Paul Mason Strains on a Gnat, But Swallows A Camel - Swallowing A Camel (1 of 8)

Because Paul has tied himself to his idealist and subjectivist analysis of fascism, he was then led to exaggerate considerably the strength and potential of the fascists standing behind Trump. It is the straining at a gnat. Now let us look at how, by comparison, he swallows a camel when it comes to his description of events in Ukraine. In almost any other scenario you can imagine, other than the one we have, now, of Ukraine being invaded by Putin's Russia, Paul would have been describing the regime in Kyiv, the association of it with openly fascist (Neo-Nazi) paramilitaries, in similar tones to that he has used to describe the government in Hungary and elsewhere. Indeed, keep everything in Ukraine the same, but transport it geographically into Western Europe, and Paul would be apoplectic about the right-wing, nationalist nature of the government, and even more the fact that its nature enabled it to enter into an open alliance with Neo-Nazi paramilitaries, even providing them with their own section of the armed force, and so providing them with money and finance, and the latest NATO military hardware!!!

Even, in the worst cases of any alliance between conservatives and fascists, for example, with the Freedom Party in Austria, it has only amounted to a political alliance between political parties, not a military alliance with fascist paramilitaries. In any other conditions, Paul would see the military alliance between a hard line, right-wing nationalist government, such as that in Ukraine, as nothing short of a threat to European bourgeois democracy, with a sizeable Neo-Nazi paramilitary organisation as the tip of a spear aimed directly at its heart.  It is the necessary result of subjectivism and moralism, manifest as lesser-evilism.

Paul has Putin in his sites, as the main target, the Russian equivalent of Trump (and not without reason, because, as I have set out before, a large amount of the financing and other support for the nationalist movements behind Trump, Le Pen, and the Brexiters in Britain, does indeed emanate from Moscow).  In his stylised narrative of good and evil, of white hats and black hats, Putin is now the clear representative of the black hat, and so, absent any class analysis, and independent class perspective, Ukraine's government must be the white hats, even though, in any other scenario, he would have them as the black hats!

It is the classic result of lesser-evilism and “my enemy's enemy is my friend”. The concomitant of this is that, having grossly enlarged the actual significance of the fascists in the US, on January 6th, Paul is led to make the most ridiculous comments in support of the right-wing, corrupt Ukrainian government, and its association with the heavily armed Neo-Nazi thugs, and their attacks on the pro-Russian communities in Ukraine, in general, and in the Donestk and Lugansk Republics in particular.

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