Blowback

[Thomas Eckhardt]

This article references Christopher Simpson's important book "Blowback" 
and is related to one of (early) Pynchon's themes, i.e. the recruitment 
of Nazis by CIC and later the CIA etc. for the Cold War. But most of 
all, it links the early Cold War period to the present. I quite like the 
beginning, prosewise, although, of course, terms like "Kiev junta" etc. 
are controversial:

'I assume, in jest, that at least a tiny part of the media blackout over 
the “anti-terrorist” wonton brutalities against civilians in 
southeastern Ukraine (Novorossya) may be the result of the decidedly 
unsexy quality of the fascist cohort participating in the Kiev junta’s 
campaign there. Foot soldiers of Svoboda and Right Sector paramilitary 
army (the Kiev junta’s so-called National Guard, formed as a volunteer 
army after the coup) look comically lumpen. Moreover, they feel like a 
postmodern pastiche of the original Nazis—and so does their cult, a 
virtual fan club, of Stepan Bandera, the Galician butcher who 
notoriously collaborated with the Axis forces in the extermination of 
Jews, Ukrainians, Poles, and other undesirables in the East. 
Ideologically, they seem unreal, as though they had just crawled out of 
a deep bomb hole in history, which had not been quite repaired in the 
post war, absurdly calling out for “Glory to Ukraine.”  A glimpse at 
fascist-parade photographs and videos of their subterranean, wormy faces 
set in the bully’s obstinate scowl, their heads shaven kapo style, 
hobnail-booted and pudgily stuffed in fascist-regulation black, makes 
one think of hastily rounded up layabouts as extras for an implausible 
B-movie about an improbable skin-head warfare in a high school anywhere 
in the USA.  Despite their obvious fantasies, Aryan warriors headed for 
Valhalla they are not. So, if they can’t be advertised as shining 
knights in America’s democracy armor or as specimen of a superior brand 
of military men, why were these retrogrades recruited to lead the 
Western-backed “pro-democracy” crusade in the Kiev Maidan and its 
aftermath?'

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/08/americas-recruitment-of-nazis-then-and-now/

Thomas
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l