Beware of ‘right wing’ genie

Over the past few months we have witnessed a repeat of a now familiar process of regime change.

Remember the ‘Pro Democracy’ protests in Libya? As the demonstrations against the regime became more violent the West supported and encouraged the demonstrators by US and EU diplomatic condemnations of the state, by sanctions and by massive pro demonstrator propaganda in our public and privately owned media.

They armed and trained the rebels and gave them NATO bombing back-up. When the Libyan government fell it emerged that the ‘Pro Democracy’ forces were in fact not pro democracy at all, they were Muslim fundamentalists seeking a theocratic state and they were very anti-Western. Something similar happened in Syria. The West enabled the build-up and arming of forces that could topple a non western regime, even though those forces were strongly anti-Western. This let a violent genie out of the bottle in the Muslim countries which has spread havoc ever since.

Now the process is repeating in Venezuela and in the Ukraine which are non-Muslim countries. In the Ukraine the forces that were enabled by the West are from the extreme right. Their victory poses an immediate threat to Russia because Ukraine is ‘the breadbasket of Russia’ supplying a lot of its food. It will also bring NATO right to their border. The West (NATO) was aware of the potential for nuclear war resulting from what they did, but seem to believe that their brinkmanship will pay off. Even if it does, the EU countries with growing political parties of the extreme right will be destabilised by the existence of an extreme right government in Ukraine. Think of Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Hungary and the UK. The ‘right wing’ genie is far bigger and more dangerous to us in these recessionary times. The Western political leaders who fail to get it back in the bottle will be condemned by history.

Jim Monaghan

Dolphin’s Barn

Dublin 8