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<a id="gmail-label" href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/ukraine-new-consensus-whiteness" rel="bookmark"><b><font size="4"><span>Ukraine: A New Consensus on Whiteness?</span></font></b>
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<span><a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist"> Ajamu Baraka</a></span>
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20 Apr 2022
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<div class="gmail-field gmail-field--name-field-cover-image gmail-field--type-image gmail-field--label-hidden gmail-field--item"><a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2022-04/ukraine-far-right-rtr-img.jpg" title="Ukraine: A New Consensus on Whiteness?" class="gmail-colorbox gmail-cboxElement"><img src="https://www.blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2022-04/ukraine-far-right-rtr-img.jpg" alt="Ukraine: A New Consensus on Whiteness?" class="gmail-img-responsive" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="452" height="285">
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<div class="gmail-field gmail-field--name-field-image-caption gmail-field--type-string gmail-field--label-hidden gmail-field--item"><font size="1">A
march of the Azov Battalian, Svoboda, and other far-right radical
groups in Kiev, October 14, 2017. (Photo: Reuters / Gleb Garanich)</font></div>
<div class="gmail-field gmail-field--name-body gmail-field--type-text-with-summary gmail-field--label-hidden gmail-field--item"><p><em>The
Biden administration and corporate media cover up the existence of
white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine. They are disappeared from
the official narrative in order to get public buy-in for U.S. policy.</em></p>
<p>In 1999 US and NATO forces bombed Serbia for 78 days, ushering a new
century further characterized by war and militarism. With no negative
consequences of military overreach, especially after the dismantling of
the Soviet Union, the U.S. unleashed war in its various forms (from
direct attacks to sanctions, drones, and subversion) with a wanton
disregard for its human and political consequences. Yet, even when
massive numbers of U.S. troops were deployed in places like Afghanistan
and Iraq, and other ancient cities whose names are in the great
religious texts of the world, and reduced them to rubble, the awful
reality of war was carefully hidden from the U.S. public.</p>
<p>U.S. propagandists had learned from the Vietnam experience that it
was much safer to shield the public from the brutality that their troops
were dishing out to poor villagers, students, ordinary workers, and
anyone who dared to resist the military might of the U.S. military on a
daily basis.</p>
<p>But the Ukraine war, at least the portion that began with the Russia
“special operation” in February, was one of those instances where
exposure to the dehumanized reality of war was welcomed.</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>The images of the burnt-out buildings and frightened refugees
crossing the frontiers of the nations that border Ukraine served an
especially important purpose. It was to generate public support for war.
War in support of Ukraine and revulsion against the Russian “invaders!”
And it did not hurt that the victims were white!</p>
<p>An important lesson was learned from the U.S. and NATO wars to
dismember Yugoslavia in the 1990s and it was that white victims made
selling war amazingly easy– especially when framed as a humanitarian
mission to rescue people from tyranny.</p>
<p>We know what emerged from this discovery. The ideological weapon of
humanitarian intervention and the mantra, “responsibility to protect”
became invaluable to justify imperialist war, even when the victims were
not white, because an appeal could be made to another powerful force –
liberal white saviorism!</p>
<p>However, in this short essay I want to address something even more
insidious and dangerous than the general propaganda efforts to generate
support for the war against Russia, and that is: in the process of
building support for war, the white supremacist, ultranationalist, and
neo-Nazi elements in Ukrainian society and in the state were downplayed,
if not ignored.</p>
<p>That whitewashing, coupled with the inordinate attention given to the
war, with the inevitable sympathy for the white victims of this war – a
war motivated by the desire of Ukrainians to join Europe, to “defend
Europeanness,” and European “civilization” – revealed a contradiction
that has always been present at the heart of the emergence of what
became Europe. That contradiction was the hyper-valuation of white
lives, of “whiteness,” in relationship to the racialized “others,” a
contradiction that I refer to as the “white lives matter more movement.”</p>
<p>This whitewashing of Ukraine is particularly dangerous because it is
occurring at a historical moment of deep crisis for the global
capitalist order, producing proto-fascist movements across Europe that
are becoming more visible and bolder. As I said in previous <a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/ukraine-afghanistan-model-consolidation-global-white-supremacist-movement">writings</a>
on this subject, U.S. authorities and the U.S. and Western European
press understood that Ukraine had an active problem with white
supremacist ultranationalists and literal neo-Nazis. Nevertheless, in
order to engender support for Ukraine and to set the stage for the
performance of a lifetime by Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s actor
president, Ukraine had to be recreated, minus the ultranationalist
influence and Nazis.</p>
<p>Herein lies the danger for non-Europeans.</p>
<p>The coup in 2014 saw for the first time since the second world-war,
literal neo-Nazis serving in the government of a European state.
Moreover, even though the ultranationalists and neo-Nazis did not have a
commanding electoral base, their non-state presence controlling the
streets of major cities and towns across Ukraine was significant. They
were <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-lgbt-event-disrupted-azov-chernivtsi/28062749.html" class="gmail-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">notorious<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> for their attacks on LGBTQ populations, anarchists, non-Europeans, and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/26/ukraine-fatal-attack-roma-settlement" class="gmail-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Roma peoples.<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>
Their violent opposition to communists and communism and socialism of
any sort was officially amplified with repressive legislation that
outlawed and repressed most left political tendencies.</p>
<p>Beginning in 2014, white supremacists from throughout the European
world traveled to Ukraine, with over four thousand “volunteers”
traveling to Ukraine recently to fight in response to Zelensky’s call to
help fight the Russians. It did not matter to Zelensky or the European
nations supplying weapons and paying the salaries of these “volunteers”
that most of them were self-identified white supremacists.</p>
<p>Again, we do not need to make the case of the presence of these forces in Ukraine. That has already been done, <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/10/nyt-discovers-ukraines-neo-nazis-at-war/" class="gmail-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>,<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/14/ukraine-investigate-punish-hate-crimes" class="gmail-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> here,<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> and <a href="https://forward.com/opinion/416751/why-does-no-one-care-that-neo-nazis-are-gaining-power-in-ukraine/" class="gmail-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>.
The political issue is that the sanitizing of the right-wing Ukrainian
state has strengthened the far-right not only in Ukraine but globally.
The whitewashing by liberals and the liberal/left in the U.S. that
transformed these elements into “moderate” Nazis is having the effect of
legitimizing their proto-fascist racialized politics, a politics that
is emerging across the white world. There is a reason Marine LePen has a
chance to defeat Emmanuel Macron, even after he moved further to the
right after being elected.</p>
<p>Liberals pretend to be opposed to the right, but they do not because
they aligned themselves with the neo-liberal right more than two decades
ago. The right will never defeat the far-right – the dilemma of the
democratic party in the U.S. But in embracing the illusion of being in
opposition and conceding ideological terrain in the elusive quest for
“bipartisanship” the far-right is further legitimized and emboldened.</p>
<p>The whitewashing of the right in Ukraine in order to support its
U.S.-backed government will have domestic political consequences. For
example, the liberal and left/liberal argument for opposing Trump was
that his supporters were infected with racism and his movement
represented a proto-fascist political development in the body politic of
the U.S. The political and ideological challenge now is to square this
support for white supremacists in Ukraine with their opposition to
Trump. How do you condemn Trumpian racism after embracing a government
and society infested with white supremacists and literal neo-Nazis?</p>
<p>What is the answer? Liberals and left/liberals are forced to
whitewash the white supremacist threat in both places. The blatant
appeals to European unity and unspoken but, nevertheless, acknowledged
assumptions of the civilizational superiority of the “West” – that
discourse around the Ukrainian issue – poses an existential threat to
the non-European world. By not challenging this discourse, with
Ukrainian president Zelensky being the main spokesperson for, is
creating a dangerous ideological foundation for the legitimation of a
cross class white supremacist alliance to defend something called
“European values” and the interests of Europe, interests that will be
poised as one in contradiction to the interests of the non-Western
global majority.</p>
<p><strong>NATO and White Supremacy: How Can a Self-Respecting African Support Ukraine?</strong></p>
<p>The images of Africa and other global-South peoples desperately
trying to flee the war in Ukraine only to be met with the dehumanizing
white supremacy that is such a normal element throughout Eastern Europe
but in particular in places like Poland and Ukraine, cannot be erased,
nor should they be. Outside of the urbanized socialist, communist and
LGBTQ communities, the Azov-enforced social conservatism of the right in
Ukraine has more of a grip on the consciousness of Ukrainian society
than most people outside of Ukraine and Eastern Europe understand.</p>
<p>That is why, with the defense of the white supremacist NATO structure
and the objective social situation of normalized racism and oppression
in Ukraine, it is absolutely bizarre that self-respecting African/Black
peoples would be giving unqualified support to Ukraine. Doing so puts
them in alignment with the imperialist agenda of the U.S., an agenda
whose main objectives are to keep Europe subordinated to U.S. capitalist
interests by disarticulating the European market from Russia, but also,
and more importantly, to weakening the Russia-China strategic
partnership.</p>
<p>This agenda does not represent anything close to the needs and
interests of the African working class in the U.S. In fact, with this
conflict (that I lay completely at the feet of the U.S), it is now the
working classes and poor around the world, and especially for us in the
U.S., that are being asked to pay the price for this agenda through
increased fuel and food prices and a capitalist imposed inflation that
amounts to a pay-cut for workers.</p>
<p>One of the many lessons of this Ukrainian situation that Africans and
the colonized are learning is that we cannot depend on most of the
European left in the U.S. and Europe. What we have seen is that the
assumptions of ethnocentric universality (the worldviews of the white
West are only views and standpoints that matter) connect significant
elements of the white left to liberalism and blind both the white left
and white liberals to the impact of Western policies on the non-European
world. This lack of self-consciousness is one of the components of the
psychopathology of the white supremacist mind-set and a threat to the
decolonial movements around the world.</p>
<p>It is also why that, while no one wants to see war and we all fight
to preserve peace, it would be tragic for the global South, and
especially for African people, if Ukraine was able to maintain itself in
its present form – as a bastion of white supremacist reaction.</p>
<p><em><strong>Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black
Alliance for Peace and an editor and contributing columnist for the
Black Agenda Report. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the
U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S. based United National
Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) and the Steering Committee of the Black is
Back Coalition.</strong></em></p>
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