Ukrainian Lessons

The first lesson, and it’s a very old one, is that violent protest does work, and also sinister tricks such as having your own snipers shoot at police and fellow protesters. Without this ramping up of mayhem and bloodshed, the Ukrainian government would not have been discredited, destabilized and finally overthrown.

The shock troops for this violence, the masked thugs at the frontline, didn’t come out of nowhere. Primarily made up of young men from the Right Sector, they had been preparing for a long time for this confrontation with the government. For years, they had been honing their skills at marksmanship, urban warfare and hand-to-hand combat. In this, they are not unlike American militias, though more mature in  development. By clearly becoming outlaws, they had reached the point of no return, so it was victory or else, for had they lost, savage retribution from their enemy would be their lot.

For a while, the world was treated to the strange spectacle of Israel’s greatest lackey, the United States, supporting Neo-Nazi thugs, but when Viktor Yanukovych had been shoved out of the way, who came to power but Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who may or may not be a Jew, though widely believed to be so, especially in Ukraine itself, where he’s regularly a target of anti-Semitic slurs. Yatsenyuk had also been endorsed by the American Jewish diplomat, Victoria Nuland, she of the “fuck the EU” fame. In the bugged phone conversation, Nuland said, “I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience.” What Nuland means is Yats, a central banker, will help to implode the Ukraine for the Western banks. Lending fiat money farted out of their asses, they will enslave Ukrainians for generations. Two weeks after being installed, Yats was already in DC to confer with the IMF and World Bank, and, coincidentally, to pose for photos with our White House buffoon. The new governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine’s industrial center, also happens to be Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a citizen of Israel!

The Right Sector’s hero and guiding light is Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator whose followers nearly wiped out all of Ukraine’s Jewry, so it is odd, to say the least, that these Neo-Nazis Banderites provided the muscles to bring a (purported, at least) Jewish banker to power. Another direct result of the  Ukrainian putsch is the loss of Crimea to Russia, a country ruled by Putin, an ex KGB colonel, while Bandera himself was killed by the KGB while living in Germany. I’m not asking you to feel sorry for Neo-Nazis, but it’s pretty clear these heavy metal-listening schmucks got a pretty raw deal out of all this, and as soon as their job was done, too, the new order turned on them, for this marriage could not last.

The Right Sector’s second in command, Aleksandr Muzychko, had just been gunned down. While eating dinner in The Three Crucians, Muzychko was cornered by the police, then shot as he tried to escape through a window. In death, Muzychko didn’t resemble a carp so much as a blow fish, with his huge, naked belly exposed through his torn Oakland Raiders jacket. During his brief moment on the world stage, Muzychko came off a blustering, violent lout. In a widely seen video, he’s smacking a government functionary upside the head, then yanking the man’s tie. Though grossly outnumbered and violated, Muzychko’s victim managed to maintain his composure and dignity, while Muzychko, in baseball cap and black jacket, came off as a crazed barbarian, but it is precisely this frothing rage and viciousness, of Muzychko and rest of his gang, that had been so valuable to the coup managers, operating behind the scene.

The hysterical nationalism of many Ukrainians may be hard for Americans to fathom, since they live in a near-continent sized country that, for most of its history, has kicked sand in other people’s faces. Unlike the Ukrainians and, in fact, most other peoples, Americans don’t fear obliteration, but perhaps they should, for the same people who have hollowed out Ukraine, Iraq and Libya, etc., are doing a pretty damn good job here.

Not wanting to be accused of killing his own people, Yanukovych left his police unarmed during most the protest against his regime, and this decision cost him everything in the end. Now, the same restraint is being shown by the Venezuelan government as it is being roiled by a series of violent, American-funded and orchestrated protests that also includes sniper fires. The CIA’s well-worn playbook should be all-too-familiar by now, but since Americans are always being transfixed by the latest celebrity ass or asshole, they never notice the blood on their hands.

Soon, however, there will also be blood on their faces, if not gushing from their bloated bellies, for this American government will not be so gun-shy when faced with the sort of civil disturbances it is so prolific at fomenting worldwide. As the world’s most promiscuous employer of violence in all its forms, micro, massive, generational, bank-enabled, smirkingly personal or drone-fired, invisibly, from the sky, Uncle Sam will not hesitate to puncture or crush anyone’s helpless body, and he won’t give a rat’s ass for world opinions.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He's tracking our deteriorating social scape through his frequently updated photo blog, Postcards from the End of America. Read other articles by Linh.