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By Gershom Gorenberg By Gershom Gorenberg June 4 at 8:02 PM

It all happened so unexpectedly 50 years ago: the crisis between Egypt and Israel, the war that began on June 5, 1967, and expanded from one front to three, the silence of the guns after just six days, and the cease-fire lines that marked Israels conquests of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Sinai and the Gaza Strip.

Suddenly, Israel was occupying land beyond its sovereign territory and ruling over the people who lived there. An official euphemism was born that summer the newly conquered land would be called administered territory. In the autumn, official maps stopped showing the pre-war lines. The new maps were also a euphemism, in pictorial form. The reality of occupation remained.

Much has changed, including the amount of occupied territory. But 50 years later we by which I mean we Israelis still have an occupation.

Or rather, the occupation has us. It has a hold on us. It is the addiction that Israel cannot shake. Much has been written on how the occupation affects the Palestinians living under Israeli rule, how it constrains their freedom of movement, their political rights and their dreams. To that, Id like to add whats less obvious: The occupation is what keeps Israel from being what it could be. It drags us down.

The occupation conceivably could have been less oppressive and might have lasted less time but for something else that happened in 1967: Israel began settling its citizens in occupied territory.

Back then Israeli strategists believed settlements would add to Israeli security. It was an anachronistic concept based on how kibbutzim had stood against relatively weak invading Arab armies in 1948. The 1973 Yom Kippur War should have buried this idea. The Israeli army had to evacuate Golan settlers in the midst of fighting Syrias powerful armored divisions.

By today its clear that the settlements have turned into an ever-larger military burden. Israeli army units deployed in the West Bank have to protect them. Soldiers, some highly trained for essential tasks, are rotated out of other units for guard duty at settlements, including outposts with a handful of families. Because of secrecy, no one know quite how much this military boondoggle costs.

Actually, no one knows exactly how much the settlement project as a whole costs. The incentives and subsidies that encourage Israelis to move to settlements are scattered throughout the budget. As just one example, a report issued last week by the Adva Center, a Tel Aviv social policy institute, detailed how over the years settlements have enjoyed more generous funding from the national government for municipal budgets than other Israeli communities.

But the total outlay is well hidden. Its like the money that a heavy drinker spends on his liquor without ever adding it up, because that would mean facing his problem. All we know is that without this outlay, Israel would have more money to reduce a child poverty rate thats among the worst in the developed world, to add academic jobs that would prevent brain drain, to add hours to the school day and reduce class sizes. As a country, were doing less with our potential than we could without our addiction.

The worst damage that the occupation does, though, may be to Israels democracy. Across a border not marked on maps, our government rules over millions of people who cannot vote. With this mortal aberration accepted as normal, it was easier to pass an election law in 2014 that aimed (unsuccessfully) at keeping parties backed by Israels Arab citizens out of parliament.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies regularly try to muzzle Breaking the Silence, an organization of veterans that publishes soldiers testimony about service in the occupied territories. They may as well say out loud that they prefer the occupation to Israels tradition of free, fierce political debate.

Back to 1967: One day that summer, French philosopher and journalist Raymond Aron interviewed Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. I found a transcript, or part of one, in Eshkols office files. Eshkol said that if Israel couldnt reach a peace agreement on its conditions with Jordan, Well stay where we are. Aron asked if he didnt fear a popular uprising. No, Eshkol replied, This isnt Algeria.

Eshkols answer showed he knew his interviewer. A decade before, Aron had scandalized his conservative political colleagues with his essay, The Algerian Tragedy. Hed argued that for Frances own sake, it had to give up its colony. Holding Algeria by force violated liberal values, he wrote, whereas, The loss of Algeria is not the end of France.

In sundry ways, the West Bank isnt Algeria. Still, Eshkol was mistaken, and Arons point holds true for Israel and the occupation. The loss of the occupied territories wont be the end of Israel. Holding on to them might be.

Originally posted here:
How occupation has damaged Israel's democracy - Washington Post

President Joko Widodo. Photo: Reuters / Darren Whiteside

President Joko Widodo wants to make it clear that he thinks communism is a threat to Indonesia and that hes ready to whoop any reds that dare to show their face in the archipelago. You just need to show him one.

The question is, where are they? Where? Jokowi asked on Saturday during a speech at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang, as quoted by Tribun. If you show them me to me, I will clobber them immediately because the law is clear.

Ever since 1965, when a supposed coup plot by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) led to the assassination of four military generals, a power grab by the dictator Suharto and the death of an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 people in a bloody purge of everybody in and associated with the PKI, Indonesia has been haunted by the ghost of communism. Even today, military generals and politicians often speak about the dangers of communists infiltrating Indonesia.

The problem, of course, is that there isnt a single credible communist threat to Indonesia today. The PKI are long gone, communism in almost all of its forms are banned from the country (even t-shirt form!) and the only semi-communist superpower left, China, is close trading and business partners with Indonesia.

But after decades of being subjected to propaganda about the evils of communism under Suhartos New Order (such as forced viewings of the ridiculously inaccurate docudramaPengkhianatan G30S/PKI) Indonesian fears about the mostly failed ideology remain high and no politician, including President Jokowi, wants to be seen as being soft on commies.

Since he first decided to run for president, Jokowis political enemies have attempted to trick regular citizens into believing conspiracy theories and fake news on social media about how Jokowi was either a secret Christian and/or an agent of the Chinese attempting to protect a new PKI threat.

Jokowi said during his speech on Saturday that, while he usually couldnt be bothered to respond to those kinds of rumors, he wanted to finally take the opportunity to directly refute them.

When the PKI were disbanded, I was only three years old, he said. Addressing rumors that there were communist sympathizers in his family, he invited people to investigate his genealogical history as he had nothing to hide.

He reiterated once again that communist organizations were banned from Indonesia for being contrary to the countrys founding principles of Pancasila, and he would immediately disband any such organization in line with the constitution.

Last month, the government initiated the disbandment of the Indonesian chapter of Hizbut Tahrir, an Islamist organization with the goal of replacing all governments with an Islamic caliphate, with Jokowi citing the fact that the organizations goals were contrary to Pancasila and thus banned by the government.

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President Jokowi: If there are any communists, show me, I'll clobber them immediately - Coconuts

By Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party of Germany) 5 June 2017

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGPSocialist Equality Party) is participating in the Bundestag (federal parliament) elections to be held on September 24. We are standing a slate of candidates in the states of Berlin and North-Rhine Westphalia as well as constituency candidates in Frankfurt and Leipzig.

At the centre of our election campaign is a socialist programme directed against war and capitalism and expressing the interests of the working class and youth all over the world. The SGP election program provides the basis for the working class to intervene in political developments as an independent force.

The Bundestag election takes place in the midst of the deepest international crisis of capitalist society in history. The danger of a nuclear world war has never been as great as it is today. After 25 years of continual wars in the Middle East, the Balkans and North Africa, the US is preparing a direct military confrontation with the nuclear powers China and Russia. Germany and the other European powers are responding to the growth of geopolitical conflicts by increasing their own military capacity. This heightens the danger of another major war in Europe.

The current federal government coalition between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) is committed to increasing the military budget from 35 billion euros to at least 60 billion euros by 2024, while further cutting spending on education and other social needs. This is under conditions where a large portion of the population is already struggling to make ends meet. Forty percent of all workers are employed in precarious jobs and 16 percent of the population lives below the poverty level, including 2.5 million children.

All the establishment parties support this political course. None of them has anything to offer but militarism, political oppression and attacks on living standards. From the conservative CDU/CSU to the Left Party, they are implementing social cuts in both the federal and state budgets. They are all conspiring against the population and using the Bundestag election to bring a government to power that will massively increase military spending, cut social provisions and wages and establish the equivalent of a police state.

The SGP is the only party that advocates a socialist programme. All other parties calling themselves left-wing have written off the working class. They defend the banks, the big corporations, the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) and the secret services. One hundred and fifty years after the publication of Marxs Capital, capitalism is again showing its true face. Everything the great Marxists wrote about the capitalist system is once again confirmed: It is a system that inevitably leads to social inequality, war and dictatorship.

The crisis of capitalism, however, also creates the conditions for overcoming it. The SGP will use the election campaign to discuss a revolutionary programme and fight for a socialist perspective in the working class.

At the centre of the SGPs election campaign are the following demands:

The epicentre of the war danger lies in the US, which is compensating for its economic decline through trade war and military aggression. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Washington has lost all inhibitions. With Donald Trump, the most right-wing president in US history has moved into the White House. He personifies the brutality and criminality of the countrys ruling class.

German imperialism has reacted by appointing itself the hegemon of Europe. Seven decades after the defeat of the Nazi regime, it is once again striving to achieve its global geo-strategic and economic interests by military means.

As early as 2014, then-German President Joachim Gauck and his successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) announced that Germany was too big and too important to remain out of the crises and hot-spots of the world. Now the German ruling class is using the UKs departure from the European Union and the growing conflicts with President Trump to strengthen the German and European military so that it can act independently of the US and, if necessary, against it.

In a Munich beer tent of all placesthe backdrop favoured by HitlerChancellor Angela Merkel declared that we Europeans have to take our fate back into our own hands and fight for our own future.

Nobody should be confused by her efforts to disguise this call with hollow phrases about the defence of Western values and protection of the climate. Dressing up naked imperialist interests with phrases about values and culture has a long tradition in Germany. In 1914, Berlin justified the World War as a struggle against Russian barbarism, and 93 leading cultural and scientific figures published a manifesto directed to all men of culture that defended the German army as it pillaged Belgium. Twenty-five years later, Europe was laid waste by German tanks and aircraft.

War and militarism follow an inescapable logic. The real significance of German militarism was expressed openly by the right-wing historian Jrg Baberowski. Speaking of the fight against terrorist organizations, he said, And if one is not willing to take hostages, burn villages, hang people and spread fear and terror, as the terrorists do, if one is not prepared to do such things, then one can never win such a conflict and it is better to keep out altogether.

In the last century, two attempts by German imperialism to subjugate Europe and become a world power ended in catastrophe. Despite the propaganda that a reunited Germany has learned the lessons of the past and stands for peace and stability, a third German grasp for world power will lead once again to war and mass murder if the working class does not intervene.

The Bundeswehr is already active in 18 foreign conflicts. It has deployed combat troops to the Russian border and been implicated in war crimes in Afghanistan and Syria. Right-wing terrorist networks operate within its ranks and cultivate the traditions of Hitlers Wehrmacht, with the protection of their superiors.

As Marxists, we base ourselves on an understanding of objective social developments in the struggle against militarism and war. The reason for the danger of a Third World War lies in the insoluble antagonisms of capitalism, which is incapable of overcoming the contradiction between the international character of production and the nation-state system.

There is only one way to stop this dangerous development: the establishment of an international anti-war movement based on the working class and fighting for the overthrow of capitalism.

The SGP rejects the capitalist system. While a small, super-rich upper class lives in luxury and dominates politics, the vast majority of the population lives in want and is largely excluded from the political decision-making process.

In every country, the ruling class is seeking to defend its wealth and international status by demanding more and more sacrifices from the working class. Mass unemployment, poverty and the destruction of living standards are the result. An entire generation of young people is being denied a future. Vast resources are squandered on military spending, while vital infrastructure decays, poverty grows and complex environmental problems are neglected.

Germany is already one of the most socially unequal countries in the world. According to a study by Oxfam, 36 German billionaires possess as much wealth (276 billion euros) as the poorest half of the population. According to the latest report by the Parittischer Wohlfahrtsverband, poverty in Germany affected 15.7 percent of the population in 2015, a new record. One in five employees in Germany works for the paltry sum of less than 10 euros per hour.

The SGP fights for a society in which the needs of the many stand higher than the profit interests of big business. The super-rich, the banks and the corporations must be expropriated and placed under the democratic control of the population. Only in this way can the social rights of all be secured. These include the right to an adequately paid job, a first-class education, affordable housing, a secure pension, high quality old-age provisions and access to culture.

The growth of social inequality and the return of militarism are accompanied by a massive growth of state surveillance and the apparatus of oppression. Hardly a month passes without new laws being passed expanding the police and intelligence services, increasing the monitoring of communications and expanding censorship of the Internet. The so-called war on terror, which in reality produces terror, serves as a pretext to intensify attacks on refugees and abolish elementary democratic rights. The heightening of the powers of the state apparatus is aimed at intimidating and suppressing resistance to militarism and other forms of social protest.

The ruling class knows that anger over social inequality and militarism is enormous. It fears the outbreak of open class struggles. According to the recently published study Generation What? 86 percent of young people in Germany believe that inequality is growing. Only 1 percent has complete confidence in the existing political set-up, while 71 percent have none. Forty-two percent would participate in an uprising against the powerful if it were to happen in the near future.

The SGP calls for the dissolution of all secret services and the apparatus of surveillance. We defend fundamental democratic rights and the right to asylum and reject any form of nationalism and xenophobia. The attacks on refugees are directed against all workers. That is why a common struggle against capitalism of all those living in Germany is necessary.

Although official politics meets with overwhelming rejection among working people, this opposition finds no political expression within the establishment parties and institutions.

The SPD is rightly hated. Originally established by workers, today it is their stoutest opponent. SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schrders Agenda 2010 and his Hartz welfare and labour reforms have plunged millions of working class families into misery. As part of the current grand coalition government, the SPD, together with Finance Minister Wolfgang Schuble (CDU), has imposed devastating austerity measures on Greece. When the SPD today speaks of reforms, it does not mean social improvements, but rather social cut-backs, increased state powers and militarism. In the election campaign, the SPDs leading candidate, Martin Schulz, is attacking Chancellor Merkel from the right. He is aggressively promoting the development of a European defence policy and a European army dominated by Germany.

A similar policy is pursued by the Greens, who have always been a party of the affluent upper-middle class. They are now among the most strident advocates of war and display only arrogance and contempt for the working class. Since the Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer defended the Kosovo War in 1999 with the slogan Never again Auschwitz, the former pacifists have supported every German war effort, even when in opposition.

The Left Party is preparing to play a similar role to that played by the Greens 18 years ago. It is seeking a so-called red-red-green coalition with the SPD and the Greens and is increasingly becoming an open party of war. Significantly, the partys lead candidate, Dietmar Bartsch, was among the five Left Party Bundestag deputies who, for the first time, voted in April 2015 to deploy the Bundeswehr abroad. Sahra Wagenknecht, the partys second lead candidate, told broadcaster ZDF last summer, Of course, Germany will not leave NATO on the day we join a government. In other words, the Left Party is just as prepared to support the Bundeswehrs foreign operations as it is to impose social cuts in the states and municipalities where it exercises political power.

With their right-wing policies, the SPD, the Left Party and the Greens facilitate the growth of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This right-wing extremist party can pose as an opposition force only because none of the establishment left parties opposes the ruling class with a socialist perspective. The AfD exploits anger and frustration over the anti-social policies of the main parties to push the entire political establishment further to the right. A similar process can be seen with Marine Le Pen in France, Gert Wilders in the Netherlands and Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria.

In order to fight the establishment parties and the extreme right and intervene independently in political events, the working class needs its own party. Exactly 100 years ago, Russian workers demonstrated that it was possible to conquer state power, end the World War and reorganize society according to socialist principles. The later Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union does not detract from the historical significance of the October 1917 Revolution.

The prerequisite for preparing the coming class struggles and realizing a socialist perspective is the construction of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party). Our strength is based on the historical tradition we embody and the principles we represent.

We stand in the tradition of the Left Opposition, which, under the leadership of Leon Trotsky, defended Marxism and socialist internationalism against the betrayals of Stalinism. Our revolutionary role models are Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who fought against capitalism even under the most difficult conditions, defending internationalism in the midst of the nationalist frenzy of the First World War.

It is now over 25 years since the former East Germany (German Democratic RepublicDDR) and the Soviet Union were dissolved. This was due to the role of Stalinism, which politically suppressed the working class and created enormous confusion about the real nature of socialism. The Stalinist bureaucracy itself took the initiative for reintroducing capitalism, with devastating social and political consequences. The Left Party stands in this Stalinist tradition.

The SGP and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) are today the only organizations worldwide fighting for a socialist response to the global crisis of capitalism.

We reject all imperialist alliances and military blocs. We are for the dissolution of NATO and the European Union and fight instead for the United Socialist States of Europe. Our ally in the struggle against German militarism is the European, American and international working class.

We call on all those who are not willing to accept the return of German militarism, the increase in poverty and the rise of the right wing to support the SGP and its election campaign . Support our participation in the election with your signature to ensure we get on the ballot. Share and discuss this election statement with friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Organize election meetings in your region, donate to our election fund and vote for the SGP on September 24. Every vote for the SGP is a vote against war and capitalism.

Read and study the World Socialist Web Site, the daily Internet publication of the ICFI! Become a member of SGP! It is high time to actively participate in the construction of a new mass socialist party!

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Socialist Equality Party stands candidates in German election: Against militarism and war! For socialism! - World Socialist Web Site

(From left): County Treasurer Teri Jacobson, Lori Hanson of Women & Childrens Horizons, Patti Worzalla and Jennie Tunkieicz. /Submitted photo

Several hundred donated items werecollected as the result of a Communitywide Shower to assist clients of Women &ChildrensHorizons.

Items were collected by Kenosha County Treasurer Teri Jacobson over a period of several weeksin April.

The Community Shower culminated with a fund-raising Tea Party event held for 25 women onApril 23 at Circa on Seventh, 4902 Seventh Ave., Kenosha. The Tea Party was donated by Pattiand Rick Worzalla, of Kenosha, as part of the Annual Fall Benefit Event fundraiser for theKenosha Achievement Center. Jacobson and Jennie Tunkieicz were the successful bidders forthe Tea Party and they decided to parlay it into another fundraising event for Women&Childrens Horizons.

Among the items donated were comforters, sheet sets, blankets, mattress covers, pillows,crockpots, coffee makers, diapers, cleaning supplies, storage containers, personal care items,and gift cards.

Lori Hanson, Marketing and Development Manager for Women& Childrens Horizons, said theCommunitywide Shower and the Tea Party event helped provide necessary household items forfamilies who need a fresh start.

Many of our clients come to us with very little. Many had to leave a dangerous situation andhave left with only the clothes on their backs. Our hope is to provide our clients with the basicneeds to live a life without violence, Hanson said.

The items that were donated at the community shower will give our clients the chance to startover. Many of the things that we may take for granted are not necessarily accessible to theseclients. Pots and pans, dishes, and silverware, to name a few, are items that we like to provide aclient who is starting over, she said.

Women and Childrens Horizons has been serving the Kenosha Community for over 40 years. Itsservices include an emergency shelter, a 24-hour help-line, legal advocacy, restraining orderadvocacy, childrens programs, transitional living program, underserved population program,and sexual assault and domestic violence victim programs. These services are offered free ofcharge and also in Spanish.

We thank those of you who donated to the community shower. Your gifts will allow our clientsto have what they need to make a better life and build a brighter future for themselves andtheir families, Hanson said.

Women and Childrens Horizons recently opened an office in Salem.

For more information about Women and Childrens Horizons, please visit its website atwchkenohsa.org.

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Communitywide Shower and the Tea Party give boost to Women & Children's Horizons - West of the I

By Jack Losh By Jack Losh June 5 at 5:00 AM

Carrying plastic bags stuffed with cuddly toys, the rebel leader enters an apartment to greet its new occupants a young family whose former home had supposedly fallen into disrepair. Aleksandr Zakharchenko, who governs the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic in eastern Ukraine, hands over the gifts, plus keys and deeds to the simple apartment. He walks around, nodding in approval at the pristine appliances and furnishings.

While a news crew films the choreographed event, mother of four Elena Korkunova says she had written a letter to Zakharchenko requesting help. Her husband, Alexei, hastily adds: Were very thankful to receive the apartment so quickly. ... Now itll be our family nest.

Ending the piece, a correspondent for the local Pervy Respublikansky channel describes how Zakharchenko personally assessed the apartments layout and quality of renovation ... and wished them health and happiness.

This unsubtle report is not a one-time thing. Ukrainian separatists are taking the media back to a Soviet-era standard as their breakaway statelets recycle old propaganda, resort to stereotypes and resuscitate the cult of Joseph Stalin.

Such broadcasts hold clues about Moscows strategy in Donbass, a volatile region where Ukrainian government troops have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014. State-sanctioned portrayals of militant rebel rulers as responsible civilian officials suggest the Kremlin wants these hard-line proxies to be in charge for some time.

As the forgotten conflict enters its fourth year, this does not bode well for peace.

Russia wants to look as if its a constructive player in negotiations but has not decisively shown which option it wants to take, says Donald Jensen, an expert on Russia and resident fellow at the Johns Hopkins University. Messaging is key, and changes depending on circumstances.

By the 1980s, TV had become a key component of Soviet mass-media culture and today remains the main news source for Russians and Ukrainians. In 2014, when Moscow began installing new governing structures in Ukraines rebel strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk, local media operations were also overhauled.

Eastern Ukraines war-racked landscape of coal mines, factories and steel mills is a Soviet time warp in which communist nostalgia and heavy industry have a bearing on the identity of many. The legacy of the former Soviet Union looms large in the collective subconscious.

So news here is staged to highlight the states wisdom and generosity as it was under Soviet control. Core political messages, reinforcing a narrative favorable to ruling elites, are worked out ahead of transmission.

Novorossiya TV, another separatist outlet, recently aired a documentary about the origins of the war. Replete with Soviet imagery and dogma, it pits the united, hard-working Slavic citizens of Russkiy Mir (Russian World) against degenerate individualism and the imperialist West.

Today, Donbass has become the flash point of the geopolitical dispute between the West and the East, the presenter says. Our city is practically on the front line. We are being murdered so that Russian people ... remain in the chains of consumer society.

Lambasting Western influences, the film splices McDonalds ads with Soviet military parades; footage of Wall Street with productive factory lines. Hackneyed, perhaps, but aimed at harnessing disenchantment in a region once held high by Soviet authorities, now war-damaged and economically stagnant. Although it refers to recent Hollywood movies and is promoted through social media, the message of the film is as old as the hammer and sickle.

Low-budget history programs are a mainstay of these separatist outlets. One presenter, Yakov Dzhugashvili, is Stalins great-grandson. He venerates the late dictator and espouses his duty to expose anti-Stalinist, anti-Soviet lies. Dzhugashvili mentions neither the Great Terror nor the gulags, instead hailing Stalin as an example of those who serve others.

A local history buff hosts another slow-paced show, using model tanks and soldiers to demonstrate the World War II heroics of a unit known as Panfilovs 28 Guardsmen, whose story became a cherished Soviet legend though one that was debunked by the publication of a secret memo in 2015.

These productions are lo-fi and indulge in questionable readings of history. But their message is potent: Your ancestors fought the fascists, you must continue that struggle today. They are, in a sense, weaponizing the past.

Propaganda about fascists is a very effective trope and has had an effect on Russian public opinion, says Kristin Roth-Ey, a lecturer in Russian history at University College London who specializes in Soviet culture and media. This is not mindless atavism they know it works.

Likewise, limited content and frequent reruns echo the Soviet Unions restricted TV schedules. Such repetition creates dominant symbols that help construct or exploit a populations cultural memory, says Kateryna Khinkulova, a specialist on the regions media.

The presentation of Ukraines separatist leaders is far more Soviet than that of Russias president, Vladimir Putin. Luhansks ruler, Igor Plotnitsky, is regularly filmed presiding over his ministerial council, publicly berating them while flanked by his peoples republic flag, with its sun rays, wheat sheaves and red star.

Russian television has its share of Putin scolding his aides, but he also projects a personality with which Russians can more easily associate.

Putin himself is a form of entertainment, a consumable product, Roth-Ey says. Think of pictures showing Putin bare-chested. Making [Leonid] Brezhnev or [Nikita] Khrushchev sex symbols would have been unthinkable in a Soviet context.

The Soviet Union was renowned for its sports parades and elaborate gymnastic displays. Socialist realism promoted heroic images of the human body from the vitality of the Komsomol youth movement to the team spirit of athletes. Though smaller in scale, Donetsk separatists are drawn to similar ideals.

A news report in March featured a gathering of youngsters jogging through the city, urging sobriety and waving separatist and communist flags a time-honored tactic of reinforcing patriotism with physical purity.

Back in vogue, too, is the shock worker an uber-productive laborer of the Soviet Union. War has ravaged eastern Ukraines economy, but separatist-controlled farms and industrial plants regularly trumpet their efficiency and ability to surpass quotas. If local news outlets are to be believed, rebel authorities are providing pensioners with thousands of tons of free coal and farming vast quantities of food even to the extent of producing Donetsk mozzarella.

These stories are designed to boost morale by creating the illusions of self-sufficiency and resurgent industry. In reality, the breakaway east could not function without Moscows support. (Russia has even pledged to supply this region with electricity after Kiev cut off power due to unpaid bills).

Nostalgia for Russias lost era borders on self-caricature. In Donbass, it has become a weird pastiche of historical memory, says Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer in European studies at Kings College London. The Putin media machine picks out bits of Soviet or czarist memory that it finds useful to its agenda at any one moment, then amplifies it using modern media techniques to overwhelm the audience.

Read more:

Ukraine turns a blind eye to ultrarightist militia

War in Ukraine helps smugglers in the black market get richer

Ukrainian rebel leaders divided by bitter purge

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Originally posted here:
TV in breakaway Ukraine has a distinct Soviet tint to it - Washington Post