L-R Paul Mason, Kevin Courtney, Melissa Benn & Emma Dent Coad in Kilburn, March 25th
A fortnight ago we published the transcript of famed British journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason publicly abusing a local anti-war activist. Now we are publishing another abusive outburst from Mason at the same event, this time aimed at former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn.
At a debate organised by Kensal & Kilburn – Better 2024, titled “Is it worth voting Labour in 2024?” Mason, who was arguing that it is worth voting for the party, attacked Corbyn during the Question & Answer session when the event Chair, Melissa Benn, asked him to explain “why Keir Starmer has made the left within the party the enemy instead of working with them as Biden worked with Bernie Sanders.”
A campaign flyer has been catching the eye around Holland Park and Shepherds Bush in recent days. Invoking the Palestinian flag, symbol of resistance and unity in the face of colonialism and ethnic cleansing, at first glance you’d presume it relates to Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. On closer inspection, it’s more parochial – encouraging people to oppose Transport for London’s proposed cycle lane on Holland Park Roundabout.Continue reading →
Liberal fascism is trending in Britain, marked by a crackdown on dissenting voices. The Labour Party is keeping pace with the times; Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership has turned Labour into the liberal wing of a Uni-party that runs Britain in the interests of the global financial system and at the expense of the rest of us. Kensington Labour Party has succumbed, surrendering its power to a system of myopic control managed by zealots, liars, and racists. How did Kensington’s red flag fade to pinkish blue so quickly?
The Pivot: Labour’s Racism Report
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour became associated with antisemitism in the public consciousness thanks to a determinedsmear campaignsome of the country’s most powerful institutions waged against the anti-racist Islington MP. Aleaked reportdetails the workings of a racist, sexist, right-wing clique operating at the highest levels of Labour’s governance during the Corbyn era, collaborating to prevent the party from forming a government under the veteran socialist. Upon replacing Corbyn, Keir Starmer recruited the independent barrister Martin Forde KC to investigate the leak, asking Forde to identify the changes required within Labour to eradicate discrimination.
Having considered 1,100 submissions from party members, Forde confirmed both “overt and underlying racism and sexism” at the highest levels of the party, noting “the particular disdain which colleagues reserve for ethnic minority MPs, councillors and CLP members”. The barrister described “a hierarchy of racism or of discrimination with other forms of racism (other than antisemitism) and discrimination being ignored. For a party which seeks to be a standard bearer of progressive politics, equality and workers’ rights, this is an untenable situation.”
Forde criticised Labour’s refusal, under Starmer, to engage withJewish Voice for Labour’s proposals for antisemitism education, reporting that Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) had been barred from engaging with that organisation despite their obvious expertise.
Labour’s website summarises the Forde Report’s key recommendation: “The report urges the Party to treat all forms of discrimination among staff, elected officials and the wider membership with the same seriousness as incidents of antisemitism.”
David Evans, General Secretary of the party since 2020, responded to Forde by offering “a commitment to you and all other members that such a situation will not arise again and that we will tackle racist and discriminatory attitudes wherever they arise in whatever section of the party.”
Following the report, Labour created a Diversity & Inclusion Board chaired by a trans person. In 2021, the party established codes of conduct on Islamophobia, Afrophobia and anti-Black racism. Meetings were slated for early 2023 to establish aworking groupto consider the Forde Report. But in May this year Fordelamentedthe lack of action, saying his work will be rendered pointless unless the recommendations are implemented. The barrister said Labour was still prioritising antisemitism and the Me Too movement at the expense of other forms of discrimination.
Kensington Takeover
Labour and the media have largely ignored Forde’s recommendations and the problems of discrimination have become far worse than the “hierarchy of racism” the barrister described. Under Starmer, Labour has turned its back on vulnerable communities and deployed a strategy of deliberately provoking fear among Jewish communities to create moral justifications for party officials to siphon off decision-making powers from the party’s membership. In Kensington, the effect has been both surreal and chilling.
Local Candidates Removed
As wereportedlate last year, unelected party officials hijacked the selection process for Labour’s Kensington candidacy. First, members of the National Executive Committeebarredthe probable winner, former MP Emma Dent Coad, from standing on spurious grounds including having once made ajokeabout Prince Harry. Labour’s London Region bosses then intervened,eliminatingthe new favourite to win, another grassroots candidate, Kasim Ali. London Region bureaucrats then took fullcontrolof the selection process, declaring branch results without publishing vote counts.
These events passed without protest from the CLP’s members, who have not raised concerns about the process at any subsequent meetings. The usurping of party democracy in Kensington came after the publication of the Forde Report and Evans’s “commitment” to anti-racism, yet a method senior Labour officials employed to rig the Kensington selection was the manufacture of anantisemitism crisis. Out of nowhere, an email was circulated to CLP members featuring clumsy antisemitic language. The party’s London Region Director, Pearleen Sangha capitalised on the email, declaring that CLP members had been suspended and stating that there would be a “serious investigation” into antisemitism in Kensington CLP.
To remove Kasim Ali from the running, Sangha took sole control of the vote at Ali’s home branch. She summarily removed up to 20 British Somalis (the same ethnic background as Ali) from the meeting, preventing them from casting their votes. Is this a party serious about Islamophobia, Afrophobia and anti-Black racism? To date, there have been no complaints made about this incident of prima facie racial profiling at CLP meetings and we understand the CLP has not submitted a complaint to the Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).
We wrote to London Region multiple times offering them opportunities to retract Sangha’s claims of suspensions and an investigation into antisemitism, but they stuck by her story each time. Kensington CLP officials immediately confirmed to us that there were no suspensions and no investigation, reconfirming this prior to the change in the CLP’s leadership in February. The current CLP Secretary, Monica Press, confirmed to us that there have been no suspensions or investigations relating to alleged antisemitism during her tenure.
Despite it being an established fact that Labour officials created an antisemitism hoax in Kensington, and despite what appears to be, at the very least, a case of targeted discrimination against Black, African, Muslim British-Somalis, there have been no consequences for the officials responsible or for the party as a whole. And Labour members in Kensington, apparently decent and liberal-minded, have remained mute as officials have disenfranchised their comrades. Some are dissonantly focused on the campaign to unseat Conservative MP Felicity Buchan while others fear that speaking up would mean expulsion from the party.
Affiliations Cancelled
More of the same is incoming. When Diane Abbott used clumsy language to point out the indisputable fact that anti-Black racism is far more prevalent throughout our society than antisemitism, anti-Irish, anti-traveller or anti-red head discrimination, Starmer immediately labelled her words “antisemitic.” Like Jeremy Corbyn, Abbott is no longer a Labour MP, and any semblance of left-wing presence in parliament is now in doubt in a country in which millions of people hold socialist values.
In Kensington, as with constituencies around the country, central control has increased with members’ power decreasing in direct proportion. Under Starmer Labour has amended its rules so CLP members no longer have a democratic choice over which comradely organisations they can affiliate to. We have seen an email from a London Region official to Kensington CLP stating that the CLP’s affiliate organisations must be pre-approved by the NEC, not according to a robust set of criteria, but solely based on “the opinion of the NEC”.
In emails seen by us, parliamentary candidate Joe Powell outlined the affiliation rule change to CLP officials, listing the grassroots organisations that were to be disaffiliated at the CLP’s February AGM including Palestine Solidarity Campaign; Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Stop the War Coalition; Republic; Jewish Voice for Labour; Somalis for Labour; Sikhs for Labour; All African Women’s Group and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project. A London Region official also wrote to CLP officers warning that affiliating to any of the above organisations would breach party rules.
All requests for affiliations are now considered by just two senior regional party officials, but one of them pre-empted any such requests by telling Kensington CLP to focus their resources on campaigning for their parliamentary candidate, as opposed to building a broader labour movement.
Kensington members elected officers amenable to the Starmer project, marking a significant turnaround from 2021 when the chair Monica Press resigned from her councillor position citing factional bullying by a small group of left-wing councillors who were then dominant in the CLP. But the votes cast at the February AGM did not mark a renewal of democracy and the authoritarians continued to consolidate their grip.
Meetings Suspended
Labour officials have transformed Kensington from a CLP dominated by a small group of allegedly factional but elected left-wingers to one apparently under the control of unelected party bureaucrats. In July, without consulting its membership, the CLP’s executive committee announced the suspension of all branch meetings until February 2024, justified by low turnout at meetings and a need to focus on general election campaigning. In early 2024, the constituency will change its boundaries and become Kensington & Bayswater. The Executive will then decide whether to reinstate branch meetings or to continue their suspension until after the general election.
The CLP Executive also announced it has replaced All Member Meetings with bi-monthly ‘policy forums’, further reducing the ability of local members to engage in the party’s processes and influence policy. The NEC and London Region are expected to retain a close watch over proceedings.
The NEC is pursuinga rule changeto reduce CLP executive committees to just six positions. Presuming their proposal is successful, this will be another significant change for Kensington which currently has 15 committee members. Roles such as Environmental Officer, Political Education Officer, Disability Officer and BAME Officer are expected to be among those to be abolished.
Local Labour activists and politicians continue to campaign on some importantissues, some no doubt struggling to identify a means of organising that could replace the party’s apparatus. But these campaigns come in the context of a party that supports the World Economic Forum’s vision for our future: “You will own nothing, but you will be happy.”
Don’t Worry Be Happy
Looking from the outside at the chaos of first Emma Dent Coad and then Kasim Ali being removed from the running to be Labour’s Kensington parliamentary candidate, it seems likely that party officials were motivated by a fear that either politician might have been responsive to local demands around the economy, justice for Grenfell and an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and a major component of the Starmer project is to separate decision making from popular demands. At no point has the local membership resisted the takeover by the national party, and by the time Starmer is in number ten, it will be too late for grassroots members to have any influence on Labour’s policies.
The Starmer team’s disfiguring of Labour’s internal democratic apparatus is matched by its draconian worldview. The party is marching in ideological lockstep with sweeping state repression of our rights toprotestandfree speech(Keir Starmer had professionalinvolvementwith the initial harassment and persecution of Julian Assange.) Starmer declared unconditional loyalty toNATOandIsrael, aligning Labour’s foreign policy with the Tories’ and reversing the progress made under Corbyn.
Labour’s asphyxiated reactionary policy approach coincides with the Conservative party collapsing from within and a time when the country requires investment after 13 years of austerity. Some Kensington CLP members might believe the crackdown on party democracy is an election-winning strategy masterminded by Jeffery Epstein’sclose friendLord Mandelson. Others will see it for what it really is, part of the freezing out of workers’ concerns from parliamentary politics fortified by intense repression of free speech todemonise and proscribedissent.
Sir Keir Starmer was more culpable than any other politician for Labour’s 2019 election catastrophe. As Shadow Brexit Secretary, he defied party leaders and pursued a disastrous policy of cancelling the democratic Leave vote. Starmer’s sabotage went unpunished because Labour was desperate to preserve a façade of unity in the face of relentless lies and attacks from the media, and political and militaryestablishments. Starmer and his team have sought to sever the party’s connection to progressive and working-class causes. Cuckolds to war criminals like Tony Blair and the corrupt media class, Labour has moved decisively and ruthlessly to kill off pro-peace, pro-worker, anti-racist interests within its ranks. In Kensington, there has been no rage against the dying of the light.
The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, Holland Park Avenue, London. Does the slogan reflect reality?
The liberal freak out following two acts of democracy in 2016 (Brexit and Trump) trapped our culture in binary (liberal and conservative) thought patterns. The lies that Russia influenced the EU vote and hacked the US election were eagerly lapped up by liberals, helping consolidate an anti-democracy pro-war consensus that currently dominates power (posing as two parties) and laid the foundations for a Psychological Operation that has force-fed us non-stop since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The Psy-Op has been stunningly effective, leading us to the brink of nuclear catastrophe while shutting down free speech, diplomacy and our prospects for survival.
Propaganda
The Psy-Op pushes unrelenting propaganda across the most trusted mainstream media outlets. From the start of the war, these outlets presented highly dubious claims about the most serious crimes as true.
Some of their reporting has been entirely false, including the Snake Island ‘heroics’ that you probably forgot a couple of weeks later.
Screengrab from BBC.co.uk
It’s all additive, so even if it’s a lie, it still works because it builds the one-sided narrative and they don’t have to admit or report that they misled us. No other media will call them out because they are at it too.
The Psy-Op has censored alternative (including fact-based) perspectives. No dissenting opinions (including those advocating diplomacy) have been allowed; in the age of mobile phones very little footage of the war is broadcast; Ukraine’s defeats are ignored or downplayed; President Biden’s historic role in the most corrupt country in Europe is under-reported; the inconvenientUkrainiandeath toll is generally ignored as if it’s a minor detail, while the dead soldiers are lauded as “heroic” – part of an emotional, irrational justification for British arms manufacturers to export more weapons. The pro-war legacy media refers to these weapons shipments as an “extraordinary level of support” without which the war could not continue.
Screengrab from Google search
Imagine if half of the UK’s current population was sacrificed to save Europe from Nazis. That’s what happened to the Soviet Union in World War Two. This historical perspective is omitted from the coverage, yet it is pertinent, as Ukraine’s army contains Nazi battalions. The Psy-Op has even tried to rehabilitate the image of Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion. Nazis – the people we were raised to hate and fear, who blitzed our cities and sought to enslave us. The Holocaust.
To the Psy-Op, Nazis are not a moral problem, only a public relations challenge.
Screengrab from The Times
Nazi Azov flags behind England’s goal, 9th September 2023, did not spark outrage among our well-disciplined media professionals.
The Psy-Op immediately proscribed the Russian perspective. No more Russia Today on your telly. The war (2014-ongoing) on the Donbas in east Ukraine, covered by all news outlets until 2022, is now omitted from reporting. Why?
Screengrab from Google/International Crisis Group
As millions of refugees left Ukraine, with millions more internally displaced, the Psy-Op focused on President Zelenskyy as the embodiment of virtue and bravery. He dressed in military colours but is an actor, not a soldier.
Green?
In October, the Psy-Op told us that Russia blew up its own pipeline, Nord Stream 2. It didn’t make any sense, not from any perspective, but you could accept it or suppress your doubts because no other view (such as the truth) was given air time. Severing the economic partnership between our two most powerful neighbours (Germany and Russia), the pipeline sabotage is a climate catastrophe but the perpetrators will go on to decide sustainability goals for the world.
Intense gaslighting. Screengrab from Google
The Psy Op plays a game of Them & Us. Russia is them, Ukraine is us. Ukrainians are dying fighting for our values, politicians tell you. The name Ukraine quickly became synonymous with liberal Western values. Despite being located in the east, and despite its intricate ethnic, religious, historical, cultural, and familial ties with Russia, we were suddenly informed that Ukraine is European like us, while Russia is talked about as if it is non-European. Did it help that on day one of the invasion, every single news reporter simultaneously started pronouncing Ukraine’s capital city as Keev? Was that all it took? No doubt the yellow and blue flags everywhere helped too. For those in a torpid state of binary identity politics, joining in with the hysteria was seamless.
An American, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, was recently appointed as a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The transgender journalist with her outlandish propaganda is not the only American mercenary in Ukraine and Biden has authorised combat pay for them, despite them not officially fighting for the US.
Screengrab from Twitter/Sarah Ashton-Cirillo
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
Suspicious? You surely are by now. We have consented to a merger with other NATO states and Ukraine’s autocratic government in an extreme provocation of a nuclear power and nobody is talking about diplomacy. Why not?
In 1947, the United States, at the pinnacle of its unassailable global power, passed its National Security Act. That same year, President Truman warned of the “Red Menace” and the American population got used to the permanent state of fear that justifies military spending. In 1950, a top-secret National Security Council policy paper called NSC-68 committed the US to never negotiating with Russia, the bad faith approach that encompassed the creation of NATO, its aggressive eastward expansion, and American/British interference in Ukraine’s democratic processes.
Politicians, unconcerned by the environmental destruction of the Nord Stream sabotage, and undeterred by the Ukrainian death toll, have played their part to perfection. Any parliamentarians who resist, even slightly, are easily brought into line.
Screengrab from GoogleScreengrab from The Independent
There’s a non-existent dividing line between the media and the state. The media, politicians, and some citizens too, love to demonise President Putin, diplomacy, and peace, but I am yet to meet a British person (aside from British-Ukrainians) whose daily life has ever been negatively impacted by Putin (or diplomacy, or peace).
The Russian government was duped into playing along with the Minsk Accords, hoping to bring peace to eastern Ukraine where Nazis and other Ukrainian units were targeting ethnic Russians. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted the Accords were just a ruse to buy time to prime Ukraine for war. She framed this as a clever move, which it is if you’re a psychopath who doesn’t care about human life.
Projection: “the attribution of one’s ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects.”
The Psy Op’s functionaries project their own characteristics and psychology onto Russia. What are the traits? A salivating desire for violent domination of others. This enables the functionaries to ignore or downplay the very real prospect of nuclear war. The UK follows the country that dropped two atomic bombs on Japan for no reason other than pursuit of a destructive rivalry with the Russians. President Biden is “leading” the Western world, yet he can’t walk or talk straight. He doesn’t know our prime minister’s name, but we follow him anyway, enslaved.
Screengrab from Google
British people have sponsored approximately 180,000 Ukrainians to escape the hell of war. What a contrast to the cynicism of the officials and corporations who knowingly sacrifice Ukrainians, and possibly Ukraine as a functioning state, for their own ends.
Us
British popular culture and millions of individuals declared their solidarity with Ukraine at the onset of Russia’s illegal invasion.
Image from Twitter / Alongcamenorwich
But this was a passive activism reflecting a herd mentality. Manchester City players wore tracksuits emblazoned with ‘No War’ but it reflected the Psy-Op’s co-opting of the language of peace rather than an effective grassroots movement calling for an end to hostilities. It was all easy, risk-free, socially acceptable virtue signalling.
Nuance is still not allowed. If you suggest that diplomacy is preferable to war, get ready to be shadow-banned or shut down immediately by those in the pay of the Psy-Op, or those who understand that the war industry (the constant state of war that keeps us scared and arms dealers’ profits high) benefits them and their economic status and have appointed themselves as Psy-Op cops policing the home front for signs of critical thinking.
Photo from Twitter / Janinebeckie
From day one of the invasion, anybody with a functioning brain cell knew the war could only end one of two ways: defeat for one side or a negotiated settlement. Because engaging diplomatically with Russia would undermine the purpose of the Psy-Op, the media and Psy-Op cops parroted the lie that Ukraine was winning. The Psy-Op’s victims, on (and in) the ground in Ukraine and the population of the Western world therefore had to maintain two contradictory ideas in their minds: Russia was so terrifyingly powerful it had to be stopped quickly before it decided to conquer all of Europe. And Russia was so meek that it was sure to be defeated on the battlefield by Ukraine.
NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg speaking at the World Economic Forum, Davos 2023. Screengrab from YouTube/NATO News
Confidence in a Ukrainian victory was useful in the early months of the war, to persuade the public that it was all worth it and that there was no need to consider alternative solutions while BAE Systems and the rest reaped the spoils of war (they will reap the spoils of reconstruction too).
Consideration of the Russian point of view has been left to serious analysts who are not invited to appear in legacy media, which has become infantilising and lightweight.
At home, the state is becoming increasingly draconian. Journalists are imprisoned in Belmarsh or harassed if they publish inconvenient facts, and the right to protest has been significantly limited. Parliament’s official opposition has purged its membership of peace activists. At the next election, we will choose between two pro-war parties willing to play brinksmanship with nuclear Armageddon.
The latest round of our impoverishment was labeled “Putin’s price hike” by Prime Minister Liz Truss. The surreal concept that China is a “threat” is being normalised, as it was with Russia, with no explanation of what exactly the “threat” is to the population. The Psy-Op’s media talk as if it is self-evidently true. With the “threat” of China, they pretend that all British people share the same values. But when it comes to these values being practiced in our daily lives, in our economy, they vanish – it’s then survival of the fittest, and if you can’t feed your children, that’s your problem.
From 2014, the United States turned Ukraine into a client state and a proxy. Nine years on and the proxy is fulfilling its role as a suicidal guarantor of endless war (endless war being preferable to successful war of course). We have heard stories about Ukrainian men who don’t believe in the war, who know their government has been conned for nine years with the promise of EU and NATO membership and they don’t want to die for it. They hide at home all day to avoid getting picked up by army recruitment officers. At night they scurry out and buy what they need as quickly as possible, hoping to wait out the carnage. What will be left of their country by the time Western states decide Ukraine has given enough for their anti-Russian cause?
If you disagree vehemently with my point of view yet managed to read this far, you deserve credit. Even if you believe that Ukraine really does represent Western liberal values that must be protected, we can surely still agree that the war needs to end. Anybody who cares about Ukrainians should be calling for peace talks as soon as possible, while Zelenskyy still has a bit of leverage.
But the Psy-Op doesn’t want you to think that deeply or logically, even at this stage when Ukraine seems to have no future as a unified country and the permanent displacement of the millions of refugees is a real prospect. If you can see this and still insist that Ukraine should fight to the last man, then maybe you don’t really care about Ukrainians. Maybe you never really did.
Cannot create or fathom the eternal consequences of the unseen…
Living like squatters in no mans land
Amongst mud, blood and steel
Completely devoid of any fear
Just the blind acceptance of fate…
Nothing matters anymore
Opinions, dreams, fashion, music
Fame, football or damned celebrity…
Shuffling along to the food hub
Collecting bread like a sparrow
It’s all gone!
We were promised food
Promised freedom!
‘What is that?’
Shouts out the wag
Now just perma-frosted ideals…
Incoming-As another meteor crashes into the river
Causing rainbow ripples
Mothers holding their babies
Rushing quickly home
Before the mist ushers in the darkness…
Demons preparing-howling salivating
Last orders please
The pieman shouts!
As rags with legs
Scurry into their caves
Awaiting the night
Like a punch drunk mongoose
Facing an amphetamine fuelled cobra
Lilly is walking fast now
Clutching her precious lantern
She looks like a cartoon
Wolves howl half-human half-beast…
I feel nothing
Yet somehow survival mode kicks in
As I steal a dead man’s watch
With ‘to Dad’ engraved on the back
But I switch off my own happy memories
Machine, machine, I must be a machine…
A blind man rings a bell
Calling all to the house of prayer
Knowing nobody ever enters
Not now, not in these times
For we have all been left behind……..
Mark C Bolton, September 2023
US Navy officers surveying Hiroshima after the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city, 1945. Image from the National Museum of the United States Navy. Previous image: The US Army’s atomic bomb exploding in Nagasaki, 1945. Image from the Library of Congress via PICRYL
The words below were sent to us anonymously. The author is in northern Ukraine and therefore writing at risk to their own security.
The author contacted us after reading an article we published on attitudes to the Ukraine war.
As our anonymous contact expressed views that aren’t given coverage, and could be said to be suppressed, in Britain, I responded with some questions, and the article below is their answer to one of these questions.
The author is an eyewitness, a historian by education and a keen observer of legislative and political trends in Ukrainian society.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, the prominent role of the far-right in Ukrainian politics has been carefully avoided in the British media’s coverage of the war.
Stepan Bandera, referred to throughout the article, was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator responsible for atrocities committed against Jews, Poles and Russians during the second world war.
Recently, leaked documents from the Pentagon revealed that the UK provides the majority of NATO states’ Special Operations Forces in Ukraine. This is in addition to the UK training Ukrainian troops; the donation of 14 British tanks to fire depleted uranium darts; hundreds of British citizens joining Ukraine’s foreign legion; and the UK’s intelligence-gathering surveillance on behalf of Volodymyr Zelenskky government, among other significant British contributions to Ukraine’s war effort.
The leaks also revealed that the claim consistently made by leaders of NATO states, that Russia is struggling to defeat Ukraine, is false.
English is not the author’s first language and I made some minor edits for fluency, but otherwise the text is as they sent it, and the links are the ones they included. Where there are two links, the first is the one provided by the author, and the second is one I added if the first did not work.
Tom Charles @tomhcharles
Answers to questions about Ukrainian fascism
By Anonymous
First of all, it should be said that English is not my native language. In this regard, there may be translation inaccuracies and incorrect wording. Please take this into account when reading this document.
In addition, you raised questions that require evidence.
I am a historian by education, so I know the method of proof.
In this regard, as a specialist, I must immediately warn that it will take considerable time (weeks, months) and resources to provide systematic and comprehensive evidence on your questions.
Therefore, in this relatively short answer, I will refer to a few, but the most significant or characteristic evidence that reflects the system.
Moreover, what I am talking about, one way or another, I see with my own eyes through the media directly from the Ukrainian authorities, I personally see in the legislative acts of my country (Ukraine), I see with my own eyes on the streets of my hometown and my country, I perceive in personal communication with their friends and so on.
I also use the analytics of trusted anti-fascist authors, whose words I passed through my own internal and very strict critical apparatus and aroused confidence.
QUESTION: How are Stepan Bandera and the Azov battalion glorified today in Ukraine?
About Stepan Bandera.
One of the first, most noticeable for the whole society, attempts to glorify S. Bandera was made back in 2010 by the third President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko.
By his decree No. 46/2010 of January 20, 2010, he awarded S. Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine (posthumously).
Link to the decree on the official website here or here.
It should be noted that later, in 2011, the Ukrainian court cancelled the above decree of the President of Ukraine. However, it was cancelled for a formal reason, since, according to current Ukrainian laws, it is only the citizens of the state of Ukraine that was created after 1991 that can be awarded the title of ‘Hero of Ukraine’. And Bandera was not formally a citizen of present-day Ukraine. On the very fact of the glorification of Bandera, the presidential decree was not appealed.
The above decree of the President of Ukraine caused a public outcry and was actively covered in the media.
However, one should take into account the time when this first major attempt to officially glorify S. Bandera took place – 2010. This is the period in Ukraine when the fascist ideology has not yet finally won in Ukraine and the entire repressive state mechanism had not been activated against those who do not agree with the glorification of Bandera and reasonably consider him a fascist. Such a turning point occurred after the so-called Euromaidan (Revolution of Dignity) in 2014, after which the glorification of Bandera acquired a new, comprehensive scale.
So, after 2014, the total glorification of Stepan Bandera was as follows:
• Bandera began to be glorified by the highest bodies of state power in Ukraine, as well as
their representatives;
• Streets were named after Bandera;
• Popular cultural figures began to glorify Bandera;
• They began to establish awards named after Bandera;
• Bandera began to be glorified in the media by journalists, public figures, and
opinion leaders;
• Bandera began to be glorified at rallies and in other ways.
As a result, S. Bandera began to gain popularity among the masses. In support of the above theses, I can refer to the following evidence:
As mentioned above, Stepan Bandera cannot be officially awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine for purely formal reasons. However, this does not prevent him from being glorified in the public consciousness by all other available means.
Let’s start with the highest state authorities of Ukraine, as well as their representatives.
In 2018, the highest legislative body of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine, adopted the Decree of December 18, 2018 “On honoring anniversaries and anniversaries in 2019”. Among the memorable dates was the 110th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera.
Link to the official website with the specified resolution here.
It should be noted that this resolution was adopted in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine by a collective majority of 450 deputies. That is, this decision is not the desire of one person, but is a conscious policy of a large group of people who have power in Ukraine.
Moreover, this resolution, as indicated above, was adopted at the time when Petro Poroshenko was the fifth President of Ukraine (2014-2019). At the moment, Petro Poroshenko is the head of the European Solidarity party and a people’s deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, that is, a representative of the highest state authority in Ukraine.
During a visit to Ukrainian volunteers on January 2, 2023 in the city of Kherson, Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, together with volunteers, sang the famous and popular song of Ukrainian nationalists, “Our Father Bandera”.
Note. The text of this song has the following line: “Our father is Bandera, Ukraine is mother, we will fight for Ukraine.” Thus, the song elevates Bandera to the scale of Ukraine itself, in fact identifying them, which praises and glorifies Bandera. To date, this song is famous and iconic in Ukrainian society.
Link to the site with this news, where there is a video of the performance of the song by the fifth President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko: here or here.
Next, let’s talk about naming streets after Stepan Bandera.
So, for example, one of the central streets in the capital of Ukraine – the city of Kyiv, is named after S. Bandera, namely “Prospect S. Bandera”.
Also, the name of this street is reflected in Google maps.
In Ukraine, mostly in western Ukraine, many streets are named after Bandera. This can be checked on Google maps.
Popularization of Stepan Bandera by cultural figures.
There is a famous singer in Ukraine, Verka Serduchka, a fictional drag character played by actor Andrey Danilko.
Verka Serduchka is extremely popular in Ukraine, Russia and other countries and in 2007 at Eurovision, Serduchka took second place.
And this very popular singer also sang the above-mentioned song of Ukrainian nationalists, “Our Father Bandera”.
Here is a link to the performance of the song on YouTube
I think it is not necessary to explain that the performance of such a song by a star of such a level could only happen at the direction of the Ukrainian authorities in the framework of the nationwide policy of glorifying Bandera.
And I pay attention to how enthusiastically the audience meets the song.
Prize named after Stepan Bandera
In Ukraine, in 2012, the Lviv Regional Council (local authority) established the “Award named after the Hero of Ukraine Stepan Bandera”.
Link to information about the award on Wikipedia or on Lviv council’s website.
The glorification of Stepan Bandera in the media by journalists, public figures, opinion leaders
In Ukraine, there is a very famous and popular journalist and opinion leader, Dmitry Gordon.
Dmitry Gordon has always taken a position that was clearly and unequivocally against Stepan Bandera without any reservations, since Bandera is an executioner and a murderer.
However, even Dmitry Gordon, under the pressure of the political situation, changed his position. Now he says that if someone in western Ukraine wants to, let them glorify Bandera; and in eastern Ukraine, if they don’t want to, let them not do it.
Note: historically, it was western Ukraine that sympathized with S. Bandera, and the east of Ukraine was his opponent.
Here is a link to a YouTube video where Dmitry Gordon talks about this.
I specifically cited these words of this particular public figure as an example, which is quite important in the context of the topic we are discussing. This example vividly shows the breakdown of the psychology of the citizens of Ukraine. Let me explain. Until 2010, the general and open glorification of Stepan Bandera was generally impossible. At the same time, the specified public figure Dmitry Gordon, as mentioned above, took a sharply negative position in relation to Bandera without any reservations or assumptions. However, after 2010, as I already said, Bandera was openly imposed on the entire Ukrainian society, at the state level, as an ideal.
The above words of Dmitry Gordon are a reflection of this change in attitude towards Bandera. Now he speaks as a fait accompli that for at least half of Ukrainian society Bandera is a hero and such people have the right to openly honor him. Moreover, Dmitry Gordon himself changed his position towards Bandera from a sharply negative one to a position that allows him to be glorified by those for whom he is a hero.
And in this case, regarding the words of Dmitry Gordon, also make a reservation. Dmitry Gordon is clearly disingenuous when he talks about the freedom of choice in whether to glorify S. Bandera or not. Dmitry Gordon is a hostage to his publicity and his former attitude towards S. Bandera. Therefore, even under the influence of the new political situation, which glorifies Bandera, he cannot sharply change his position to the exact opposite and come out completely in defence of S. Bandera. That is why he voiced such a half-hearted position.
Moreover, such a crafty position is nothing but an Overton Window for those who used to condemn Bandera. Such a half-hearted position is intended to remove the taboo from the personality of Bandera. And in the future, under the influence of the methods described in this document, these people will be forced to accept that Bandera is a hero. The classic Overton Window in action. Therefore, in fact, there is no freedom of opinion in relation to Stepan Bandera in our country. The denial of Bandera’s ideal is literally life-threatening.
A torchlit procession marking Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera’s birthday, Kiev, 2019. Image: Youtube/Euronews
The glorification of S. Bandera at rallies and in other ways
On January 1st 2019 in the capital of Ukraine – the city of Kyiv – the birthday of Stepan Bandera was celebrated with a torchlight procession.
Link to video of the torchlight procession on YouTube.
In this video, posters with images of S. Bandera are clearly visible, the participants in the procession give comments that S. Bandera is a hero for them.
Also, the name of Stepan Bandera was given to the home-made weapon “Bandera Smoothie” (a bottle with incendiary mixture). The name of this weapon is a play on words. During World War II, Soviet soldiers used a homemade weapon (a bottle with incendiary mixture) against Nazi tanks, which was called the Molotov Cocktail. Now the same home-made weapon that Ukrainian propaganda proposed to use against Russians (descendants of Soviet citizens) began to be called “Bandera Smoothie”.
Here is a link to a site where it is proposed to make this homemade weapon with this name. Also in Ukraine, car stickers with the inscription “Bandera Smoothie” are sold. Here is a link to a site selling these stickers.
In addition, the name of Stepan Bandera was given to a military vehicle – “Banderomobil”.
Note. “Banderomobil” is the unofficial name of the car brand, this is folk art, but quite characteristic. The name is written in large letters on the side of the car and is a play on words, namely the addition of the words “Bandera” and “automobile”.
Link to a car site with a photo of such a car here, or here
It is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that the same fifth President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, is driving the above-mentioned “Banderomobil”. That is, he created a PR campaign with “Banderomobil” and he himself participates in it.
We move on.
Even in my professional environment, colleagues have ceased to be shy, and some of them have begun to publicly, openly congratulate each other on S. Bandera’s birthday. The author of this document personally witnessed such congratulations.
Also, the author of this document personally witnessed how on the facade of a house on the central avenue of one of the large industrial cities in the south-east of Ukraine, around 2018, a portrait of R. Shukhevych was painted (a close associate of S. Bandera, a war criminal, a participant in the “Volyn Massacre” in 1943).
Summary – the rise of Bandera in modern Ukraine
Summing up, it should be said that there are many such examples. However, I think that in the context of this short essay, these examples are weighty, characteristic and sufficient.
As stated above, the actions of the authorities (plus a clearly aggressive attitude towards those who deny the glorification of Stepan Bandera) brought results and Bandera began to gain popularity in society.
I also consider it my duty to note that the glorification of Stepan Bandera absolutely clearly coincided with the development of anti-Russian rhetoric and the incitement of causeless, unjustified hatred towards Russians and everything Russian in our country.
The author of this document has personally witnessed the incitement of such hatred in the media by politicians, journalists, public figures and so on.
As a result, personal acquaintances of the author of this document after 2014 dramatically changed their minds and began to openly speak aggressively against Russians. Moreover, these people cannot explain an adequate reason for hatred.
It is also noteworthy that many of these aggressive people are themselves Russian-speaking and have ties to Russia: some have relatives in Russia, some from Russia receive a pension, and some even teach Russian literature.
However, even they became unreasonably aggressive towards the Russians.
As a conclusion: I personally believe that the incitement of unreasonable hatred towards everything Russian is inextricably linked with the glorification of S. Bandera; glorification of S. Bandera initially pursued the goal of inciting unreasonable hatred of everything Russian.
About the Azov Battalion
Note: the Azov battalion at different times had different numbers and composition, so it can also be called a separate special forces detachment “Azov” or the regiment “Azov”.
Arguments and evidence regarding the glorification and popularization of the Azov Regiment and its militants in society are generally similar to those given regarding the glorification of Stepan Bandera.
Such evidence includes, in particular, the following:
• The official status of the Azov Regiment in the Ukrainian state;
• Rewarding the militants of the Azov Regiment with state awards;
• Popularisation of the Azov Regiment in society with the help of social advertising, celebrities, and so on.
The official status of the Azov Regiment
The Azov Battalion was created in May 2014 (after the coup d’état) as a power unit within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
Further, the Azov Battalion was reorganized and expanded as part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
Link to the Wikipedia article, which indicates the creation and development of the Azov Battalion here.
Thus, the Azov Regiment initially had a legal and official status as a power unit of the state of Ukraine.
This alone already confirms the fact that the fascist military unit “Azov” is officially recognized and approved by the state of Ukraine.
Rewarding the militants of the Azov Regiment with state awards
In August 2022, Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Gritsaenko, Deputy Commander of the Azov
Special Forces Detachment, was posthumously awarded. This is stated on the official website of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky. Link to the official website of the President of Ukraine with information about the award here.
Popularization of the Azov Regiment in society with the help of approving articles in the media, social advertising, celebrities, and so on
For example, I give a link to an article about one of the fighters of the Azov Regiment here:
Also, the author of this document personally in his town saw on the central avenue a lot of billboards with social advertising of the Azov Regiment (and with the image of their logo in the form of Wolfsangel) and calls to become a militant of this regiment.
In addition, the Azov Regiment is popularized and glorified by pop culture figures.
So, in Ukraine there is a famous singer, Tina Karol. She met with the fighters of the Azov Regiment, about which there is an approving article on the apostrophe.ua media resource.
Summing up, I will say that, as in the case of the glorification of Stepan Bandera, the glorification of the militants of the Azov Regiment and the creation of a positive image by them is systemic and national in nature, for which there is a lot of evidence, some of which was given above.
On Friday, Kensington MP Felicity Buchan attended a series of events locally to commemorate the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Dressed in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, Buchan smiled like a friend to refugee children and their parents, but the words she spoke revealed a simplistic view of the conflict and no appetite for doing anything to stop the death and destruction.
Virtually all 650 MPs in parliament have been in lockstep to prolong the Ukrainians’ agony as they lose both territory and population in the war against their far stronger neighbour. As Ukraine is crushed, our politicians virtue signal from a safe distance. Diplomacy is a dirty word, and we’re repeatedly told that peace is impossible. Sir Keir Starmer has banned Labour MPs from questioning NATO’s provocation of the war and Boris Johnson intervened to prevent Presidents Zelensky and Putin from holding peace talks last April, as reported in Ukrainian media (the British press ignored it).
From 2014 to February 2022, over 14,000 were killed in Ukraine’s civil war following the US-backed coup that overthrew a president who favoured close ties to Russia. In the coup, the ensuing civil war and now the war with Russia, Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups and army battalions have played a prominent role.
The situation is intensely complex and dangerous, yet Buchan pledged Kensington’s and the UK’s unwavering support for the people of Ukraine. Her platitudes and clichés masked the ugly reality: Britain will support the Ukrainians on the condition that they keep fighting the Russians in an unwinnable war.
Slava
Buchan wrote about her experience of the anniversary: “I was honoured to attend the very moving remembrance service at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral. Tragically, more than 450 children have died in the conflict. Paper angels were suspended from the ceiling in their honour. Ukraine will prevail. Slava Ukraini.”
Slava Ukraini – Glory to Ukraine. But where is the glory? And what right does a British politician have to declare glory to a country they are, knowingly or unknowingly, sacrificing?
Outside the Ukrainian embassy, Buchan declared “We will not tire, we will be there to the end.”
These words are almost unfathomably vacuous. But soundbites are all we hear from our leaders as they mindlessly provoke Russia and China, two countries that needn’t be enemies of Britain.
“We will be there to the end” of what? Ukraine as a functioning state? Or are our rulers really set on decades of existential wars to impoverish and terrify us as they play brinkmanship over nuclear annihilation?
Outside the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain on Holland Park Avenue, Buchan told the assembled refugee children that the war against Russia “isn’t just about Ukraine. It’s about western values, good values.”
We emailed Felicity Buchan asking her to clarify what she meant, given that Ukraine is an eastern country, but at the time of writing, she had not replied.
Complicity
Dubbed “Complicity Felicity” in North Kensington due to her part in voting down the fire safety recommendations of the Grenfell Inquiry, Buchan enjoyed her moment posing as a liberal humanitarian. But her words were loaded with the complacency, fanaticism and racism of the British political establishment. Ukrainian lives mean so little that Britain sends enough weapons to keep them hanging on in the war, guaranteeing humanitarian catastrophe. This is justified through profound Russophobia and the puerile demonisation of Putin as the epitome of evil. It’s a familiar tactic, most recently used against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, a country illegally occupied by both the United States and Israel – western values? Before Assad, it was Gaddafi, sodomised to death by our allies in Libya. “We came, we conquered, he died!” squealed Hillary Clinton in delight – western values.
All this recent history, including Russia’s intervention in Syria to prevent its fall to ISIS and al Qaeda; the Ukrainian government’s role in persecuting ethnic Russians in the Donbas; the Ukrainians’ own values, traditions and their intrinsic value as humans, is all swept away with simplistic concepts like “Western values…good values.”
Like most MPs, Kensington’s “Complicity Felicity” frames the war in babyish terms, Good West v Bad East. By shunning diplomacy but acting as a friend of the Ukrainian people, Buchan is adding duplicity to her complicity and simplicity.
Urban Dandy London 