov on the trip to Hong Kong was a noto­ri­ous extreme-right Ukrain­ian activist who goes by the name Maliar. Maliar is pop­u­lar on Insta­gram, under the name xgadzil­lax, where he has more than 23,000 fol­low­ers. (Maliar has a dis­tinc­tive scar on the left side of the neck, which makes him easy to rec­og­nize in pho­tos.)

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist’s dis­tinc­tive head tat­toos and scar]

    Besides the swastikas inked into his skull, Maliar had the Nazi sym­bols tat­tooed on his right leg, next to an algiz rune, anoth­er com­mon white suprema­cist emblem.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist’s dis­tinc­tive leg tat­toos]
    ...

    And then there’s the tat­toos of the “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la” slo­gan, which just hap­pens to be the title of a com­pi­la­tion of writ­ings by David Lane:

    ...
    Sev­er­al pho­tos show that at least two of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in Hong Kong have tat­toos read­ing “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la,” the title of a com­pi­la­tion of writ­ings by the noto­ri­ous Amer­i­can white suprema­cist David Lane, whose neo-fas­cist ter­ror­ist group The Order mur­dered a lib­er­al Jew­ish radio host and planned more assas­si­na­tions of left-wing Jews.

    Lane, who was con­vict­ed to 190 years in a US prison for numer­ous crimes, cre­at­ed the most famous white suprema­cist slo­gan, known as the 14 Words — which inspired the name of anoth­er Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi group called C14.

    Fil­imonov, who also has a large fol­low­ing on Insta­gram, where he uses the name Sun­pe­runa, pub­lished a pho­to show­ing the phrase “Vic­to­ry or Vala­hal­la” embla­zoned on his chest.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist with “Vic­to­ry or Vala­hal­la” tat­too]

    The book “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la” is ded­i­cat­ed to “Aryankind.” In its pages, its author says he is com­mit­ted to pre­vent­ing the “immi­nent extinc­tion fac­ing the White Race” and the “Judeo-Amer­i­can/Judeo-Chris­t­ian mur­der of the White race.” The screed is replete with homages to Nazis, and the back cov­er shows a pho­to of Lane’s body in his cof­fin, wrapped in a Con­fed­er­ate flag.

    These Ukrain­ian fas­cists were such fans of the book that they per­ma­nent­ly tat­tooed its title on their bod­ies.

    Maliar, the oth­er mem­ber of Gonor who joined the Hong Kong protests, has “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la” inscribed con­spic­u­ous­ly on his neck.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist with “Vic­to­ry or Vala­hal­la” on his neck]
    ...

    But there are also pho­tos of them in uni­form, which estab­lish their mem­ber­ship in the Azov Bat­tal­ion. A for­mer leader of Right Sec­tor was also spot­ted in Hong Kong:

    ...
    Jour­nal­ist Mor­gan Artyukhi­na iden­ti­fied anoth­er mem­ber of the far-right Ukrain­ian con­tin­gent in Hong Kong as Ser­hii Ster­nenko. Artyukhi­na not­ed that Ster­nenko is a for­mer leader of the Ukrain­ian fas­cist group Right Sec­tor, which burned down a trade union build­ing in Odessa dur­ing the 2014 coup, killing 42 peo­ple.

    ...

    Both Fil­imonov and Maliar pre­vi­ous­ly fought in the US-backed neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. Maliar has post­ed pho­tos on Insta­gram show­ing the two armed and in mil­i­tary uni­form, wear­ing Azov patch­es.

    [see image of Ukrain­ian fas­cist, Maliar, pos­ing with guns in a mil­i­tary uni­form with Azov patch­es]

    And Fil­imonov has pub­lished sev­er­al show­ing him and his friends wear­ing Azov t‑shirts.
    ...

    And yet the unde­ni­able Nazi ide­ol­o­gy of these fig­ures is absurd­ly denied by the Kiev-based NGO, the Free Hong Kong Cen­ter, which hap­pens to be a project of the EU-fund­ed Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine:

    ...
    Despite all of this pub­licly avail­able evi­dence demon­strat­ing the open fas­cism of the Ukrain­ian hooli­gans in Hong Kong, the Kiev-based Free Hong Kong Cen­ter pub­lished a state­ment on Face­book defend­ing and white­wash­ing Gonor.

    The orga­ni­za­tion con­firmed that the extrem­ists did indeed fight with Azov “dur­ing the first peri­od of the war” against pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists, but claimed that they have been unaf­fil­i­at­ed since 2015.

    The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter described the neo-fas­cists as “activists of the Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty and as well as vet­er­ans of the defend­ing war with Rus­sia.” Absurd­ly, the cen­ter declared that they “assured us they are real­ly against nazism and anoth­er kind of alt-right ide­ol­o­gy.”

    “A lot of peo­ple were dis­ap­point­ed by the tat­toos of these guys,” the Free Hong Kong Cen­ter con­ced­ed. But they insist­ed “that all sym­bols are from Slav­ic pagan­ism.”

    The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter is a project of an NGO called the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine. In addi­tion to build­ing links with anti-Bei­jing forces in Hong Kong, the project says its mis­sion is to “counter Chi­nese threats to Ukraine.”

    The Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine is a pro-Euro­pean Union advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion which is a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Lib­er­al Youth and the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Lib­er­al Youth, both of which are fund­ed by the EU.

    The main coor­di­na­tor of the Free Hong Kong Cen­ter is a Ukrain­ian activist named Arthur Kharytonov, who is also the pres­i­dent of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine. Kharytonov was deeply involved in the Euro­maid­an protests in Ukraine, which led to the 2014 US-backed coup. He then set up the league in 2015.
    ...

    ““A lot of peo­ple were dis­ap­point­ed by the tat­toos of these guys,” the Free Hong Kong Cen­ter con­ced­ed. But they insist­ed “that all sym­bols are from Slav­ic pagan­ism.”

    They aren’t Nazis. They’re Slav­ic pagan­ism enthu­si­asts. That’s the kind of rhetor­i­cal cov­er these groups are get­ting from an EU-fund­ed NGO.

    But as the fol­low­ing Kyiv Post arti­cle from back in August describes, there’s anoth­er way Ukraini­ans are influ­enc­ing the Hong Kong protests: a 2016 doc­u­men­tary about the Maid­an protests, Win­ter on Fire, is report­ed­ly quite pop­u­lar with the Hong Kong pro­tes­tors and a source of inspi­ra­tion and lessons on how to car­ry out these protests:

    Kyiv Post

    Hong Kong pro­test­ers draw strong inspi­ra­tion from Ukraine rev­o­lu­tion

    By Jack Lau­ren­son.
    Pub­lished Aug. 7, 2019. Updat­ed Aug. 7 at 3:58 pm

    A pair of pop­u­lar upris­ings with sim­i­lar, inde­pen­dence-ori­ent­ed goals.

    Two soci­eties long­ing to break away from their author­i­tar­i­an super­pow­er neigh­bors Rus­sia and Chi­na.

    Two move­ments both start­ed – mere­ly weeks apart in 2014 – by West­ern-mind­ed stu­dent activists, dream­ing of free­dom and democ­ra­cy.

    Two protests that con­clud­ed, how­ev­er, quite dif­fer­ent­ly.

    The Euro­maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion in Ukraine suc­ceed­ed in oust­ing its cor­rupt, Rus­sia-backed admin­is­tra­tion from pow­er, and began a process of demo­c­ra­t­ic reforms to move the coun­try away from Moscow towards Europe and the West.

    The pro-democ­ra­cy Umbrel­la Move­ment in Hong Kong, mean­while, large­ly failed in its first attempt to secure addi­tion­al free­doms and uni­ver­sal suf­frage for peo­ple of the semi-autonomous region, a for­mer British colony with a free-spir­it­ed and lib­er­al iden­ti­ty.

    In Ukraine, a group of Maid­an activists rode the post-rev­o­lu­tion elec­toral wave into a new­ly-elect­ed, large­ly pro-West­ern par­lia­ment. In Hong Kong, the leg­isla­tive coun­cil remained dom­i­nat­ed by com­mu­nist offi­cials cho­sen by Bei­jing, led by a chief exec­u­tive appoint­ed by Chi­na. A group of school-aged stu­dent activists with polit­i­cal ambi­tions who trig­gered the protests were not elect­ed – instead, they were round­ed up and sent to prison.

    But today, pro-democ­ra­cy protests in Hong Kong have been reignit­ed with a vengeance.

    Some activists and law­mak­ers there say they are inspired and instruct­ed by the suc­cess­ful rev­o­lu­tion in Ukraine. They see sim­i­lar­i­ties in the two strug­gles and feel con­nect­ed.

    “We are strong­ly aware of, and inspired by, a doc­u­men­tary named Win­ter on Fire… and by how the peo­ple in Ukraine start­ed a strike to fight for their free­dom,” says Joshua Wong, the 22-year-old pro-democ­ra­cy activist from Hong Kong who effec­tive­ly began lead­ing the Umbrel­la Move­ment while still a high school stu­dent.

    Wong says that he, like many young Hongkongers, watched the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary about the Ukrain­ian rev­o­lu­tion after the 2014 protests in his city. Ukraini­ans have inspired activists in Hong Kong to con­tin­ue and improve their fight for free­dom, he says.

    For protest­ing, Wong has spent more than 100 days in jail. He has also been the tar­get of vio­lent attacks from Bei­jing-backed thugs that have put him in the hos­pi­tal. In 2018, Wong was nom­i­nat­ed for the Nobel Peace Prize and named a Per­son of the Year by Time, For­tune and Forbes.

    He has words of sol­i­dar­i­ty and respect for Ukraine: “Even though we come from dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal con­texts… No mat­ter the dif­fer­ences between Ukraine and Hong Kong, our fights for free­dom and democ­ra­cy are the same,” Wong said, adding that Ukraine’s strug­gle to free itself from the grip of Rus­sia is mir­rored in Hong Kong’s resis­tance against com­mu­nist Chi­na.

    ...

    Anoth­er upris­ing

    Despite hybrid efforts by Bei­jing to con­sol­i­date its influ­ence and exert full con­trol over Hong Kong – hand­ed back to Chi­na by Britain in 1997 on the con­di­tion of eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal and judi­cial free­doms for the region – a spir­it of inde­pen­dence and anti-Bei­jing resis­tance is flour­ish­ing.

    The pop­u­la­tion of Hong Kong large­ly speak Can­tonese, instead of the Man­darin spo­ken in Chi­na. Most cit­i­zens these days regard them­selves as Hongkongers, instead of Chi­nese. Foot­ball fans boo the Chi­nese nation­al anthem. Pro­test­ers and demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers increas­ing­ly demand full inde­pen­dence from Bei­jing, as well as the uni­ver­sal suf­frage that was promised to them in the 1997 Han­dover agree­ment.

    There is more than a whiff of rebel­lion in the air: “One of the most chant­ed slo­gans is ‘Free Hong Kong. The Rev­o­lu­tion of Our Times’. A rev­o­lu­tion would mean some fun­da­men­tal changes in the sys­tem or struc­ture, and that is what we are hop­ing to see,” says Chris, a spokesper­son for Fight For Free­dom: Stand With Hong Kong, an advo­ca­cy group.

    ...

    “It is always a rev­o­lu­tion when it comes to stand­ing up against the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na,” says Pop­pie, one Hong Kong pro­test­er who cau­tious­ly spoke with the Kyiv Post, not giv­ing her full name.

    Bei­jing mon­i­tors social media users and reg­u­lar­ly blocks web­sites. Hongkongers have been “dis­ap­peared” or bru­tal­ly beat­en for far less than open­ly speak­ing out against Chi­na.

    “I see some sim­i­lar­i­ties (to Maid­an), in terms of the police bru­tal­i­ty here, and the government’s ten­der­ness toward tyran­ny,” she says, adding that Ukraine and Hong Kong them­selves, how­ev­er, are dif­fer­ent. Ukraine is already a sov­er­eign coun­try, while Hong Kong is not, she points out.

    “Hong Kong inde­pen­dence is the only answer now,” says Pop­pie, who notes that the protests this year are more orga­nized and coor­di­nat­ed. In 2014, activists weren’t assertive enough, she says: “It achieved absolute­ly noth­ing, just some nice pho­tos.”

    “The pro­test­ers are now ambush­ing dif­fer­ent dis­tricts, by appear­ing at the place in a group – they build road­blocks,” she says. “They focus on con­ceal­ing their iden­ti­ty… cov­er­ing not just their face but also their ears and limbs. They have made their own shields out of any­thing they can get: rub­bish bin lids, road signs. They also take down rail­ings to build block­ades.”

    Euro­Maid­an films

    In recent weeks, videos from the Euro­maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion have been cir­cu­lat­ing on Hong Kong social media net­works and in closed groups, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple pro­test­ers and demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers there who spoke with the Kyiv Post.

    Ukrain­ian activists have also been shar­ing mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port with Hong Kong pro­test­ers, as well as stag­ing a num­ber of protests out­side the Chi­nese embassy in Kyiv.

    The doc­u­men­tary film, Win­ter on Fire, which is avail­able on the Net­flix stream­ing ser­vice and focus­es on the Euro­maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion, has been par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar online and become a talk­ing point among many Hong Kong activists.

    Hongkongers are also adapt­ing and improv­ing on Euro­maid­an tac­tics. They use lasers to inter­fere with facial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy in CCTV cam­eras. To avoid the author­i­ties, ral­lies are increas­ing­ly orga­nized through dat­ing appli­ca­tions like Tin­der, or in games like Poke­mon Go. Encrypt­ed mes­sen­ger apps like Telegram have become more pop­u­lar.

    Back in 2014, there was less aware­ness about the rev­o­lu­tion­ary events tak­ing place in Ukraine, but that is chang­ing now.

    “I didn’t feel that a lot of peo­ple relat­ed Hong Kong’s protests in those days to the Ukrain­ian Rev­o­lu­tion very much,” says Lo Kin-hei, a reformist law­mak­er in the Hong Kong City Admin­is­tra­tive Coun­cil, and Vice-Chair­per­son of The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Hong Kong.

    “The rea­son… I guess, is that we didn’t have too much cov­er­age on the Ukrain­ian Rev­o­lu­tion back then, the news didn’t report it too much, and most Hong Kong peo­ple were not aware of it at that time.”

    Hong Kong is also, accord­ing to Kin-hei, clos­er to main­land Chi­na and the break­away, demo­c­ra­t­ic island of Can­tonese-speak­ing Tai­wan – which pro­vides the coun­try with more pro-democ­ra­cy inspi­ra­tion than dis­tant Ukraine.

    “Our com­par­i­son goes more towards the Tien­an­men Mas­sacre in 1989, and recent sup­pres­sion of Tai­wan by Bei­jing,” Kin-hei says, in ref­er­ence to the event 30 years ago in Bei­jing, where the Chi­nese mil­i­tary crushed a pro-democ­ra­cy protest with tanks, killing thou­sands of stu­dents.

    “Hav­ing said that, I know some peo­ple are real­ly draw­ing atten­tion to the Ukrain­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, espe­cial­ly after watch­ing that doc­u­men­tary on Net­flix,” the demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­er says. “We see sim­i­lar­i­ties – and some of us fear the casu­al­ties that hap­pened in Ukraine will one day hap­pen in Hong Kong,” he added.

    Sol­i­dar­i­ty in Kyiv

    In Ukraine, there is also plen­ty of sup­port for the Hong Kong pro­test­ers: “We can see the clear­est par­al­lels between Ukraine and Hong Kong,” says Arthur Kharytonov, a civ­il soci­ety activist, coor­di­na­tor at the Free Hong Kong Cen­ter in Kyiv, and co-founder of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine.

    “We feel that they are our friends – they are the same as we are… we want to help them in their fight for democ­ra­cy, rule of law and human rights,” Kharytonov says. Ukraine’s rev­o­lu­tion and the Umbrel­la Move­ment in Hong Kong have the same goals and the same spir­it, he argues.

    “There are a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties: stu­dent resis­tance to com­mu­nis­tic (Russ­ian) ideas, the abuse of human rights and the legal sys­tem, police bru­tal­i­ty and aggres­sive, anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­pa­gan­da… with Rus­sia and Chi­na form­ing a kind of total­i­tar­i­an fam­i­ly, Ukraine and Hong Kong need to stand togeth­er.”

    Same but dif­fer­ent

    “There are sim­i­lar­i­ties between the upris­ings in Ukraine and Hong Kong,” says Glen Grant, a secu­ri­ty and defense expert at Kyiv-based think tank, the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute. “In both cas­es, pow­er in the form of gov­ern­ment is try­ing to sup­press the will of the peo­ple.”

    But the two strug­gles are not exact­ly the same and have tak­en place against dif­fer­ent back­drops, and dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal con­texts, experts say.

    Hong Kong also has a much big­ger chal­lenge ahead, if it plans a Euro­maid­an-style push for full inde­pen­dence.

    “The dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of the Maid­an is that the resources of the state were out­matched by the resources of civ­il soci­ety,” says James Sherr, a fel­low at the Eston­ian For­eign Pol­i­cy Insti­tute. “That is not the case in Moscow or in Hong Kong,” he adds, where the resources of the state have not even been ful­ly brought to bear on pro­test­ers.

    ...

    “We are look­ing to exhaust the police,” says Pop­pie. “Make it incon­ve­nient for every­one so the gov­ern­ment will start lis­ten­ing.”

    Some activists, how­ev­er, still fear a repeat of the Tien­an­men Square mas­sacre. But Pop­pie says the Chi­nese army will not come to Hong Kong, as it would be too cost­ly for Chi­na to ful­ly and open­ly crush dis­sent in the semi-autonomous ter­ri­to­ry: “If we burn, they will burn,” she says.

    ———-

    “Hong Kong pro­test­ers draw strong inspi­ra­tion from Ukraine rev­o­lu­tion” by Jack Lau­ren­son; Kyiv Post; 08/07/2019

    “We are strong­ly aware of, and inspired by, a doc­u­men­tary named Win­ter on Fire… and by how the peo­ple in Ukraine start­ed a strike to fight for their free­dom,” says Joshua Wong, the 22-year-old pro-democ­ra­cy activist from Hong Kong who effec­tive­ly began lead­ing the Umbrel­la Move­ment while still a high school stu­dent.”

    Accord­ing to Joshua Wong, a promi­nent Hong Kong protest orga­niz­er, the Win­ter on Fire doc­u­men­tary is some­thing the pro­tes­tors are strong­ly aware of and inspired by, which is lead­ing to a gen­er­al inter­est among the Hong Kong pro­tes­tors in the tac­tics used by the Maid­an pro­tes­tors. In oth­er words, the Maid­an protests are being pushed as a tem­plate for the Hong Kong protests:

    ...
    In recent weeks, videos from the Euro­maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion have been cir­cu­lat­ing on Hong Kong social media net­works and in closed groups, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple pro­test­ers and demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers there who spoke with the Kyiv Post.

    Ukrain­ian activists have also been shar­ing mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port with Hong Kong pro­test­ers, as well as stag­ing a num­ber of protests out­side the Chi­nese embassy in Kyiv.

    The doc­u­men­tary film, Win­ter on Fire, which is avail­able on the Net­flix stream­ing ser­vice and focus­es on the Euro­maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion, has been par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar online and become a talk­ing point among many Hong Kong activists.

    ...

    “I didn’t feel that a lot of peo­ple relat­ed Hong Kong’s protests in those days to the Ukrain­ian Rev­o­lu­tion very much,” says Lo Kin-hei, a reformist law­mak­er in the Hong Kong City Admin­is­tra­tive Coun­cil, and Vice-Chair­per­son of The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Hong Kong.

    ...

    “Our com­par­i­son goes more towards the Tien­an­men Mas­sacre in 1989, and recent sup­pres­sion of Tai­wan by Bei­jing,” Kin-hei says, in ref­er­ence to the event 30 years ago in Bei­jing, where the Chi­nese mil­i­tary crushed a pro-democ­ra­cy protest with tanks, killing thou­sands of stu­dents.

    “Hav­ing said that, I know some peo­ple are real­ly draw­ing atten­tion to the Ukrain­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, espe­cial­ly after watch­ing that doc­u­men­tary on Net­flix,” the demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­er says. “We see sim­i­lar­i­ties – and some of us fear the casu­al­ties that hap­pened in Ukraine will one day hap­pen in Hong Kong,” he added.
    ...

    And note how Arthur Kharytonov of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine — the NGO that was white­wash­ing the Gonor group in the first arti­cle excerpt — is por­tray­ing both the Maid­an and Hong Kong protests as a joint fight against Rus­sia and Chi­na. There’s an attempt to merge the con­flicts in Hong Kong and Ukraine around a shared anti-author­i­tar­i­an move­ment:

    ...
    In Ukraine, there is also plen­ty of sup­port for the Hong Kong pro­test­ers: “We can see the clear­est par­al­lels between Ukraine and Hong Kong,” says Arthur Kharytonov, a civ­il soci­ety activist, coor­di­na­tor at the Free Hong Kong Cen­ter in Kyiv, and co-founder of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine.

    “We feel that they are our friends – they are the same as we are… we want to help them in their fight for democ­ra­cy, rule of law and human rights,” Kharytonov says. Ukraine’s rev­o­lu­tion and the Umbrel­la Move­ment in Hong Kong have the same goals and the same spir­it, he argues.

    “There are a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties: stu­dent resis­tance to com­mu­nis­tic (Russ­ian) ideas, the abuse of human rights and the legal sys­tem, police bru­tal­i­ty and aggres­sive, anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­pa­gan­da… with Rus­sia and Chi­na form­ing a kind of total­i­tar­i­an fam­i­ly, Ukraine and Hong Kong need to stand togeth­er.”
    ...

    So that spe­cif­ic doc­u­men­tary, Win­ter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Free­dom, appears to have been a sig­nif­i­cant source of influ­ence for the Hong Kong pro­tes­tors. Which rais­es the ques­tion: why that par­tic­u­lar doc­u­men­tary about Ukraine? There have quite a few doc­u­men­taries about the Maid­an protests so what makes that par­tic­u­lar one stand out? Well, as the fol­low­ing 2016 review of the doc­u­men­tary describes, what makes it stand out was how it sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly white­washed the involve­ment of the far right and West­ern gov­ern­ments in the Maid­an protests:

    The Nation

    The Heart­break­ing Irony of ‘Win­ter on Fire’
    The Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary, like much West­ern cov­er­age of Ukraine, presents the West with a myth­i­cal, white­washed ver­sion of the Maid­an “rev­o­lu­tion.”

    By Lev Golinkin
    FEBRUARY 18, 2016

    The Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed Net­flix doc­u­men­tary Win­ter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Free­dom presents view­ers with a sto­ry of every­day cit­i­zens fac­ing down bru­tal riot police con­trolled by Ukraine’s then-Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych, backed by Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin. The col­or­ful array of activists, artists, scarf-wrapped babush­ki, beard­ed priests and fresh-faced stu­dents makes it appear as if Ukraine’s peo­ple from all walks of life in par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Maid­an upris­ing. But some are missing—neo-Nazis, who were edit­ed out.

    “A CRUCIAL ROLE”

    Ukraine had an estab­lished far-right move­ment long before the Maid­an upheavals of late 2013–early 2014. In 2010, Ukraine’s then-Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yushchenko drew wide­spread con­dem­na­tion abroad by hon­or­ing Stepan Ban­dera, a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor and leader of an under­ground army respon­si­ble for slaugh­ter­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jews and Poles dur­ing World War II. Pre-Maid­an Ukraine was home to the Social-Nation­al Assem­bly, a white-suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion head­ed by Andriy Bilet­sky, who’s writ­ten that his group’s mis­sion is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final cru­sade for their sur­vival.” It also had the Svo­bo­da par­ty, led by Oleh Tyah­ny­bok, a par­lia­men­tary deputy whose 2004 request for an inves­ti­ga­tion of the “Mus­covite-Jew­ish mafia” con­trol­ling Kiev caused inter­na­tion­al head­lines. In 2012, a fel­low Svo­bo­da politi­cian called Ukrain­ian-born actress Mila Kunis a “dirty Jew­ess.” All that these groups need­ed was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to come out of the shad­ows; Maid­an gave them that chance.

    Ini­tial­ly, the dis­parate neo-Nazi fac­tions remained on Maidan’s periph­ery. But as the protests grew vio­lent in late 2013—which led to Yanukovych’s over­throw, civ­il war, Crimea, etc.—the far right “played a cru­cial role, pro­vid­ing mus­cle to pro­test­ers who were large­ly unequipped to do their own fight­ing,” as The New York­er described it. Indeed, the instru­men­tal role of far-right groups was acknowl­edged by jour­nal­ists and ana­lysts in pub­li­ca­tions as diverse as The Guardian, the BBC, Reuters, and The Nation­al Inter­est. Even Han­nah Thoburn—a com­men­ta­tor who’s authored numer­ous arti­cles in sup­port of Maidan—has not­ed that Win­ter on Fire failed to men­tion “that far-right nation­al­ist groups were very involved in the fight­ing.”

    The dark­est evi­dence of the far right’s involve­ment comes from Ivan Katchanovs­ki, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa, who researched the events of Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014, “Maid­an snipers mas­sacre” when mys­te­ri­ous gun­men killed over 50 peo­ple. In addi­tion to being the cru­cial turn­ing point that led to Yanukovych’s abdi­ca­tion, the mas­sacre is the cli­max of Win­ter on Fire. Katchanovs­ki argues, with con­sid­er­able foren­sic and oth­er evi­dence, that far-right groups not only pro­voked fight­ing by shoot­ing at the police but also car­ried out the mur­der of Maid­an pro­test­ers in a false-flag oper­a­tion. The Kiev gov­ern­ment has been unable to pro­vide a defin­i­tive expla­na­tion to what hap­pened that day.

    The far right’s absence from Win­ter on Fire becomes even more glar­ing when com­pared with oth­er doc­u­men­taries about Ukraine. Maid­an: Tonight Tomor­row, which received a pos­i­tive review in The New York­er, man­aged to include the far right, despite being less than nine min­utes long, while Masks of the Rev­o­lu­tion, a French film, focused sole­ly on the role of ultra­na­tion­al­ists dur­ing and after Maid­an. (Iron­i­cal­ly, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment attempt­ed to pre­vent France from air­ing the lat­ter film because they claimed it “cre­ates mis­con­cep­tion.”)

    With­out the neo-Nazi groups, Maid­an would not have suc­ceed­ed in over­throw­ing Ukraine’s elect­ed president—the tit­u­lar “win­ter on fire” would have sput­tered out. And yet the film makes no men­tion of them. (A frame-by-frame scruti­ny revealed some back­ground flash­es of flags and insignia, an inter­vie­wee wear­ing a scarf with Bandera’s image, and two scenes with Tyah­ny­bok milling about in the back­ground, but none of this would hold any mean­ing for an Amer­i­can view­er.) The fact that Evge­ny Afi­neevsky, the film’s direc­tor, chose to ignore the very fac­tor that made his film pos­si­ble is aston­ish­ing.

    “JELLY SIDE UP”

    Anoth­er gross dis­tor­tion in Win­ter on Fire is its pre­sen­ta­tion of Maid­an as an inde­pen­dent phe­nom­e­non free of West­ern inter­fer­ence. While the film makes much of the ties between the Yanukovych gov­ern­ment and Moscow, it por­trays the protest move­ment as spon­ta­neous, grass­roots, and, above all, behold­en to no for­eign inter­ests. Vis­it­ing Amer­i­can politi­cians appear in a sin­gle ten-sec­ond scene when they, accord­ing to the inter­ti­tle, “meet with Yanukovych in order to find a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion to the cur­rent cri­sis.”

    Evi­dence, how­ev­er, demon­strates that America’s role dur­ing the win­ter tur­moil of 2013–14 was more quar­ter­back than arbiter. The most telling exam­ple of this comes via an inter­cept­ed phone call between US Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Vic­to­ria Nuland and Washington’s ambas­sador to Ukraine, Geof­frey Pyatt. Dur­ing the call, Nuland and Pyatt sound like two senior man­agers hash­ing out cor­po­rate restruc­tur­ing, with Nuland instruct­ing Pyatt on which Ukrain­ian leader should be appoint­ed prime min­is­ter, how to side­line the UN and the EU in nego­ti­a­tions, and the best strat­e­gy for mak­ing Ukraine land “jel­ly side up,” as an enthu­si­as­tic Pyatt described it.

    The call, which was leaked on Feb­ru­ary 4, 2014, was not the first time Nuland and Pyatt were deeply involved in Maid­an. On Decem­ber 11, 2013, the pair made a high­ly pub­li­cized tour of the bar­ri­cades hand­ing out cook­ies to pro­test­ers. Three days lat­er, Sen­a­tor John McCain flew in to speak to the crowds; McCain and Sen­a­tor Chris Mur­phy shared the stage with Svo­bo­da leader Tyah­ny­bok. Both vis­its were filmed by Ukrain­ian and West­ern press, yet are absent from the doc­u­men­tary. Under­stand­ably, the involve­ment of senior US gov­ern­ment offi­cials work­ing to land Ukraine “jel­ly side up” inter­fered with the “every­day peo­ple, teach­ers, doc­tors, street clean­ers” nar­ra­tive of Win­ter on Fire.

    “A FILMMAKER, NOT A JOURNALIST”

    What is so strik­ing about Win­ter on Fire is not how it white­wash­es the sto­ry of Maid­an but the fact that Afi­neevsky, the direc­tor, brazen­ly admits it. An inter­view with US-fund­ed Radio Free Europe brought up the claim that the film “glossed over” Right Sec­tor, a neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion that played a promi­nent role in Maid­an and was lat­er accused of tor­ture, among oth­er crimes, by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al. “You know what? Right Sec­tor, they actu­al­ly fought for every­thing like every­body else. They were a part of these peo­ple,” scoffed Afi­neevsky. What Afi­neevsky meant by this answer is unclear, much like the state­ment that he is “a film­mak­er not a jour­nal­ist,” which Radio Free Europe said he gave in response to charges that he over­sim­pli­fied the nar­ra­tive.

    Afi­neevsky repeat­ed the same line in an inter­view with Mash­able, when asked about his deci­sion to ignore the anti-Maid­an protests that arose in response in the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions of east­ern Ukraine and were vicious­ly sup­pressed by far-right gangs in the spring of 2014. Accord­ing to the Mash­able arti­cle, which not­ed Win­ter on Fire’s “fail­ure to address many of the com­plex­i­ties of the rev­o­lu­tion,” “the deci­sion to exclude alter­na­tive view­points was a con­scious one.”

    The “alter­na­tive view­points” exclud­ed by Afi­neevsky are, of course, the opin­ions of the rough­ly 22 mil­lion Ukraini­ans who were against the Maid­an upris­ing, as report­ed by Kyiv Post (a pro-Maid­an pub­li­ca­tion) in Decem­ber 2013. To put this deci­sion into per­spec­tive, imag­ine a for­eign film­mak­er cre­at­ing a glow­ing doc­u­men­tary about the NRA called America’s Fight for Free­dom while ignor­ing the alter­na­tive view­points of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who strong­ly oppose the NRA.

    ...

    AFTER WINTER ON FIRE

    Omit­ting incon­ve­niences such as armed ultra­na­tion­al­ists, Amer­i­can politi­cians, and the opin­ions of 22 mil­lion Ukraini­ans required metic­u­lous, per­haps even Oscar-wor­thy edit­ing; eras­ing these fac­tors from real life has proven to be much more prob­lem­at­ic. In fact, in the two years after Maid­an forces took con­trol of Kiev, the impact of both the far right and the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment on Ukrain­ian soci­ety has only grown deep­er.

    Clash­es with riot police gave white-suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions an oppor­tu­ni­ty to seize a cen­tral role in the Maid­an upris­ing; the ensu­ing war with east­ern Ukrain­ian rebels enabled the far right to expand from gangs into orga­nized bat­tal­ions, march­ing under the neo-Nazi Wolf­san­gel sym­bol and the black-and-red ban­ner of Ban­dera.

    For near­ly a year, this dis­turb­ing devel­op­ment was bare­ly cov­ered by West­ern media, which, much like Win­ter on Fire, large­ly avoid­ed the dark side of Maid­an. Sto­ries of the neo-Nazi bat­tal­ions slow­ly seeped into the West due in part to the tena­cious jour­nal­ism of inves­tiga­tive reporter Robert Par­ry as well as the atten­tion of US Con­gress­men John Cony­ers and Ted Yoho, who spon­sored an amend­ment ban­ning US funds from going to the infa­mous Azov bat­tal­ion, which was formed from one of Biletsky’s orga­ni­za­tions and has been labeled as “open­ly neo-Nazi” by The New York Times and received cov­er­age in USA Today.

    In addi­tion to bru­tal­ly crush­ing dis­sent in south­east­ern Ukraine, the far-right para­mil­i­taries racked up a hor­ri­fy­ing record of human-rights vio­la­tions. Sev­er­al far-right bat­tal­ions have been accused of tor­ture, kid­nap­ping, mur­der, and war crimes by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al. At times, the para­mil­i­taries have turned on the gov­ern­ment, clash­ing with police and guards­men with dead­ly con­se­quences; as com­men­ta­tors point­ed out, Kiev’s con­trol over these armed ultra­na­tion­al­ists is ten­u­ous at best.
    ...
    ———-

    “The Heart­break­ing Irony of ‘Win­ter on Fire’” by Lev Golinkin; The Nation; 02/18/2016

    “The far right’s absence from Win­ter on Fire becomes becomes even more glar­ing when com­pared with oth­er doc­u­men­taries about Ukraine. Maid­an: Tonight Tomor­row, which received a pos­i­tive review in The New York­er, man­aged to include the far right, despite being less than nine min­utes long, while Masks of the Rev­o­lu­tion, a French film, focused sole­ly on the role of ultra­na­tion­al­ists dur­ing and after Maid­an. (Iron­i­cal­ly, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment attempt­ed to pre­vent France from air­ing the lat­ter film because they claimed it “cre­ates mis­con­cep­tion.”)”

    Yep, it’s an excep­tion­al doc­u­men­tary. It’s just unfor­tu­nate­ly excep­tion­al for its exten­sive white­wash­ing that com­plete­ly removed the involve­ment of the far right. Or West­ern gov­ern­ments. Which makes it less a doc­u­men­tary and more a piece of fic­tion loose­ly based on the Maid­an events. That’s the doc­u­men­tary that Hong Kong’s pro­tes­tors are being encour­age to draw inspi­ra­tions and lessons from:

    ...
    Anoth­er gross dis­tor­tion in Win­ter on Fire is its pre­sen­ta­tion of Maid­an as an inde­pen­dent phe­nom­e­non free of West­ern inter­fer­ence. While the film makes much of the ties between the Yanukovych gov­ern­ment and Moscow, it por­trays the protest move­ment as spon­ta­neous, grass­roots, and, above all, behold­en to no for­eign inter­ests. Vis­it­ing Amer­i­can politi­cians appear in a sin­gle ten-sec­ond scene when they, accord­ing to the inter­ti­tle, “meet with Yanukovych in order to find a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion to the cur­rent cri­sis.”
    ...

    And as the arti­cle notes, it was the vio­lent clash­es with the Ukrain­ian police that cre­at­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the far right mili­tias to seize a cen­tral role in the Maid­an protests. It seems like a rather mas­sive les­son the Hong Kong pro­tes­tors need to be learn­ing right now, but that les­son has been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly stripped from the doc­u­men­tary along with any oth­er ref­er­ences to the far right’s involve­ment:

    ...
    Omit­ting incon­ve­niences such as armed ultra­na­tion­al­ists, Amer­i­can politi­cians, and the opin­ions of 22 mil­lion Ukraini­ans required metic­u­lous, per­haps even Oscar-wor­thy edit­ing; eras­ing these fac­tors from real life has proven to be much more prob­lem­at­ic. In fact, in the two years after Maid­an forces took con­trol of Kiev, the impact of both the far right and the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment on Ukrain­ian soci­ety has only grown deep­er.

    Clash­es with riot police gave white-suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions an oppor­tu­ni­ty to seize a cen­tral role in the Maid­an upris­ing; the ensu­ing war with east­ern Ukrain­ian rebels enabled the far right to expand from gangs into orga­nized bat­tal­ions, march­ing under the neo-Nazi Wolf­san­gel sym­bol and the black-and-red ban­ner of Ban­dera.

    ...

    In addi­tion to bru­tal­ly crush­ing dis­sent in south­east­ern Ukraine, the far-right para­mil­i­taries racked up a hor­ri­fy­ing record of human-rights vio­la­tions. Sev­er­al far-right bat­tal­ions have been accused of tor­ture, kid­nap­ping, mur­der, and war crimes by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al. At times, the para­mil­i­taries have turned on the gov­ern­ment, clash­ing with police and guards­men with dead­ly con­se­quences; as com­men­ta­tors point­ed out, Kiev’s con­trol over these armed ultra­na­tion­al­ists is ten­u­ous at best.
    ...

    And that’s all part of what’s mak­ing the sto­ry of Nazi Ukraini­ans show­ing up in Hong Kong so omi­nous for the fate of the protests. The pro­tes­tors are learn­ing from a doc­u­men­tary that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignores both the involve­ment of Nazis and the cru­cial role vio­lent clash­es played in ele­vat­ing those Nazis to lead­er­ship posi­tions in protest move­ment and now mem­bers of those very same Ukrain­ian Nazi groups are show­ing up in Hong Kong to net­work with the pro­tes­tors. All in all, it’s very good news for any far right Hong Kong groups that want to pig­gy­back on these protests to shape the nature of any post-protest polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment. But it’s hard to think of worse news for all the Hong Kong pro­tes­tors clam­or­ing for more human rights. Nazi-infused move­ments don’t tend to result in greater human rights.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 5, 2019, 1:36 pm

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