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World News See other World News Articles Title: Jewish Subtexts in Ukraine “If I put on glasses and look at myself like the whole rest of the world, I see myself as a monster, as a puppet master, as the master of Zelensky, someone making apocalyptic plans. I can start making this real.” Ihor Kolomoisky, New York Times, November 2019. In 2015, a fascinating study in Japan found that not only will rats “desert a sinking ship” in accordance with the ubiquitous maxim, but also engage in highly altruistic behavior toward trapped rats to help them escape. They assist one another and flee as a group. The study came to mind when I read a piece published by the Moscow Times on February 14, describing the simultaneous departure of “at least 20 chartered flights … from Kyiv on Sunday, more than at any other time in the last six years of flight observations.” The private jets carried the majority of Ukraine’s oligarchs, who were evidently privy to concrete indications of impending war at a time when a full-scale Russian invasion was mooted but far from being a matter of fact. The sole exception seems to be Petro Poroshenko, who has appeared in the streets of the capital clutching a rifle. Since their departure, the fleeing oligarchs have vanished from media discussions of what is happening in Ukraine. This is a curious fact given that the very meaning of the term oligarchy implies that these billionaires were extremely influential in the political direction adopted by their country until very recently. Years of speculation on the political influence and intentions of these oligarchs have now suddenly been replaced with simplistic, dueling visions that border on the nonsensical: one of an innocent democratic Ukraine fighting against Russian imperialism/quasi-Fascism; and the other of a Russian “special military operation” designed to “denazify” Ukraine. In the following essay I don’t want to critique or debunk either of these obviously flawed perspectives, but instead to return some of the focus to the oligarchs, and to two Jewish oligarchs in particular: Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Victor Pinchuk. De-Nazifying Ukraine? “We will strive for the demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine, as well as bringing to justice those who committed numerous bloody crimes against civilians.” Thus said Putin in what amounts to his declaration of war on Ukraine on February 24. This line, perhaps more than any other in his long, historically-weighted address, has absorbed considerable media attention. The majority of this attention has been devoted to smug portrayals of Putin as deranged or hypocritical. How can Ukraine be a ‘Nazi’ country, goes the logic, when it has a Jewish President in Zelenskyy? To the historiographically literate, it’s obvious that, to Putin and many Russians that share his thinking, the Jewishness of this or that politician or oligarch is irrelevant to the alleged ‘Nazi’ threat facing Russia. Our western-centric background dictates that we view National Socialism and World War II primarily as an action against Jews, and therefore the rhetorical positioning of Nazism and Judaism has a singular, jarring effect. Those media commentators smugly pointing to the Jewishness of Zelenskyy are operating within this paradigm. In the Soviet Union, however, World War II/Fascism was more prominently interpreted as a reactionary capitalist, imperialist, anti-Slavic or anti-Russian affair. Although the slow creep of Holocaust memorials and associated education programs has now reached deep into Eastern Europe, World War II is still primarily remembered for its masses of Slavic, not Jewish, dead. The racial element of National Socialist ideology was acknowledged in early ‘Holocaust’ historiography in the East, but wasn’t foregrounded (even in East Germany) in the way we have become totally absorbed by in the West. When Putin therefore claims he is seeking the de-Nazification of Ukraine, he is speaking, with perfect logic, less of political parties with broad racialist or anti-Jewish ideologies than of a more specific imperialist, militaristic, and anti-Russian movement, and specifically to an incident during the Maidan riots in 2014 when Ukrainian nationalists burned down a building in Odessa, killing 31 Russians who opposed the uprising; this incident was featured in Putin’s post-invasion speech, where he vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. But there can be no doubt that Putin’s main targets are the NATO-leaning, and Western-orientated politicians and those who have supported or ignored violence against Russian-speaking separatists since 2014. Legitimate or not, Putin’s condemnation of Ukrainian nationalism has unfortunately kicked off the familiar game of ‘You’re the Real Fascists’ in the West. As if we didn’t have enough of “Antifa are the real Fascists” shenanigans muddying our social discourse, in recent days the Western liberal media has engaged in the production of massive numbers of articles reassuring nervous latte liberals that their support Ukraine is perfectly compatible with their woke political sensibilities. In some instances, this has led to some hilarious and extravagant U-turns, most notably in Facebook suddenly reversing its long-held ban on expressing support for Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, a military unit known for its adoption of certain Far Right and National Socialist symbols. The logic, as expressed in The Guardian by the Jewish self-styled expert on Fascism Jason Stanley (see my previous discussion of his work), is that Putin can be identified as the ‘real Nazi’ because he denies the primacy of Jewish suffering. Stanley: The Russian leader’s pretext for invasion recasts Ukraine’s Jewish president as a Nazi and Russian Christians as true victims of the Holocaust. … The dominant version of antisemitism alive in parts of eastern Europe today is that Jews employ the Holocaust to seize the victimhood narrative from the “real” victims of the Nazis, who are Russian Christians (or other non-Jewish eastern Europeans). Those who embrace Russian Christian nationalist ideology will be especially susceptible to this strain of antisemitism. With this background, we can understand why Putin chose the actions he did, as well as the words he used to justify them. Ukraine has always been the primary target of those who seek to restore “Soviet power in fascist form”. Echoing familiar fascist antisemitic tropes, in a 2021 article, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev denounced Zelenskiy as disgusting, corrupt and faithless. The free democratic election of a Jewish president confirms in the fascist mind that the fascist bogeyman of liberal democracy as a tool for global Jewish domination is real. By claiming that the aim of the invasion is to “denazify” Ukraine, Putin appeals to the myths of contemporary eastern European antisemitism—that a global cabal of Jews were (and are) the real agents of violence against Russian Christians and the real victims of the Nazis were not the Jews, but rather this group. Russian Christians are targets of a conspiracy by a global elite, who, using the vocabulary of liberal democracy and human rights, attack the Christian faith and the Russian nation. All of which is to say that Prof. Stanley could do with stepping outside and taking some deep, slow breaths of fresh air. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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