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Vladimir Putin Should 'Denazify' Himself

Vladimir Putin Should 'Denazify' Himself

When Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the reason for his bloody invasion of Ukraine was to purge it of "drug addicts and neo-Nazis," the Russian dictator provoked sneers and laughter. It was a ludicrous claim against a nation that had elected a Jewish president, who lost family members to the Holocaust, with 75 percent of the vote in 2019. The far-right party, by the way, won 1.6 percent in that election.

Putin's rationale to "de-Nazify" Ukraine by the barbaric leveling of its cities and mass murder is an exercise not only in war crimes, but in political projection. It is an absurdity of a kind that is practiced by his slavish American collaborator, former President Donald Trump — the loser who accuses opponents of stealing the election that he actually tried to steal.

Putin's "Nazism" ploy is of course a cynical and cliched propaganda trope, playing on the Russian people's epochal struggle against Adolf Hitler's Germany. It is persuasive to them only because no honest narrative is permitted on Russia's airwaves or in its press, which are forbidden to report the facts of the invasion under penalty of imprisonment. It is also a crime in Russia to report that the Putin regime is the polestar of neo-fascism and neo-Nazism in the world today.

It is no accident, as the old Marxist cliche goes, that the most enthusiastic supporters of Putinism in this country are our very own homegrown fascists — not just Trump himself, but the entire ideological apparatus surrounding him, from Steve Bannon and Alex Jones to the self-styled America First Political Action Committee, whose neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes led a chant of "Putin! Putin!" at their annual meeting last week. (Noting that commentators had compared Putin to Hitler, he asked with a smirk, "Is that a bad thing?")

Indeed, the Kremlin's covert actions to elect Trump align perfectly with Putin's role in Western politics seeking to exalt neo-fascist movements. Seeking to leverage the extreme right, the Russian state and its proxies have provided covert support and funding to anti-democratic movements both here and across Europe — and have seen those efforts exposed repeatedly.

The most explosive and embarrassing incident, at least until the U.S. presidential election in 2016, occurred in France. By 2014, the National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, seemed poised to gain power in the final round of French elections. But as a fascist party founded by Le Pen's father, a notorious neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier, her outfit faced financial difficulties. A Russian bank linked to the Kremlin and its intelligence services stepped in with a loan of nine million Euros, thus enabling Le Pen to promote her party's anti-NATO and anti-European policies, if not to actually win election.

Tracing Putin's foreign initiatives and his attempts to influence elections in other countries is to chart the rise of neo-fascism. In Greece, the Russians have patronized and siphoned money to Golden Dawn, an unabashedly pro-Nazi organization that routinely engages in violence and whose leaders were convicted of murder two years ago. In Austria, Russia's principal political ally is the Nazi-inflected "Freedom Party." And in Germany, the Kremlin promotes the AfD, or Alternative for Germany, ideological heir to Hitler's National Socialists — and funnels in the Russian money.

The same pattern holds true across Eastern Europe; in Hungary, for instance, the Jobbik Party, an anti-Semitic movement with roots among that country's Nazi collaborators, is assiduously Putin-backed, as is Ataka, the neo-Nazi party of Bulgaria. In Ukraine, Putin tried to maintain a puppet regime. The independent Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned in 2004 and nearly died in a pattern eerily similar to other Russian poisonings and assassinations. Then Putin's puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown in 2014 by a mass uprising. Putin has been desperate for revenge ever since.

There is a background of pro-Nazi history in Ukraine, dating back to World War II, when the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists joined forces with Germany against the Allies and committed atrocities against Jews, Poles and, yes, Russians. But unlike Germany, Greece, France, and many other countries where populist and fascist parties have risen in recent years, that element in Ukraine barely reached two percent in the election when Volodomyr Zelensky won the presidency. Putin, the neo-Nazi sugar daddy, is playing on that discredited past and trying to tie it like a noose around the Jewish liberal leader.

What these rancid movements and parties share, along with Trump and his minions here, is an eager willingness to advance Putin's aggressive authoritarian ambitions, whether in Ukraine or elsewhere. All of them, including Trump, are hostile to NATO and the European Union, which they rightly regard as bulwarks of democracy and liberalism. All of them promote a reactionary version of "Christianity" that is violently antagonistic toward religious minorities, gay people, women's equality, and social liberalism.

As for Putin himself, what does he believe? Like his bedmate Trump, the Kremlin autocrat is more of a syndicate boss, the leader of a Mafia. He only expresses beliefs that ruthlessly serve his will to power — and to the extent that he articulates any ideology, it is a toxic mash of centralized authority, angry nationalism, furious hatred for the West, and a mystical idolatry of the "Russian spirit." But he revealed what that all means to him back in 2005, when he arranged for the reinterment of the remains of the Russian fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin at a Moscow monastery. Yes, that is Putin's true philosophy, and he made it plain himself: fascism.

Putin must be treated with a mixture of resolution and caution, but nobody should have the slightest illusion about who and what he really is — and why he is committing war crimes hour by hour.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Macron’s New Party Headed Toward Huge Parliamentary Win

Macron’s New Party Headed Toward Huge Parliamentary Win

 

PARIS (Reuters) – President Emmanuel Macron’s fledgling party is set to trounce France’s traditional main parties in a parliamentary election and secure a huge majority to push through his pro-business reforms, projections after the first round showed on Sunday.

The vote delivered a further crushing blow to the Socialist and conservative parties that had alternated in power for decades until Macron’s election in May blew apart the left-right divide.

With 90 percent of voters accounted for, Macron’s Republic on the Move (LREM) and Modem allies had won 31.9 percent support, Interior Ministry results showed.

The conservative party The Republicans and allied center-right Union of Democrats and Independents held 18.9 percent, the National Front 13.8 percent and the Socialists 7.45 percent.

Pollsters project Macron’s alliance could win as many as three-quarters of the seats in the lower house after next week’s second round of voting.

That would give France’s youngest leader since Napoleon a powerful mandate to make good on campaign pledges to revive France’s fortunes by cleaning up politics and easing regulations that investors say hobble the euro zone’s second-biggest economy.

“France is back,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on French TV. “Next Sunday, the National Assembly will embody the new face of our republic.”

Voter turnout was a record low for parliamentary elections in the post-war Fifth Republic at 48.6 percent, taking the shine off Macron’s margin of victory in the first round.

Both the Socialists and the conservative Republicans urged more voters to cast their ballots in the June 18 second round, warning them against allowing too much power to be concentrated in the hands of one party.

Macron professes to be of neither right nor left. His one-year-old LREM party fielded both seasoned veterans and political novices including a former bullfighter, a fighter pilot and a former armed police commander.

“It’s a renewal of the political class,” said Jose Jeffrey, a Health Ministry administrator who voted LREM.

Projections by three pollsters of LREM’s tally after the second round ranged from 390 to 445 of the assembly’s 577 seats – potentially the biggest majority since president Charles De Gaulle’s conservatives won more than 80 percent of seats in 1968.

Macron, a former investment banker, wants what supporters describe as a “big bang” of economic and social reforms, including an easing of stringent labor laws and reform of an unwieldy pension system.

The pro-European leader’s program enjoys strong support among liberal, well-educated voters in France’s big cities, but he is less popular in poorer areas where industry is in decline.

Sunday’s projections pointed to another torrid night for the two main traditional parties, which have suffered high-profile defections to Macron’s government, as well as the far-right National Front.

The Socialist Party suffered in particular. Its chief, Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, confirmed he had been eliminated from his long-held Paris seat, a symbol of his party’s stunning demise after five years in power. Benoit Hamon, its failed presidential candidate, was also headed for the exit door.

Cambadelis acknowledged that the first round marked an “unprecedented” setback for the party, set to win a paltry 30-40 seats, and the broader left.

“It is neither healthy nor desirable for a president who gathered only 24 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidentials and who was elected in the second round only by the rejection of the extreme right should benefit from a monopoly of national representation,” Cambadelis said.

Francois Baroin, who led the campaign of the conservative Republicans, projected to win 80-100 seats, echoed the sentiment.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who led the voting in her northern constituency, called the huge abstention rate “catastrophic” and urged supporters to turn out in a week’s time.

Pollsters projected her party, which is still reeling from her disappointing showing in the presidential run-off vote against Macron, will next week win just a small handful of seats – perhaps as few as one.

Among the LREM political newcomers who went through to second round were his key ministers and a retired bullfighter.

(Additional reporting by Cecile Mantouani, Antoine Boddaert in Paris, and Gabriela Baczynska and Charlotte Steenackers in Brussels; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Cynthia Osterman)

As Liberal Macron Decisively Defeats Far Rightist LePen, Europe Exhales

As Liberal Macron Decisively Defeats Far Rightist LePen, Europe Exhales

 

PARIS (Reuters) – Emmanuel Macron was elected French president on Sunday with a business-friendly vision of European integration, defeating Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist who threatened to take France out of the European Union.

The centrist’s emphatic victory, which also smashed the dominance of France’s mainstream parties, will bring huge relief to European allies who had feared another populist upheaval to follow Britain’s vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president.

With virtually all votes counted, Macron had topped 66 percent against just under 34 percent for Le Pen – a gap wider than the 20 or so percentage points that pre-election surveys had suggested.

Even so, it was a record performance for the National Front, a party whose anti-immigrant policies once made it a pariah, and underlined the scale of the divisions that Macron must now try to heal.

After winning the first round two weeks ago, Macron had been accused of behaving as if he was already president; on Sunday night, with victory finally sealed, he was much more solemn.

“I know the divisions in our nation, which have led some to vote for the extremes. I respect them,” Macron said in an address at his campaign headquarters, shown live on television.

“I know the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that very many of you have also expressed. It’s my responsibility to hear them,” he said. “I will work to recreate the link between Europe and its peoples, between Europe and citizens.”

Later he strode alone almost grimly through the courtyard of the Louvre Palace in central Paris to the strains of the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, not breaking into a smile until he mounted the stage of his victory rally to the cheers of his partying supporters.

His immediate challenge will be to secure a majority in next month’s parliamentary election for a political movement that is barely a year old, rebranded as La Republique En Marche (“Onward the Republic”), in order to implement his program.

Outgoing president Francois Hollande, who brought Macron into politics, said the result “confirms that a very large majority of our fellow citizens wanted to unite around the values of the Republic and show their attachment to the European Union.”

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, told Macron: “I am delighted that the ideas you defended of a strong and progressive Europe, which protects all its citizens, will be those that you will carry into your presidency”.

Macron spoke by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he hopes to revitalize the Franco-German axis at the heart of the EU, saying he planned to visit Berlin shortly.

Trump also tweeted his congratulations on Macron’s “big win”, saying he looked forward to working with him.

The euro currency, which had been rising for two weeks as the prospect receded that France would elect an anti-EU president, topped $1.10 in early Asian trading for the first time since the U.S. elections.

“Fading political risk in France adds to the chance that euro zone economic growth can surprise to the upside this year,” said Holger Schmieding, analyst at Berenberg Bank.

The 39-year-old former investment banker, who served for two years as economy minister under Hollande but has never previously held elected office, will become France’s youngest leader since Napoleon.

Le Pen, 48, said she had also offered her congratulations. But she defiantly claimed the mantle of France’s main opposition in calling on “all patriots to join us” in constituting a “new political force”.

Her tally was almost double the score that her father Jean-Marie, the last far-right candidate to make the presidential runoff, achieved in 2002, when he was trounced by the conservative Jacques Chirac.

Her high-spending, anti-globalization ‘France-first’ policies may have unnerved financial markets but they appealed to many poorer members of society against a background of high unemployment, social tensions, and security concerns.

Despite having served briefly in Hollande’s deeply unpopular Socialist government, Macron managed to portray himself as the man to revive France’s fortunes by recasting a political landscape molded by the left-right divisions of the last century.

“I’ve liked his youth and his vision from the start,” said Katia Dieudonné, a 35-year-old immigrant from Haiti who brought her two children to Macron’s victory rally.

“He stands for the change I’ve wanted since I arrived in France in 1985 – openness, diversity, without stigmatizing anyone … I’ve voted for the left in the past and been disappointed.”

Macron’s team successfully skirted several attempts to derail his campaign – by hacking its communications and distributing purportedly leaked documents – that were reminiscent of the hacking of Democratic Party communications during Hillary Clinton’s U.S. election campaign.

Allegations by Macron’s camp that a massive computer hack had compromised emails added last-minute drama on Friday night, just as official campaigning was ending.

While Macron sees France’s way forward in boosting the competitiveness of an open economy, Le Pen wanted to shield French workers by closing borders, quitting the EU’s common currency, the euro, radically loosening the bloc and scrapping trade deals.

When he moves into the Elysee Palace after his inauguration next weekend, Macron will become the eighth – and youngest – president of France’s Fifth Republic.

Opinion surveys taken before the second round suggest that his fledgling movement, despite being barely a year old, has a fighting chance of securing the majority he needs.

He plans to blend a big reduction in public spending and a relaxation of labor laws with greater investment in training and a gradual reform of the unwieldy pension system.

A European integrationist and pro-NATO, he is orthodox in foreign and defense policy and shows no sign of wishing to change France’s traditional alliances or reshape its military and peacekeeping roles in the Middle East and Africa.

His election also represents a long-awaited generational change in French politics that have been dominated by the same faces for years.

He will be the youngest leader in the current Group of Seven (G7) major nations and has elicited comparisons with youthful leaders past and present, from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to British ex-premier Tony Blair and even late U.S. president John F. Kennedy.

But any idea of a brave new political dawn will be tempered by an abstention rate on Sunday of around 25 percent, the highest this century, and by the blank or spoiled ballots submitted by 12 percent of those who did vote.

Many of those will have been supporters of the far-left maverick Jean-Luc Melenchon, whose high-spending, anti-EU, anti-globalization platform had many similarities with Le Pen’s.

Melenchon took 19 percent in coming fourth in the first round of the election, and pointedly refused to endorse Macron for the runoff.

France’s biggest labor union, the CFDT, welcomed Macron’s victory but said that the National Front’s score was still worryingly high.

“Now, all the anxieties expressed at the ballot by a part of the electorate must be heard,” it said in a statement. “The feeling of being disenfranchised, of injustice, and even abandonment is present among a large number of our citizens.”

The more radical leftist CGT union called for a demonstration on Monday against “liberal” economic policies.

Like Macron, Le Pen will now have to work to try to convert her presidential result into parliamentary seats, in a two-round system that has in the past encouraged voters to vote tactically to keep her out.

She has worked for years to soften the xenophobic associations that clung to the National Front under her father, going so far as to expel him from the party he founded.

On Sunday night, her deputy Florian Philippot distanced the movement even further from him by saying the new, reconstituted party would not be called “National Front”.

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander, Andrew Callus, Marina Depetris, Bate Felix, Sybille de la Hamaide, Mathieu Rosemain, Sarah White, Matthias Blamont, Julien Pretot, Geert de Clercq, Adrian Croft, Leigh Thomas, Helen Reid, Tim Hepher, Jemima Kelly, Maya Nikolaeva, Dominique Vidalon, Cyril Altmeyer and Gus Trompiz; Writing by Richard Balmforth; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

On Eve Of French Election, Trump (And Putin) Still Pushing ‘Nationalism’

On Eve Of French Election, Trump (And Putin) Still Pushing ‘Nationalism’

Hold the exhalations of relief about the newfound “moderation” of Donald Trump and the supposed downsizing of Steve Bannon, his official extremist ideologue. With his all-but-explicit endorsement of Marine LePen, the French neo-fascist presidential candidate, it is now clear that Trump remains allied with foreign “nationalists.”

Specifcally, within hours after this week’s Paris terror attack — mounted by ISIS to line up frightened French voters behind its preferred candidate LePen — Trump issued a series of messages that played directly into that strategy. On Twitter he wrote: “Another terrorist attack in Paris… The people of France will not take much more of this…Will have a big effect on presidential election!” Then only hours later, the president — who customarily avoids endorsing foreign candidates — told the Associated Press that he expected the attack to bolster LePen because she is “strongest on borders and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

In backing the leader of France’s neo-fascist party, Trump also resumed his role as the Western political stalking horse for Vladimir Putin. Having received LePen in Moscow, where she denounced sanctions and sucked up to Putin, Russia’s authoritarian president has mobilized his entire propaganda apparatus to influence the French election. Indeed, Putin has been preparing this moment for a long time. Three years ago, LePen’s party received a $10 million loan from a Moscow-affiliated bank.

Kremlin support for the French ultra-rightist is only one instance of a far broader Russian outreach toward fascistic elements across Europe, extending from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece and the Northern League in Italy to the anti-Semitic nationalist Jobbik Party in Hungary and neo-Nazi gangs in Norway. Sometimes blatant, sometimes secretive, and sometimes outsourced to local groups, these provocations may or may not reflect Putin’s own ideology. But their purpose is obvious enough — to disrupt and disorganize the democratic West, which still dares to criticize Russian human rights abuses and imperial ambitions.

So Marine LePen, like every neo-fascist politician subsidized by the Kremlin, opposes the Western alliance in all its forms. She would remove France from the European Union and from NATO — the ultimate target of Putin’s scheming.

Now any normal American administration would regard Putin’s promotion of neo-fascism in Europe as a danger to U.S. national security interests. But the Trump administration is anything but normal, expressing support for the very elements that are undermining our traditional alliances, on behalf of our traditional adversaries. Lately Trump has given lip service to NATO, presumably under pressure from his defense secretary James Mattis and his national security adviser H.R. McMaster. But his blatant boosting of LePen proves that his NATO turnaround earlier this year was hollow.

Fascist themes have emanated from Trump and his circle almost from the beginning of his presidential campaign. His chief strategist Bannon is drawn to fascist ideologues such as the late Julius Evola and Putin’s Alexander Dugin, who has cemented Russian ties with Golden Dawn and other Nazified Europeans and declared that “American liberalism [i.e., democracy] must be destroyed.” Among Trump’s national security aides is a former Jobbik politician, the Hungarian émigré Sebastian Gorka, who has sported the insignia of a Nazi Hungarian militia.

In short, there is an obvious reason why the Trumpists would feel affinity toward the Kremlin, whose political think-tanks, intelligence agencies, and foreign propaganda machinery went so far to help elect Donald Trump last year. The stakes of the investigation into that illegal interference with the 2016 election keep getting higher, and may rise again with the French election. Nobody should maintain any illusions about who Trump and his cronies are, what interests they serve, and what kind of threat they pose to the future of the democratic world.