In the former East Germany (DDR) the ruling party - the SED - took its orders from Moskow. After "die Wende" - and reunification of east and west Germany the SED morphed eventually into what is today "die Linke" - the Left Party. And it still can't "quit" Moscow. Over the past few weeks as Putin's "unmarked" troops occupied Crimea, I've listened to Left Party officials denounce the EU and the United States - especially the United States - for "whipping up" protests in the Ukraine and supporting the "fascist coup" in Kiev. No matter that Russia is a far from a socialist worker paradise; it is much more an authoritarian kleptocracy where the press and political opposition have been silenced. It never occurs to Sahra Wagenknecht that perhaps the people of the Ukraine aspire to something much more akin to Poland than to Belarus. All that matters is that Putin is a bulwark against "American imperialism." The fact that he granted asylum to Edward Snowden is the icing on the cake. Putin has his army occupying Crimea and stationed on the border of eastern and southern Ukraine - but it is Washington and NATO that are the "warmongers."
But the German Left Party is not alone in its admiration of Putin. The right-wing groups are jubilant that Putin is sticking it to the "decadent" west. They share Putin's hatred of democracy, his contempt for the free press, his nationalist fervor; they celebrate his brutalization of gays and lesbians. The German Right also shares the Left's hate of the United States. Here is Udo Voigt - head of the neo-Nazi NPD - in an "editorial" concerning the Ukraine. His words could have been uttered verbatim by Sahra Wagenknecht of the Left Party:
Die Blutspur der USA zieht sich seit dem II. Weltkrieg durch die ganze Welt. Die USA destabilisierten Länder und Regierungen, die sich nicht der Weltordnung der Wallstreet unterordnen. Die Einsätze amerikanischer Soldaten hinterlassen Leichen, verbrannte Erde und Hoffnungslosigkeit. Ich kann nur hoffen, daß ihnen dies in der Ukraine nicht gelingt!
(Since World War II the US has left a trail of blood throughout the whole world. The US destabilizes countries and governments who refuse to bow to Wall Street. American troops leave behind bodies, scorched earth and hopelessness. I can only hope they don't succeed in the Ukraine!)
Putin's Anschluss of Crimea has reawakened the dreams of a German-Russian Axis, which harkens back to the short-lived National Bolschevist movement in the Weimar Republic:
"Nationalbolschewisten" wie Moeller van den Bruck und Ernst Niekisch glaubten, in der Oktoberrevolution eine antiwestliche Rückwendung zu russischen "völkischen" Wurzeln und damit ein Vorbild für die eigene "nationale Erhebung" erkennen zu können. Nur im fatalen Hitler-Stalin-Pakt 1939-41 flackerte diese Vision noch einmal kurzzeitig auf.
("National Bolschevists" like Moeller van den Bruck and Ernst Niekisch viewed the October Revolution as a an anti-Western return to the roots of the Russian Volk; it should serve as a model for a German "National Uprising". A faint glimmer of this returned briefly follwing the fateful Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939.)
Whatever transpires over the next weeks and months in the Ukraine, Putin can count on a sizeable Fifth Column in Germany.
There's a new axis of evil now: Russia-China-Iran-Syria-Cuba-Venezuela-North Korea. Nevertheless, the American international strategy (if there is any) seems to put the focus on China and the threat of islamist hegemony. Russia has to face these threats as well, same as India, making both of them potential allies of the USA. So when 24h before the invasion of Crimea began, the US Senate was briefed by the secret services that there are no signs of a Russian intervention, was that blatant incompetence or part of the game? If it is a big game, what comes next? You take Crimea, we take Syria? Cuba? Venezuela? If it is incompetence, is your country still in the best hands?
Posted by: koogleschreiber | March 22, 2014 at 12:48 AM
George Carlin gave to the low-lives of this country the right answer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YM3n2x7iSI
Posted by: Bert Rogers | May 24, 2015 at 10:50 PM