On Ukrainian "Far Right"
Mar. 30th, 2022 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skittishfoxPeople often miss one thing about "far right" movements in Ukraine by comparing them to either "nativist" or "nationalist" movements in the West.
Ukraine has been a colony of Russia until very recently. Russia tried to colonize Ukraine by banning or suppressing the local culture and language, and outright denying the locals the say in their affairs. Holodomor is just an extreme example of Russian colonialist policies, but in reality they continued until the very end of Soviet Union. The fact that some of that suppression and displacement was organic under colonial rule shouldn't distract us from the fact that these instances were the result of colonialism and did not come from organic development of a free Ukrainian society.
However, the Western observers often suffer from implicit racial bias. They come with pre-conceived notion that white people cannot possibly be victims of colonization, and therefore miss any parallels between Black liberation movements and similar movements in Ukraine. To them, any call to Ukrainians to unite as a nation doesn't invoke Afrikaa Bambataa, but, instead, summons the ghost of The Birth of a Nation, where the only possible cause white people can rally around is a colonialist one.
The West further denies agency to Ukrainians by not allowing any argument to the contrary. People are presumed guilty not based on their actual actions, but, instead, based on perceptions of their actions and any number of hypothetical actions they could do in the future. Ukrainians are judged not based on what they actually do; instead, they are judged based on what some observers think they could possibly do. What's worse, there is no opportunity to correct the misconception, as the same checks to correct implicit racial bias touted by the West are never applied in the first place - just because Ukrainians are white and are not worthy of second-guessing.
Hopefully, just like the first month of war started a deep self-revaluation of Western intelligence community, which got most of the things wrong, the same events should start a similar soul searching with regards to leanings and motivations of Ukrainian society as a whole, since the failure to see the obvious cultural parallels between Black liberation movements and Ukrainian nation-building couldn't be more glaring.
Ukraine has been a colony of Russia until very recently. Russia tried to colonize Ukraine by banning or suppressing the local culture and language, and outright denying the locals the say in their affairs. Holodomor is just an extreme example of Russian colonialist policies, but in reality they continued until the very end of Soviet Union. The fact that some of that suppression and displacement was organic under colonial rule shouldn't distract us from the fact that these instances were the result of colonialism and did not come from organic development of a free Ukrainian society.
However, the Western observers often suffer from implicit racial bias. They come with pre-conceived notion that white people cannot possibly be victims of colonization, and therefore miss any parallels between Black liberation movements and similar movements in Ukraine. To them, any call to Ukrainians to unite as a nation doesn't invoke Afrikaa Bambataa, but, instead, summons the ghost of The Birth of a Nation, where the only possible cause white people can rally around is a colonialist one.
The West further denies agency to Ukrainians by not allowing any argument to the contrary. People are presumed guilty not based on their actual actions, but, instead, based on perceptions of their actions and any number of hypothetical actions they could do in the future. Ukrainians are judged not based on what they actually do; instead, they are judged based on what some observers think they could possibly do. What's worse, there is no opportunity to correct the misconception, as the same checks to correct implicit racial bias touted by the West are never applied in the first place - just because Ukrainians are white and are not worthy of second-guessing.
Hopefully, just like the first month of war started a deep self-revaluation of Western intelligence community, which got most of the things wrong, the same events should start a similar soul searching with regards to leanings and motivations of Ukrainian society as a whole, since the failure to see the obvious cultural parallels between Black liberation movements and Ukrainian nation-building couldn't be more glaring.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-30 04:35 pm (UTC)я наводив цитату з фейсбуку басиста "пінк флойд" роджера вотерса - шпарить не гірше соловйова на орт.
в 2015 році він давав інтерв'ю "раша тудей" та кричав "крим наш".
no subject
Date: 2022-03-30 05:37 pm (UTC)Good point. When you tell them that your grandgrandfather was a slave, they hardly believe it.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-30 08:14 pm (UTC)RCA
Date: 2022-03-31 01:33 pm (UTC)