Stephen posted recently on some laughably bad coverage of the Ukrainian elections aftermath by John Laughland. Writing in the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash thinks European commentators have a problem with democracy in the Ukraine because of their distaste for Eastern European culture and a desire to keep Putin sweet. And sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein wonders why we apply different standards to different elections.
So, what’s the deal here? The mixed emotions stimulated by the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine seem to be a sharp contrast with the Velvet Revolutions in 1989. Could it be that because history didn’t end in 1989, as Francis Fukuyama claimed, the West wants to close its eyes to the dysfunctions of liberalisation in the post-Communist East and the messiness of democracy outside our sanitised version of electioneering and political contestation?
ELSEWHERE: John Quiggin continues his exemplary coverage of and commentary on the Ukraine.
It’d have been nice to see both sides of politics united under the banner of liberal democracy; the left acceding to the death of communism and the right looking a bit stiff as they donne their long lost “power to the people” garments.
Am I the only one who see’s a parallel to the eureka debate?
Anyway, clearly the papers won’t have a dime of it, and hence the role out of unlikely morons such as Laughland, followed by more predictable morons such as Applebaum taking the bait. All under the guise, I assume, of showing “both sides of the debate”. Apples and oranges… or rather, an orange herring.
Yay for op-ed journalism!
‘the right looking a bit stiff as they donne their long lost “power to the people” garments.’
Bipartisanship, where is thy sting?