Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If you think Putin is bad on GLBT Rights...Check out the New Ukraine Parliament! [View all]freshwest
(53,661 posts)41. This eye-opening piece was linked by frazzle:
Last edited Mon Mar 3, 2014, 01:03 AM - Edit history (2)
to frazzled.Ukraine: The Haze of Propaganda
by Timothy Snyder
From Moscow to London to New York, the Ukrainian revolution has been seen through a haze of propaganda. Russian leaders and the Russian press have insisted that Ukrainian protesters were right-wing extremists and then that their victory was a coup. Ukraines president, Viktor Yanukovych, used the same clichés after a visit with the Russian president at Sochi. After his regime was overturned, he maintained he had been ousted by right-wing thugs, a claim echoed by the armed men who seized control of airports and government buildings in the southern Ukrainian district of Crimea on Friday.**
Interestingly, the message from authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Kiev was not so different from some of what was written during the uprising in the English-speaking world, especially in publications of the far left and the far right. From Lyndon LaRouches Executive Intelligence Review through Ron Pauls newsletter through The Nation and The Guardian, the story was essentially the same: little of the factual history of the protests, but instead a play on the idea of a nationalist, fascist, or even Nazi coup détat.
In fact, it was a classic popular revolution. It began with an unmistakably reactionary regime. A leader sought to gather all power, political as well as financial, in his own hands. This leader came to power in democratic elections, to be sure, but then altered the system from within. For example, the leader had been a common criminal: a rapist and a thief. He found a judge who was willing to misplace documents related to his case. That judge then became the chief justice of the Supreme Court. There were no constitutional objections, subsequently, when the leader asserted ever more power for his presidency.
In power, this leader, this president, remained a thief, but now on a grand, perhaps even unsurpassed, scale. Throughout his country millions of small businessmen and businesswomen found it impossible to keep their firms afloat, thanks to the arbitrary demands of tax authorities. Their profits were taken by the state, and the autonomy that those profits might have given them were denied. Workers in the factories and mines had no means whatsoever of expression their own distress, since any attempt at a strike or even at labor organization would simply have led to their dismissal.
There is much more at the link, it's well worth the read:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/
It descibes an oligarchy that was strangling the people of Ukraine. That is why we saw so many peaceful protestors as it began and didn't stop. And former Red Army Ukrainians came to the aid of students, along with Russians and all the groups we can imagine. Gay activists worked with them.
The author, is described as:
Timothy Snyder is Housum Professor of History at Yale and the author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. This month, he is to deliver a Philippe Roman Lecture on the origins of the Holocaust at the London School of Economics. (March 2014)
Titles he has written are:
#
Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine
March 20, 2014
#
Ukraine: The New Dictatorship
February 20, 2014
#
In the Cage, Trying to Get Out
October 24, 2013
http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/timothy-snyder-2/?tab=tab-blog
He asks these questions:
Has it ever before happened that people associated with Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Armenian, Polish, and Jewish culture have died in a revolution that was started by a Muslim? Can we who pride ourselves in our diversity and tolerance think of anything remotely similar in our own histories?
This article changed my mind where none of the blustering opinions at DU could have. I still want a just outcome for all these people and for Svoboda to be soundly smacked down. I see why the EU wants to deal with the new government and not Yanukovych.
I still see no villains other than on the personal level, and appreciate even more that we are NOT going to war over this. Now I think some have been misled and I admit to great confusion on this. I'm thinking Yanukovych did need to be taken out of power.
** I also understand why they may think that way. In their minds, they are fighting a war from long ago. They do not know a new way to deal with their own corrupt oligarchical rulers, so they must revert to old enemies.
JMHO.
Edit history
Please sign in to view edit histories.
45 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
RecommendedHighlight replies with 5 or more recommendations
If you think Putin is bad on GLBT Rights...Check out the New Ukraine Parliament! [View all]
KoKo
Mar 2014
OP
and they're both wrong. doesn't make russia any better. do try not to use GLBTs as pawns...
dionysus
Mar 2014
#2
it's been implied a lot, or posited that we are "just as bad", all the time here.
dionysus
Mar 2014
#12
he's dreamy.. and ultra liberally n stuff... stickin it to the meal ol PTB of the west!
dionysus
Mar 2014
#6
If you recognize that Putin is square in the middle in terms of Eastern Orthodox politics...
Junkdrawer
Mar 2014
#34
The article is about the reactionary right's seizure of power in the wake of the revolution
Scootaloo
Mar 2014
#26
You'll have to be more specific. On what day did this new government in
Pretzel_Warrior
Mar 2014
#18
I just searched on the Guardian and found no article saying adoption laws were changed
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2014
#21
I searched POSTER #5 's statement about NEW Ukraine Parliament COUP banning Gay Adoption...
KoKo
Mar 2014
#37
So you would support the US pouring 10K troops into Guantanamo and securing the area around it? nt
geek tragedy
Mar 2014
#28
Same difference. The current Ukrainian government didn't sign that deal with Russia nt
geek tragedy
Mar 2014
#33
They have a 30 year lease on that base that absolutely no one was threatening.
pampango
Mar 2014
#45