Ukraine (It's life Jim, but not as we know it)
The dangers of right wing conspiracy theorists
Now I've written quite a bit over the danger of extreme left wing thinking. So I thought I'd balance things out with some right wing horror. Every inch as dangerous and frustratingly annoying.
I give you (drum roll) The Right Wing Conspiracy Theorist!
Watch them carefully, they're the ones tossing out casually cryptic words hinting that something sinister is underfoot. Words and phrases such as "The great reset" "New World Order (NWO)" And the greatest enemy hiding in plain sight the World Economic Forum (WEF)
They'll constantly spurn out sinister tropes such as "join the dots" "Manipulating the narrative" And a particular favourite "ARE YOU AWAKE YET"
They "know" something that you don't, they've cracked the code and followers will lap it up. Of course, left wing conspiracy theorists are also in abundance, anyone who's familiar with Carole Cadwalladr can certainly testify to this, the woman is bat-shit crazy, but! This is about her right wing counterparts, I may cover her some other day.
The problem with conspiracy theory, is there is also (generally) a kernel of truth hidden within,
To really understand things in Ukraine, you have to try and understand the kind of man you're dealing with, Vladimir Putin. This is on him, and him alone. Below is a link to the Putin files. Be warned, it's huge! But it does give a very good insight into the Man and in my opinion, it's well worth a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp3LKYIr3F8&list=PL_pPc6-qR9Zzqyps3_JmrNG6h2kMXGfEE
Now to Ukraine. A very good friend of mine recently ask me my thoughts. I've been studying 20th century history for around 30 years now, he thought I might be able to make any sense of the situation. Truth is, historically, Ukraine, has been through many periods of which can easily be described as "hell on earth"
But he persisted and asked me to post about it on my blog (that nobody reads) and whatever I came up with, he would know I had studied it in a pretty reasonable amount of detail and be able to present that info in a way he would understand. So this is what I found (and concluded)
A very quick history (and I mean Speedy Gonzalez speed)
I want to try and build a picture, this is no deep historical dive, to do that I insist you study the era yourself.
Every one of us in Britain is acutely aware of WWII and have learnt quite a bit about this era in school, but much of that is taught from a purely British perspective (obviously) But our war, is painted in a rather binary "good vs evil" narrative. Churchill wasn't just a master orator, he was also a master manipulator. On mainland Europe however, the story is anything but binary, and Ukraine was very much stuck in the middle of that.
This isn't a straight forward story of bad Nazi's betraying our (soon to be heroic Russian allies) only to be crushed at Stalingrad and slowly pushed back into Germany. There were plenty of Ukrainian's who fought on both sides causing unimaginable terror. Some of the most horrific war crimes were committed during Germany's invasion of Russia.
But why would Ukrainian's fight for Germany, you might ask? I'll give you one example. Holodomor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Hardly going to incite devotion in Ukraine toward mother Russia is it?
When Germany invaded Russia, they also unleashed the infamous "Einsatzgruppen"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen
But these weren't made up of solely the SS or even the Wehrmacht (regular German army units)
For further reading, check out the massacre at Babi Yar in Kyiv.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar
But to fully appreciate the horror (and I fully recommend everyone watch it) Grab a copy of the film "Come and See" (1985)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_and_See
Although "Come and see" reflects on events in neighbouring Belarus, it does highlight in very graphic detail the horror of what the German invasion of Russia visited upon innocent civilians. Ukraine went through a very similar experience to Belarus (seriously, watch the film)
And as a footnote, it's also worth remembering around 4.5 million Ukrainian's fought alongside Russia.
Confused yet? You should be.
Now you've caught up (a little bit)
So you can see, Ukraine is a very complex story. But is it really still like that? (lil bit yup) So to understand it, let's break down more current events. Beginning with the country directly to the North of Ukraine, Belarus.
Belarus is currently under the jackboot of the autocratic Alexander Lukushenko, who, after the democratic vote in 2020 simply declared himself the winner with an 80% majority. A dictatorship fully backed up by none other than (surprise, surprise) Russia! this is an essential part of Putin's dream of a buffer zone between Russia and NATO.
https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/86512
But Ukraine didn't work out the same way. Ukraine had something the west (in particular the US) were extremely interested in that Belarus lacked, and that was vast resources of gas and oil.
This is why the US were far more interested in Ukraine than it was in poor old Belarus. This led to the US backed uprising in 2014 (which prompted Putin to invade the Crimea) Now Putin was stuck between a rock and a hard place, he desperately wanted control of the whole country but the US wanted the reserves.
A tremendous documentary about US interference in Ukraine is below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0JpqcsVg2s&t=824s
So how would Putin go about reversing this US interference?
First you destabilise the East (Donbas) This is where Ukraine borders Russia (and indeed a lot of Russians live) This is where Ukraine is at it's weakest. Then you drop in a horror word that makes people all over the world recoil. Putin went with "NAZI" But how does one go about destabilising a country? Well, luckily enough, history easily throws up a textbook example. The Gleiwitz incident was one of many engineered by the Nazi regime to warrant it's invasion of Poland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
The destabilisation of Donetsk and Yuhansk in the Donbas area of Ukraine is very much a Moscow backed, civil war and it's been going on for 8 years.
OK let's talk Nazi's
Neo-Nazis are rife throughout all of the old eastern block countries, but the numbers are thankfully very small. Ukraine has arguably it's biggest presence. This is where the right wing conspiracy theorists fall down.
Think of life as a picture in 3 parts
1. The picture
This is usually given by your main stream media, it's generally a reporting of what's going on in the world today. In times of war, it generally just gives you a reporting of facts (facts that are sometimes proven to be wrong) but they are generally presented in good faith at the time.
2. The Bigger picture
Here lies the most danger for the right wing conspiracy theorist. They'll get rumour, or read about something that the media aren't reporting on and immediately shout "Wake up people! they're lying to you" In actual fact, they're not lying, they're just presenting what they believe to be facts based on current events of the time ergo: The NEWS
3. The Whole picture
Normal people arrive here, they can see the whole picture (even if they don't fully understand it) They can see that every story comprises of many different factors.
Look at it this way, a right wing conspiracy theorist recently claimed massive BBC coverup on the War in Ukraine and to prove they were right they posted a link from the BBC itself
In 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY
And again in2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE6b4ao8gAQ
So! They're not reporting it and to prove their theory here is a link of them reporting it. Conspiracy theorists will then claim all this is being covered up and why aren't they reporting on it today?
Well, they could I suppose, but I found both these links in as long as it took me to type "BBC Neo-Nazis Ukraine" into YouTube, hardly seems like a cover up to me.
So anyway..
As you can see, Ukraine's president has made quite a few concessions with the Neo-Nazis, certainly a cause for concern. But, the course to a true and fair democracy, is never smooth, sounds like a horrible collaboration has been made.
All the more confusing seeing as the current president of Ukraine is actually Jewish. But think of it like Churchill having to work with the Russians in order to defeat the Nazi's in WWII. He knew Stalin was a tyrant who had murdered millions of his own people, but he desperately needed them.
For Zelenskyy, his situation was even worse. His problem was that the Neo-Nazi's were also a part of his own government. Where do you start in creating a stable democracy? At the beginning. It's very easy for us in Britain to be shocked at the idea of Neo-Nazi's in any democratic government, let alone be a part of its defence force. But Britain has been very lucky (so far)
But Putin has his very own Neo-Nazi useful idiots. A group that he's very keen to play down but are very active in the Donbas as well. For every Azov Battalion (Ukraine) There is a Wagner mercenary group (Russia) In fact, if you quite like to go down the rabbit holes of absurdity from time to time, do some investigating yourself, it's absolutely terrifying! The gold standard of rabbit holes. The following link describes just how deep it goes
https://unherd.com/2022/03/the-truth-about-ukraines-nazi-militias/
Is the WHOLE picture becoming a bit clearer? Probably not, the problem with the whole picture is that it's rarely sexy, it's just not exciting enough to get the juices flowing.
Now Putin has claimed many things about Ukraine in the past, claiming it shouldn't exist as a country, It will always be a part of Russia, and has repeatedly expressed concerns about Ukraine's wish to be part of NATO & the EU
Now If I were Ukraine, I would most definitely want to be part of NATO given what lies to the East of my country.
Putin is paranoid about NATO, does he have a right to be paranoid? Well, you could claim he has a very legitimate reason, but why? NATO has never attacked Russia, and is never going to. But won't that bring Nukes onto his border? Well possibly, but a Nuclear attack by NATO would be the end of not only his life, but pretty much every country in the Northern Hemisphere. However, let me add a caveat.
NATO was formed as an alliance "against" Russian aggression! It may only be a defensive alliance, but you could easily reason that Putin does have a point in not being a big fan of an organisation explicitly created to resist his country. Equally he can also claim that the west (largely US/UK) has hardly covered itself in moral glory in the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
Putin's invasion however, was a special mission to "DeNazify" Ukraine, a sovereign country with a tiny amount of Nazi influence.
So who's next on his "Denazify" mission. Well that could mean loads of countries, many who are part of NATO. Ironically, including Russia itself
How much DeNazify is enough? Until they're all dead? How do you define a Nazi anyway? Some are pretty damn easy to recognise yes, but there are plenty that aren't. And why should we take the definition of the word from an autocratic tyrannical monster like Putin (obviously we shouldn't)
A bit more on Zelensky.
Clearly he has played his hand well, A leader in the trenches with his people and saying all the right things. But is there more to him than meets the eye? Well yes. He has shut down Tv stations and restricted some of the press since assuming office. Why would he do that? His claim was because these outlets were pro Russia and reporting only propaganda.
Was he right? Probably, there is a significant amount of pro Putin people in Ukraine.
He is also a member of the much hated WEF. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but only if you're not actually influenced by them and your leadership is always what you believe to be in the best interests of your people. After all, nobody votes for the WEF. Zelenskyy is very western in his views, he wants to embrace the EU and he want's Ukraine to become a proud member. An organisation like the WEF would be right up his street. The fact that he won the election with 73% of the vote suggests it's very popular with Ukrainian's also
He has also become a pretty wealthy guy, he has invested money abroad (although his actual wealth is reported as vastly different sums depending on which "evidence" you read) But plenty of politicians in Britain have money invested overseas, many of them are exceedingly wealthy, it's not uncommon
And, of course, he struck a deal with those pesky Neo Nazis. However, I've mentioned before, when he assumed office, the Neo Nazis were already there. In order to tackle corruption and establish something resembling a democracy, ugly deals have to be made. The following link talks about this in quite a bit of depth, it is however, from a socialist perspective, but I think, in order to present something as unbiased as possible, you should make every attempt to show both sides
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/01/ukr-m01.html
So let's get back to right wing conspiracy theorists.
They've took aim at the stars and hit the moon instead. Rather than try to gain a insight into Putin's thinking, they merely take a stand and say
"Of course invading another country is wrong, but!" But they should be delving deeper into what kind of a Man Putin actually is rather than concentrating solely on his attack on Ukraine
But with Zelenskyy, they take the opposite approach. Because they feel they know Putin, after all, many of them wouldn't even remember a time when he wasn't President of Russia. But they don't "really" know him and seem reluctant to find out.
Any information on Zelenskyy is gobbled up, spun on high speed and regurgitated onto social media platforms
"There's so much more to him than meets the eye" They'll say. Putin, gets a pass though.
Lets take a look at biolabs.
Yes, biolabs exist in Ukraine, every country has them. Where do you think smear tests, biopsy's etc are sent? How do they test for a pathogen like Coronavirus? They send them to a biolab.
So in order to understand how Russia propaganda works, one only needs a quick google search to find out how.
Russia made very similar claims about the Lugar Centre in Georgia, the BBC covered that below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvDqn1whZsg
This highlights yet again the stunning naivety of the right wing conspiracy theorist. Desperate for the truth and convinced the main stream media is deliberately leading them away from the truth, they go and fall for a classic example of Russian propaganda! Whilst I didn't agree with the west banning Russia today (RT) I could understand why, because conspiracy theorists stumble so easily into such obvious traps. No matter how much you try and convince them, they just will not believe the truth!
It was pretty clear the Russians would use the exact same tactic in Ukraine. This is not some hushed up secret the US is trying to hide. It's not something sinister, back in the dark days of the Soviet Union they had hundreds of these labs dotted all over, many for nefarious purposes. But just because some of the labs from that era are still in use today, does not prove they must be for use in developing bioweapons Just because the Russians were doing it, doesn't mean they're still in use for the same purpose.
The Nunn-Lugar Program was even set up by the US to specifically deal with de-escalation of Nuclear weapons arsenals. This included biolabs and the removal of threats from former Soviet Bloc countries of which Ukraine was one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn%E2%80%93Lugar_Cooperative_Threat_Reduction
The following presser also helps clear this up.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1501749465803284482
Now, a final note on this. I did find many conspiracy theorists claim that the US has denied any existence of biolabs at all. They then go on to cry foul and accuse of a cover-up when the US admits there are biolabs. The problem is, I haven't found any evidence of the US denying biolabs, only that they aren't using biolabs to make bioweapons. Infuriating as it is, conspiracy theorists just can't see what is in front of their eyes, they simply "must" have the adrenalin rush that fuels their paranoia!
Now, at time of writing, It's clear Putin fancied this would be an easy victory, even some military planners were confused at his positioning of troops around Ukraine because it just didn't make any sense. So little sense in fact, many of them predicted there was no way he would invade!
I'm no military strategist, but I've listened to them enough due to my fascination with 20th century warfare. It was the strangest start to any conflict I'd seen before. No sustained targeting of the Ukrainian air force, neither did they attempt to eliminate any communications, logistically it was haphazard, and last but by no means least. A country known globally for it's hacking infamy has done virtually nothing to try and cut Ukraine off from the outside world. They just seemed to stroll over the border, the air force done a bit of attacking here and there and they then headed off to their objectives (the big Cities)
That was their plan, or, in other words, no real plan at all! They were expecting mass surrendering and it's lunching in Kyiv tomorrow.
It's been 13 days! And although they have made plenty of inroads, their assault has now ground to a slow crawl and they've resorted to indiscriminate bombing of Cities. Like Syria before, Ukraine is now slowly being pulverised to rubble. I don't think that was in their plan at all.
So now, some on the right wing are suggesting he give up, after all, Putin only wants the Donbas and Crimea doesn't he? Well possibly, but if they bothered listening to what Putin has actually been saying for the past decade or so, evidence suggests that he'll be wanting plenty more than that.
After all, if all he wanted was Donbas, he could have taken that by brute force and stopped, then sat back and made his demands, but he didn't. It seems to me he wants nothing less than his own puppet regime installed with no Western influence at all. The problem is, the majority of Ukrainian's don't appear to want that (and even less so now he's bombing the fuck out of them)
They were expecting an easy time, clearly they were victims of their own belief that they were indeed saving Ukraine from themselves and delivering freedom.
A brief note about refugees
Now, you will find many social commentators (and indeed members of the public themselves) who will cry "why are we so obsessed with Ukraine, what about Yemen, is it because Ukrainian's are white?"
Not really no, racism is everywhere, It's a global thing. We care about Ukraine mainly for 2 reasons.
1) The aggressor has nuclear weapons, without which, this battle would be long ago consigned to history and we'd be back to talking about Covid
2) The "west" only knows one way to run a country. A capitalist, liberal democracy. In modern times, everywhere the west has invaded (supported/defended) It's always had the same goal (democracy with free and fair elections)
Ukraine is very much a fledgling democracy. It's not a country that is simply sympathetic to the west. It's a country that wants to be considered a part of the west.
Yes, before the war it still had a way to go regarding rooting out corruption, but the fact remains, it was definitely heading that way.
Yemen on the other hand, is a Muslim country. Why does that matter? Well, let's take a final dive into history to explain.
Afghanistan.
I'm sure you've heard of this country? Well Afghanistan is also a Muslim country. The west tried an experiment in establishing a liberal democracy, it took 20 years and it failed epically. So why did it fail?
Another must watch documentary. "This is what winning looks like"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI
I think this answers any questions you might have.
Devout Muslim countries just don't work well when you just stroll up and try to establish a liberal democracy.
Every innocent Yemeni life matters as equally as a Ukrainian one. But when you get dumb reporters saying stupid stuff like "Ukraine is different, blonde hair/blue eyes" etc, etc. They're not really commenting on racial lines (although it sure as hell sounds like it)
It's a clash of religion and culture. It has nothing to do with skin colour. This is why we appear to care more.
So to sum up.
Putin has failed, at every level he has failed, militarily and diplomatically. But he does still have an out. I'm pretty sure Zelenskyy would be glad to give up the Donbas region and the Crimea, but he would also be demanding guarantees himself. To keep Ukraine a sovereign democracy, free from the threat of invasion forever.
Now who would guarantee that? Even if Putin got over his colossal ego, there is no way he would accept NATO as the guarantor even if there were no troops or weapons in Ukraine, so who?
But let's be honest, Putin isn't a stupid man and is a wiley operator. But he's way out of his comfort zone here (which makes him even more dangerous) Zelensky is a great manipulator, he knows how to play this game and he's playing it well. He could make a very reasonable offer and he will definitely make it public leaving a very uncomfortable ball for Putin to play. He'll either accept it, or he'll reveal to the world what a vicious tyrant he actually is (and what we knew him to always be anyway)
Putin has invaded a sovereign country, he has spent 8 years in an attempt to destabilise it, when that wasn't going quite as he wanted he decided it was much better to bomb the fuck out of it murdering civilians by their thousands instead.
Does he have a point? No. His dirty tricks worked in Belarus, US dirty tricks worked in Ukraine.
The only way forward I see is for him to accept some kind of terms. (which could give him quite a lot of face saving) or flatten Ukraine and become the most hated man on the planet. Or maybe, just maybe, he may be taken out from within. But that begs the question "what the hell kind of guy will we have to deal with now?"
We may have a long time to wait.
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