Volodymyr Ishchenko: The man who would (NOT) be a socialist?

JOAQUIN FLORES  | OPEDS & COUNTER ANALYSIS

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Editor’s Note: Several days ago we ran a piece from a source we respect (Socialist Project), “Ukraine’s European Discourse Does Not Correspond to Reality”, by Volodymyr Ishchenko, billed as a sociologist “studying social protests in Ukraine.” Something in his analysis, or perhaps it was his approach to this complex but extremely important subject, that didn’t sit well with us. Maybe it was his coldness if not thinly veiled hostility toward the Ukrainian rebels (and the Kremlin arguments), or the way he presents a picture of a largely “normal” and functioning Kiev government in which the fascist murder of journalists and dissidents and thorough evisceration of civil society (shown to have had roots in the government itself) appear as marginal occurrences instead of issuing from the very core of what defines this Washington-backed regime.  Since we believe that airing diverse viewpoints is in the final analysis more conducive to approximating the truth than simply censoring anyone, we decided to seek a second opinion, so here’s a critique by a highly qualified observer of events in Eastern Europe who sees matters in a very different light.

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[dropcap]U[/dropcap]nderstanding V. Ishchenko’s motives are not easy.  Indeed psychology is a very complicated thing and not my field of expertise, and it can be difficult to discern modes and patterns in thinking within a given individual – that is – why they say what they say, what sort of operating assumptions they are using, etc.

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Other questions arise as to the degree that they possess either the cognitive capacity or the methodological tools to understand the world.  There are indeed countless thousands of pundits and ‘writers’, many with degrees from “good” institutions, who may possess a high verbal aptitude accompanied by a strong desire to be publicly visible, but who may not in fact have either a basic foundation in logical reasoning, or a very strong intuitive or meta-political understanding of social phenomena and mass politics.  Some of these are even sociologists.  One of them is V. Ishchenko.

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I have to admit, that a few times in reading this interview, I could not help but to take a few mental notes.  I had read Ishchenko’s musings a few times before – predictably on the pro-establishment publication ‘The Guardian’, so I wasn’t surprised at the resulting blindness and fence-sitting on the matter surrounding Ukraine.

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Remember, he’s the guy who said that ‘we’ (the royal, imperial, 1st world ‘champagne socialist’ ‘we’) ought to support ‘the progressive wings of both factions’ of Majdan – Maidan or anti-Maidan? The Ukraine situation requires more nuance | Volodymyr Ishchenko – the progressive europhile liberal socialists, and the progressive euroskeptic-europhile liberal socialists.

Knowing what I know about Ishchenko, I was not surprised that he behaved in the interview in this way.

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I have long ago come to a place in understanding that the term ‘socialist’ may apply to anyone who self identifies that way, whether they are a kind of Marxist, a fascist (National Socialist), a social-democrat (or left-liberal), an anarchist —really it objectively spans the whole political compass and only excludes those who don’t call themselves that.

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I say this to underscore how one might read ‘Ishchenko’s socialist perspectives’.  It should not be confused with those strands of socialism which support the struggles of the oppressed – who may explain the world in a language uncomfortable to 1st world academic ‘leftists —and those strands of socialism which reject the West’s narrative about progress.  There is a particular strand of first world socialism, which Ishchenko either believes in or panders to in his writing:  I don’t want to be divisive, and use the ‘brand name’ of this strand – because there are many good people who are not only well intentioned, but who do good work under this broad brand.  They were greatly involved in the factory occupation movement in Argentina.  But some groups within this broad brand are very different from this, and also have NGO’s and front groups which are sponsored by US corporate and intelligence oriented consortiums.  George Soros, Goldman Sachs, and similar have also donated generously to the front groups that these ‘socialists’ work with, for, and around.  This is where the Arab Spring and Color Revolution phenomenon comes from, and is only possible because of their existence.

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[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t any rate, Ishchenko’s is a form of radical liberalism which masquerades as a Marxian form of (even) revolutionary socialism.  But it is ultimately a radical, extreme liberalism – in the pejorative sense – in terms of its views of the individual and identity politics, which among other things privileges sex and gender ‘minorities’ over the ‘reactionary’ working class , even calling the parties of the latter ‘bourgeois’:  “The CPU – to the extent that you can call it a “leftist” party at all, which I have some doubts about – is a bourgeois and even conservative party with regard to cultural values such as feminism, gender equality or minority rights. They have published many conservative statements.”

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Ishchenko believes that these sex and gender struggles – which are certainly important – are, however, the final and most crucial determinant of ‘progressivism’ or even leftism, even when to the exclusion of working class and labor struggles.

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Ishchenko’s type can be defined by their aversion to actual-real struggles of ‘3rd world’ and 2nd world peoples. Mostly, these strike me as colonial fetishes, seeing ‘3rd world’ and ‘2nd world’ people as ‘not quite getting it’ – having justified  economic demands, but being too ignorant and oppressed not to see that they are only replacing one kind of “authoritarian leadership” for another. This is ‘radical liberal’ chic in the 19th century anarchist sense – so ‘radical’ that it pre-empts or short circuits an understanding of actual-real social processes, hierarchies, and how empirically leadership is observed and emerges in any human organization.

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As much as we may look to the stars and dream, we are still primates.  Even with the anarchists in Spain led by Durruti, or those in Ukraine led by Makhno, there has never been an actual revolutionary movement, one that had success in its grasp, which did not push forward – at least in an organic way – its own leadership.  But this is not a polemic against anarchist idealism – which has many fine points we all can learn from – but rather to point out some of the strains that Ishchehnko cynically exploits in service of Empire.  Ishchenko neither is, nor claims to be, an anarchist.

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But this is distinct both from any guesses about what he actually believes in, and is also unquestionably distinct from the very principled struggles of radical liberals and anarchists, both today and centuries ago.  Concretely, the point here is that Ishchenko’s problem with the Donbass rebels is expressed under the guise of their ‘machismo’ and – what is called in “polite” academic circles – ‘unreconstructed Stalinism’.  I suspect that his real problem with them is that it’s his job to be against them.  It’s congenitally built into his resume.

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[dropcap]Understanding Majdan[/dropcap] and Ukraine is not easy without a better-than-working knowledge not only of Post-Soviet space, but also of the modern and post-modern strategies and tactics employed by the US in areas where it is intent on developing certain assets.   These assets are ultimately deployed as destabilizing agents, and are by now I hope well known, as pro-Imperial projects in target areas.  I expect errors of this type from well intentioned radical liberals, or self-defined socialists who are weak on anti-imperialism.

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This notwithstanding, I am troubled by what I can only think are willful distortions in ‘sociologists’ like Ishchenko.  At least, if sociology is to be as much a positive science as it is a normative one.  But having normative expectations which have very little to no foundation in positive sociology – that is by examples, unless these are idealized and uncomfortable facts are omitted – then what we are left with are unreasonable expectations which condemn actual movements in favor of imaginary ones.  It is a kind of Nirvana fallacy which – perhaps in a well intentioned way – buttresses capitalism instead of challenging it.  Indeed, for those who have never had to work for a living, depended on dignified wages, health care, education, housing – it is easy to champion and prefer the illusory and overly academic conceptions of bourgeois ‘free expression’, to indulge in imagined quandaries over ‘civil society’ and ‘pluralism’,  instead of the things which concretely matter to most real people.

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In my view, Ishchenko is  a poor sociologist,  and, wittingly or not, an apologist for a murderous regime engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity, who does not understand what the term ‘structural’ (as he uses it in the piece) means. It is critical in correctly laying blame for the horrors and repressions happening in Ukraine today on the outrageously reactionary ‘liberal progressive Europhile’ Kiev Junta – both for the legal and historical records – to realize that the repressions are systemic. 

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But as a still happily employed lecturer at the Department of Sociology in the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine, who also makes apologies for that regime – he is part of that system.  If he were as genuinely or vocally an opponent of this obviously bloody regime as any socialist worth his salt ought to be, then he would be as dead as the ‘non-systemically connected’ murdered people whom he cynically refers to.  

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Chiefly, Ishchenko does what he and his colleagues have done in the cases of Libya, Syria, and Egypt – they have misrepresented the ideological and social foundations of those they support and are financially connected to, through the same US sponsored NGO’s and non profits.

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Ishchenko sits on both boards of LeftEast and Center for Labor and Social Research.  LeftEast has been promoting a number of scandalous lies revolving around the emergent protest movements in Bosnia and Macedonia.  These have been widely exposed as fronts for US imperialism – creating Western sponsored NGO’s and non-profits to sponsor and mentor astro-turf ‘grass roots’ movements which mirror the slogans and symbolism of particular strands of liberal-socialist-leftism which first world people of the same kind, might identify with.  It rarely strikes those in the West that these slogans and symbols are only what are projected to the 1st world audience, and these slogans, symbols and idea-packets are generally unpopular – either in Ukraine, Macedonia, or Bosnia (or anywhere east of Germany and south of Italy, on planet earth).

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Ishchenko—so far on a smaller scale— is a sort of Ukrainian version of Srjda Popovic of Serbia —a figure who received many millions of dollars from the US to create Otpor! and later CANVAS.  These were the fake-left protest movements organized against the socialist government of Milosevic, which the US later used to legitimize the bombing of Belgrade, an assault that lasted for 76 ceaseless days, killing thousands of innocents, and plunging the whole city into a state of terror. The now grown children from the period still suffer serious physical and psychological traumas from this event, a “gift” from Washington under Bill Clinton, the “genial progressive Democrat.”[learn_more caption=”READ MORE ON THE NATO BOMBING CAMPAIGN”] NATO’s bombing campaign involved 1,000 aircraft operating from air bases in Italy and Germany, and the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt stationed in the Adriatic Sea. At dusk, F/A-18 Hornets of the Spanish Air Force were the first NATO planes to bomb Belgrade and perform SEAD operations. BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from ships and submarines. The U.S. was the dominant member of the coalition against Yugoslavia, although all NATO members were involved. [/learn_more].  That is ‘Otpor!’ Popovic, and that is ‘support the progressive Majdan’ Ishchenko.  The blood is on their hands.  Interestingly, LeftEast did republish a decent article which exposed Popovic’s ‘fake left’ work for Empire with Otpor!  Exposed: Globally Renowned Activist Collaborated With Intelligence Firm Stratfor | LeftEast

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[dropcap]P[/dropcap]opovic went on to Libya, Egypt, and Syria to work his same magic with CANVAS – training organizers and propagandists in the art of ‘non-violent’ demonstrations which are only part of a technique which involves the violent overthrow and eventual bombing of sovereign states who the US wants to destabilize and overthrow.

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Significantly Popovic went to Ukraine to do the same, and create specifically the image for Ishchenko’s ‘liberal progressive Majdan’ for western audiences to be confused by.

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Conveniently, or perhaps I should say criminally, LeftEast altered the original article above, which in their version goes unauthored.  The original piece here:  Exposed: Globally Renowned Activist Collaborated With Intelligence Firm Stratfor

Significantly in the unedited version, correctly attributed to Carl Gibson and Steve Horn – who have done tremendous work on the subject, is this gem:

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<<Otpor! was so successful that it was ushered into Ukraine to help manufacture regime change there in 2004, using the template applied originally in Serbia with $65 million in cash from the U.S. government.

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“We trained them in how to set up an organization, how to open local chapters, how to create a ‘brand,’ how to create a logo, symbols, and key messages,” an Otpor! activist told U.S.-funded media outlet Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. “We trained them in how to identify the key weaknesses in society and what people’s most pressing problems were—what might be a motivating factor for people, and above all young people, to go to the ballot box and in this way shape their own destiny.”

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he overthrow of Milošević was accompanied by U.S.-funding for the creation of a robust media apparatus in Serbia, and Popovic’s wife worked at one of the U.S.-funded radio and TV outlets as a journalist and anchor B92 from 2004-2009.

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“By helping Radio B92 and linking it with a network of radio stations (ANEM), international assistance undermined the regime’s direct and indirect control over news and information,” a January 2004 policy paper released by USAID explained. “In Serbia, independent media supported by USAID and other international donors facilitated the regime change.”

Critics point out that what happened in Eastern Europe was regime change, not revolution in any real sense of the term.>>

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The entire article is quite elucidating in scope, and I recommend it to everyone.  So, we are not talking about a dynamic which Ishchenko is unfamiliar with, unless I misunderstand LeftEast’s editorial policy.  It is also one his organization has intentionally suppressed in explaining Ukraine.   I have also written, given public talks, and published numerous pieces on precisely this subject.  One very interesting thing about this tactic is that it plays upon a fallacy in psychology, false consensus. In trying to make the Majdan semi-supportable in the minds of western readers, here’s an example:

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It is true that in the initial stages – and the initial ones only – the Majdan supporters tended to promote a ‘progressive’ understanding of Europe.  But if the Communist Party of Ukraine is ‘bourgeois’ for being ‘conservative’ on social issues relating to gender and sex (by and large reflecting the social views of the vast majority of humans on earth east of Germany and south of Italy), then would Ishchenko ‘condemn’ the Majdan supporters for being defectively ‘bourgeois’ in their Progressivism?  No.  Progressive is one of these ‘code words’ that can work both ways.  Yes, socialists and communists in the West for a long time were able to ‘hide behind’ their own ‘fellow travellers’ and ‘liberal class’ – in the context of McCarthyism and beyond – under the banner ‘progressive’.  We are supposed to know what ‘progressive’ means when we know that the people are actually anarchists, socialists, and communists.

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But this rhetorical device, when used by Ishchenko, is not used in a principled way to protect radical leftist activists from persecution, but rather to paint a milieu as something which it is not – as something which ‘could even be radical leftist’ – when clearly by ‘progressive’ the term means something quite different—in practice its opposite.  In this context, ‘progressive’ is short-hand for being pro-EU, nothing more, and with no further substance.

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The actual ‘progressivism’ of the ‘liberal Majdan’ is quite bourgeois, racist in their Slavophobia expressed also as Russophobia (this can be a form of self-hate, which those in the US with experience in race-class theory will understand immediately), where they ‘other’ an integral component of their own being (leading to a denigrated and subservient self image, etc.) and moreover ‘reactionary’.  They are not only anti-communist, but anti-socialist – not just anti-socialist, but anti-social-democratic and moreover imbibed with numerous libertarian-ish mythologies about where the West’s wealth came from, and how they can have some too.

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What those in the West often don’t understand – and what Ishchenko most certainly panders to and exploits – is that in the post-communist world a city-dwelling college educated person can be fine with all form of life-style and identity politics within the realm of individualism, but also be horrendously elitist, pro-capitalist, anti-semitic, racist, and have nothing but self-shame and scorn for the slavic, cultural ‘village’ tendencies of the people they themselves come from.

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‘Progress’ for them is purely about European integration, not yet measuring up and still having to prove something; it is not about the rights of labor, equal distribution of the wealth, or any movement which the word ‘progressive’ has been used (properly) in the West as a shield for.

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One tactic, again, used by these Gene Sharp-educated and inspired agents of empire is in misrepresenting – through carefully selected photos and even faked leaflets – what is actually being promoted on the ground in places like Libya, Syria, Egypt and Ukraine, versus what is being presented to Western audiences.

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Certain statements which further confirm my sense that he should have no platform from any genuine ‘left’:

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Murders are just “problems with freedom of speech”?  And we are ‘enlightened’ with his ‘radical’ perspective that being a “controversial figure’ still does not justify that someone should kill him”.”  In his other writings, when ‘someone has killed someone’ in Syria, Libya, or Russia – these are used as final and damning evidence in support of ‘regime change’.  In Ukraine, these are but “problems with freedom of speech”.

He continues:

This is really beyond the pale in terms of intellectual dishonesty or incompetence.  Incompetence is not out of the question.  But neither is a motivation by self-interest and an unreasonable desire for recognition, one that perhaps reaches levels of sociopathy.

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He has just spoken of murders, murders which have been systemically condoned by being systemically ignored.  He has also mentioned the systemic de-facto banning of the Communist party (oh, but they are bourgeois).  There is also the Odessa massacre in which between 50 and 100 trade union and leftist activists were brutally murdered, while the state gendarmes – who were present –  systemically ignored that radical nationalist and neo-Nazi forces beat to death, raped, strangled, shot, and burnt to death these ‘anti-majdan’ activists.  I suppose these ‘anti-majdan’ activists are not the ‘progressive anti-majdan’ that Ishchenko says we ‘should support’ alongside the ‘progressive majdan’ (?!?!)

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here is also the 800 pound gorrilla in the room.  There is the systemic repression of ‘Ukrainians’ who live in the areas under the UAF occupation, and those being shelled by UAF forces in the Novorossyan areas.

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1 million have been displaced, 500,000 internally.  German intelligence reports over 50,000 dead.  I suppose it’s technically true that murdered people are no longer repressed. Perhaps they were only collateral damage, and weren’t repressed at all, before being killed.

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By focusing on ‘repression’ – which can conceivably range from “online bullying” or a gay bar being shut down, all the way to concentration camps and torture – we do not talk about the killings.  Thousands and thousands of killings, murders really.

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But to put forward honestly that the ‘progressive maijdan’ was brim-filled with the kind of self-hating racist Europhillic Slavophobia “othered” into Russophobia, which led directly to the murderous and Russophonic regime in Kiev today, is beyond the thinking of Ishchenko.  Or, possibly just beyond his job requirements.

— Joaquin Flores for The Greanville Post

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

[box] Special Associate Editor Joaquin Flores is a Mexican-American expat based in Belgrade. He is a full-time analyst and director at the Center for Syncretic Studies, a public geostrategic think-tank and consultancy firm, as well as the co-editor of Fort Russ news service. His expertise encompasses Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and he has a strong proficiency in Middle East affairs. Flores is particularly adept at analyzing ideology and the role of mass psychology, as well as the methods of the information war in the context of 4GW and New Media. He is a political scientist educated at California State University. In the US, he worked for a number of years as a labor union organizer, chief negotiator, and strategist for a major trade union federation. [/box]