junge Welt: Jetzt am Kiosk!
Gegründet 1947 Mittwoch, 8. Mai 2024, Nr. 107
Die junge Welt wird von 2751 GenossInnen herausgegeben
junge Welt: Jetzt am Kiosk! junge Welt: Jetzt am Kiosk!
junge Welt: Jetzt am Kiosk!
Der Bandera-Komplex

Der Bandera-Komplex

Ändern Sie die bevorzugte Sprache unterhalb des Bildes. /// Please change your favourited language below the graphic at the top of this page.

  • Ukrainian fascism – history, function, networks

    Fascists function as NATO's secret weapon and whip for the fight it has been pushing down »to the last drop [of Ukrainian] blood«. Therefore, the political class and media establishment of the West glorify them as heroes and methodically conceal their murderous ideology. The international conference »The Bandera Complex« intends to contribute to the exposure of this mass manipulation: The political roots of the cult surrounding the Ukrainian fascist leader and Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, will be exposed, and facts will be presented to counter the dangerous distortion of history, particularly in Germany. The influence of the Banderites is highlighted, at the very least, as an obstacle to develop an understanding with Russia as the basis for a stable peace. Continuing from this, a critique will be presented of today's hegemonic anti-fascism, which has renounced its Marxist roots and finds itself blind, at best, to the fatal alliance of Western imperialism and the fascists it has heavily armed.

    The presentations of the event are available in German and English on the junge Welt YouTube channel.
    Info & Program:
    https://www.jungewelt.de/blogs/bandera_komplex/460275

  • · Programm

    Program Schedule & Info

    Attention! The event is sold out. You can follow the conference on October 29, 2023 via livestream (in English or German) at www.jungewelt.de.

    Program Schedule

    10.30 am
    Welcome: Dietmar Koschmieder (managing director Verlag 8. Mai / newspaper junge Welt)
    Introduction: Susann Witt-Stahl (Editor-in-chief Melodie & Rhythmus, free journalist)

    11.00 am
    Lecture: Moss Robeson
    Trident, Swastika, Eagle: The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Holocaust and the origins of the Bandera Lobby in the USA
    Questions and discussion

    12.00 pm
    Lecture: Russ Bellant
    »No armistice and no compromise with the Kremlin«: Banderites as instruments of the USA and NATO in the Cold War
    Questions and discussion

    13.00 pm Break

    13.45 pm
    Lecture: Moss Robeson
    Unmasking the Bandera Lobby: Investigating OUN-B and its role in the Ukraine conflict
    Questions and discussion

    15.15 pm Break

    15.45 pm
    Lecture: Jürgen Lloyd
    Uncompromising Enforcement of the Maximum Interests of Monopoly Capital: On the function of fascism in the Ukrainian war
    Questions and discussion

    17.00 pm Break

    17.15 pm
    Panel: Oleg Jasinsky, Jörg Kronauer, Russ Bellant, Arnold Schölzel
    Ukrainian Fascists and the Bandera Lobby – Agitators for the World War III?
    Moderation: Stefan Huth (Editor-in-chief junge Welt)

    19.00 pm End

    Overall Moderation: Sebastian Carlens (Publishing Director, Verlag 8. Mai / newspaper junge Welt), Susann Witt-Stahl (Editor-in-chief Melodie & Rhythmus, free journalist)

    The programme is subject to change.
    ________________
    Sunday 29.10.2023
    Start: 10.30 am (Entry: 10.00 am)
    End: 7.00 pm
    Place: Münzenbergsaal of the ND-Haus, Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, 10243 Berlin

    ______________

    By participating in the event, you agree to the possible publication of photographic material in which you can be seen.

    The conference will be held mainly in English with simultaneous German translation. The event will be broadcasted in both languages via livestream.

    _______
    The event is organised by the daily newspaper junge Welt and the culture magazine Melodie & Rhythmus. It is a major political and organisational challenge and involves high costs. Therefore, we are dependent on financial support. Donation account: Verlag 8. Mai GmbH, Berliner Sparkasse, IBAN: DE25 1005 0000 0190 7581 55, BIC: BELADEBEXXX, pay-ment reference: »Bandera-Komplex«.

    Donation via PayPal:
    https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=62Y8H5JYTHCGA

  • · Videos

    Conference Trailer

    Everything you need to know about the Bandera Conference in Berlin and the livestream on 29 October.

  • · Attendees

    Speakers

    Moss Robeson, Russ Bellant, Jürgen Lloyd
    Oleg Yasinsky, Jörg Kronauer, Arnold Schölzel

    Moss Robeson, born 1996 in Red Bank, New Jersey, is an independent researcher based in New York focused on Ukrainian fascism and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, DC. Publications (selection): Bandera’s Insurgency-in-Waiting: OUN-B and the »Capitulation Resistance Movement«, Part 1; Greenlighting the »Pantheon of Heroes« or: How USAID learned to stop worrying and love the Banderites (Bandera Lobby Blog, banderalobby.substack.com, 2022, 2023); The Azov Lobby, Part 1(Ukes, Kooks & Spooks, mossrobeson.medium.com, 2023); Cold War Campus 2.0: Victims of Communism & a CIA feeder school (Victims of Communism, vocinfo.substack.com, 2023); Banderization of Ukraine: How the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rewrites the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust – with the support of Washington (junge Welt, 2023); WAZ and the »Magic Circle«, a found footage film about the Bandera cult in the U.S. (Moss Robeson, youtube.com, 2023).

    Russ Bellant, born in Detroit in 1948, worked as a freelance writer and has researched varieties of U.S. fascism and Nazism, and rightist dominion theology groups across the U.S., attending meetings of the Aryan Nations, the World Anti-Communist League, emigre fascist networks and former Nazi collaborators in the U.S., and organizations allied with the military-industrial complex. He is active with solidarity groups fighting U.S. interventions in their countries. Publications (selection): Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party: Domestic fascist networks and their effect on U.S. cold war politics (South End Press, 1988); The Religious Right in Michigan Politics (Americans for Religious Liberty, 1996); Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s dirty little Ukraine secret (Foreign Policy In Focus, 2014).

    Jürgen Lloyd, born 1964 in Mönchengladbach, board member of the Marx Engels Foundation, is active in Marxist educational work, and for years has been working in particular on the concept of fascism and its consequences for anti-fascist strategy. Publications (selection): Fascism Starts Already in the Kitchen: On useful and harmful interpretations of the relationship between fascism and society (in: Susann Witt-Stahl/Michael Sommer (eds.): »Antifa Means Air Strike!«: Regression of a revolutionary movement, Laika 2014); Fascism on Its Way to Power (in: Lena Kreymann/Paul Rodermund (eds.): A World to Win: Marx, capitalism today and what we can do, Papyrossa 2018); Exported Fascism: How the export of capital also transports the content of power (junge Welt 2023).

    Oleg Yasinsky, born in Kiev 1967, Ukrainian Chilenean journalist, is collaborator of Latin American independent media such as Pressenza, Desinformemonos and others, researcher of indigenous and social movements in Latin America, producer of political documentaries in Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico and Chile, author of several publications and translator of texts by Eduardo Galeano, Luis Sepulveda, Jose Saramago, Subcomandante Marcos and others into Russian. He is a columnist for Russia Today‘s Spanish page and correspondent for Telesur in Russia.

    Jörg Kronauer, born in 1968, is a social scientist and journalist living in London. He works on neo-fascism and international politics, is editor of the online portal German Foreign Policy and publishes regularly in junge Welt.

    Arnold Schölzel, born in 1947, studied philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin and worked there in teaching and research in the history of philosophy until 1990. 1982 doctorate with a thesis on Karl Korsch. Editor of junge Welt since 1997, editor-in-chief from 2000 to 2016. Since 2019, responsible editor of the monthly magazine Rotfuchs, author on domestic and foreign policy issues in junge Welt and Unsere Zeit.

  • · Background

    Trident, Swastika, Eagle:

    Moss Robeson

    The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Holocaust and the origins of the Bandera Lobby in the USA

    The role of Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust is well documented. But in order to expose the powerful campaign to rewrite history and whitewash the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a deeper reflection is required.

    In the 1930s, the OUN evolved from an anti-Polish terrorist organization to a pro-Nazi fascist movement with strong connections to Germany and Italy. During World War II, the OUN split in two factions: Melnykites (OUN-M) and Banderites (OUN-B). Both collaborated with Nazi Germany and participated actively in the Holocaust.

    This lecture will trace this history and debunk powerful myths about the Ukrainian Nationalist movement, which were spun by followers of OUN leader Stepan Bandera after it became clear that Germany would lose the war and they needed new allies in the West to back their struggle against the Soviet Union. It will also touch on a little known history of the OUN in the United States during the Nazi era, which began over a decade before the Banderites got organized in North America.

  • · Background

    »No armistice and no compromise with the Kremlin«:

    Russ Bellant

    Banderites as instruments of the USA and NATO in the Cold War

    During the Cold War, the international Bandera Lobby became closely connected to the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) which led to unprecedented access in Washington and the White House during the 1980s. An important facet of this nexus was the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), a Banderite-led coalition of former Nazi collaborators that preached the »inevitability« of World War III. The WACL united these fascists with Nazis from Germany, death squads from Latin America, far-right regimes in Asia, and other Cold Warriors from around the world, all of whom were obsessed with eradicating communism.

    The lecture is primarily based on research for the 1988 published book »Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party«. For this study the author met key figures of the »fascist international« during the Cold War – such as an OUN-B delegation led by Slava Stetsko, wife of Stepan Bandera's deputy and member of the central committee of the ABN.

  • · Background

    Unmasking the Bandera Lobby:

    Moss Robeson

    Investigating OUN-B and its role in the Ukraine conflict

    Mostly it is assumed today that the Bandera wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) fizzled out many years ago. Some »experts« acknowledge that OUN-B still exists, but downplay its significance.

    This two-part lecture will start with an overview of the international OUN-B network and highlight its alarming connections, especially in the United States, but also in Germany and other western countries. (For example, over 20 years, leaders of the Bandera cult have been making inroads in the »belly of the beast« with policy conferences held in Washington and New York.) Since Ukraine became independent in 1991, OUN-B has tried to bridge the gap between the far-right and more mainstream political forces. OUN-B lost its virtual monopoly on the Bandera cult, however it has played an important part in the »Banderization« of the country since 2014, and arguably helped to provoke Russia’s invasion by sabotaging president Zelenskiy’s early efforts to make peace in 2019–20.

  • On the function of fascism in the Ukrainian war

    Fascism has repeatedly played an important role as a dangerous power factor in the history of Ukraine. This is true again today, if one considers the influence that fascists – armed with Western weapons – have on the current state leadership.

    What is the role of fascism in the current war in Ukraine? A qualified discussion of this question requires recognizing the functional connection between fascism and war and putting it into clear terms. Otherwise, the attempt to understand the developments remain a helpless effort and misconceptions will be the result.

    In an essay published in 1974 the Marxist political scientist Reinhard Opitz pointed out that monopoly capital exercises its power in fascist forms precisely when it decides to act »in the interest of the uncompromising enforcement of its maximum interests«, whose nature is such that they require the rigorous violent elimination of all resistance.

    The investigation of what constitutes the decisive maximum interests in this Ukrainian war and to what extent their uncompromising implementation makes it necessary for the imperialism of the »Wertewesten« to resort to fascism opens the perspective on the functional connection between fascism and war. Only based on the insights this analysis provides does it become possible to answer the following questions in a qualified manner: Is fascism merely an unpleasant biproduct of the present war? Or does it function as a power factor? And if so – what power? Who is the bearer and who ordered it?

    Large parts of the anti-fascist movement and the peace movement have lost sight of how to apply the analytical tools of the historical-materialistic theory of fascism or have completely abandoned them. Their self-inflicted helplessness leads to blind guesswork and has severe consequences. Thus, the refusal of Western politicians and journalists to recognize fascists as such – even if they stand in front of them wearing Nazi symbols – often remains unchallenged. And activists, who consider themselves to be on the left, and mobilize against the peace movement with a supposedly anti-fascist impetus, attach themselves to a united front with NATO propagandists and use a history-falsifying image of »Querfront« to polemicize against politically valid positions. On the other hand, some fellow activists refrain from critically assessing the objective interests expressed in the theory and practice of supposed »friends of peace«. They are content with the verbal anti-war-declarations of these »friends« and fail to recognize the demagogy of the real Querfront-strategists, who always are fascists (!). All this is reason enough to rediscover the lost tools of the historical-materialistic analysis of fascism and to consistently apply them in accordance with their intended purpose.

  • jW editor-in-chief Stefan Huth will discuss the role of Ukrainian fascists and their allies as a motor and catalyst for the escalation of conflicts, also beyond the Ukraine war, with the publicists Oleg Yasinsky (Pressenza, Telesur), Jörg Kronauer (German Foreign Policy, jW), Arnold Schölzel (jW, Rotfuchs) and Russ Bellant. In this framework, dangerous political and ideological consequences and concomitant phenomena such as historical revisionism, the suppression and stigmatisation of oppositionists as well as hate propaganda in the media and the synchronisation of public opinion will also be examined.