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Svoboda had to give up much of its "radical" appeal to gain real popularity. Now its target audience is not marginal skinheads and radical nationalists, Svoboda

Svoboda had to give up much of its "radical" appeal to gain real popularity. Now its target audience is not marginal skinheads and radical nationalists, Svoboda has attracted a lot, a lot of people (10% of votes in Ukraine in 2012) who don't want to vote for the old corrupted opposition (Tymoshenko's "Batkivshchyna", Socialist Party of Ukraine, Green Movement, etc) and don't trust their hollow "patriotism". Yes, you can find old videos where Tyagnybok says all kind of far right things, but he's too much of a politic, he says what gains popularity in his target audience and he's a hostage of the strongly patriotic crowd now. Far right radicals are now out of Svoboda making Right Sector, which is partly responsible for Hrushevskogo actions. > it looks extremely organized and professional - you haven't seen the first days of Maidan when it was chaotic and crystallizing before our eyes. I'd ascribe its amusing (but not supernatural) self-organization to powerful social networking and Orange Revolution experience.

malkung 13y ago
Constantly burning car tires, large-scale production of Molotov cocktails, great skills at building barricades, lots of people wearing body protection ... This does not look like self-organization at all. Surely, someone has been seriously training for this.
- dmytrish 13y ago
  > Constantly burning car tires - that does not require any training and was invented after few days of inhaling police tear gas. > large-scale production of Molotov cocktails - please see the previous HN post (by a russian blogger, Zyalt) where you can see _poorly_ made "cocktails" that often ignite the thrower. They're made in a hurry by women behind the front line. The large slingshot is also quite a masterpiece of preparation (irony)! > Body protection - is essential to be protected from police assaults later. I saw those protesters in the first day when they were completely unprotected. > great skills at building barricades - sure, peaceful guards of Maidan had a great opportunity to learn how to do that during several police assaults at nights long before the violent resistance began (there were 2 months of peaceful protests at Maidan before radicals started violent actions on Hrushevskogo street - and Maidan is still a place for peaceful protest). Large barricades appeared after a police raid at night on December 11 when police tried to disassemble fences around Maidan using tear gas, sticks and physical pressure. Nobody used explicit violence at that time, but that was a great lesson how to defense.

malkung 13y ago

Constantly burning car tires, large-scale production of Molotov cocktails, great skills at building barricades, lots of people wearing body protection ... This does not look like self-organization at all. Surely, someone has been seriously training for this.

dmytrish 13y ago
> Constantly burning car tires - that does not require any training and was invented after few days of inhaling police tear gas. > large-scale production of Molotov cocktails - please see the previous HN post (by a russian blogger, Zyalt) where you can see _poorly_ made "cocktails" that often ignite the thrower. They're made in a hurry by women behind the front line. The large slingshot is also quite a masterpiece of preparation (irony)! > Body protection - is essential to be protected from police assaults later. I saw those protesters in the first day when they were completely unprotected. > great skills at building barricades - sure, peaceful guards of Maidan had a great opportunity to learn how to do that during several police assaults at nights long before the violent resistance began (there were 2 months of peaceful protests at Maidan before radicals started violent actions on Hrushevskogo street - and Maidan is still a place for peaceful protest). Large barricades appeared after a police raid at night on December 11 when police tried to disassemble fences around Maidan using tear gas, sticks and physical pressure. Nobody used explicit violence at that time, but that was a great lesson how to defense.