Siding with fascism: Western ideologues pose greater threat to the West's security than ISIS

A Western ideologue unravelling is no pretty sight. It’s like watching a lobster boiling in a pot. And like that lobster he or she eventually pops.

‘Popping’ recently over Russia have been key figures of the Western geopolitical and ideological firmament – people for whom the world is made of a Western bloc of nations divinely ordained to command, and the rest of the world condemned to obey.

A prime example of what I mean concerns the Atlantic Council in Washington, one of the more notorious of an ever expanding network of neocon think tanks in our world, within whose Washington offices you will find gathered cranks of inordinate dimension.

For such people Russia is not a country of 146 million people whose contribution to the world in the fields of art, science, culture and so on has been profound throughout its history and remains so today, but instead is a cancer that needs to be removed – preferably by force.

Take Mr Anders Aslund – economist, author and senior crank/fellow at the Atlantic Council. His outpouring of vituperation in response to the Kerch Strait incident involving Russia and Ukraine – calling for the West and NATO to “react sharply before it is too late” – is redolent of a man suffering emotional and psychological meltdown.

In losing his mind so, Mr Aslund reminds us that the Atlantic Council is an organization stacked with people for whom rationality is a vice and irrationality a virtue. Perhaps such a state of affairs might even be funny if not for the influence this particular think tank wields in Western foreign policy circles; influence that is on a par with an arsonist being taken seriously when it comes to fire prevention.

It also comes as no surprise that the Atlantic Council’s financial sponsors amount to a rogue’s gallery of global corporations, oil companies, banks and financial institutions, governments and various other entities of such nature. It confirms that the relationship between global capitalism and Western imperialism is one forged in hell – or at least it does for those nations and people forced to exist at the sharp end of its egregious role around the world when it comes to fomenting conflict, crises, carnage and instability.

Ukraine is a prime example of what I mean. Lest anyone forget, the last democratically elected government of Ukraine to enjoy a mandate covering the entire country was unceremoniously toppled by a violent coup at the start of 2014. It was a coup supported by Western ideologues such as Anders Aslund, and one in which neo-Nazis were in the vanguard on the ground.

It is no coincidence that Western Ukraine, where the 2014 coup was centred and where the government it hatched continues to enjoy the bulk of its support, is a part of the world where fascism has deep historical and cultural roots. This is reflected in the recrudescence and elevation of fascism as a legitimate and openly flaunted creed in this part of the world today, calling to mind German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s prescient warning at the end of the Second World War: “The womb from that which crawled remains fertile.”  

Strange then – or indeed perhaps not so strange – that British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson should recently declare with the bombast of a man who spends his days memorizing the wartime speeches of Winston Churchill: “As long as Ukraine faces Russian hostilities, it will find a steadfast partner in the United Kingdom. By continuing to work together, whether through training programmes or military exercises, we help Ukraine to stand up for our shared values.”

You heard that, yes? Shared values, the man said.

Williamson’s stentorian words of support for the coup government in Kiev should be weighed in the balance against the analysis of US academic Stephen F. Cohen, set out in a May 2018 podcast for The Nation magazine. In it Cohen reveals the extent to which neo-Nazis are now an integral part of the Kiev government’s armed forces, specifically the controversial Azov Battalion.

Even the previously mentioned Atlantic Council is unable to place democratic lipstick on the far right pig of Western Ukraine in 2018. In a June article for the think tank, Josh Cohen (no relation to Stephen F.) writes:

“Since the beginning of 2018, C14 and other far-right groups such as the Azov-affiliated National Militia, Right Sector, Karpatska Sich, and others have attacked Roma groups several times, as well as anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, an event hosted by Amnesty International, art exhibitions, LGBT events, and environmental activists.”

He continues:

“After the March 8 attacks, Amnesty International warned, ‘Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.’”

Given the ‘actual’ society hatched by Euromaidan in 2014, rather than the ‘illusory’ one touted in the West, it is prudent to point that the while the likes of Gavin Williamson may well harbor delusions of Churchillian grandeur in his capacity as Britain’s defence secretary, one important distinction cannot be overlooked.

It is that while Churchill – racist and imperialist though he was – sided with Moscow against fascism, the current generation of aspiring Winstons within the British establishment are siding with fascism against Moscow.

Speaking of which, the Second World War is always a sumptuous feast when it comes to highlighting the bubble of unreality in which your average Western ideologue exists. Here, allow me to introduce John Sweeney of the BBC.

Mr Sweeney recently saw fit to tweet the following: “Thinking about the victims of Stalin’s famine of 1933 and the useful idiots – then and now – who blind their eyes to the truth that throughout too much recent history the Kremlin has been little more than a killing machine.”

‘Stalin’s famine’ of 1932-1933 was undeniably egregious, but any less so than Churchill’s Bengal famine of 1943? As for the Kremlin being a ‘killing machine’, it was certainly Europe’s good fortune that this was the case between 1941 and 1945, or else the entire continent would have been enslaved by the Nazis; turned thereafter into a mass grave the like of which would have made the Holocaust that Hitler and his hordes authored mere child’s play in comparison.

With a view to saving the worst till last, newly installed British army chief, General Mark Carleton-Smith, is evidently not a man whom anyone could accuse of having a serious grasp on reality – not when according to him “Russia today indisputably represents a far greater threat to our national security than Islamic extremist threats such as al-Qaida and Isil (ISIS).”

The lobsters, as you can see, are well and truly popping.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.