General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: FAIR: Denying the Far-Right Role in the Ukrainian Revolution [View all]Igel
(37,239 posts)It's a straw man. Most acknowledge Svoboda's drawbacks, without exaggerating them or declaring them to be universal problems of the protesters. That's Putin's line.
Most also don't fall for a kind of etymological fallacy, either. Similarity with events from 1944 don't require identicality of events. "Evoking" a similar symbol can be just that: you evoke it for a purpose, not because all the goals and actions are the same.
And then there's the whole/part issue, where one issue from 1944 remains: Ukrainian independence and throwing off the shackles of ethnic repression after the end of colonialization (even if we really don't like thinking of the USSR as a colonial empire).
A serious issue is assuming what we see and know is all that we need. We hear Tiahnybok say something anti-Semitic and we see red. We don't hear something come out of Putin's mouth because we don't notice it, and we assume we know everything we need to. We don't, but we're believe ourselves to be right so we're happier that way.
For Kyiv and in Crimea what's important is this: The Kyiv government will have elections soon. Russians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Bulgarians, Hungarians will vote pretty much unconstrained. Even the Party of Regions has candidates running.
The Crimean government will have elections soon. In one of them, thousands of armed foreign troops supporting one particular outcome will be in the streets, have shut down any unfavorable media outlets, are detaining opposition members without trial, and are banning any observers, even as the foreign government behind the troops makes veiled threats against voting the wrong way and promises of a great influx of money if they make the right choice. That choice was being billed as a choice between autonomy and annexation; the city council voted for annexation and is now describing the referendum as confirmation that they made the right choice.
And we declare the side with the troops to be the side of enlightened truth and justice. No need to invoke Czechoslovakia, no need to invoke the Sudentenland, Kosovo or S. Ossetia.