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01-02Apr12
Ukraine Svoboda Nationalist Nazi Party Echoes Hitler
Anti-Semitism takes the stage in Hungary Two directors, one theater and the rise of Nazi ideology in Eastern Europe.
Anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism are on the rise in Eastern Europe, under the guise of ultra-nationalism. A look at the forces behind it, and what the European Union is doing to reign it in.
This is the first story in a five-part series exploring the rise of the far-right in eastern Europe. In part one, the political battle over an historic theater highlights growing anti-Semitism in Hungary. Part two examines the growing popularity of Svoboda, a far-right party in Ukraine. Part three visits a popular Ukranian restaurant designed to ridicule Jews. In part four, the EU considers what it can do about far-right extremism in its domain, and part five takes a broader look at the problem across the region.
BUDAPEST, Hungary -- First went the director, then the prima donna.
A political tug-of-war over an historic theater in the Hungarian capital has reignited concerns about growing anti-Semitism in this Eastern European nation.
Budapest's picturesque New Theater has long been a popular mainstay among the local cultured and urbane, who tend to be disproportionately liberal and include many of the local Jewish community. But recently, a series of firings and resignations have left the popular theater in the hands of avowed anti-Semites, sparking protests and political violence.
The deterioration of the storied theater highlights an emerging trend of rising neo-Nazi sentiment in parts of Eastern Europe. Cloaked in nationalism, the ideology has gained new traction amid Europe's economic crisis, which far-right politicians have sought to blame on Jews and other ethnic minorities such as the Roma. Those ideas are particularly disturbing to many here, in a country where the second highest number of Jews in Europe were murdered during World War II, and from where the highest number of Roma were transported to Nazi death camps.
Hungary's small Jewish community was nearly eliminated during World War II. Since the beginning of the year, Jews -- along with other national minorities -- have once again been excluded from the Hungarian constitution's definition of the "Hungarian people." New research from Central European University shows that the number of Hungarians with anti-Semitic views has risen from 14 percent to 24 percent since 2006.
"Ever since the [euro zone debt] crisis in 2009, they've been asking, who's responsible for the crisis? Banks and bankers. And who are they? Jews," said Robert Frohlich, the chief rabbi at Budapest's central Dohany Street Synagogue.
Frohlich was referring to Jobbik, a vocal, neo-fascist political party that he says blames Hungary's Jewish community in messages that are both "encoded and direct." Jobbik is the most popular far-right party in Europe today. It is opposed to big banks and the European Union, and has gained popularity with vehement attacks on the country's Roma minority. About one-quarter of Hungarian voters currently support Jobbik, making it the second most popular party in Hungary.
The party has been growing in the polls ever since Viktor Orbán's Fidesz won office two years ago. Fidesz, which has a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament, has changed the political climate in the country, perhaps irrevocably. It passed the new constitution emphasizing Hungarian ethnic identity. Meanwhile, the conservative party has fought with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union over political changes perceived as anti-democratic elsewhere on the continent. And it has failed to improve the Hungarian economic situation, which remains dire -- fostering the growth of Jobbik, some opponents assert.
At the New Theater, though, former and current employees and some theater patrons say that the shift toward anti-Semitism has been a combination of the subtle and overt messages from the conservative parties.
For a decade, Istvan Marta, a 60-year old Hungarian composer, ran the New Theater, staging adaptations of Western European classics, from Shakespeare to Schiller.
But earlier this year, he was forced to step down after his contract wasn't renewed in November by the Budapest City Council, which is dominated by the ruling party, Fidesz. The city council, as the owner of the theater, has been required since the end of the communist era to choose directors for its theaters for four-year tenures. In the past, whenever a director proved to be successful at the job, the contract extension has been automatic.
New applicants for the job were usually only considered if the theater was either in deep debt or if the council was dissatisfied with the artistic performance of the theater.
In Marta's case neither of the scenarios occurred -- the theater was doing well, both financially and artistically.
Even so, a well-known former politician and playwright, Istvan Csurka, was initially appointed artistic director at the theater last November. Csurka was ardently pro-Jobbik.
But Csurka never took up his job at the New Theater. He was forced to retract his nomination after he wrote a rant against Hungarian-American financier George Soros saying that Soros' projects in Hungary "only serve to keep a well defined section of the Jewish community in power."
Without a contract extension, Marta then stepped down in February, even though an independent panel set up to assess the situation recommended to the mayor that he stay.
Budapest's mayor replaced him with Gyorgy Dorner, a dramatist notorious for his anti-Semitic views and an outspoken campaigner for Jobbik. The appointment has sparked outrage in the arts scene, and among the Jewish community and other left-leaning Hungarians.
The mayor, István Tarlós, didn't respond to GlobalPost's requests for comment. But last month, he told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,"I won't let the New Theater become a stage for far right or anti-Semitic forces in Hungary."
At the New Theater, the change has been marked. Actors, theatergoers and sponsors have since walked away from the once popular theater -- as well as its popular prima donna, Lia Pokorni.
"Leaving Budapest's New Theater was a strong setback for me but I just couldn't stay," said Pokorni, who is of Jewish heritage. "[I] could not work with a director who is so strongly associated with radical right-wing theories and emotions."
Since January, a number of theater personnel have lost their jobs, as the new management - in agreement with the owner, the Budapest City Council did not extend their contracts. Several of those let go are of Jewish origin while others refuse to disclose their religious or ethnic background.
Others left because they believed they would be targeted next, staff insiders say. One, who asked that that his name not be published because of ongoing contract negotiations, said he worries about his job because he believes that his religion now plays a role in the new director's employment decisions.
This employee said that Dorner told him that from now on, the theater would only employ people who "fear and believe in God."
"It was never really a question of whether I believed in God or not," the man said of the exchange. "Rather, I think he just wanted to hint at my Jewish origins, which I did not want to discuss at all."
The changes have also sparked political violence.
Clashes outside the theater in early February pitted neo-Nazis against liberal demonstrators in which dozens were injured. Hungary's far right, which overwhelmingly supports the theater's new management, has fought against the growing anti-government protest movement in the central European country -- and Budapest's cultural scene -- since the beginning of the year.
"I have no doubt about the type of plays the new director will put on the stage," said Katalin Nemeth, a pensioner who has been a season ticketholder at the New Theater for years, but has not bought a ticket this month.
Dorner, who once was the voice of Bruce Willis and Eddy Murphy in many Hungarian movies, calls himself a "radical nationalist," and says he wants foreign influences off the stage.
"I want to see Hungarian plays being brought onto the stage for Hungarian crowds to cheer," Dorner said in an interview with a local paper.
He has publicly said his vision for the New Theater involves "cutting in on the leftist and Jewish dominated populated theater scene."
Dorner also plans to stage a play by Csurka, the man initially appointed to run the theater's artistic program, who has since died. The play, "The Sixth Coffin," deals with Trianon, the treaty agreed after World War One that left Hungary with just one-third of its former territory.
It is a subject that infuriates Hungary's neighbors, Slovakia, Romania, the Ukraine and Serbia because they fear Hungarian territorial expansion due to the large Hungarian minorities still living in their countries.
But Dorner has few qualms about raising the subject or doing more to provoke. Recently, he promised to rename the theater "Hatorszag" (Hinterland), a concept, critics say, invokes Hungarian claims on its neighbors' territory. Budapest's mayor vetoed the suggestion, but the idea lingers.
Dorner also fired the theater's lead actor Balazs Galko. While Galko had been silent on political issues, he has been a regular at anti-government demonstrations. These days, Galko recounts how, after he was fired, he was told rather amiably by Dorner that he should not expect to get a job in the Budapest cultural scene in the future.
Dorner's actions outraged Galko, he says. In January, Dorner took to the stage at a demonstration held by Jobbik, and stood next to the party's leader, Gabor Vona, as party members torched a European Union flag.
"This is our message to the European Union if it does indeed want to colonize us: [EU Commission President Manual] Barroso thinks we are idiots, and he treats us like that too -- and we won't take it," Vona said at the event.
"It made me feel uneasy when I saw Dorner was present at the burning of the European flag," said Galko. "And I wanted to keep my job but I could not just overlook these disturbing changes."
Charles McPhedran contributed to this story from Budapest.
[Source: Ani Horvath, GlobalPost, Boston, 02Apr12]
Ukraine's nationalist party embraces Nazi ideology. Meet Svoboda, an up-and-coming party in Ukraine. It's nationalist, pro-Nazi, and poised for the parliament.
L'VIV, Ukraine -- In this great city of western Ukraine, the worst of the European experience is creeping back into democratic politics.
In L'viv, it comes under the guise of Svoboda, a party calling for a Ukraine that is "one race, one nation, one Fatherland." Originally known as the Social-National Party, it is rooted in Nazi collaboration.
This wasn't supposed to happen. In 2004, following a disputed national election, the Orange Revolution, a peaceful campaign of protest, swept a coalition of moderate nationalist politicians into power. They quickly fell out among themselves. A blizzard of allegations of corruption swirled around them. One of the original leaders of the Orange Revolution, Yulia Tymoshenko, is in prison, convicted of "abuse of office," although rights groups say her incarceration is politically motivated.
From journalists, cab drivers and young entrepreneurs, to peasant women who run market stalls to supplement their state pension by selling homemade cheese and pickles, everyone says the same thing: the politicians of all parties are only in it for themselves, grabbing every penny they can. Meanwhile, Svoboda has grown in popularity. Young people are drawn to the nationalist rhetoric, and older supporters are more used to life under the kind of authoritarian views it holds.
Svoboda is now the largest party on L'viv city council and in the regional council. It has taken power in other major urban centers of western Ukraine, like Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk. Come this October, when the country holds elections, Svoboda is expected to make the jump to the next level and win seats in the Verkhovna Rada, the national parliament, for the first time.
Besides disappointment with the main democratic parties and endemic corruption around the country, Svoboda's rise underscores a swell of anti-Semitism in a part of the world where the Holocaust was at its fiercest and there are virtually no Jews left. It is a symptom of an ultra-nationalism all along the eastern borders of Europe. This extreme form of racially based nationalism links Soviet Communism and Jewishness together. The patriotic fight against the former leads to Nazi-glorification and an excusing of local fighters roles in helping to murder Jews during the Holocaust.
Svoboda's success so far has been built on a skilled public-relations campaign, complete with videos re-enacting Nazi propaganda tropes like torchlight parades and speeches that echo Hitler. Svoboda also honors Ukraine veterans who fought with the Nazis in a unit known as the Waffen SS-Galicia against the Soviet Army and the threat of what they refer to as "Jew Communism."
They deal in gesture politics, changing the name of Peace Street, in an outlying district of L'viv to Nachtigall Street, in honor of a Ukrainian group that was implicated in a massacre of the city's Jews after the Nazis arrived in June and July 1941. Svoboda's reason: "Peace Street is a holdover from Soviet stereotypes." Their political demonstrations frequently turn violent. Last September in Uman, Hasidic Jews on annual pilgrimage were confronted by Svoboda activists. The two groups were separated by police. The Svoboda contingent then attacked the cops. Dozens were arrested.
Last month, German historian Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, was forced to cancel lectures around Ukraine after receiving calls from people threatening to harm him, as well as being followed by hundreds of Svoboda supporters wherever he went. His crime: lecturing on Stepan Bandera, leader of an ultra-nationalist group during World War II, a fascist responsible for many atrocities against non-ethnic Ukrainians. For Svoboda, Bandera is a hero.
"We consider tolerance a crime"
The person organizing the demonstrations and making the firebrand speeches is Yuri Michalchyshyn. At 29, he is barely old enough to remember the bad old days when Ukraine was under Soviet rule. He speaks a romantic nationalist language rarely spoken by mainstream western politicians. "A nation is an organic thing, historically defined. A wave of passionate energy which unites past, present and future generations," Michalchyshn said, seated in the office of Iryna Sekh, his party's leader at the regional council. "The Ukrainian nation is the current territory of the Ukraine reinforced by language and recent history of social and national struggle."
Svoboda's racial theorizing is built on sand, since most people who live in the region have mixed blood. "Ethnically, Ukraine doesn't exist," according to Ukrainian historian Andriy Kozitzky. The western part of the country nestled up against Poland and Hungary is a mix of many groups: Russian, Ukrainians, Armenians. That's irrelevant to Svoboda followers. Mychalchyshyn said: "We are against diversity." In his writings, he says, "We consider tolerance a crime."
The young ideologue promises a parliament composed of Ukrainians voted for by Ukrainians. Minorities will be given seats based on their proportion of the population. But they won't be able to vote. His supporters also like his promise to get Ukraine's nuclear weapons back. When the Soviet Union collapsed the nuclear weapons based in Ukraine were returned to Russia or were decommissioned. "It's a mentality," said Mridula Ghosh, a sociologist who works for the East European Development Institute in Kiev. "Svoboda is anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic."
Ukraine's nationalist past and present
It would be comforting to write Svoboda off as a morbid symptom of a country moving away from 70 years of the bloodiest conflicts in European history and Yuri Michalchyshyn as a young loudmouth. That is difficult to do. The party speaks directly to its constituents' fears about Russia and its anger about corruption in the national government. Svoboda has also tapped into fervent anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine, which persists even among those who don't agree with Nazi ideology. During World War II, Ukraine was overrun by the Soviets as they pushed into Europe. Amid that turmoil, Bandera emerged as a controversial figure to lead a violent Ukrainian independence fight against the Soviets.
In 1943, the Nazis established a Ukrainian division of their feared SS, known as the Waffen SS-Galicia, as the western part of the country was known as the time. Bandera's men first collaborated with the Nazis against the Soviets, and then later waged a sporadic guerilla war against the USSR. But his group also launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing in western Ukraine against Polish villagers, beginning in 1943. Priests were beheaded and crucified, men were disemboweled, women gang-raped. Families were locked into wooden barns and the buildings set on fire.
The terror worked. The area was ethnically cleansed as Poles fled the region. Cementing his hero status for Svoboda adherents, Bandera was later assassinated by the KGB. In 2010, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko named Bandera a hero of the Ukraine. A year later, his successor Viktor Yanukovych, who is perceived to have close ties to the Kremlin, revoked the honor, underscoring the concern many Ukranians have about Russian interference in their government.
Even for nationalists who don't agree with Nazi ideology, Bandera remains an inspiration.
Historians of World War II say the lines between the Waffen SS-Galicia and the various partisan groups associated with Bandera are blurred, and that all groups can be implicated in the massacres.
Not everyone in L'viv buys the Svoboda line. Last May, at Victory Day celebrations marking the defeat of the Nazis, a near riot broke out when Sekh, the Svoboda regional leader, and a group of supporters turned up. Police had to separate Sekh and her young acolytes from those who had turned up to simply mark the defeat of the Nazis. "We were afraid there would be Red flags. We were protecting our history and culture." There was much pushing, shoving and fist-fighting with the police in the middle. With a touch of the melodramatic, Sekh says she spent the next few months carrying her pajamas and toothrush with her everywhere because she expected to be arrested for instigating a riot. Charges were never filed against her.
Nationalism still appeals to Ukranians such as Myroslav Marynovych, a 63-year-old vice-rector at the Greek Catholic University. After World War II, Marynovych spent years in a Soviet gulag for demanding the right to discuss Ukranian national history. There, he met several men who had fought with Bandera's group and the Waffen-SS Galicia. He said that he doesn't agree with nationalist extremism, but that in the circumstances of World War II he can't condemn it completely.
"I defend their patriotism, but not their methods," he said. Meanwhile, he tries to influence debate via his position at the university, taking part in acts of reconciliation with the tiny Jewish community that remains in L'viv and, as in his dissident days, writing letters to the editor of Svoboda-supporting newspapers. Most recently, he challenged an article they published written by a Holocaust denier.
Long time coming
At the L'viv headquarters of Viktor Yanukovych's ruling "Party of Regions," they acknowledge their policies are a hard sell to the voters.
The local deputy leader Laura Arzumanivna Arzumanyan, of Armenian heritage, is philosophical. It's all part of the scientific processes of history. "The fact that Svoboda appeared is something that had to happen," Arzumanyan said.
"Let me ask you, how old is America?" she answers her own question, "200 years old. You are a very old country. We are only 20 years old. You had Ku Klux Klan. You passed through that time. This is something we must go through."
[Source: Michael Goldfarb, GlobalPost, Boston, 02Apr12]
How about some anti-Semitism with that dish? Diners are encouraged to haggle for their meal at this Ukrainian eatery. Yep, it's that offensive.
L'VIV, Ukraine -- L'viv survived more or less intact the worst of the 20th century -- war, genocide and ethnic cleansing.
What didn't survive was the city's cosmopolitan social history, which can be read on the street signs fanning out from Rynok Square, the medieval center: Russia Street, Armenian Street, Old Hebrew's Street, Serb Street. At the start of World War II L'viv was around 55 percent Polish, a little over 30 percent Jewish and around 12 percent Ukrainian.
By the end of the war, the Poles were chased away, and 99 percent of the Jewish population of the city and surrounding countryside had been murdered. Today the city is around 90 percent Ukrainian.
Most of the money for post-Soviet renovation seems to have gone into restoring the interiors of Lviv's magnificent Baroque churches. The ceilings are covered with brightly colored religious frescoes. Their gold and silver treasures are polished and luminous. On Sundays, houses of worship are packed. Loudspeakers carry the sound of service to the crowds spilling out onto the pavement.
L'viv is a very young city, home to several universities. The town's cafes -- it seems like there are more per square mile than in Vienna or Paris -- are a lot more affordable and do a thriving student business. There are music clubs and plenty of places for a cheap drink, and dozens of restaurants to eat in.
As nationalist fervor steeped in anti-Semitism resurfaces, there appears to be little memory of the past, or perhaps for some, a desire to rewrite it.
"L'viv: the last city in Europe," said Yurij Nazaruk, with a laugh. "That would look good on a t-shirt."
Just 31, Nazaruk, is a marketing savant who came up with the idea of using nationalist mythology to provide themes for a chain of 15 restaurants around the city.
Just across from City Hall in Rynok Square is his restaurant Kryivka, which means "hiding place" in Ukrainian. Knock on the door and a burly man in a partisan uniform opens it. Say the password, "Glory to Ukraine," and you are escorted past walls made of logs, downstairs into a re-creation of a bunker used by partisan fighters allied to Stepan Bandera, a nationalist hero, during their ethnic-cleansing campaign.
Bandera is the hero-figure of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda, the largest political party on L'viv city council. He is a controversial figure because of his partisans' links to the Nazis and also because of their sadistic ethnic-cleansing campaign against the area's Polish population. This restaurant pays tribute to Bandera and his men. "For a long time you could not talk about them," he said. "It was a classical form of masochism, to beat yourself up with the past. These men were heroes. They were fighting for an independent Ukraine."
Inserted into one of the bunker's walls is a shooting range where diners can fire a pellet rifle at targets with the faces of Lenin and Stalin.
The restaurants are popular, he said, for the gimmicks, not the food. "Our policy is to educate the society," Nazaruk said. "We try to find for each of our restaurants some theme, something they may be aware of in their history."
Nazaruk has also opened another, more controversial restaurant named At the Golden Rose. It's adjacent to the site of what had been L'viv's Golden Rose synagogue, a 350-year-old house of worship that was destroyed by the Nazis.
At the restaurant, patrons are given hats with sidecurls intended to mimic those worn by Orthodox Jewish men. There are no prices on the menu. Diners must haggle with the waiter over how much to pay.
Asked if he understands why this is offensive, especially since almost all of L'viv's Jewish residents were murdered, Nazaruk shrugs.
"More Ukrainians died in the war than Jews," he said. "Bargaining over prices? It's the truth. But you must make it positive. We're not just dealing in anti-Semitic stereotypes."
He added, "When Ukrainians come to this restaurant, they see pictures drawn by Bruno Schulz and they read about Joseph Roth. [Both Jewish, Schulz was a writer and artist, and Roth a journalist and author]. This is very positive."
"It is an insult for every Jew," said Betty Rechister, the English-speaking member of a leading family in the city's tiny Jewish community. "Jews do not go there."
Does the restaurant make her angry? "Not angry. I'm disgusted." Then she adds, "There are many worse things."
Like what?
"Svoboda," she said, with a bitter laugh.
[Source: Michael Goldfarb, GlobalPost, Boston, 02Apr12]
The EU takes on extremism. Can it win? The European Union has some clout, but it can't change public opinion.
LONDON, UK -- Twenty-two years ago, the world witnessed a jail-break the likes of which it had never seen before.
The Berlin Wall came down, and through that opening rushed whole nations imprisoned by Soviet hegemony. The Soviet Union disintegrated, but Russia didn't.
These newly escaped nations had one thought: getting protection from the big bad bear to the east.
To the west were two organizations that offered the prospect of protective alliances, NATO and the European Union. Initially, both had doubts about offering membership. For the EU, there were concerns that these countries, after decades of Communist rule, were not ready economically or in terms of democratic practice to join. But generous voices pointed out that the best way to promote democratic stability was through EU membership.
Ten former Soviet bloc countries are now members of the EU, with an eleventh, Croatia, about to join.
Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament says, "I don't know any other experiment in human history so advanced in terms of political integration and democracy."
But now the old doubts have resurfaced.
Some governments in eastern Europe are ignoring the human rights and democratic commitments their nations signed up for when they joined the EU.
Xenophobia and minority discrimination, often mixed with a right-wing authoritarianism that has echoes of 1930's-style fascism, are becoming mainstream. The clearest case is in Hungary, where a new constitution which came into effect on the first day of 2012 is setting off alarm bells.
Schulz says, "The European Parliament is seriously concerned about Hungary with regard to the exercise of democracy, the rule of law, the protection of human and social rights, the system of checks and balances, and equality and non-discrimination."
Following its landslide victory in 2010 elections, Fidesz, Hungary's ruling party, effectively re-wrote the country's constitution, removing many of the checks and balances on executive power essential to democracy. The party severely curtailed judicial independence. Impartial election commissioners, who were supposed to oversee free and fair elections, were replaced by Fidesz members.
The same thing happened with the Central Bank.
Religious freedom has been circumscribed, as more than 300 faiths, including those of Seventh Day Adventists, Methodists, Unitarians, as well as a number of Islamic mosques, and Hindu temples lost their legal status.
They can re-apply, but the new constitution says they must have been active in Hungary for at least 20 years. Most of these faiths have not.
The EU has leverage in the situation. Back in 1993, its members agreed the "Copenhagen Criteria." Hungary and the other EU aspirants had to show their governments had "the rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy … " before they could join. They also committed to adhering to the Copenhagen rules as members. These are legally binding commitments.
The European Commission, the EU's administrative wing, has decided Hungary is in breach of them, and has instituted legal proceedings over several provisions of the new constitution. One particular issue on which Hungary's government is being challenged relates to judicial independence. The constitution mandates a retirement age for judges of 62, down from 70. This would mean the forced retirement of 274 judges.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban would have the right to appoint their successors. Clearly, it is meant to clear away judges who might rule against the radical constitutional changes in test cases.
So the EU plans to bring an age-discrimination case in the European Court of Justice.
Beyond legal proceedings, the EU has another big stick: money. Hungary is desperately trying to negotiate a loan from the IMF for 20 billion euros ($26.5 billion) to help finance its sovereign debt. The IMF is refusing to discuss the loans until the EU's questions about its constitution are addressed. Hungary may have one of the more visible problems, but populist extremism based in xenophobia, and Nazi nostalgia is rife in the EU's former eastern-bloc countries.
Recently in Riga, Latvia, an estimated 1,500 people marched in honor of the Waffen SS, and were watched by several thousand supporters. A small number of non-Latvian Jews including Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, wore concentration camp stripes and stood in protest. There were also several hundred counter-demonstrators from Latvia's Russian minority. The march had initially been banned by the city council but the ban was overturned in court.
Joel Rubinfeld, co-President of the European Jewish Parliament, bemoaned Brussels' unwillingness to intervene. "It's got to be in contradiction to EU rules to European legislation."
The EU could do something about it.
When countries join the EU they sign its basic treaty. In some ways the treaty is like the US Constitution. Article 2 commits all member states to respecting the diversity of their citizens, human rights and democratic practice. Article 7 states the ways in which member countries can be punished if they breach those commitments. But it takes one-third of member states agreeing to bring action against another member for article 7 to be invoked. The political reality is that there is no appetite for bringing action against Latvia for its honoring of ex-Nazis. One-third of the member states couldn't be lined up to do it.
The case of Hungary's constitution is so egregious it could not be ignored. Hence the legal case.
British MP Denis MacShane says, "The EU Commission does issue statements, but no more. Clearly Latvian politicians who endorse or excuse these Nazi commemorations should not be allowed to take part in EU events."
But MacShane, a former minister for Europe in Tony Blair's government, knows these Latvian politicians take part fully in the EU. The European Parliament is a freely elected body and it is full of politicians with extreme views.
Among them, MacShane, points out, the British National Party's Nick Griffin, and Krisztina Moravi of Hungary's Jobbik, who tried to wear the uniform of the Hungarian Guard, a fascist group of the 1930's, into the Parliament building.
Benjamin Ward, of Human Rights Watch, adds this criticism: "What's really missing at EU level is engagement as a group, with enough countries demanding action against the xenophobes."
The EU claims a lack of authority to act. The spokesman for the Commission's Vice-President,Viviane Reding, says that issues like Waffen SS marches and other xenophobic displays, which seem to violate the Copenhagen criteria "fall outside of EU law or are national competences."
The EU's lack of involvement in individual countries may be down to two connected facts. First, says Human Rights Watch's Ward, is that rather than stand up to the extreme views of the BNP and Jobbik, mainstream conservative politicians have appropriated them. Adds Ward, "The response of mainstream political parties has been to assimilate these intolerant views by watering down the way they express them. This has the effect of mainstreaming ideas about minorities."
Second, says Ward, "There is concern in Brussels that the EU is not a popular institution in many countries."
Euro-skepticism runs deep in national conservative politics around the continent. Britain's Conservative MEP's have formed a caucus with ultra-nationalist parties from Poland and the Baltics including parties that endorse the Waffen-SS memorial marches. Their bond is a deep-seated antipathy to Brussels.
The EU represents a unique experiment in history. It's greatest success has been in helping countries make the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Not just since the fall of the Wall, but going back to the 1970s when Spain, Greece and Portugal all shed dictators and emerged as modern democracies, in large part by adhering to EU rules and receiving EU funds to help re-build infrastructure.
European Parliament president Martin Schulz says, that the same process is now at work in the Commission's dealings with Hungary. "The European Union will continue to exert a major force for democratic and economic change in Eastern Europe."
The question that hangs over Schulz and other pro-Europeans is, What if the democratic will of many in the eastern borderlands is racist and xenophobic? What can be done then?
[Source: Michael Goldfarb, GlobalPost, 02Apr12]
Eastern Europe's Hitler nostalgia Where is all this pro-Nazi sentiment coming from? The answer lies partly in history.
WARSAW, Poland -- In the Baltic States they celebrate their liberation from the Soviet Union in the middle of March.
Winter's worst lies grey on the streets, but that doesn't stop people in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, and Riga, capital of Latvia, from marching solemnly to honor the heroes who fought vainly to keep the Soviet Union at bay.
Among those who march are groups who honor those who fell wearing the uniform of the Waffen SS, the military arm of the notorious Nazi paramilitary unit. These SS veteran marches are not fringe events. Thousands march and thousands more turn out to cheer them on.
The parades' permits are applied for by members of the governing party in parliament. Marchers are defended by the government.
Latvia's president Andris Berzins reportedly praised the SS veterans on Latvian television last week, "It's crazy to think they're war criminals." Berzins added, "Many people lost their lives for the future of Latvia. I don't see any basis to deny this … it seems to me it's not acceptable to dishonor these people, before whom we should bow our heads," he said.
Read more: Anti-Semitism takes the stage in Hungary
It's not just on Independence Day that the Nazi past intrudes on public life.
In 2008, the Lithuanian parliament passed a law banning the display of Soviet and Nazi symbols.
In 2010, a local Lithuanian court ruled that Swastikas were exempt from that law because the twisted crosses were 'Lithuania's historical heritage rather than symbols of Nazi Germany." It would be easier to accept that explanation if the crowds didn't cheer the marchers on with cries of "Juden Raus!" or "Jews out!" as eyewitnesses have attested.
The official tolerance for marches honoring those who fought with the SS is part of a general trend in the Baltic States and all along the eastern borders of Europe: an embrace of a form of exclusionary nationalism that belongs to the 19th century, rather than the globalized 21st. It is the kind of nationalism that underpinned Hitler's theory of "One People and One Reich."
In recent weeks, Latvian voters rejected a proposition that Russian be acknowledged as the country's second official language. Around 27 percent of Latvia's population of 2 million is native Russian speaking. When the votes were counted Latvian president Berzins, said, "An overwhelming majority of Latvian citizens have expressed their unequivocal support for one of the core constitutional values, the national language."
Tensions between Lithuania and Poland are also high over language. Officially, government forms and all shop signs are supposed to be in the Lithuanian language. The largest minority in Lithuania is Polish, around 6.7 percent of the population. There are significant differences in the Polish language from Lithuanian.
Lithuania's Polish minority is demanding the right to spell their names on official documents in Polish rather than in the Lithuanian alphabet. They also want Polish shops to be able to put signs up in Polish. Quantifying the strength of the ultra-nationalists is almost impossible. Dovid Katz, an American scholar based in Vilnius who runs Defendinghistory.com, says it is sizeable.
"Ultra-nationalism is a real trend and it's being mainstreamed. Many of its supporters are young and they have dynamism." Katz adds, "It's hard too imagine that these EU and NATO countries are taking up this nativist ideology."
Certainly, the Baltic states' counterparts in the EU and NATO are deeply concerned. On March 11th, the American Embassy in Vilnius backed an alternative parade, "Celebrate Freedom" organised by leading human rights campaigners.
The Council of Europe published a report on the Nazi marches in Latvia in February. It said, "All attempts to commemorate persons who fought in the Waffen SS and collaborated with the Nazis, should be condemned. Any gathering or march legitimising in any way Nazism should be banned."
The report went on to state that the EC, "cannot but express concern about any attempt to justify fighting in the Waffen SS and collaborating with the Nazis, as it risks fuelling racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance … "
That is the key point. The endorsement of Nazi collaboration by some officials gives encouragement to racists and violent xenophobes. It discriminates against minorities and preserves an official place for the kind of racial hatred which has watered too much of the soil that lies in the land between the Baltic and the Black Sea.
The reason for this resurgence in ugly ultra-nationalism is an unanswered question of history: who was worse, Hitler or Stalin? This may seem like a question for the seminar room, but not here. In the countries between the Baltic and the Black Sea the question is deeply emotional. It has been rephrased this way: Does the blood of someone killed fighting the Soviet Union cry out louder from the grave than someone who died fighting with the Soviets against the Nazis? And what about those who were simply murdered without taking up arms?
n the eastern borderlands of Europe, those deep questions are the meat of politics. When a small group of Lithuania's Social Democrats signed an international declaration in January on the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee conference; when the Nazis initiated the "Final Solution" for Europe's Jews.
The declaration said it was wrong to diminish the Holocaust by saying it was "equal to, similar to or equivalent to" Soviet Communism's crimes. Lithuania's foreign minister, Audronius Azubalis, tore into them, "In essence, this sort of rhetoric by the Social Democrats repeats the Kremlin's ideological positions, that Stalin is good and Hitler bad. It isn't possible to find differences between Hitler and Stalin except in their moustaches (Hitler's was shorter)."
The statement gave offense, but Azubalis was simply playing on a view that is common in the area. Marek Chodakiewicz, Polish-born professor of history at Washington's Institute of World Politics tells an old Polish joke: "Whom do we fight first? Nazis or Communists? Let's fight the former first: business before pleasure."
The importance of history
Historians and sociologists around Europe's eastern edge all agree: the basic questions of politics in the area have been settled.
All the countries are ruled by right-of-center governments who buy into free-market economics.
"Ideology does not drive political discussion in Poland. Politicians, journalists, when they get into arguments, it's about history," says Jan Olaszek, a historian at Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, a government created, quasi-official institution that uses historical research for activist purposes -- bringing prosecutions for "Crimes against the Polish Nation."
That view is echoed down the road in L'viv Ukraine. "History is extremely politicised here," says Sofia Dyak, director of the Center for Urban History in Eastern Europe. "History is not an objective study. It is about serving an ideological agenda. It used to be Soviet. Now it is about a nationalist history. So it is used in a highly selective manner."
Things can get very twisted in this highly selective, political use of the historical record. Much of that twisting can be found in the persistence of anti-Semitism in the region. One hundred years ago, the area from the Baltic to the Black Sea was the heartland of world Jewry. Today there are virtually no Jews left. Between 90 and 95 percent were murdered in the Holocaust, those who survived left for Israel, the United States and other countries.
"Lack of Jews is not a problem for anti-Semites," says Polish sociologist Rafal Pankoswki. "Anti-Semites don't need Jews around to hate them." In Pankowski's view, anti-Semitic language, "is a kind of discourse of hostility not just to Jews but to the whole idea of diversity. It is a form of social protest to express anger about things."
Part of the new nationalist mythology is based on old canards. Jews are an international cabal that seek to rule the world. Soviet communism was part of that plot. Marx was Jewish, right? So was Trotsky, so were many of the early Bolsheviks. Even today in Poland, Pankowski points out, liberals have the epithet "zydokomuna,"which means, "Jew communist" thrown at them when they defend anything from gay rights to the European Union.
According to Pankowski, using the word Jew as a general term of abuse occurs most at soccer games. "At matches fans abuse each other by calling each other Jews. At one match last year in Przesow one set of fans unfurled a banner with the slogan 'Death to the Hook-Nosed Ones' written over a stereotyped picture of a Jewish man with a big nose wearing a yarmulkeh."
Were there any Jews in the stadium?
"No," says Pankowski. "This is how fans act everywhere."
In Lithuania, the explicit connection in many minds between Jews and the Soviet Union is demonstrated in the bizarre case of two elderly Holocaust survivors, Fania Branstovsky, a librarian at the Vilnius Yiddish library, and Dr. Rachel Margolis, a biologist. Both escaped from the Vilnius ghetto during the war. Both joined Soviet-backed partisans fighting the Nazis.
In 2008, when they were both in their late 80's, criminal investigators, in a glare of publicity announced they intended to arrest the pair for war crimes for their alleged participation in an action around a Lithuanian village in 1944 in which civilians were killed. No charges were brought, no apologies were given. Although both women, now in their 90's, are alive to receive such an apology. Whether the ultra-nationalists will continue to assert themselves into national life is unclear.
Dovid Katz notes, "Lithuanian Prime Minister Andreas Kubilius doesn't have a fascist bone in his body." But Katz notes, while many politicians disapprove of the ultra-nationalists they keep silent. "The politicians could easily condemn this. There is a total lack of moral courage."
What is odd about the entrenchment of ultra-nationalism is that the area was always one of shifting national boundaries and mixed populations. Every country in the region has been subject to repeated subjugation to larger countries' imperial designs. The Soviet Union was only the most recent. One hundred years ago none of these countries were independent either. They were subject to Russian, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian imperial hegemony.
Many historians and politicians in the region constantly remind western visitors that their newly liberated nations are only just being allowed to go through historical processes America and western Europe went through in the 18th and 19th century.
Professor Marek Chodakiewicz says, "The people of the Intermarium, the lands between the Black and Baltic Seas, were frozen in the Soviet totalitarian iceberg for 50 to 70 years. Now they are finally free to kvetch. And kvetch they do. It is a necessary, therapeutic, and cathartical exercise. Without coming to grips with the past, there is chaos." But it's a question of how you come to grips with the past.
To paraphrase George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat it."
[Source: Michael Goldfarb, GlobalPost, Boston, 01Apr12]
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