Rodina’s Lyubomirsky Calls for New Ultra-Right International ‘from Chile to Thailand’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 8 – The SOVA human rights monitoring group has obtained a letter dated July 27, 2015, from Yury Lyubomirsky, the Rodina Party leader who organized the forum of European and Russian ultra-right groups in St. Petersburg to radical nationalists around the world “from Chile to Thailand.”

            The portal does not publish the text but says it calls for the formation of an international alliance “against liberalism, multi-culturalism, tolerance and globalism (and at the same time against communism, Nazism and Islamist as false alternatives) in support of national sovereignty and ‘traditional values’” (sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/publications/2015/09/d32737/).

              Moreover, according to the SOVA report today, the proposed alliance should be ready to “support a possible conservative revolution in at least one country as what it says “a precondition for the general liberation from ‘the global cabal.’”  Among those the alliance should help in the first instance are “’the Serbs of Kosovo, the residents of Novorossiya, [and] the Christians of the Near East.’”

              Lyubomirsky also says that the new organization should organize “common training camps” to prepare “’international brigades’” which could be sent to fight on the correct side “’in zones of armed conflicts.’”

              The SOVA report says that the addressee list of the letter is of “the greatest interest” and it does publish that (sova-center.ru/files/xeno/parties.pdf). Among the 71 listed are Hungary’s Jobbik Party, the Bulgarian national Union, Greece’s Golden Dawn, Germany’s Naitonal Democrats, and the American racist David Duke.

              In reporting this, SOVA suggests that it may be indicative of “an insufficient seriousness” of this enterprise that the list is so “chaotic and even contains obvious errors.” And it also cautions that it has no information yet as to how any or all of the addressees responded to this appeal.

            Despite such cautions, this letter and list are important for three reasons. First, they that those in Moscow who want to reach out to ultra-right groups abroad are now looking far beyond Europe to Asia, Latin America and the United States and prepared to offer a pastiche of ideas that may attract some who would be put off by other aspects of the group’s program/

            Second, this letter highlights the way in which Moscow is pursuing such groups, using Russian radicals to do the heavy lifting confident that if they get in trouble with Western public opinion, the Kremlin can always say that it had nothing to do with them, even if it is clear that they are acting consistently with Moscow’s policy.

            And third, especially at a time of growing xenophobia as a result of the refugee crisis in Europe and of tensions in the Middle East, such fishing in the troubled waters of the extreme right seems to some in the Russian capital to be a profitable enterprise, something that means what is reported about Russian actions likely is only the tip of this iceberg.