FTR #985 Fascism: 2017 European Tour, Part 2

Begin­ning our tour in Poland, we note alarm­ing signs of that coun­try descend­ing into fas­cism, with anti-immi­grant, anti-Mus­lim xeno­pho­bia on the ide­o­log­i­cal front burn­er of the iron­i­cal­ly named Law and Jus­tice Par­ty: ” . . . . Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple — many of them young men with crew cuts, but some par­ents with chil­dren, too — flocked to the Pol­ish cap­i­tal to cel­e­brate Inde­pen­dence Day in a march orga­nized in part by two neo-fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions. They waved white and red Pol­ish flags, they bran­dished burn­ing torch­es, and they wore “white pow­er” sym­bols. They car­ried ban­ners declar­ing, ‘Death to ene­mies of the home­land,’ and screamed, ‘Sieg Heil!’ and ‘Ku Klux Klan!’ . . . .”

The treat­ment accord­ed female counter-demon­stra­tors exem­pli­fies the nature of the ral­ly: ” . . . . A dozen incred­i­bly coura­geous women showed up to protest the march. After mix­ing with the marchers, they unrav­eled a long strip of cloth embla­zoned with ‘Stop Fas­cism.’ They were imme­di­ate­ly attacked. Their ban­ner was ripped apart. Marchers pushed some of the women to the ground and kicked oth­ers. . . .”

At an insti­tu­tion­al lev­el, the Law and Jus­tice Par­ty is imple­ment­ing an Orwellian mock­ery of its name: ” . . . Ever since the Law and Jus­tice Par­ty won both the pres­i­den­tial and par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in 2015, Poland has been under­go­ing a dis­turb­ing polit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. Law and Jus­tice is an Orwellian name for a par­ty that con­stant­ly vio­lates the law, breaks con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions and is hell­bent on sub­ject­ing the courts to its con­trol. The par­ty is dis­man­tling the insti­tu­tion­al frame­work of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy piece by piece in order to remove any restraints on the per­son­al pow­er of its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczyn­s­ki. ‘Prezes,’ the Boss, peo­ple call him. . . .”

The xeno­pho­bia uti­lized by the Law and Jus­tice Par­ty is a com­mon ele­ment in Euro­pean and Amer­i­can fas­cist move­ments: ” . . . . Two years ago, the par­ty bet that latch­ing onto the refugee cri­sis in Europe would give it pur­chase on the votes nec­es­sary to win. Its cal­cu­la­tion proved entire­ly cor­rect. One of the first insti­tu­tions the par­ty hijacked was pub­lic tele­vi­sion. Law and Jus­tice has turned it into Fox News on steroids, paid for by the tax­pay­ers. It feeds view­ers non­stop pro­pa­gan­da about the mount­ing threat to Poland’s sov­er­eign­ty from the Euro­pean Union, specif­i­cal­ly in the form of Mus­lim refugees. Those refugees present a threat to our way of life, the gov­ern­ment and the press insist. They will assault our women, they say, and they are car­ry­ing infec­tious dis­eases to boot. A year ago, a quar­ter of Poles opposed accept­ing any­one flee­ing the rav­ages of war in the Mid­dle East; after months of relent­less pro­pa­gan­da, 75 per­cent are now opposed. This year the coun­try has let in only 1,474 asy­lum seek­ers, near­ly all of them from Rus­sia or Ukraine. . . .”

In Italy, Cas­a­Pound reca­pit­u­lates Italy’s fas­cist past, in res­o­nance with anti-immi­grant xeno­pho­bia exhib­it­ed by oth­er neo-fas­cist par­ties: ” . . . . But Cas­a­Pound is win­ning seats in a hand­ful of towns, and some of its core beliefs — a fond­ness for Rus­sia and sharp oppo­si­tion to the Euro­pean Union, glob­al­iza­tion and immi­gra­tion, which it believes sul­ly the nation­al iden­ti­ty and econ­o­my — are increas­ing­ly spread­ing through­out Italy. In Sici­ly, the new head­quar­ters of Broth­ers of Italy, a descen­dant of the post-fas­cist Ital­ian Social Move­ment, had the phrase ‘Ital­ians first’ writ­ten on the wall dur­ing its recent inau­gu­ra­tion. Anti-immi­gra­tion sen­ti­ment has grown so pop­u­lar that the once-seces­sion­ist North­ern League has dropped the word ‘North­ern’ from its name as it looks for inroads to the south. . . .”

Much of our tour is in Ukraine, where the OUN/B fas­cists are rewrit­ing his­to­ry.

Key ele­ments of this Orwellian re-write include:

1.-The Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry, head­ed by Volodomyr Via­tro­vych, is stand­ing World War II his­to­ry on its head. inter­na­tion­al­ists. . . .”
2.-Viatrovych and his Insti­tute are mar­ket­ing a “pet Jew” UPA sol­dier to prove the open-mind­ed, polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect­ness of the UPA and the OUN/B.
3.-Wholesale sup­port for Via­tro­vy­ch’s Orwellian re-write of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry has come from Poroshenko gov­ern­ment: “. . . . The con­tro­ver­sy cen­ters on a telling of World War II his­to­ry that ampli­fies Sovi­et crimes and glo­ri­fies Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist fight­ers while dis­miss­ing the vital part they played in eth­nic cleans­ing of Poles and Jews from 1941 to 1945 after the Nazi inva­sion of the for­mer Sovi­et Union. . . . And more point­ed­ly, schol­ars now fear that they risk reprisal for not toe­ing the offi­cial line — or call­ing Via­tro­vych on his his­tor­i­cal dis­tor­tions. Under Viatrovych’s reign, the coun­try could be head­ed for a new, and fright­en­ing, era of cen­sor­ship. . . .”
4.-More about Via­tro­vy­ch’s his­tor­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da: “. . . . To that effect, Via­tro­vych has dis­missed his­tor­i­cal events not com­port­ing with this nar­ra­tive as ‘Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da.’ [This is true of infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by any­one that tells the truth about the OUN/B heirs now in pow­er in Ukraine–they are dis­missed as ‘Russ­ian dupes’ or “tools of the Krem­lin’ etc.–D.E.] In his 2006 book, The OUN’s Posi­tion Towards the Jews: For­mu­la­tion of a posi­tion against the back­drop of a cat­a­stro­phe, he attempt­ed to exon­er­ate the OUN from its col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Holo­caust by ignor­ing the over­whelm­ing mass of his­tor­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. . . .”
5. The Pol­ish fas­cists described above have remained silent about Via­tro­vy­ch’s aca­d­e­m­ic coverup of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists’ exter­mi­na­tion of eth­nic Poles dur­ing World War “. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed: ‘We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.’ Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .”
6. Ukraine’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion is echo­ing and ampli­fy­ing Via­tro­vy­ch’s nar­ra­tive: “. . . . Sev­en­ty his­to­ri­ans signed an open let­ter to Poroshenko ask­ing him to veto the draft law that bans crit­i­cism of the OUN-UPA. . . . After the open let­ter was pub­lished, the legislation’s spon­sor, Yuri Shukhevych, react­ed furi­ous­ly. Shukhevych, the son of UPA leader Roman Shukhevych and a long­time far-right polit­i­cal activist him­self, fired off a let­ter to Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion Ser­hiy Kvit claim­ing, ‘Russ­ian spe­cial ser­vices’ pro­duced the let­ter and demand­ed that ‘patri­ot­ic’ his­to­ri­ans rebuff it. Kvit, also a long­time far-right activist and author of an admir­ing biog­ra­phy one of the key the­o­reti­cians of Ukrain­ian eth­nic nation­al­ism, in turn omi­nous­ly high­light­ed the sig­na­to­ries of Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­ans on his copy of the let­ter. . . .”
7.-More about Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion Kvit, and Via­tro­vych: “. . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive to teach­ers regard­ing the ‘neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,’ includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a ‘sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine’ and Ban­dera as an ‘out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple.’ More recent­ly, Viatrovych’s Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry pro­posed that the city of Kiev rename two streets after Ban­dera and the for­mer supreme com­man­der of both the UPA and the Nazi-super­vised Schutz­mannschaft Roman Shukhevych. . . .”
8.-In keep­ing with the re-writ­ing of Ukraine’s wartime his­to­ry, the city of Lvov [Lviv or Lem­berg, when it was part of Poland] has estab­lished a fes­ti­val in hon­or of Roman Shukhevych, the head of the Ein­satz­gruppe Nachti­gall or Nightin­gale Bat­tal­ion, on the anniver­sary of the begin­ning of a pogrom that he led.

More about this pogrom:

1, “The Ukrain­ian city of Lviv will hold a fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor on the anniver­sary of a major pogrom against the city’s Jews. . . . On June 30, 1941, Ukrain­ian troops, includ­ing mili­ti­a­men loy­al to Shukhevych’s, began a series of pogroms against Jews, which they per­pe­trat­ed under the aus­pices of the Ger­man army, accord­ing to Yale Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Sny­der and oth­er schol­ars. They mur­dered approx­i­mate­ly 6,000 Jews in those pogroms. . . .”
2.-The Ein­satz­gruppe Nachti­gall was an SS exter­mi­na­tion unit. “. . . . In 1959 [SS offi­cer Theodor] Ober­laen­der was the cen­ter of a storm that final­ly forced his res­ig­na­tion in May 1960. He was blamed for the mass mur­der of thou­sands of Jews and Pol­ish intel­lec­tu­als who had been liq­ui­dat­ed in July 1941 when a spe­cial SS task force under his com­mand occu­pied the Pol­ish city of Lem­berg (Lvov). . . . As briefly men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous chap­ter, Min­is­ter Ober­laen­der is accused of hav­ing been involved in the so-called “Lem­berg mas­sacre,” in which sev­er­al thou­sand Poles and more than 5,000 Jews were slaugh­tered. Dr. Ober­laen­der does not deny a] that he was the com­mand­ing offi­cer of a spe­cial SS task force, the Nightin­gale Bat­tal­ion, made up of nation­al­ist Ukraini­ans; and b] that this bat­tal­ion was the first Ger­man unit to move into the Pol­ish city of Lem­berg on June 29, 1941, where it remained for six or sev­en days. . . .”

The offi­cial found­ing of the UPA (Octo­ber 14)–the group whose troops com­prised the Ein­satz­gruppe Nachtigall–is now a nation­al holdiay Ukraine: ” . . . . Thou­sands of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists have marched through the cap­i­tal, Kyiv, to mark the 75th anniver­sary of the cre­ation of the con­tro­ver­sial Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA). March orga­niz­ers said as many as 20,000 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Octo­ber 14 march, which was sup­port­ed by the right-wing Free­dom, Right Sec­tor, and Nation­al Corp polit­i­cal par­ties. . . . Jour­nal­ists report­ed see­ing some marchers giv­ing Nazi salutes. Since 2015, the Octo­ber 14 anniver­sary has been marked as the Defend­er of Ukraine Day pub­lic hol­i­day. . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-We return to the sub­ject of the Lithuan­ian Rifle­man’s Union, who are engag­ing with maneu­vers with sim­i­lar orga­ni­za­tions from Latvia and Lithua­nia.
2.-Reviewing infor­ma­tion about the Lithuan­ian Rifle­men’s Union, we high­light its activ­i­ties as part of the Nazi mil­i­tary effort in the Baltic states, includ­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in admin­is­ter­ing Hitler’s “Final Solu­tion.”
3.-Reminiscent of the Nazi “pun­ish­er bat­tal­ions,” the Lithuan­ian Rifle­man’s Union–a fas­cist militia–has been expand­ed to meet the so-called “Russ­ian threat.” Like the OUN/B’s mil­i­tary wing–the UPA–the Lithuan­ian Rifle­man’s Union con­tin­ued the com­bat of World War II until the ear­ly 1950’s. Formed dur­ing the wan­ing days of the Sec­ond World War, they jumped from the Third Reich to the Office of Pol­i­cy Coor­di­na­tion, a CIA/State Depart­ment oper­a­tional direc­torate. (This is cov­ered in FTR #777, as well as AFA #1.)
4.-Review of info­ra­tion from FTR #779, not­ing that Svo­bo­da was net­work­ing with Rober­to Fiore’s Forza Nuo­va. Svo­bo­da has threat­ened Ukrain­ian Jews who protest­ed the estab­lish­ment of an offi­cial hol­i­day in Ukraine hon­or­ing Ukrain­ian pogromist Sime­on Pet­lyu­ra, whose troops killed 50,000 Jews in Ukraine.

FTR #887 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

The ongo­ing occu­pa­tion of an Ore­gon wildlife pre­serve in Ore­gon by para­mil­i­tary forces led by Ammon Bundy (son of Cliv­en Bundy) may seem far removed from the gild­ed realms in which the Koch Broth­ers move. They may also appear to be of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal stripe from the likes of Edward Snow­den and Julian Assange. That is not the case. In fact, the “Bundy­ists” are real­iz­ing the agen­da of the Wise Use move­ment and the Koch broth­ers, both advo­cates of ced­ing con­trol of fed­er­al lands to local con­trol, in order that cor­po­rate inter­ests such as tim­ber, min­ing and cat­tle ranch­ing can use the ter­ri­to­ry for their own use and prof­it. By the same token, the likes of Edward Snow­den and Julian Assange have arro­gat­ed to them­selves the use, con­trol and dis­sem­i­na­tion of sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion that was not theirs to own or dis­trib­ute. David Golum­bia not­ed the atti­tude of “coders” such as Snow­den, Assange and “hack­tivists ” . . . the polit­i­cal world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it . . . mem­bers of demo­c­ra­tic poli­ties have no choice but to accept them hav­ing that role.” Turn­ing to tur­moil in Europe, the recent assaults on women by Mid­dle East­ern immi­grants in Ger­man, Finnish and oth­er cities on the con­ti­nent have fueled the rise of fas­cist groups, mint­ing valu­able polit­i­cal coinage from the assaults. Some observers com­pared a recent ram­page in Leipzig with the 1938 Kristall­nacht pogrom. The broad­cast con­cludes with an overview of P‑2 Lodge grand­mas­ter Licio Gel­li, the recent­ly deceased fas­cist who pro­found­ly influ­enced events on three con­ti­nents. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Fred C. Koch’s con­struc­tion of an oil refin­ery for Hitler; Ex-CIA offi­cer and author Robert Baer’s belief that Hitler escaped Ger­many at the end of the war; review of the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Fox News host Andrew Napoli­tano and Snow­den Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice Ron Paul at a lib­er­tar­i­an stu­dents con­fer­ence; review of the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Edward Snow­den at that same con­fer­ence; review of Carl Lund­strom’s financ­ing of the anti-immi­grant Swe­den Demo­c­rat fas­cist par­ty and his fund­ing of the Pirate Bay web­site that host­ed Wik­iLeaks.

Now THAT’s Comedy! Beppe Grillo’s Counter-Culture Fascism

Italy’s recent elec­tions saw the Five Stars Move­ment of come­di­an Beppe Gril­lo win­ning a share of the vote that will enable it to play a key role in form­ing the next coali­tion gov­ern­ment. There are indi­ca­tions of the par­ty’s sym­pa­thy for fas­cism and neo-fas­cism. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Gril­lo appears to be anti-Semit­ic as well.

Imagine, “Morsi Is a Textbook Islamic Fascist”: I Told You So, Part 3 (Democracy, Muslim Brotherhood Style, Part 3)

We recall the tsuna­mi of praise, Hosan­nas and Hal­lelu­jahs gush­ing forth from the world’s media and polit­i­cal pun­dit­ry. Hail­ing the “Arab Spring” as the dawn­ing of a new enlight­en­ment in that part of the world, they missed the boat–fundamentally. We, on the oth­er hand, were warn­ing that this phe­nom­e­non was a Nazi oper­a­tion, hav­ing been ini­ti­at­ed by pow­er­ful cor­po­rate forces in the sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush, it had its trig­ger with the Wik­iLeaks milieu–itself a far-right, Nazi-linked enti­ty, as we demon­strat­ed in FTR’s 732 and #745. (In addi­tion to the doc­u­men­ta­tion in the orig­i­nal WikiLeaks/Arab Spring series, see the arti­cle excerpt­ed below.) Before delv­ing into details, an excel­lent overview of recent events in Egypt was pro­vid­ed in an Eng­lish-lan­guage blog by a cit­i­zen of that tor­tured coun­try. The con­tra­dic­tions and dead­ly under­cur­rents of unfold­ing events were elo­quent­ly summed up by Mah­moud Salem in “Imag­ine.”

P‑2, Take II?

Com­ment: A recent fis­sure between Ital­ian neo-fas­­cist (he calls him­self a “post-fas­­cist”) Gian­fran­co Fini and Ital­ian pre­mier Sil­vio Berlus­coni turned up indi­ca­tions of a cabal of pow­er­ful fig­ures, who have clan­des­tine­ly coa­lesced into a secre­tive, piv­otal influ­ence group. (Berlus­coni is pic­tured at right.) This is rem­i­nis­cent of the sin­is­ter P‑2 Lodge of Licio Gel­li, a […]

LaRouchies and the Muslim Brotherhood

Com­ment: An ear­ly Mus­lim Broth­er­hood chief in the Unit­ed States was one Ahmed Elka­di. Elka­di has been a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the elec­tion camaigns of Lyn­don LaRouche, the Amer­i­­can-born head of a Ger­­man-based fas­cist net­work. (LaRouche’s var­i­ous polit­i­cal fronts in the U.S. are exten­sions of the Schiller Insti­tute, head­quar­tered in the Fed­er­al Repub­lid of Ger­many.) […]

More about Silvio Berlusconi’s Mafia Ties

Com­ment: Ital­ian prime min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni’s Mafia ties are becom­ing more vis­i­ble. A mem­ber of the fas­cist P‑2 lodge, Berlus­coni has “more con­nec­tions than a switch­board.” Suc­ces­sor to Mus­solin­i’s fascisti, the P‑2 has been a major focal point of these broad­casts for decades. (Berlus­coni is pic­tured at right.) Berlus­coni and his Ital­ian fas­cist milieu also […]

FTR #696 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Japan­ese prime min­is­ter pub­licly dis­cuss­es the M‑Fund, a deci­sive link between Japan­ese con­quest dur­ing World War II and its post­war pol­i­tics; Ital­ian prime min­is­ter Berlus­coni linked to the Mafia; Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist orga­ni­za­tion The Fam­i­ly pro­mot­ing fas­cism from the 1930’s on.

FTR #677 Update on Global Fascism

The old SS giv­ing rise to new fas­cism in Aus­tria and Ger­many; Mus­solin­i’s heirs move into the Ital­ian main­stream; Con­ti­nu­ity of for­eign pol­i­cy between the “new” Ger­many and the Third Reich.

Hitler, Mussolini and the Ikhwan: The Fascist History, Associations and Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood

The Broth­er­hood is best under­stood as part of “the fas­cist inter­na­tion­al,” before, dur­ing and after World War II. It has allied with Ger­man and Ital­ian fas­cists from WWII to the present.