FEMEN Lustmord

A May the 2nd photo just outside the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, Ukraine shows FEMEN activist Ievgeniia Kraizman giving a victorious salute as the camp of pro-Russian rebels was burning, at a point when the atrocities within the building were likely occurring, and just as arson upon it was about to be committed. For a thorough compendium of videos and accounts of the massacre...

MyFireDogLake ("operationmindcrime"): The Odessa Massacre – detailed video analysis – one month later.

As Ievgeniia posed for the photo, a pregnant woman inside the building was about to be or was in the process of being strangled to death, while at least one other woman was about to be or was being raped, her scorched remains left as evidence. Kraizman's photo was originally posted (since removed) on her Instagram account, then shared on the Facebook page of The Junsae, before receiving its widest circulation in this critical Steven Argue article...

Santa Cruz IMC: Fake “Feminists” of Femen Participated in the Odessa Massacre

FEMEN, as covered in the western media - with a focus on their protest of issues beholden to the feminist left - would seem incongruous with the milieu in which we here find Miss Kraizman. A three part series by French blogger Oliver Pechter on the history of FEMEN however surprisingly puts them firmly - for a time at least - in association with members of the Ukrainian far right. We have here translated excerpts and summarized the contents of this series...

Olivier Pechter: Communistes et rouge-bruns, les premiers alliés. L’histoire cachée des FEMEN (1/3)

Born in the crucible of communist and anti-fascist Ukraine, FEMEN is no less associated, in a repeating fashion, to reactionary movements or even ultra-nationalists (2/3). Before taking refuge in France, thanks to the benevolence of certain neo-conservative movements (3/3)

...some years ago, one sees of the foundations of FEMEN passing abruptly from one camp to another. A turnaround signifying imposture. This earned FEMEN to be qualified as "political technology" by Ukrainian specialists...

Political technology? It is political manipulation pushed to the extreme. The tools for doing this are familiar to us: storytelling, disinformation, "triangulation"... But it's extends and intensifies in the areas of the ex-USSR, where it stirs as a veritable small industry, to us unknown. In most cases, it is the maneuvers of a powerful authority for maintaining its place, through trickery. FEMEN has long been considered as a provider of this type of service. But in this case, they have developed their position at the discretion of the media and by their financial/political support of the moment. It would therefore be false to say that they have been created by a puppeteer whose interests they have defended all along. They have defended their own before. Nevertheless, we reveal some political/financial acquaintances not mentioned up till now, able to shed new light on some of their positions.

Pechter recounts the pre-history of FEMEN beginning in the city of Khmelnytsky in the early naughts where Anna Hutsol (the hidden face of Femen) and Viktor Sviatski (the reported manipulator behind FEMEN) meet in the "circle of marxist street" and the Komsomol, or communist youth movement. They form the student movements "Centre perspectives of youth" and "New Ethics," while Hutsol campaigns for the communist party. Following dismal election returns, however, they align with "Grande Ukraine" - a red-brown party being a political alliance of the left with nationalists. Grand Ukraine is under the direction of businessman and alleged spy Igor Berkut, one reputed to employ "political technology". In their early association with these parties, Hutsol and Sviatski were then Russophilic and anti-NATO.

In part 2 of the series, Immigration, peine de mort, alliés néofascistes… L’histoire cachée des FEMEN, Pechter follows the inception of FEMEN in its opportunistic fellow-travelling with certain unsavory far-right groups and figures...

In a Ukrainian political context as tense as it is confused, FEMEN will engage in all alliances and friendships, up to having hosted the web-site of a former skin-head, or demonstrating with the Svoboda party.

When FEMEN is launched in Kiev in the Spring of 2008, André Kolomiets ("Andrew Kolomyjec"), one of the executives of the Grande Ukraine, quickly comes back to the administrative council. It will become one of the "most constant sources of financial support" for the activists. "To assure their independence" he says very seriously... 

Pechter lists certain issues that are shared between Grande Ukraine and FEMEN, such as an anti-immigration stance directed particularly against Turks (the Turkish embassy was the location of one of the first FEMEN protests) and advocacy of the death penalty in the case of sadists. FEMEN would moreover seem to advocate a sort of nationalist, or ethnocentric feminism, where listed in a mission statement we find: "construct a national image of femininity, of maternity and of beauty based on the experience of the Euro-atlantic women's movement." Here then, as Pechter notes, the geo-political tilt of FEMEN has turned towards the West.

Other nationalist and far right groups with which FEMEN has had a rapprochement include "Coalition parties of the Orange Revolution," the "Confraternity of Saint Luke," and the "Black Committee". Members of the latter have been sentenced for setting fire to a residence of African students and attacking a Jewish community center.

Pechter produces numerous photographs illustrating FEMEN activists and leaders associating with far-right elements and individuals not only in demonstrations (for instance with Svoboda and the paramilitary UNA-UNSO in a January 2011 protest against the Belarusian regime) but apparently in more social settings as well, where we find FEMEN's Anna Hutsol in a group photograph with Anna Sinkova of the Confraternity of Saint Luke and Bogdan Titsky of the Black Committee. Other figures on the extreme right that FEMEN is shown to be on friendly terms with include Edouard Iholnikov and Sergey Didkovsky

Continuing in part 3, Islamophobie et réseaux néoconservateurs. L’histoire cachée des FEMEN, Pechter charts FEMEN's move to Paris, and with it, a neo-conservative turn...

By 2009, FEMEN intend to become Europe's premier feminist movement. They are on their way. Yet they have successfully drawn attention to themselves on the world stage (at the Venice Biennial for example). In France they are received with honors (2012) and even inspire the new stamp, Marianne (2013).

On the latter, see Inna Shevchenko's tweet: FEMEN is on French stamp.Now all homophobes,extremists,fascists will have to lick my ass when they want to send a letter. As her choice of targets indicates, with the move to Paris, FEMEN had adapted to a new activist milieu. Pechter continues...

A sign of opportunism of the organism, in establishing themselves in France, they abandon their more reactionary positions (anti-immigration and pro-death penalty) in favor of the easy combat with Islam and the Church, or even in favor of gay marriage...

Abreast of the French left [or "Within the.." but we cannot resist the double entendre of the French expression, Au sein de la gauche française], FEMEN drew the support of the Greens, the Left Party, but also of the PS [center-left Parti socialiste of French president François Hollande]. It must be added that with their installment in Paris, they have made a media opponent of the Catholic right wing.

However, it is on the basis of the islamophobia that they have in common with fundamentalists that they have aroused their strongest support. In particular in the pro-American movement. Figure of this current, Caroline Fourest, veritable guardian angel. At the crossroads in the milieu of these associations, journalistic and political, she is a weighty ally. 

Fourest will be unfamiliar to most English speakers. She is a prominent feminist in France, an author and film-maker. Her beneficence towards FEMEN comes primarily with the film, "Nos seins, nos armes !" (Our breasts, our weapons), and a biography of Inna Shevchenko, Inna, published earlier this year. As Fourest has been a strong critic of the treatment of women within Islam, this puts her into common cause with certain French neo-conservatives, such as François Zimeray and Bernard-Henri Lévy. These associations alone would not make FEMEN a neo-conservative or Zionist movement. Pechter however suggests that a neo-conservative bias is evident in the plagiarizing of an Islamophobic rant by Inna Shevenko in an interview with the Huffington Post (fr)...

We are at war. A war between two epochs. A war between a retrograde mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and a progressive mentality ingrained in the 21st Century. A war between liberty and oppression. A war between democracy and dictatorship. A war between those who treat women like dogs and those who cry "we are women, we are human beings!"  A war between those who believe in superstitions and those who have a clear mind.

This rant is nearly word for word that of "Ultra-Zionist" Wafa Sultan in 2006 on Al Jazeera in answering a question about Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations". As Pechter notes, the rant was to be found on Caroline Fourest's website, Prochoix.

Now that FEMEN has a chapter in Israel, should we anticipate protests against illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and against the treatment of Palestinians as second class citizens? Doubtful. Thus far they have chosen rather easy and inconsequential targets. At their first protest at a gay pride parade, they were heard shouting, "End discrimination within the community!” (Is the problem that gay men are not attracted to women?)...

Times of Israel: Topless protesters make Israel debut


Supplemental to Pechter's research...

MetaTV: Les Femen - leurs liens avec l’extrême droite ukrainienne et les think tanks américains

A trans-Atlantic source of support for FEMEN is to be found in the Open World Leadership Center, of which Anna Hutsol is listed as an alumna. Inasmuch as the president of the board of directors, James H. Billington, is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and is a recipient of the Presidential Citizen Medal from George W. Bush, this raises the question of whose interests FEMEN's activism truly serves. Is it about the liberation of femininity or is it about furthering a neo-conservative agenda and of besetting the Russian sphere of influence with the hackles of FEMEN as "soft-power" shock-troupes?