9 Comments
User's avatar
Paul Saucer's avatar

Given the curious Ukrainian Judeo-Banderist movement, the strange support for the Kiev regime by anarchist elements (Makhno-Banderists?) & RHIC-EDOMesque wanna-be-assassins like Ryan Routh, makes the concept of a future ultra-left/progressive anti-Trump alignment with Azov Ukrainian ultra-nationalist/neo-nazi veterans, entirely plausible.

Likewise an old fashioned GLADIO 2.0 strategy of tension to unite the huddled Euro-masses against the enemy image of Mother Russia seems equally possible.

Excellent article. Food for thought and grounds for further research as elder anti-fascist US radio host Dave Emory would say.

Expand full comment
Kevin Batcho's avatar

Your comment about Dave Emory is super interesting. You won't be surprised then that my discussions of Italy's Strategy of Tension come from listening to Mae Brussell as a teenager on a local college radio station. I listen to Emory as well for a while.

The far left - right alignment is also thought provoking. I was researching philosopher Alexandre Kojeve for the background to these articles--it was he who popularized Hegel's End of History in the 20th century. Fukuyama includes a quote from Kojeve where he discusses "Robespierrian-Bonapartism." Kojeve also has a book on the various archetypes of authority--father, master, leader and judge. I was starting to get lost with all these ideas so I had to get back to the main article but I will try to develop them in the future.

And I have sketched out articles on the powerful polarity of the Judeo-Banderist phenomenon. It's like a toxic synergy. I've always been fascinated by the attraction of opposites. Zelensky and Azov is like a simulation of Churchill on an Iron Cross.

Expand full comment
Hussein Hopper's avatar

Looked at through the historical lens of Western European history this is a pretty reasonable article . However from a broader perspective things look rather different I think.

Western Europe is in terminal decline culturally, socially and economically. Its leaders are walking mental and moral zombies. It lectures the rest of the world on “values” but the words completely lack credibility and moral substance. They (the EU , Krauts, Poms and Frogs) resemble nothing so much as third rate kabuki actors in a largely empty provincial theatre.

Europe has no real power in world, unlike China, India, Russia and the US. As recent events show all too clearly it is now irrelevant on the world stage. Its fate will be decided capriciously by these powers, as they once did with their various colonies. What goes around comes around.

Expand full comment
Kevin Batcho's avatar

I was hinting at Europe's modest position in the world with the suggestion they would be better off integrating into the BRICS and Eurasia instead of trying to become a fourth great power. We'll know in ten years but I struggle to believe that Europe will indeed accomplish empire but they will at least give it a try for a few years. I do believe that as separate members of BRICS, some European nations could reverse their decline, particularly those in the east.

Expand full comment
Hussein Hopper's avatar

Eastern Europe, I agree. Western Europe is done for unless the current nonentities get kicked out, which is possible I suppose, but then I think the economic and social damage will be irreversible soon. Could see Eastern Europeans in BRICS, but struggle to see Britain, France or Germany joining due to the massive loss of face involved and not sure their former colonies in BRICS would let them join. Life is looking sad and lonely for them

Expand full comment
Kevin Batcho's avatar

Western European nations are like an alcoholic who has not yet hit rock bottom. If they changed tomorrow they may be able to make something of themselves but it is highly unlikely that they have any self-awareness of the state they are in and the trajectory they are on. They will need a century of humiliation to turn thing around.

Expand full comment
Feral Finster's avatar

Look at eurodemographics. How anyone can spark a military revival on a continent populated largely by geriatric metrosexuals is left unsaid. Even in their youth, europeans were and are the biggest wimps on the planet, guys who made Richard Simmons look like Rambo. Now, they are in their dotage.

And no, Virginia, Ukrainian demographics are no better, even before the war. If anything, they are even more dire. The plan ever always only was for the United States to fight WWIII, with europeans as grateful sidekicks and catamites.

Aurelien has an interesting theory that european politicians are trying to relive their fantasies of 1968. Not sure how that applies to eastern europe, but it's still intriguing.

Expand full comment
Tima Voievodin's avatar

This contrarians don't ever take Ukraines' will into account, or recognize that it also may have agency, assuming that music is set by Washington ot Brussel.

By that, they deny Ukraine it's own nation state or policy

Expand full comment