Eric Zuesse

On January 22nd, Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News (Murdoch founded it, his son James headed it for a while, and their 21st Century Fox owns a controlling stake”“ in it) telecast a puff-piece for Ukraine’s right-wing extremists, several times calling them “heroes” to “patriotic” Ukrainians. This segment of their documentary series “Ross Kemp: Extreme World,” was titled “Ukraine: The Rise of The Right.” In it, Ukraine’s “far right” are described as being patriots who are protecting all of Ukraine from a Russian invasion, and who are therefore being increasingly admired by Ukrainians. It says: “The ultras [ultra-rightists] are actually patriotic young people who are ready to fight — not only on the Maidan, but also at the war for our land. … These men — seen now by many as heroes — are fighting for the Azov Battalion in Mariupol, Maryinka and Iliovaisk.”

The message is that whereas these far-rightists were previously despised, they now are widely respected: "Just a few years ago they were on the fringes of society — shunned for their violent behaviour and xenophobic beliefs, but since the 2014 Maidan revolution — and the subsequent fighting against pro-Russian groups — their popularity has grown.”

In the segment here, the presenter, Ross Kemp, says, at 15:25, that, Ukraine "faces the threat of a full-scale Russian invasion. NATO has called the crisis in Ukraine, the biggest threat to European security since World War Two. Amidst this chaos, volunteer far-right battalions have put up some of the strongest resistance.” He then notes that the city of Mariupol in Ukraine’s southeast "is currently being defended by a right-wing militia called the Azov Battalion.”

At 17:55, Kemp refers to “occupied Crimea,” as if Crimea (which had been part of Russia from 1783 to 1954, and where far more of the residents still considered themselves to be “Russian” than “Ukrainian”) had been seized by Russian troops, instead of Crimea having been protected against invasion of troops from the new Ukrainian Government immediately after the February 22nd coup in which Obama had seized control over Ukraine’s Government, by the use of paid mercenaries (‘volunteers’) from the nazi Right Sector, who were headed by Dmitriy Yarosh, and by other racist mercenaries, some from outside Ukraine.

Ross Kemp is then in Mariupol, where he says: "Just to give you an idea of how vulnerable this city is, in the distance is Russia, all the way along there [and he points at the supposedly feared Russia]. … In May of 2014, Mariupol was one of several cities seized by pro-Russia separatists. … How did a predominantly far-right militia [Azov] end up defending one of Ukraine’s most important cities? … The fight to defend Mariupol has made the [Azov] Battalion specialists in urban warfare. The majority are ordinary Ukrainians united by a sense of patriotism [he doesn’t say ‘nationalism,’ but ‘patriotism,’ so as to give it an attractive odor].”

He also doesn’t deny that “some” of the Azov fighters are White-supremacists (they make it too obvious). At 20:25, he says: "But there’s an altogether darker ideology that unites some Azov members.” A swastika is shown; then an Azov fighter is interviewed saying, ‘’'It’s a war with Russia.’” The idea Rupert Murdoch’s man Kemp wants to convey here is that these fighters are “patriots,” who are “volunteering” to “defend” Ukraine against “pro-Russians” and against “Russian troops” (he uses that phrase though there’s actually no sign of any of those). He ignores that Obama’s team had taken over Ukraine during a coup which was long in the planning and which used the public “Maidan” anti-corruption demonstrations as merely a ‘democratic’ PR backdrop. In fact, here is the U.S. State Department’s Victoria Nuland, telling the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, on 4 February 2014, whom he is to place at the top of the post-coup Government; and, when the coup occurred, this “Yats” was indeed the person who became appointed 22 days later. No hint of such background is given in Rupert Murdoch’s ‘news’ (propaganda) report.

At 30:20, Ross Kemp says: "Since February of 2014, Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists have been locked in a bloody battle for control of towns in the east. [Actually, the civil war had started not in February 2014, such as he says, but on 9 May 2014. The Obama coup had occurred in February 2014, overthrowing the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, for whom more than 70% of the residents in southeastern Ukraine had voted; and the civil war didn’t start till May because it wasn’t clear till May that the newly installed Government wanted the residents in the southeast to die or else to flee to Russia — to be gone from Ukraine. Obama didn’t want them voting in any future Ukrainian national elections, because that would jeopardize the lasting-power of his coup-Government.] This is the town hall of Mariupol. Five months ago, Russian separatists stormed this building. ... The Russian supporters were made to leave, but when they did, they torched it.” [He’s there trying to convey the idea that “Russian supporters” had torched the town hall in Mariupol. But, actually, it wasn’t the “town hall”; it was the police station; and there’s no indication that the locals had torched it. Instead: On 9 May 2014, which is the very day that Ukraine’s civil war started throughout southeastern Ukraine (in response to the May 2nd massacre in Odessa), the local police force refused to take commands from the invading Ukrainian Government troops of western Ukraine, who were then entering Mariupol to take the city over. Anti-coup people entered the building in order to occupy it, and a battle ensued between the Kiev troops and the Mariupol locals. The locals were driven out by Ukraine’s military; and the police station was torched, but no one knows by whom. Here is video of the police station on fire, on 9 May 2014. But the “town hall” also had been involved in Ukraine’s invasion. Here is a Reuters article on 7 May 2014, reporting that “Ukrainian forces seized the rebel-held city hall in the eastern port city of Mariupol overnight, driving out pro-Russian activists, then withdrew, making no attempt to hold onto the building, witnesses said. .... Witnesses said the soldiers left after smashing furniture and office equipment.” Maybe they burned it later. The vandals were the haters — the very people whom Ross Kemp so obviously admires.]

Here and here and here are how what Kemp fearsomely calls the “pro-Russian separatists” (or, as Reuters had referred to them, ‘activists’) in Mariupol first encountered the Obama-coup-regime’s troops, as those troops invaded Mariupol slaughtering residents on 9 May 2014. And here is what had happened at the largest southeastern city, Donetsk, just three days earlier, on May 6th. That Donetsk video refers to the Ukrainian oligarch or aristocrat Kolomoysky. He was the man who had financed the massacre on May 2nd of entirely peaceful anti-coup demonstrators in Odessa — the massacre that had actually caused the people in the other rejectionist cities to become separatists. It caused some southeastern areas to go all the way to refusing to accept the Obama-installed coup-government at Kiev, and to establish instead their own independent nation, in order to protect themselves from the (it had by then become blatantly clear) rabidly anti-Russian racist-fascists, or nazis, whom Obama had placed into power in Kiev. Obama needed the May 2nd massacre in order to terrorize the people in the southeast so as to cause them to form their own government to protect themselves from it, thus enabling the ‘legitimate’ Government (the one that Obama had just installed in his actually illegal coup) to call them ‘Terrorists’ and so to have an excuse to bomb and drive them out, so as to eliminate the residents in the pro-Yanukovych area, so that no similar Ukrainian President would ever again be able to be elected by voters in Ukraine. This was essential in order to get Obama’s imposed illegal nazi Government to stick, to last. Kolomoysky was an ally, and an employer of the family and friends, of key people in the Obama Administration, and all of them could benefit enormously from killing and driving out lots of residents in the heavily-pro-Yanukovych southeastern portion of Ukraine.

At 31:30, Ross Kemp says: "After months of attacks, Kalinovka [he pronounced it ‘Kalikovka’] is a ghost town. All of the houses have been abandoned here.” He doesn’t even care to mention why the surviving residents had left: Ukraine’s troops had been shelling, bombing, and shooting at them, so survivors fled into the separatist-controlled area, or else into Russia.

At 33.00, he’s at the border heading into Donbass (the separatist-controlled region), and is told by the nazi troops to go back from whence he came, because press presence might draw fire from pro-Russian snipers just beyond that demarcation-line — which is just a lie, but the sucker or propagandist apparently took everything that these fascists told him as being the gospel truth, and he was basically a mere video stenographer for these nazis anyway, not a real journalist (who questions everything).

So: Ross Kemp went back to Mariupol. He didn’t even care to get the opponents’ side of this war. The nazis told him to go back to Mariupol, so he did. This is Rupert Murdoch’s ‘news’ operation: one-sided ‘news’ only. (Any intelligent person who watched the ‘documentary’ up to that point, had to recognize by now that this was really no ‘news report’ at all, but pure war-propaganda. Even if that fact hadn’t become blatant before, it now became blatant.)

At 39.00, Kemp says: "The city [Mariupol] formed its own militia because of the threat posed by Russian separatists and, the Russian Federation.” An interviewed Ukrainian official, a woman, tells him that “Russian troops … systematically destroyed” the city. She calls herself a “nationalist.” No evidence is presented — and none is asked for — to support her “Russian troops” allegation. He just accepts everything she tells him.

At 41.30, he says: "You can see why regiments like the Azov Battalion and other far-right battalions are gaining support here. Because they’re volunteers who are making the ultimate sacrifice to defend the city. And so people here are rallying to their cause.” Actually, most of the “people here” must both hate and fear the nazis. The residents know that they’ll be killed if they express any support whatsoever for the anti-coup, or anti-‘Maidan,’ side. To a ‘reporter’ like Kemp, it makes no difference what the reality of or for the residents there is.

In other words: This documentary by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky ‘News’ is just pro-nazi propaganda, which conflates “nationalism” with patriotism, and which presents nazis as being heroes, instead of as being the rabid anti-democratic bigots that they actually are.

The Obama-installed coup-government was assigned by Obama, and by the IMF, to exterminate as many of the residents in the Donbass region of southeast Ukraine as possible, because 90% of these residents had voted for the very man, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Obama’s nazis overthrew on 22 February 2014. (The dark purple region on that map, in the far east of Ukraine, is the area that had voted at least 90% for Yanukovych; and it’s the area that broke away from Ukraine in May 2014 and is being bombed by Obama’s Ukrainian forces. That area was traditionally called “Donbass,” but many of its inhabitants now call themselves “Novorossiyans,” or new Russians, because they want to be part of Russia, which their region used to be part of.) So, this Government sent these nazis in, to finish the job, for Obama and for their own oligarchs.

Do the viewers of Sky ‘News’ want to know any of that background? Apparently not — after all, they are viewers of Sky ‘News.’ They are fascists, and many of them are like Obama’s team: they are nazis — racist fascists. (Most of those viewers probably just call themselves “conservative.” Of course, they won’t acknowledge that Obama too is “conservative.”)

That video was called “Part 2” of Kemp’s propaganda-film about how heroic Ukraine’s nazis are. Here is “Episode 1” (or “Part 1,” as alternatively tagged). Most of it is actually the same video and text, except organized differently (placing the emphasis upon the failure of the post-coup Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to be sufficiently nazi to satisfy these ‘patriots’).

Here is a bit of the relevant historical background that Murdoch’s operation decided to hide from both versions: “The Nazis Even Hitler Was Afraid Of.”

And here is the current geopolitical context of Obama’s February 2014 take-over of Ukraine.

Ironically, the view that the rightist oligarch Murdoch is spreading — that Putin is the aggressor in this war and that Obama is not — is exactly the same view that the leftist oligarch George Soros is spreading about it. In fact (as can be seen from Soros’s many statements and actions there), both of those Western oligarchs are remarkably similar, and Soros could as well have hired the people who hired Ross Kemp as Murdoch did. Kemp’s ‘documentary’ is 100% in line with Soros’s many essays about the situation in Ukraine. The biggest difference between these two aristocrats is that they’re in different lines of business — different rackets. (Here is a partial list of the companies that Murdoch controls. Soros is instead an investor and a ‘philanthropist.’)

DISCUSSION

When ‘right’ and ‘left’ merge and become one, at nazi (i.e., racist-fascist), such as does occur in the top aristocratic circle (especially regarding Ukraine), then what authentic meaning remains to standard political debate? What does the public then know of ‘democracy’? How is democracy then even possible? It’s not. (And that linked-to scientific study, specifically of the U.S., proves that the U.S. is not a democracy. But this problem is far broader than merely the U.S.)

Perhaps wealth-inequality is getting to be so extreme as to close out even the possibility of democracy. Let’s not fool ourselves about how big the challenge is; it’s enormous:

On 9 October 2013, Credit Suisse issued their Global Wealth Report 2013, authored by Anthony Shorrocks, Jim Davies, and Rodrigo Lluberasis. It reported that the world’s richest 0.7% owned 13.67 times as much as did the world’s poorest 68.7%. That super-rich 0.7% (each with net-worths above $50,000,000) owned 41% of this planet’s private assets. The world’s richest 8.4% owned 83.3%. The world’s richest 31.3% owned 97%. So: the bottom 68.7% owned just 3%. (All of these findings are calculated from the data shown on page 22.) Overall, the share of global wealth was “barely 1% for the bottom half of all adults” worldwide (see page 4). Furthermore, economic mobility into and out of the billionaire class, during the latest ten-year period (2000-2010), was low: only 24% entered or left the class during the decade (see page 28).

According to Vilfredo Pareto, who was the father of today’s ‘welfare’ economics and also the “Karl Marx of fascism” (and also Benito Mussolini’s personal teacher), there is no rational basis for economists to consider any of this extreme wealth-inequality to be sub-“optimal.”

No wonder aristocrats favor such a ‘free market’ (and such an economic theory).

But it won’t do Ukrainians any good, and it’s slaughtering the people in Donbass. However, any of that richest 0.7% who care enough, one way or the other, about what’s happening there, are promoting the nazis, who are doing those aristocrats’ dirty-work, regardless of whether nazi bigots are aware of the fact, or even care whom they’re actually serving, or why. Any of those nazis who are in the bottom 68.7% of the world’s wealth-pyramid — the people who collectively own just 3% of the world’s private wealth — are probably driven more by their hatred than by their greed, anyway. They’re like sleepwalkers, or robots. Push their psychological buttons, and they’re on, “for the cause.” True-believers, in some Big Lie or other. And, so, they ‘volunteer’ their services far cheaper than do people who actually care. (Most of their payment comes to them in the form of the personal pride they get, for their race and nation. It doesn’t come out of any aristocrat’s hide.) In that sense, they value themselves appropriately: dirt-cheap. (Of course, they don’t understand this.) They’re a bargain for their unrecognized masters, who push true-believers’ buttons by hiring propagandists such as Ross Kemp.

But, as for the residents in Donbass: these people are total victims in all of this.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .