As unrest continues in both countries, a sharp, hypocritical divide widens for the “international community.”
Tony Cartalucci
Activist Post
For audiences around the world watching pro-EU protests unfold in the streets of Ukraine’s capital of Kiev, they may have noticed flags bearing a lifted hand giving a “three-fingered salute.” This is the reformed Nazi salute of right-winged nationalist group Svoboda. Along with other racist, bigoted, extremist political parties including “Fatherland,” Svoboda has filled the streets, clashed with police, occupied government buildings and called for the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine – for the sake of joining the European Union. The EU, for its part, awaits these mobs with open arms.
Joining the EU in anticipation is US Senator John McCain of the US National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) International Republican Institute. McCain went as far as traveling to Kiev, Ukraine, and even taking to the stage at the protest – side-by-side with Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok.
Of Svoboda, the Business Insider would have this to say in their article titled, “John McCain Went To Ukraine And Stood On Stage With A Man Accused Of Being An Anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi:”
…Svoboda (which means freedom in Ukrainian) is one of those reconstructed modern European far right parties — it is aligned with the British National Party and the French National Front, for example — and it has gained some kind of electoral legitimacy, winning 10 percent of the seats in Ukraine’s parliament in 2010.
However, the party’s past is seriously murky. When it was founded in 1995, the party called itself the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), and it had a swastika-like logo. While it eventually split from its more right wing members, the party remained focused on celebrating Ukrainian ethnic identity in opposition to Russia and Communism.
Tyahnybok himself was expelled from the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction in 2004 after giving a speech demanding that Ukrainians fight against a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” (he later clarified this by saying that he actually had Jewish friends and was only against to “a group of Jewish oligarchs who control Ukraine and against Jewish-Bolsheviks [in the past]”). In 2005 he wrote open letters demanding Ukraine do more to halt “criminal activities” of “organized Jewry,” and, even now, Svoboda openly calls for Ukrainian citizens to have their ethnicity printed onto their passports.”
Image: US Senator John McCain reaches new depths in an already truly disgraceful career – associating with literal Nazis to support them in their goal of guiding Ukraine, its wealth, and its people into the arms of Wall Street and London. McCain’s support for sedition worldwide for similar purposes has seen him visit other nations such as Egypt in his capacity as chairman of the IRI
One could scarcely imagine what justification John McCain could give for associating with literal Nazis. But one will have to be satisfied with only imagining, since the Western media, charged with seeking the truth, has not raised this question, let alone answered it. Even the Business Insider attempts to give McCain the benefit of the doubt in order to allow the protests to continue and to allow the US, UK, and EU to continue openly supporting them.
Other protest leaders in Kiev include Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleksandr Turchynov, both of deposed, disgraced, and now currently imprisoned former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s All Ukrainian Union or “Fatherland” party. Both have taken controversial stances regarding homosexuals.
In light of the recent Duck Dynasty hysteria, one might believe the Western media would have immediately highlighted “Fatherland’s” bigotry, especially considering the Nazi-pedigree of the party.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk would go as far as stating, when his views regarding homosexual marriage were labelled “conservative” that:
I do not agree. If a man has normal views, then you label him a conservative, but those who use drugs or promote sodomy – you label them a progressive person. All of these are perversions.
And despite all of this, news organizations like the BBC are still attempting to endear global audiences to Ukraine’s pro-EU Nazis in articles like, “Ukraine protests: Singing in the cold.” And of course, not all of the protesters are Nazis – but those that are not should surely question just what they are supporting when the likes of Svoboda, “Fatherland,” and John McCain are standing beside them.
Back in Bangkok…
In the hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets in Bangkok, Thailand, you will not find Nazis, nor “three-fingered salutes.” Neither will you find bigotry or disparagement being aimed at minority groups. There are no political parties leading marches that trace their pedigree back to Adolf Hitler and the global-spanning tragedy that he led the world into. And yet, when anti-regime protesters invited foreign dignitaries from the West to participate in a special press briefing, only Switzerland and Russia would attend.
The Thai anti-regime protesters, like in Ukraine, have filled the streets, clashed with police, occupied government buildings and called for the overthrow of the Thaksin Shinawatra regime. Unlike in Ukraine, the West has utterly condemned the protests as violent and “undemocratic.”
Worse yet, the only bigotry one will find against homosexuals in Thailand comes from the Wall Street-backed regime of Thaksin Shinawata, whose sister Yingluck Shinawatra is currently sitting for as “prime minister.”
Indeed, Thaksin’s “red shirt” mobs had used violence and intimidation to disrupt and shut down an HIV/AIDS awareness march organized by homosexual groups in the northern city of Chiang Mai, a regime stronghold. “Out in Perth” reported in their article, “Chiang Mai Pride Shut Down by Protests as Police Watch On,” that:
Organisers were forced to call off Chiang Mai’s planned second annual Gay Pride Parade on February 21 after harassment from the Rak Chiang Mai 51 political group.
Dressed in their trademark red shirts, members of Rak Chiang Mai 51 locked parade participants into the compound where they were gathering, throwing fruit and rocks and yelling abuse through megaphones.
150 police officers looked on but did nothing to intervene during the four and a half hour stand off.
Fearing escalating violence, organisers eventually called off the parade.
Ginger Norwood from the newly formed Sao-Sao-Et network says the decision to call off the parade was a difficult but necessary one.
‘The red shirts continued to threaten violence if the parade started and would not leave the blockaded area as long as there was a possibility that the parade might happen,’ she said.
‘The inaction of the police further added to the tense situation, because the organisers had no confidence the police would intervene or provide any kind of protection if the red shirt protesters attacked parade goers.’
The action against the Gay Pride Parade had been planned weeks before the event, with Rak Chiang Mai 51 using a local radio station to rally people and driving a truck around the city centre the day before, recruiting people to join their protest.
When asked what would happen if march organizers decided to ever hold another legally sanctioned event in Chiang Mai, regime demagogue Kanyapak (DJ Aom) Maneejak stated:
If in the future they wish to have a parade they can send us their proposal and if we think that it is polite then we will allow it, and even promote it.
Evidently, an already approved event must also be cleared by self-appointed arbiters wearing similar colored shirts who use violence and intimidation to crush opposing views – a tale that should sound sadly familiar as we recall the history of John McCain’s Svoboda friends in Ukraine.
It would appear then, that US Senator John McCain and the rest of the West who embrace the Nazis of Kiev, have decided to oppose the anti-regime protesters in Bangkok because their sort of regime is already in power in Thailand. It should be no surprise then, that McCain’s NED directly funds pro-regime propaganda outfits like Thailand’s Prachatai and hosted “red shirt” leaders in Washington DC ahead of the last general elections in 2011.
Whatever one might think of homosexuals – they are human beings and should be afforded the same amount of respect, dignity, and liberty as anyone else. Infringing upon one group opens the door for infringing upon others and then eventually upon us all – another maxim learned the hard way during the rise and fall of Nazism.
That Thaksin’s “red shirts,” whom the West, including the BBC, New York Times, and Reuters seem to portray as the embodiment of “democracy,” seem to believe otherwise is exactly why protesters have risen up against the regime and have demanded reform before elections, currently scheduled for February 2014. What has allowed Thaksin Shinawatra to remain dug into power for over a decade is most certainly not democracy – and the regime’s transgressions and thuggery go well beyond disrupting HIV/AIDS awareness marches.
For Now…
It is more than mere fascist ideology that attracts the West to Svoboda in Ukraine and the regime of Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand – it is each group’s willingness to make vast economic, social, and political concessions to the corporate-financier interests of the West in exchange for political power built upon foreign-funding, favorable news coverage in the Western press, and “appearances” by figures like John McCain to lend them legitimacy and drive they themselves lack. The forces opposed to them may not be perfect, but by comparison, and for the sake of both Ukraine and Thailand’s future and the many otherwise unprotected minorities that reside there, they are the best alternatives.
The West, and the Fortune 500 corporations that drive their destinies – corporations like Exxon, BP, Monsanto, Chevron, Raytheon, and other giants of big-pharma, agri, defense, oil, and finance – will not come to the aid of those opposing Nazis in Ukraine or fascistic, bigoted, violent mobs of “red shirts” in Thailand. No – that task is left to us. We must be the ones to speak up in the silence or confusion created by the West’s media machine and the many little helping hands that carry their propaganda far and wide.
We must get organized and work together to not only condemn a world we disagree with, but to build one we believe is better.
For Part I – See Here: “A Tale of Two Protests: Ukraine & Thailand”
Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at
Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg.
Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.
Be the first to comment on "A Tale of Two Protests: Ukraine and Thailand – Part II"