I never cease being amazed at the access western mainstream media gives to vested interests and outright liars these days. It’s almost as if all information channels have simply become ad platforms for whoever pays the freight, or at worst whichever message needs to be disseminated. In the case of the Putin bashing, all we need do is research the author, outgoing EU Ambassador to Russia, Vygaudas Ušackas. For those of you already informed about new Nazi activities surrounding the Russian frontiers, the fact Ušackas is a Russophobe from Lithuania may not come as any surprise. For everyone else, let me explain my contention here.
Ušackas is the founder of something called “Mission Siberia”, which he established along with the Lithuanian Youth Council (LIJOT) back in 2005. Project “Mission Siberia” basically sent expeditions of Lithuanian young people to 70 locations inside Siberia to maintain the cemeteries of Lithuanian deportees who perished in Soviet prisons and forced-labor camps there during Soviet times. This effort was obviously based on a noble principle, but looking at who and what stands behind offers clues to larger crises in the eastern European region. Stay with me here.
“Misija Sibiras” (or Mission Siberia) is funded by several interesting individuals and groups. The most interesting being the Kazickas Family Foundation, which was set up by the late American-Lithuanian billionaire Juozas Kazickas. It’s here the story of anti-Putin propaganda gets interesting, for Kazickas’ ties to Hitler’s Germany add a familiar Russophobic tint to The Guardian opinion piece.
Juozas Petras Kazickas is described in Wilipedia as a “self-made billionaire”, whose grandparents had been deported to Siberia after the 1863 Uprisings where present-day Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Latvian, Ukrainian, and western Russian citizens rose up to refuse conscription into the Czar’s army. Without the deep history lesson here, this period was immediately after Russia had lost the Crimean War (interesting parallel, no?). However, it’s Kazickas’ role in the Lithuanian resistence against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944 that should interest readers. Furthermore, his retreating with the Nazis to Germany when the Soviets turned the tide in WWII cast a familiar light on anti-Putin narratives in general. If we follow Kazickas back to Germany and to the ancient University of Tübingen, we find still darker implications against pro-Nazi Lithuanians. The University of Tübingen was at that time involved in legitimizing the policies of the Third Reich as “scientific”, and in sterilization on an epic scale. Also at Tübingen, research into genetic flaws led to the extermination of more than 30,000 Roma people (Shaping the Superman: Fascist Body as Political Icon – Aryan Fascism, by J A Mangan). It was at Tübingen and other Nazi era institutions, under the credentials of notorious Nazi intellectuals like Gerhard Kittel, that the Hitler’s “Final Solution” was transformed into science. As I suggested, my report here is not appropriate for Nazi philosophies or dramas. But the “heritage” of western media’s voices these days, it does bear investigation (See – Theologians Under Hitler, by Robert P. Ericksen, Yale Press).
Breaking it all down. The European Union’s outgoing ambassador to Russia is pounding the message “Putin must go” at The Guardian, The Observer, at The Baltic Times, and elsewhere (See Emma Graham-Harrison’s piece citing Ušackas – “West’s rift with Russia ‘will last until Vladimir Putin goes’). One of his favorite projects was largely funded by a Nazi sympathizer/collaborator who later became a multi-million dollar consultant to western corporations including; Exxon, El Paso Natural Gas, Columbia Gas, Rockwell International, Philip Morris, Coca-Cola, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and many others. And the European Union in its infinite wisdom sent a certifiable Russia hater to Moscow to mediate on behalf of the peoples of Europe with Putin.
I cannot decide what is more preposterous. Should I be vexed at The Guardian for publishing anti-Russia bias views at ever turn? Or is it more ridiculous for the European Union to insult Russia at every moment and appointment possible? No, I think the whole Russophobic mess dwarfs these smaller Nazification concerns. But what do you think?
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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