From an internet discussion list
Anyone who had any doubt that the mass media (from CNBC to Fox, from CNN to public television) constitutes the organ of mass manipulation of capital, needs to seriously consider the coverage of events in Ukraine. They are “All In” from Fox to the Nation. The government in Kiev (or Kyiv) — even how you pronounce or spell the name of the capital city is politicized today — is presented as a democratic redoubt vainly struggling against the Stalino-fascist and thuggish Putin regime in Moscow, determined to crush a weak democracy in a valiant Ukraine. Meanwhile, not a word about the power of the oligarchs in Kiev, who prefer Exxon to Gazprom, and NATO to the Kremlin, in a geopolitical struggle between capitalist states and blocs. Not a word about Svoboda or the Right Sector, who control the Maidan in Kiev, and who are the lineal descendants of Stefan Bandera, and the fascists who sought an alliance with Nazi Germany in June 1941, and assisted in the mass murder of Jews, and who today wrap themselves in the mantle of “democracy” and Western values (weren’t they the same values that Hitler defended as his armies swept through Ukraine in 1941, killing Jews and “communists”?), even as they demand a racially pure Ukraine? But this is not just about the deceitful role of journalists and the mass media in the West. It’s really about the fact, which “progressives” cannot accept, that nationalism in all its ideological forms today is reactionary; that in the present epoch nationalism – like democracy – is the watch-word, the clarion call, of capitalism as it seeks to generate mass support for its underlying social and production relations. And beyond Ukraine, that clarion call evokes a response on the “left” as anyone who has watched Al Sharpton or Ariana Huffington over the past several weeks can attest: a call that seconds the efforts of the Obama administration to build popular support for a tough sanctions regime, and arms for Kiev. We may not be on the brink of war, nuclear or otherwise, in Ukraine, but we are certainly seeing a significant heightening of inter-imperialist tensions, even as the left seems to be only choosing sides over who is the real aggressor.
Mac Intosh
