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#YesAllWomen: Rebecca Solnit on the Santa Barbara Massacre & Viral Response to Misogynist Violence
Santa Barbara is grieving after a 22-year-old man killed six college students just after posting a misogynistic video online vowing to take his revenge on women for sexually rejecting him. The massacre prompted an unprecedented reaction online with tens of thousands of women joining together to tell their stories of sexual violence, harassment and intimidation. By Sunday, the hashtag #YesAllWomen had gone viral. In speaking out, women were placing the shooting inside a broader context of misogynist violence that often goes ignored. In her new book, "Men Explain Things to Me," author and historian Rebecca Solnit tackles this issue and many others. "We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern," Solnit says. "Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We turn now to the massacre in Santa Barbara, California, where a gunman killed six other people and wounded 13 others. Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old college student, fatally stabbed three roommates at his apartment complex near the University of California, Santa Barbara. He then opened fire at a nearby sorority house, killing two women. Rodger continued his rampage with a drive-by shooting on scores of pedestrians, killing one. The attack ended when he crashed his vehicle, found dead at the wheel of what police called a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The rampage was part of a plot Rodger outlined in videos and a manifesto posted online hours before. He described his anger at being sexually rejected by female classmates. He spoke of launching a, quote, "war on women" for failing to see him as, quote, "the true alpha male."
ELLIOT RODGER: Girls have never been attracted to me. I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It’s an injustice, a crime, because I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy. I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male.
AMY GOODMAN: Elliot Rodger was armed with three semiautomatic handguns and multiple rounds of ammunition, all of which he had purchased legally. In an emotional statement the following day, Richard Martinez spoke out about the loss of his 20-year-old son Christopher, who was killed in the rampage. Martinez denounced the National Rifle Association and the politicians who stand in the way of gun control.
RICHARD MARTINEZ: Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, "Stop this madness! We don’t have to live like this"? Too many have died. We should say to ourselves, "Not one more!"
AARON MATÉ: The massacre also prompted an unprecedented reaction online with tens of thousands of women joining together to tell their stories of sexual violence, harassment and intimidation. By Sunday, the hashtag #YesAllWomen had been used over 500,000 times, the most on Twitter. In speaking out, women were placing the shooting inside a broader context of misogynist violence. While there’s been intense scrutiny of the shooter’s background and mental illness, there has been far less focus on a culture of violence in which nearly all mass shootings are carried out by men, and people like Elliot Rodger feel entitled to victimize the women who reject them.
AMY GOODMAN: In her new book, Men Explain Things to Me, the writer, historian, activist Rebecca Solnit tackles this issue and many others. She writes, quote, "We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender," she writes.
Rebecca Solnit joins us from the studios of San Francisco. A writer, historian and activist, she has written over a dozen books, including her latest, Men Explain Things to Me. She is also a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine.
Rebecca, your response to what happened in Santa Barbara over the weekend on Friday?
REBECCA SOLNIT: One of the things that was fascinating was the battle of the story. There was such a mainstream desire to say, "Oh, this was aberrant. Oh, he was mentally ill. This has nothing to do with us. This raises no big questions." And to see feminists and allies speak out and say, "No, this is about misogyny, this is about entitlement," was really extraordinary. The term "sexual entitlement," which I had heard before, but not widespread, suddenly began to be used everywhere. And it feels like it really changed the conversation, because so many people insisted on it, so many people got it—this sense that this guy was owed something by women and was furious at them for not giving it to him and that he had the right to exact revenge and all kinds of, you know, what our government calls "collateral damage" on the people around him because his needs weren’t being met.
AARON MATÉ: What can we learn here about the broader culture that enables people like this to do what he did?
REBECCA SOLNIT: I absolutely agree with Richard Martinez that the availability of guns is a huge problem. I think it’s part of a toxic brew in our culture right now that includes modeling masculinity and maleness as extremely—as violence, as domination, as entitlement, as control, and women as worthless, as disposable, as things men have the right to control, etc. And, you know, as well as one of the sad things is that he seemed to have incredibly conventional ideas about what constituted happiness and well-being and his entitlement to them. He seemed to have no resources, no models of alternative ways to meet your needs to be happy, to connect to human beings. So, all of that needs to be addressed, but particularly the violence against women, which is a huge epidemic in this country right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Journalist Laurie Penny wrote an article in the New Statesman headlined "Let’s Call the Isla Vista Killings What They Were: Misogynist Extremism." In it, Penny writes, quote, "When news of the murders broke, when the digital world began to absorb and discuss its meaning, I had been about to email my editor to request a few days off, because the impact of some particularly horrendous rape threats had left me shaken, and I needed time to collect my thoughts. Instead of taking that time, I am writing this blog, and I am doing so in rage and in grief—not just for the victims of the Isla Vista massacre, but for what is being lost everywhere as the language and ideology of the new misogyny continues to be excused." Rebecca Solnit, I was wondering if you can comment on this and the fact that it’s not just one video that Elliot Rodger had posted online. He posted numerous videos. And what was his—the indications of his hatred of women before this and why he had not been dealt with?
REBECCA SOLNIT: I think what’s important is to look at the broader picture. He killed six people, but three women every day in the United States are killed by domestic partners, ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, etc. You know, this is not an isolated event, but part of an epidemic. And you can look at other things he did earlier. In his 140-page sort of manifesto autobiography, he talks about trying to push women off a ledge at a party because they weren’t paying attention to [him], throwing coffee on girls who didn’t respond the way he wanted them to. And you can see these micro-aggressions, and just as you can see Laurie Penny being given rape and death threats, that there is a huge, broad network that we need to look at, and not just this guy, but the fact that, as the hastag says at #YesAllWomen, yes, all women face these kinds of things, not just the women who died and were shot in Isla Vista and the male—you know, the men who got caught in the crossfire. So, you know, I think that we need to broaden the focus from this one guy, who’s no longer alive, and his misery and rage, and to look at the broad picture of how well he fits into a culture of entitlement, how well he fits into a culture of rage, how well he fits into a culture that considers women tools and playthings and property. And then we need to start addressing that. Or maybe we just need to broaden and deepen the way that some of us have been addressing it for decades, including you, of course.
AARON MATÉ: And, Rebecca Solnit, in your book, Men Explain Things to Me, you talk about the 2012 gang rape and murder of a woman in New Delhi, and you talk about how that sort of spawned a Emmett Till moment, where India sort of had a reckoning with its rape culture. With the proliferation of—like, with the explosion of the #YesAllWomen hashtag and the response that you saw, are you seeing a similar moment here?
REBECCA SOLNIT: I think we are. I actually feel like, in early 2013, really worldwide, very strongly in India and the United States, we changed the way we talked about rape. You know, we won the battle of the story to stop treating rape as sort of isolated, aberrant incidents and treat it as a widespread problem that arises not from anomalies in the culture, but from the mainstream of the culture. And changing the language was part of that. The word "rape culture," or the words "rape culture," the phrase "rape culture," became very widespread last year and a really important tool in addressing the epidemic of rapes in the military, on campuses and all over the country and in a lot of parts of the world. I feel like the word this year, because we’ve made another kind of breakthrough in discussing it, is "sexual entitlement," so that—to discuss the broad problems that underlie this particular incident.
So, yeah, I feel like we really shook things up this weekend and that we won the battle of the story. There’s half a million #YesAllWomen tweets. An addressing of the—you know, annoyance of "not all men" as this constant refrain, that changes the subject to the needs of male bystanders, got addressed. And a lot of very powerful women—Laurie Penny, Jennifer Pozner, Amanda Hess and so many more of the great feminist voices of our time—were there immediately to frame this story as a broad story, as a big story, as a story that’s central to our culture, as a story that impacts all women, not just the women who were directly attacked in Isla Vista. And I think that’s—
AMY GOODMAN: Rebecca—
REBECCA SOLNIT: —that’s remarkable. I feel like I saw a huge struggle this weekend and one in which we made enormous gains.
AMY GOODMAN: Rebecca, explain "yes all women," those words, that phrase.
REBECCA SOLNIT: There’s this incredibly annoying phrase, "not all men," that comes up all the time. You know, you say three women a day are murdered by male partners, and so often some guy will say, "Not all men." An angry feminist said to me yesterday, you know, "What do they want? A cookie for not raping, beating and murdering?" And, you know, we know it’s not all men, but we need to talk about the fact that it is all women. And that’s what "yes all women" said, is, "Yeah, we know not all men are rapists and murderers, are not abusers and misogynists, but all women are impacted by the men who are." And that’s where the focus needs to be, because it has such a huge impact.
Every woman, every day, when she leaves her house, starts to think about safety: Can I go here? Should I go out there? Do I need to take the main street? Do I need to be in by a certain hour? Do I need to find a taxi? Is the taxi driver going to rape me? You know, women are so hemmed in by fear of men, it profoundly limits our lives. And of course it’s not all men, but it’s enough that it impacts all women. And it’s pretty nearly worldwide. The tweets were coming from all over the English-speaking world and parts of the world that aren’t primarily English-speaking, to say that this problem impacts me, this problem impacts us, and we need to keep doing things about it. We need to escalate, and we need to address how deeply embedded it is. And we need to make visible what’s been invisible, and we need to change it. And I think this weekend we really started to do that.
AMY GOODMAN: Rebecca, the title of your book, Men Explain Things to Me, explain it to us, and also the first story and how it relates to what we see this weekend in Santa Barbara.
REBECCA SOLNIT: Yeah, Men Explain Things to Me came about because all my life men would explain things to me that they didn’t necessarily know better than I did, and sometimes I knew much better than they did, because there was this assumption that because of gender they were just inherently knowledgeable and superior and in control, and I was inherently ignorant and in need of an injection of their knowledge, wisdom, insight, etc.
The title story—or the story that inspired it came about in 2003. I was at a party when some guy said to me, "So, I hear you’ve written a few books." And I said, "Several, actually." I was at about eight books or seven books at that point. And he said, "And what are they about?" And the most recent one was about Eadweard Muybridge. It’s the father of motion pictures. It’s called River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. And he didn’t comment on that. He said, "Oh, have you heard about the very important Muybridge that just came out?" And he started doing what feminists, immediately after this essay came out, coined or defined as mansplaining—one of the great new words that’s helped us discuss what’s going on in the world. He started telling me about this very important book I should know about. And the woman I was with, my friend Sally, kept saying, "That’s her book." And he literally didn’t hear her until she had said it three or four times. So this man was telling me about this book I should know about, and it was a book I had written. And he was so full of himself, he literally couldn’t hear me, couldn’t hear her, didn’t ask questions first.
And that was incredibly funny, but it’s part of a slippery slope where men assume the right to talk over you, to not listen to you, to tell you how it’s going to be, to explain reality. What surprised me when I wrote that essay is that I started out with a pretty amusing incident, although one that’s indicative of sexism and a kind of conversational bullying, and I ended up talking about rapes and murders, the ways that women are literally silenced, deprived of their powers, etc. I think it’s important that we look at all this stuff together. It begins with these micro-aggressions; it ends with rape and murder and what Italian feminists call "femicide."
AARON MATÉ: On our show recently, we featured the voices of college women who have been fighting back against sexual assault, both the incident and then the inability—or the refusal of the schools to punish them. Your take on the way schools in this country have handled rape on campus?
REBECCA SOLNIT: It’s been pretty damn pathetic in a whole lot of ways. One thing is that they tend to worry a lot more in many cases about the well-being of the perpetrators than the victims. Another thing is that they shifted responsibility for preventing rape from men not to rape to women to do all kinds of things to not get raped, which we don’t do with any other crime. And, you know—and then they haven’t pursued these things seriously. It’s also kind of crazy. It’s like, OK, if there’s petty vandalism on campus, maybe that’s a campus issue, but if there’s a felony crime that involves, you know, a woman being strangled, a woman being brutalized, why is that not turned over to the legal system, which is there to deal with those things, the idea that it’s an in-house incident? But what—you know, it’s been mishandled or overlooked, not handled at all, for decades, forever.
But what’s amazing is, because these young women rose up, they said, "This is not acceptable. This is not a legitimate way to deal with it." Because they used social media, their voices, the mainstream media, they’re organizing to say, "This has to stop. This has to change." They’re really radically changing how it’s being treated and exposing the universities—
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds, Rebecca.
REBECCA SOLNIT: —which are universities from California to Rhode Island, from Florida to Alaska, and saying, "This is going to change." And they are changing it. This is a very exciting time in feminism. I think that we’re shifting things profoundly.
AMY GOODMAN: Rebecca Solnit, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Her new book is called Men Explain Things to Me.
Will Election Unite Ukraine? Dozens Killed in Airport Battle as President-Elect Vows Russia Talks
At least 30 pro-Russian rebels have reportedly died in fierce fighting at the airport in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The Ukrainian government bombarded the airport with air strikes, then paratroopers, after rebels seized it on Monday. The fighting began just hours after the pro-European billionaire candy tycoon Petro Poroshenko won Ukraine’s first presidential election since the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych. After his election, Petro Poroshenko said he was ready to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he ruled out any talks with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. To discuss these developments, we are joined by three guests: Christopher Miller of the Kyiv Post, reporting just steps from the embattled airport in Donetsk; Jack Matlock, the former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991; and Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, who just returned from Kiev and wrote the article in The New York Review of Books titled "Ukraine: The Edge of Democracy."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: Dozens of pro-Russian rebels have reportedly died in fierce fighting at the airport in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The rebels seized the airport Monday morning. The Ukrainian government responded with force, launching air strikes, then paratroopers.
The fighting began just hours after pro-European billionaire Petro Poroshenko won Ukraine’s first presidential election since the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych in February. Poroshenko took about 55 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff. Polling stations never opened in parts of eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels have formed a self-proclaimed people’s republic.
AMY GOODMAN: After his election, Petro Poroshenko said he was ready to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he ruled out any talks with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
To talk more about Ukraine, we go first to Donetsk. Christopher Miller is an editor at Kyiv Post. He’s been based in Ukraine for four years.
Talk about the results of the election and who the man is who won.
CHRISTOPHER MILLER: The results of the election were Poroshenko winning by a landslide, and with more than—much more than 50 percent of the vote. However, that percentage in Donetsk region, specifically, was much lower. The turnout here was about 15 percent. I did speak with some people who were able to vote, not in Donetsk city proper, but in a western city here called Krasnoarmeysk. Some of them voted for Poroshenko, they said, because they had no other choice. They had no one who represented their views in the region. Others voted—said they voted for the former Party of Regions member Sergiy Tigipko. But there is very little support for Poroshenko in Donetsk, and, you know, more than 80 percent of the population was disenfranchised here.
AMY GOODMAN: You are right near the airport, Christopher. Can you talk about what’s happening there right now?
CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Yeah, I’m several hundred meters from the airport, as close as I can get right now. There’s about six dump trucks full of dirt. They’re being moved into the street and used as barricades. There are several hundred tires stacked up in front of them, the sort of first line of the barricade, and everything is wrapped in razor wire. There’s about 30 armed rebels here, several with anti-tank weapons rigged over their shoulders, all with Kalashnikovs and pistols tucked into their flak jackets. It’s a pretty tense scene. There are some locals standing by and about a dozen journalists, as well. We’re not sure exactly what’s going to happen here. We haven’t heard gunfire for several hours, but there was several bursts of it earlier this morning.
AARON MATÉ: And, Christopher Miller, the new president, the president-elect, Poroshenko, has promised to negotiate with the rebels, but does this latest flareup of violence—does it portend a wider conflict?
CHRISTOPHER MILLER: It’s really hard to say. Poroshenko obviously hasn’t sworn in yet, and he might be involved in discussions regarding the anti-terror operation that’s being carried out here, but, you know, the orders are still coming down from the interim government and interim president. You know, he said that he is planning on coming out east. It’s going to be difficult to get out here, obviously, with the airport closed, train traffic in and out, and barricades erected all around the region. But I might—I might have to go in a moment. Some people are—some people are moving. And I apologize.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s OK, Christopher. Very quickly, how many people have been killed where you are at the airport?
CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Around the airport area, after my visit to the morgue about an hour ago, 33 people had been identified as pro-Russian rebels that fought with Ukrainian forces yesterday. They were heaped into a pile at the morgue that was being guarded by several—several other rebels. The lead investigator there said that several of them had been killed by Kalashnikov bullets. One man was seriously mangled. His left leg was missing and his arms broken from some sort of blast. Other reports from the Donetsk mayor have said 40, possibly 43; two doctors I spoke to said 45 and 43 rebels have been killed. Both of them and the lead investigator confirmed with me that two civilians were caught in the crossfire—one man and one woman—and both died.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, the significance of Donetsk in the struggle, and if you think Ukraine could divide? You’re in—of course, right in Donetsk, which is in eastern Ukraine.
CHRISTOPHER MILLER: It’s hard to say. It does seem as though—as tense as it is, that the Ukrainian troops have the upper hand. Most of the rebels fled the central administration building that they’ve been holed up in for more than a month last night, including the separatist leader, Denis Pushilin. And the Ukrainian military has taken control back from the rebels of the airport here. Certainly, they recognize the significance and importance of the airport here and, you know, don’t want to lose it. But it seems as though the momentum is in their favor. I guess we’ll see how today plays out and if they can remain in control here.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Christopher, stay safe. Christopher Miller, editor at Kyiv Post, he has been based in Ukraine for four years. When we come back from break, we’ll have a discussion about what’s happening overall in Ukraine, and then we’ll be talking to Rebecca Solnit about the massacre in Santa Barbara. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté.
AARON MATÉ: Well, dozens of pro-Russian rebels have died in the fighting in Ukraine, and we’re going to go now to talking about the elections. On Sunday, Ukraine’s newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko, said he was ready to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he ruled out any talks with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
PRESIDENT-ELECT PETRO POROSHENKO: They just murder. They’re just bandits. They’re just a killer. They’re just a terrorist. That’s the case. And if you expected that I will find out the support of these people, no way, no chance. In no civilized country of the world, nobody have a negotiation with a terrorist. We are a civilized country. And we will, again, fight for the trust of the people of Donbass. We will propose the amnesty for those who can accept disarmed and not directly involved in the crimes, not only in the killing of the people. And we will defend and clean and bring the peace in the Donbass, including the fighting against terror. This is the—one of the main function of the state, to defend the people.
AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, ahead of the Ukrainian election, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would accept the outcome of the vote.
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] We will unconditionally respect the choice of the Ukrainian people, and we’ll work with the authorities that are being formed based on this election.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about Ukraine, we’re joined by Jack Matlock. He served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow from '87 to ’91. He's—welcome to Democracy Now!, joining us from Princeton. Talk about the significance of these elections and the man who won, Ambassador Matlock, the billionaire chocolate manufacturer.
JACK MATLOCK: Well, the elections are obviously extremely important, the fact that so many people came out in most of the country and the fact that the decision was a clear-cut one. In the past, Ukrainian elections have been very closely balanced, with a very slight majority taking all the power. Now, the country is obviously still very divided, and it’s most unfortunate that those on the extreme east, particularly in Donetsk, for the most part didn’t have the chance to vote.
Now, the president-elect, Mr. Poroshenko, is probably the best of the candidates in a position to begin to re-unify the country and to negotiate with the Russians. I think he has to do two things before he can address the deeper problems that Ukraine has. One thing, he has to unify the country in the sense that the Russian-speaking population of the east feel that they are part of the same country, and at the same time he has to satisfy Russia that his government is not going to be rabidly anti-Russian and a security challenge for them. I do think that he should be well positioned to talk to them. He has business interests in Russia. Of course, he has been in the government of the party that dominated in the east, so that it would seem that he is the best of the current leaders to lead them into—or out of some of their current problems.
AARON MATÉ: Well, let’s hear more from the president-elect, Petro Poroshenko. After winning Sunday’s election, he said Russia’s involvement is crucial to resolving the crisis.
PRESIDENT-ELECT PETRO POROSHENKO: Russia is our biggest neighbor. And because of the fact that they’re stopping the war and bringing the peace to the whole Ukraine and bringing stability on the eastern part of Ukraine, that would be impossible without participation of Russian representative, most probably. The meeting with the Russian leadership will certainly take place in the first half of June.
AARON MATÉ: Ambassador Matlock, what are the grievances of the rebels in the east, and what can Poroshenko do to address them?
JACK MATLOCK: Well, the grievances of the Russian-speaking people in the east—I don’t know about the rebels; I think they’re a bunch of hoodlums and are—you know, are simply seeking power for the sake of it and to loot and so on. But the people as a whole, I want to feel that they can be loyal, first-class Ukrainians and still live in a Russian-language cultural world. Russian is their first language, and they feel that the governments that have come from the West have tried to force upon them Ukrainian as a language that—not exclusive language, but one that has precedence over the others. This is a highly emotional issue. Now—and I think one of the big mistakes that the government made just after the overthrow of Yanukovych, there was a vote to make Ukraine the only official language. Now, that was reversed by the acting president, but still it sent shockwaves, I think, through the Russian-speaking eastern regions.
There are other issues, as well. The economies are quite different in the basis. The eastern—the economy in the east is much more dependent upon Russia for markets and much more vulnerable to Russian manipulation. But basically, I think what the people in the east want, most of whom do feel that they’re loyal Ukrainians, most of them don’t want to be in the Russian Federation, but they do want respect. And I think that the new government must lead them to a sense of nationality, a sense of national unity, not based entirely on language but that includes Russian as well as Ukrainian.
AMY GOODMAN: In addition to Ambassador Matlock, we’re joined by Timothy Snyder in Vienna, Austria. He’s a professor of history at Yale University, author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. And his latest piece for The New York Review of Books is headlined "Ukraine: The Edge of Democracy." He’s just returned from a weekend in Kiev. Professor Snyder, thanks also for joining us. Can you talk about who Poroshenko is, his history and his significance as the now president-elect of Ukraine?
TIMOTHY SNYDER: Poroshenko is a good example of where Ukrainian politics stands now. What we saw in Ukraine in the early part of this year was a revolution, which was essentially from the left, a revolution against an authoritarian regime which had done away with basic rights, which was kleptocratic and which embodied the main complaint that Ukrainians, east and west, north and south, have, which is corruption. That revolution was essentially stopped halfway. It was stopped halfway as a result of the Russian intervention and the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, so that what you have now is a kind of compromise between new elites an old elites.
Poroshenko is right there in the middle. He is—he is not someone new. He is someone who has served in important functions in governments over the course of the last decade. At the same time, he was someone who was on the Maidan, who rather prominently himself took part of the revolution. So, he’s somewhere in between. I mean, he’s someone who’s made an awful lot of money, and yet he’s also someone who stood by the people who were trying to change things for the better.
With regard to your previous question, it’s interesting to note that Poroshenko, like the other major presidential candidate, for that matter, is a native speaker of Russian. He’s from—he’s from near the southeast. And like most Ukrainian politicians, he’s perfectly capable of using one language or the other depending upon the circumstances.
AMY GOODMAN: And how he’s viewed in the east and also in the west, as well as by President Putin, Professor Snyder?
TIMOTHY SNYDER: Well, look, the important thing about the election that just happened is that people went en masse to vote. I think the main idea that people had voting for Poroshenko was that he was the best of the available alternatives. Poroshenko is not someone who’s regarded as some kind of hotheaded patriot from the West. He’s not someone who is regarded as, you know, some kind of radical. He’s seen by pretty much everybody for what he is: a centrist.
The crucial thing about Poroshenko is that he was the only candidate who had the necessaries to get elected in the first round. He had backing from all over the country. In fact, even in the southeast, insofar as we have electoral returns from there, he was the candidate who was winning. And he also had a reputation which crossed the divide between pro-Maidan and anti-Maidan.
How is he seen in Russia is anyone’s guess. I’m not sure they’ve decided that themselves. But he has spoken to Putin in the past, and I think there’s no particular reason to think that people won’t—people won’t speak to him in the future.
But, I mean, at the moment, of course, what he represents, above all, is the outcome of a very successful presidential election in which more than 60 percent of the people came out to vote. And I think, frankly, it was the voting itself, more than Poroshenko, which was the crucial thing to most Ukrainians. I think the voting itself is more the success. And now, you know, Ukrainians, like you and me, will have to wait and see whether this man turns out to be the oligarch and the traditional elite that he’s been in the past or turns out to be the person who cares about the rule of law and the Western orientation for Ukraine, as he’s promised in his electoral campaign.
AARON MATÉ: And, Professor Snyder, we hear a lot about nationalism—people aligned with Ukraine, people aligned with Russia. But are there social and economic concerns, those that underpinned the revolution at the get-go? Can those concerns help unite west and east?
TIMOTHY SNYDER: That’s an absolutely great question, because we have, for the last several months, been basically experiencing Ukraine within a kind of alternative reality in which the only issues were cultural ones, whereas in fact the cultural issues are, in my opinion, at least, not that important. The main issue in Ukrainian politics—and this is true of the people who are dissatisfied in Kiev, as well as the people who are dissatisfied in the southeast, in Donetsk, in Lugansk—is corruption and the absence of the rule of law. Nationalism is just not that important. I mean, there is an ethnic nationalist fringe in the west and the center, just as there is a Russian nationalist fringe in the southeast. Those people numerically do not amount to very much. As we just saw in this presidential election, the two nationalist candidates came in dead last. They polled around 1 percent. They were actually beaten—they were beaten by everybody else, but they were also beaten by the Jewish candidate. So, support for the far right and for Ukrainian nationalism in Ukraine is close to zero, much lower than in pretty much any other European country you would want to name. So, that’s not the real issue. That’s a distraction.
I think it would be good to get that out of our minds and realize that the basic issue is how to install the rule of law in Ukraine. That’s the thing that Poroshenko is going to be tested on, and that’s the thing that Yanukovych, before him, failed on. And I think if the new government can phrase this the right way, as Ambassador Matlock suggested, this is the issue which can go across, from Lviv to Kiev into the southeast. If the government can persuade the people in the southeast that it’s about making the administration, the bureaucracy and the law work for them, then I think we might have a place to start.
AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Matlock, I wanted to get your response to Russian President Putin, aside from saying that he would support the election in Ukraine, said Friday Moscow’s biggest concern over the crisis in Ukraine was that the former Soviet republic would join NATO. He said, "Tomorrow Ukraine may join NATO, while the day after tomorrow parts of the U.S. anti-missile system could be deployed there." He was speaking to an investment forum. Talk about NATO and Putin and his concerns.
JACK MATLOCK: Oh, I think that is and has been Putin’s main concern, and I think that’s why he took Crimea. You know, one of the problems when we started expanding NATO in the way we did is that if we weren’t prepared to stop at a certain point, which had to be Ukraine and, I would add, Georgia, this was going to create a very strong reaction from Russia, whoever the leader of Russia was. And I think it was quite irresponsible, the talk that we had in around 2007, 2008, of bringing Ukraine into NATO, and the fact that the Ukrainian governments were not willing to sort of pledge neutrality, the way, in effect, Finland, for example, has lived as a neutral country without NATO, defending itself very well from Russia. I think this has been probably the crucial issue. There have been others, of course, but I think that’s the crucial one, because Putin looks at the demonstrations in Ukraine inaccurately, but as simply the creation of the United States, the CIA and the West Europeans. And this has been exaggerated in their propaganda, so that the whole so-called threat of NATO putting its bases in Crimea, of all places, was probably the most emotional of the issues that has been driving him.
AARON MATÉ: I want to go back to Professor Snyder. Did you see this as a choice between Russia on the one side and then the EU on the other? That was framed as the issue when this revolution began, but why can’t Ukraine forge ties to both?
TIMOTHY SNYDER: Because Russia is no longer Russia. Russia is now also an integration project. That’s the big thing that changed, and it surprised elites in the European Union as well as elites in Ukraine, and certainly we are now just coming to terms with it. The traditional Ukrainian foreign policy has been precisely to balance between east and west, to go west as far as you can, then when that doesn’t work out, go back east, and then when that doesn’t work out, go back west. Every Ukrainian president down to Yanukovych, in fact, has done that in one form or another. The reason that that is no longer possible is that Russia is no longer a state. Russia is also an integration process, called Eurasia. And the reason why we had the revolution that we had from November to March of last year and this year is that Russia became an exclusive alternative. What Russia wanted was for Ukraine to join its project, the Eurasian Union, rather than sign a trade deal with the European Union. And so, there we had a clear difference between the Ukrainian president, who decided in the end not to move towards Europe, and the people who started the protests, who were in favor of moving towards Europe. So, Ukraine is no longer in a traditional geopolitical situation where you have a state here and a state here. You have two different projects of integration, right, one of which wants Ukraine to join—that’s Putin’s project—one of which many Ukrainians wish to join, and that is the European Union. So, obviously, some kind of happy middle has to be found. But that’s the reason why—that’s the reason why you can no longer play this game of going back and forth. But I would stress, this is not about fundamentally Russia and the European Union or Russia and America. It’s fundamentally about what the Ukrainians themselves want to do with their own sovereign statehood and the choices that their leaders make.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Matlock—I mean, Ambassador Matlock, the massive China-Russia deal that was just made, can you talk about the significance of that and how that plays in, if it does at all, with Russia and Ukraine?
JACK MATLOCK: I’m sorry. I missed the first question.
AMY GOODMAN: The massive China-Russia—
JACK MATLOCK: I mean, first part of your question.
AMY GOODMAN: The China-Russia energy deal that has just been sealed, the largest ever.
JACK MATLOCK: Oh, the energy deal. I think that that has no relevance at all, except in the minds of some pundits. That’s a deal that will take place several years from now. It’s probably a good thing. It’s going to develop fields that haven’t yet been developed and extend the pipeline, the supply of natural gas to China. That will increase, you might say, the world supply of natural gas. I think that if it makes economic sense—and nobody knows precisely what the terms are—it’s not a bad deal, and I don’t think it should be looked at as if it’s suddenly a switch in alliances.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Ambassador—Professor Snyder, that same issue? It’s how the U.S. sees Russia’s alignments these days and the significance of Russia-China together.
TIMOTHY SNYDER: I agree with Ambassador Matlock that the deal itself doesn’t have to be seen as a big symbolic event, one way or the other, whether they had signed or whether they hadn’t. I do think that there is the possibility of a Russian geopolitical realignment here, because what’s happened with Ukraine in the last several months is that Russia has defined itself by way of its own propaganda domestically, first of all, but also internationally, as not a European state, as not bound by previous treaties involving European states, as not bound by the general European sense of the rule of law, as not being part of the European postwar order, as not—as, in general, being a different civilization.
I personally take that change, which we’ve seen very much in the last half-year, very seriously. I mean, the outcome, of course, is things like the annexation of Crimea or the open talk about changing the Ukrainian border or other borders again. But in defining Russia as not European, Putin is opening himself up to other models. And China is attractive, because China, unlike the European Union or unlike the United States, doesn’t come with a normative package. It doesn’t ask for liberalism. It doesn’t ask for rights. It doesn’t ask for democracy. So there does seem to be a certain temptation in the Kremlin to tilt to the east. And that temptation can become a reality. If the Europeans react, as I think it’s very likely they will, to this latest disaster by getting their heads together—
AMY GOODMAN: We have just lost Timothy Snyder. He was speaking to us from Vienna, Austria. The satellite has gone down. He’s a professor of history at Yale University. But we are going to end the conversation there, though of course continue to follow developments not only in Ukraine, but with the EU, as well as with Russia and China. Professor Snyder wrote Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. And we’ll link to his piece in The New York Review of Books titled "Ukraine: The Edge of Democracy." He’s just returned from Kiev.
And Ambassador Matlock, thanks so much for being with us, has served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow from ’87 to ’91.
JACK MATLOCK: Glad to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: His latest book, Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray—and How to Return to Reality, as well as Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union. He also wrote Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended. And that does it for our broadcast on Ukraine. When we come back, we’ll talk about what happened in Santa Barbara this weekend, the massacre. Stay with us.
Headlines:
•Gunman Who Vowed "War on Women" Kills 6 in California
A California man has killed seven people including himself after posting a video to YouTube saying he was seeking retribution against all women for rejecting his sexual advances. Elliot Rodger stabbed three people to death at his apartment Friday before driving to a sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he killed two women outside. He drove through town continuing to fire on pedestrians, before dying of what authorities called a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Hours before the attack, Rodger posted a chilling video saying he planned to attack "you girls" for what he called the "crime" of not being attracted to him.
Elliot Rodger: "On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB, and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blonde slut I see inside there."
Rodger’s misogynist comments sparked a viral response on Twitter, with more than a million tweets using the hashtag #YesAllWomen, seeking to put the attack within a wider context of everyday harassment and violence. Among those killed in the massacre was 20-year-old Christopher Michaels-Martinez, whose father has reignited the call for gun control.
Richard Martinez: "Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA [National Rifle Association]. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, 'Stop this madness! We don't have to live like this"? Too many have died. We should say to ourselves, 'Not one more!'"
•Nigerian Official Says Location of Missing Girls Known
A top military official in Nigeria has said officials have located the nearly 300 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, but will not risk going in with force to attempt a rescue. Air Marshal Alex Badeh reportedly made the remarks in the capital Abuja as demonstrators there rallied to demand the girls’ return. They have been missing for six weeks. U.S. military specialists have been participating in the search. Over the weekend, Nigeria was rocked by further violence, including an attack by gunmen in the northeast that killed 20 people at a market.
•Report: U.S. Creating Commando Units in 4 African Countries
The news comes amid reports about how U.S. Special Operations troops are creating elite commando units in four African countries as part of a secretive counterterrorism program. The New York Times reports the Obama administration launched the program last year to train "homegrown African counterterrorism teams" in Libya, Niger, Mauritania and Mali. An official told the Times the Pentagon is spending nearly $70 million to train and equip units in Niger and Mauritania. The effort in Mali has stalled following a military coup, while initial training in Libya was called off when militants overpowered Libyan guards at a training base and stole hundreds of U.S.-supplied items, including automatic weapons. On Wednesday, Obama is expected to give a speech at West Point outlining a new foreign policy direction that focuses more on training local forces.
•Obama Discusses Future U.S. Presence in Surprise Afghanistan Trip
President Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan over Memorial Day weekend. Speaking to troops at Bagram Air Base, Obama discussed plans to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 pullout date.
President Obama: "And once Afghanistan has sworn in its new president, I’m hopeful we’ll sign a bilateral security agreement that lets us move forward. And with that bilateral security agreement, assuming it is signed, we can plan for a limited military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, because after all the sacrifices we’ve made, we want to preserve the gains that you have helped to win."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has so far refused to sign a deal to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but both candidates on the ballot in next month’s runoff have expressed support for the deal.
•White House Mistakenly Outs Top CIA Official in Afghanistan
The Obama administration has blown the cover of its own top CIA official in Afghanistan. The official’s name was included on a list emailed to reporters that was later included in a press pool report circulated to more than 6,000 people. The White House scrambled to issue a list without the official’s name, and news outlets have agreed to withhold it over security fears. The apparent gaffe comes as the administration faces pressure over its failure to release other secret information, including a Senate report on the CIA’s torture program. McClatchy has obtained a letter from two top Senate committee chairs who wrote to Obama in January seeking help in declassifying information about the torture program. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin blamed the CIA’s secrecy for stalling the prosecution of 9/11 suspects and interfering with efforts to "publicly shine a light on the misguided CIA program." The CIA has indicated it could take months to review the report.
•U.N. Warns of New Carbon Dioxide Milestone; House Votes to Bar Pentagon Funds for Climate Change
A U.N. agency says the world has reached a new milestone on carbon dioxide (CO2), which is driving climate change. The World Meteorological Organization warned that in April, for the first time in history, monthly concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million throughout the Northern Hemisphere. WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud called for urgent action to cut emissions, saying, "Time is running out." Next week, President Obama is expected to announce a new regulation to cut carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, the leading source of carbon pollution in the United States. The warning from the WMO came just days after House lawmakers passed an amendment to a major military spending bill, which bars the Pentagon from using funds to address climate change and its potential impact on national security.
•3 Missing in Colorado Mudslide; Crews Battle Fires in Arizona, Alaska
In western Colorado, rescuers have been searching for three men missing after a four-mile-long mudslide, which followed days of drenching rain. In Arizona and Alaska, crews have been battling massive wildfires, which have forced residents to evacuate their homes.
•U.S. Suspends $3.5 Million in Military Aid to Thailand After Coup
In Thailand, the military junta that took power in a coup says it has received the endorsement of the king and will remain in power "indefinitely." The military has dissolved the senate and arrested a former education minister who emerged from hiding to criticize the coup. The Obama administration announced it has canceled military exercises with Thailand and suspended $3.5 million in military aid, about a third of total U.S. assistance.
•Egypt Declares Holiday to Urge Voting in Presidential Election
Egypt has declared a national holiday today in an apparent bid to boost voter turnout in the second and final day of the presidential election. Former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is widely expected to win after leading the ouster of democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi last year.
•Far-Right Parties Gain Ground in European Parliament
In Europe, extreme right-wing parties have gained new ground in elections for the European Parliament. In France, the far-right, anti-immigrant National Front party won the European Union election, while Britain saw a victory by the the U.K. Independence Party, which wants to withdraw from the European Union. Across Europe, parties skeptical of the EU on both sides of the spectrum surged to more than double their representation. In Greece, opposition leader Alexis Tsipras announced a victory by the left-wing, anti-bailout Syriza party.
Alexis Tsipras: "This is a historical day for our people. They have made a clear and brave verdict, that despite the unprecedented propaganda of fear, they condemned the Samaras government and the policies of the bailout. And for the first time in history, it raised the left to first place and with a significant difference."
*Ukraine: Dozens Killed in Donetsk Fighting After Presidential Poll
In Ukraine, at least 30 pro-Russian rebels have reportedly died in fierce fighting at the airport in the eastern city of Donetsk. The Ukrainian government bombarded the airport with air strikes, then paratroopers, after rebels seized it on Monday. The fighting began just hours after the pro-European billionaire candy tycoon Petro Poroshenko won Ukraine’s first presidential election since the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych.
*Turkish Court Orders Arrest of Israeli Commanders for Raid on Gaza Flotilla
In Turkey, a court has ordered the arrest of four former Israeli military commanders for the killings of Turkish activists on board a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in 2010. Israeli commandos stormed the aid ship Mavi Marmara in international waters, killing nine activists, including one with U.S. citizenship. On Friday, a Turkish man injured in the raid reportedly died after four years in a coma, bringing the total death toll to 10.
*Pope Francis Refers to "State of Palestine," Prays at "Apartheid Wall"
Pope Francis has paid a visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, flying directly to Bethlehem where he referred to the "State of Palestine" and made an unscheduled stop at Israel’s separation wall, bowing his head next to graffiti reading "Apartheid Wall" and "Free Palestine." On Monday, Pope Francis laid flowers on the tomb of the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, in Jerusalem.
*4 Dead in Shooting at Jewish Museum in Brussels
In Belgium, four people were shot and killed when a gunman opened fire at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. The shooter was captured by surveillance footage at the museum, but he has yet to be identified and remains at large.
*Bahraini Activist Nabeel Rajab Released After 2 Years; Funeral Held for Teen
In Bahrain, a leading human rights activist has been released after nearly two years in prison for his role in pro-democracy protests. Speaking after his release, Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, vowed to continue the struggle for democracy under the U.S.-backed monarchy.
Nabeel Rajab: "With great regret, I was imprisoned for giving speeches, my participation in defending the human rights in Bahrain, but really these two years have changed me to be much stronger. The prison for me was like a school, and I will continue to fight for the people and human rights and with the political societies until we achieve our goals that we started on February 14."
On Saturday in Bahrain, thousands marched for the funeral of a 14-year-old boy who activists say was killed by shotgun pellets fired by police last week. Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
*Activists Worldwide Join "March Against Monsanto"
Activists took to the streets around the world on Saturday to protest against the spread of genetically modified foods, patented seeds and toxic pesticides by the agricultural giant Monsanto. Organizers said millions took part in the "March Against Monsanto" events in more than 400 cities across more than 50 countries.
*Zapatista Leader Subcomandante Marcos Says He Is Stepping Down
In Mexico, the Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos has announced he is stepping down and will disappear, more than 20 years after launching an indigenous uprising on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. In a statement, Marcos said he is making way for the next generation, writing, "We have decided that today Marcos no longer exists."
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