Recently the massive rallies of the far-right parties, the powerful public presentation of the National Militia affiliated to Azov’s “National Corps” party, escalating attacks by extreme right groups against leftist, feminist, LGBT, human rights events brought Ukrainian radical nationalists back into the center of the public discussion.
The dominant narrative since Maidan in Ukrainian and much of the Western public spheres have been systematically downplaying the problem – either arguing that Ukrainian far right are not really “fascists” in the strict definition of the term, or that they are simply puppets of Ukrainian oligarchs or even Russian intelligence, or that they are small and marginal. The latter, liberal version of the denialist narrative originated during Maidan protests in politically motivated attempts to counter Russian propaganda exaggerating the far right role and to legitimate the events for the Western liberal-progressive public. Later, the poor performance of Svoboda and the Right Sector in 2014 elections gave a kind of the ultimate argument for irrelevance of the far right in Ukraine. The denialist narrative not only obfuscated the causal dynamics of toppling Viktor Yanukovych but is preventing an adequate analysis of the radical nationalists’ danger now downplaying their extraparliamentary power, violent resources, street mobilization potential, interpenetration with law enforcement and overall impact on Ukrainian politics.
