Former runner for mayor of Lviv, who took third place at the 2010 elections, deputy of the city council of Galitchyna's administrative center Yuri Mihalchyshin got wide media publicity after the scandalous lecture for the active core of the All-Ukrainian Union “Freedom” (“Svoboda”), which is his fracture. In his speech, which received wide resonance in the Internet, Mihalchyshin called for Ukrainian patriots to take the killers of Hamas as an example for thesmelves.

The IzRus portal gives us fragments of his speech: “The wonderful and intolerant Palestinian people blows up occupants, and fights a guerrilla war in the city. Hamas is an Islamist anti-globalist movement, an exemplary model of resistance... The so-called “State of Israel” is absolutely illegitimate... The Palestinians show us positive examples towards which we should be oriented – national solidarity, social activity, the role of religion, and the provision of safety in the streets done by Hamas' freedom fighters.” The Lviv city council deputy spoke of the Holocaust in the following manner: “The historic conditions sometimes come together in such extreme ways so that they [the Jews] have to become worried. Europe has had such particularly bright periods. We know all about them. And these bright periods bring much hope to the Palestinian people. They remember them, and have a very positive response to them. Of course, they meet these parts of history with great enthusiasm, hoping that not all is lost yet.”

EAJC General Council member, expert on anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and political extremism Vyacheslav Likhachev was one of those to whom the IzRus journalist Shiman Briman turned to for a commentary. Below we give the full text of the commentary of Vyacheslav Likhachev, which had been significantly shortened in the IzRus publication:

“Yuri Mihalchishin became especially famous during the Lviv events of the 9th of May, where he had been not only one of the most active participants of the riots (connected with the active and sometimes violent opposition of the Ukrainian nationalists to the people who wanted to pay a symbolic tribute of memory to Soviet soldiers) from Svoboda's side. It can be clearly seen on the videos from the 9th of May that he was the main link between Svoboda and the small quickly-moving groups (so-called “mobs” in the subculture's slang) of aggressive youths, whose faces were covered with white doctor's masks. Those events showed with unexpected candidness the level of connection and the quality of coordination between the representatives of teenage Neo-Nazi (in the actual sense of the word) subcultural groups and the Svoboda party active core, even its leadership – and Mihalchishin was one of those creating the connection.

This is no surprise, really. The young party functionary of Svoboda and deputy of the Lviv City Council does not conceal his Neo-Nazi predilections, calls for a “socio-national revolution,” and has a blog on Livejournal with the telling username “nachtigal88” (the last number is the Neo-Nazi subculture code for “Heil, Hitler!” and “nachtigal” probably doesn't mean the bird “Nightingale,” but the name of a battalion of Ukrainians that fought on the side of the Third Reich), where he unashamedly speaks about how he demonstrates the “salute from the heart to god” (an allusion to the popular in Russian Neo-Nazi groups poem “Let's raise our hands from the heart to god”, which means, of course, the Roman salute) and the feeling of awe with which he held the first edition of the “Main Kampf” in his hands (a book that had been, in Mihalchishin's own words, “defining” for him from 16 years onwards).

Mihalchishin tries to cover his unhealthy love for the Nazi ideology in public with scholarly interest – his PhD thesis is dedicated to the political strategies of the Nazi party and the Italian Fascist party. It is obvious that the man sees in them an example and a model for freedom – and he turns to Hamas for such a model, as well. His apologetic of the Islamist radicals, about whom, judging by the lecture, the Svoboda functionary knows nothing, is purely practical – Mihalchishin calls for Ukrainian “patriots” to learn from Hamas, or better said from the picture of this organization he paints, the general idea of which he must have seen in nice sweet wet-dreams.

It should be said that, in general, “Svoboda” has been trying to be more careful with anti-Semitism in recent years, starting with the memorable pronouncements of party leader Oleg Tyagnybok in 2004. In their agitation, the party uses different negative ethnic stereotypes which incite a less acute reaction in journalists and society at large – Russophobia, or a migrantophobia interpreted through the racist categorical apparatus. But sometimes their anti-Semitism bursts through again, and it is very characteristic that these “bursts” are connected with two topics – the Holodomor and the Near Eastern conflict. Tyagnibok himself has given speeches teetering on the brink of anti-Semitism about the “atrocities commited by the Zionist agressors.” I believe there is a simple explanation to this peculiarity of party propaganda. Post-Soviet “anti-Zionism” (in Europe, too, but in post-Soviet territory this is stronger because of the memory of official USSR propaganda) is something from the arsenal of communists and other lefties, but not from the arsenal of nationalists, because nationalists, including their radical wing, might not want Jews in their countries, but cannot help but respect Israel as a model of a national state. Svoboda wants to be seen as respectable, like right-wing parties in Europe, and the unbridled criticism of the politics of Israel and solidarity with its enemies, including killers and terrorists, is a discourse which is not perceived as anti-Semitic by society at large. Since they cannot, and do not really want to, restrain their anti-Semitism, in their official agitations the leaders of Svoboda channel it against Israel, even though they are in truth absolutely indifferent towards what happens in the Near East, as Ukraine has neither real influence, nor real interest in the region, and Mihalchishin's lecture, full of factual mistakes and a general absence of understanding, is a testament to just how little attention he pays to the region and its situation. For Michachishin's didactic purposes, the picture he has in his head is more important than reality.

Thus only one questions remains – does this Hitler fan who calls to take HAMAS an as example have any real influence in his party? In truth, even though he has been called an “ideologist,” his official place in the party hierarchy is insignificant - “deputy head of the political education department of the AUU Svoboda Lviv oblast organization.” Naturally, he is not the ideologist of the party, and neither the “right-hand man” (or even the “left foot” man, for that matter), nor the “Lviv chief.” The fact that he participated in the elections of the Lviv mayor does not show that he has any leading positions in the region – in fact, it is probably the other way around, as when the members of Svoboda understood that they would not be able to take the post, they placed a candidate that is not important and not very recognizable, so as to avoid stigmatization of some of the more famous figures. Even though Svoboda had been obviously winning in the City Council elections for the roster of members, the candidate for mayor from their party received five times less votes than the regional favorite, and this was obvious from the very beginning. Mihalchishin only has influence on the regional level – among those activists to whom he reads lectures. The program of Svoboda and its agitations, even though they are openly radically ethno-nationalistic, are fairly far off from the ideas of a “socio-national revolution” and an “urban partisan war.” The role (and recognizability) of Mihalchishin had grown after the events of the 9th of May, but he only has leading positions among the circle of Svoboda's young radical followers."