Charlottesville’s recent white supremacist march has inspired a journalist at a marginal US web site to pen an article claiming that the US condemns right wing extremists at home, but supports them in Ukraine and Syria.
On August 15 MintPress News published an article by Whitney Webb entitled Right Wing Extremists Condemned in Charlottesville, Funded And Armed In Ukraine And Syria.
The August 14 white supremacist march in Charlottesville and its ensuing violence were widely condemned throughout the United States with statements, tweets, television discussion programs, politicians and citizens alike unequivocally reminding the world, that racism is evil and will not be tolerated in America.
But MintPress saw something specific in the events in Charlottesville, an American hypocrisy that allowed it to “back a right wing coup in the Ukraine (yes, they clearly don’t adhere to the view that Ukraine is a free and separate state, but rather simply a the, still requiring the definite article), and now forces the US to confront rising right wing terror at home.
Whitney Webb is a regular contributor to MintPress, her Facebook page regularly promotes her stories. This particular article is accompanied by several photographs of torchlight processions held by the conservative Ukrainian Svoboda political party.
This is what she writes:
“Nowhere in recent years has U.S. political support for right-wing fascists, and even neo-Nazis, been more florid than in Ukraine. In 2014, after the successful ouster of the country’s democratically-elected president in what leaked phone calls later confirmed was a U.S.-backed coup, Ukraine came under the rule of a new administration led by billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko. Despite the U.S.’ assertion that the change in Ukraine’s government in 2014 was not a coup, Poroshenko himself has labeled it as such.”
Ms. Webb’s claims are clearly out of synch with the reality of events in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko certainly never referred to the ousting of former president Viktor Yanukovych as a coup, In June 2015 he did ask Ukraine’s Constitutional Court to verify the constitutionality of the decision to deprive Yanukovych of the status of president after he fled the country to Russia in February 2014.
StopFake asked Ukraine’s Constitutional Court to clarify the issue. Ukraine’s constitution has no provisions for a transfer of power after a president flees the country. According to Ukraine’s Constitution, the only way a president can be removed from office is through impeachment. The Court’s ruling certainly never uses terms like constitutional coup and President Yanukovych was stripped of his powers after he fled the country within the confines of Ukrainian law, the Constitutional court ruled.
Whitney Webb also claims in her MintPress article that the US actively supported right radical parties in Ukraine, in particular the Svoboda Party. She claims that the “coup” gave Svoboda unprecedented power. She clearly does not follow Ukrainian politics and obviously does not know that during the 2014 parliamentary elections, that is, after the Maidan revolution, Svoboda did not get the 5% of votes required to even get into parliament. Six Svoboda members are MPs, but they were elected in single mandate constituencies.
Ms. Webb also claims that US Senator John McCain supported Svoboda when he visited Ukraine during the Maidan protests. But Senator McCain did not specifically support Svoboda, he addressed the demonstrators and expressed support for the people who spoke out against the lawlessness of the Yanukovych regime.
Whitney Webb goes on to say that US administrations have financed an “openly fascist regime in Kyiv” which is “actively oppressing ethnic minorities”. She does not mention the oppression that Crimean Tatars have suffered since Russia annexed Crimea.
MintPress is a news website launched in 2012. Its investors are anonymous. Its founder Mnar Muhawesh has said on record that “our media has failed us very miserably”. The site has claimed that Syrian rebels used chemical weapons and has been accused of supporting Syrian president Assad. Mnar Muhawesh is a frequent commentator on RT (Russian today), MintPress is often cited by Voice of Russia, Iranian Press TV and other so-called alternative media.
