By Steigan blogger (Bjørn Ditlef Nistad)
On May 16, 2017, the Kiev Rada banned the so-called St. George ribbon, that is, a ribbon which war veterans and other residents are wearing on May 9 to celebrate the Victory over Hitlerite Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. A bunch of MPs dared to protest against the ban. This led to the fact that a member of the Rada, Yuri Bereza, dressed in military camouflage, shouted from the rostrum of the parliament that he “wants to take a machine gun and shoot these bastards.”
It can be assumed that when a deputy of the European Parliament calls to shoot the opposition, this should become a big sensation in the media. But that did not happen. Probably, the leading Western media decided to silence the incident.
If this would have happened in the parliament of any other country, would there be an attempt to silence it? Of course not. If the appeal to shoot the opposition sounded in the Russian Duma or from the supporter of Marine Le Pen or Donald Trump, this would cause the appearance of bellicose headlines in Western newspapers. But if it was a politician of any African or Asian country, his statement would have a message, which would say that this was a dangerous lack of a political culture.
Or, for example, a taxi driver whose legs were shot by the guards of the Ukrainian politician because he spoke in Russian and refused to say a nationalistic greeting? Can you imagine that the media will be just as silent if the guards of a well-known Russian politician shot a taxi driver who, in their opinion, was not patriotic enough, for example, because he refused to approve the reunion of the Crimea with Russia?
Or, for example, the laws according to which in Ukraine it is a criminal offense to criticize the Ukrainian fascists of the 30s and 40s, that is, individuals and groups that killed hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles during the WWII? Why do not the media comment on these laws as they constantly comment on Russian laws on compulsory registration of political organizations funded from abroad? And why do such comments appear? Because Russia, like almost all other countries, including Norway, has laws restricting foreign financing of political activity? Or because fascism is in fact part of the state ideology of Ukraine?
On of the important things in the construction of postwar Europe was that fascism should not have support in European countries. What is happening today in Ukraine in the form of bans on criticism of fascist organizations, the killing of opposition politicians and journalists, the ban of the Communist Party, the firing of policemen for trying to protect war veterans from right-wing extremists and calls for the parliament to shoot the opposition can not be characterized differently from fascism.
The fact that our media, headed by a state-sponsored and financed radio company NRK, refuses to report this, can hardly be called anything other than disinformation.