Western regime-change cartels are steering the South Caucasian republic towards chaos and the brink of civil war.
Protestors in Georgia carrying EU, US and Ukrainian flags, December 28 -- image via video screenshot
By Susann Witt-Stahl, Tbilisi, Junge Welt, 26 Dec 2024. Translated by Helmut-Harry Loewen
Sacks full of brand new helmets are regularly delivered in front of the parliament building in Tbilisi and distributed at the daily pro-EU demonstrations. Until the state put a stop to the militant protests by arresting people and banning the distribution of fireworks, gas masks and other equipment useful for street battles were also available, all for free. No wonder: the pro-EU activists have powerful allies with almost inexhaustible sources of money. “We get everything we need from the US embassy,” reports one demonstrator, raving about their ‘democracy’ and ‘protest training,’ as well as the support from the social democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) and other German non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Georgia is an Eldorado for Western NGOs. The law on the transparency of foreign influence that came into force in June 2024 does nothing to change this. Of the more than 30,000 NGOs operating in the country, of which only around 4,100 are said to be active, only 469 had actually complied with the reporting obligation by the deadline. Aggressively interventionist think tanks such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), founded in 1983 under the Reagan administration, to whose board the regime-change champion Victoria Nuland was recently appointed, can operate unhindered. The NED, whose project partners in Georgia also include the FES, co-finances NGOs that are instrumental in orchestrating the protests against the temporary suspension of talks on EU accession and for new elections. For example, Transparency International Georgia, Georgian Young Lawyersʼ Association, which is also supported by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the European Endowment for Democracy (the British and EU counterparts to the NED) as well as the German embassy, and the Shame Movement.
The latter already set fire to a banner in the national colors of Ukraine in 2023, on which a Molotov cocktail can be seen above the slogan “I threw it!” “on behalf” of the youth of Georgia, “who are fed up with the authoritarian and anti-Western policies of the criminal and illegitimate Georgian Dream regime,” according to the Shame Movement. Videos circulating on social media and consistently suppressed by the Western press document that quite a few street activists have responded to such calls for violence. Detailed instructions for uprisings are provided by the Belgrade-based Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), which specializes in the organization of colour revolutions. CANVAS, which was involved in the “Euromaidan” in Ukraine, but is also active in Cuba, Venezuela and many other countries that are on the menu of US imperialism, has been training street activists in Georgia, since 2021 on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Anti-communist glue
The ideological foundations are created through the fabrication of “freedom and democracy” myths, phobias and hatred towards (systemic) competitors of the West. Historical revisionism and the export of anti-communism form an important pillar. German institutions have taken on a leading role in this. In 2010, the think tank Sovlab was established as an initiative of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is close to the Green Party, and is also supported by the NED, the US Embassy, the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the East German [SED] Dictatorship, the German Adult Education Association and the Goethe Institute. Sovlab, which produces books and films, organizes conferences and exhibitions, aims above all — often in cooperation with Georgian universities and the CIA news station Radio Liberty as well as the government of Ukraine — to “rethink” the Soviet past.
The professions of faith in the blessings dispensed by the USA, EU and NATO, which are presented with cult-like emphasis and can be heard at pro-Western rallies, and the hysterical reactions against anyone who is suspected of holding socialist positions or who only shows the beginnings of dissenting opinions, are indicative of this. Indoctrination through the NGOs' extensive “educational programs” is having an effect, at least among academics and the self-employed in the tourism, gastronomy, media, art and culture sectors, who hope to benefit more from neoliberal globalization if Georgia joins the EU.
Pressure to conform
The revolt of an ideologically blinded middle class, directed from above and from outside, is taking on grotesque proportions: The now hundreds of protest marches against the Georgian Dream government controlled by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili have been called for by “participants in US exchange programs,” “graduates of British universities,” “designers, marketing and PR people,” “children of priests and other clerics,” “yoga lovers,” friends of animals, Italy and basketball, even fans of “Harry Potter,” among others. Where the working class is virtually absent, micro-communities, sectarian identity politics and the fantasy cosmos of the culture industry have come to fill the gap.
In the field of science and research, the pressure to conform is particularly high, especially because of the abundant funding from the EU's Erasmus program. Recently, lecturers and students from various universities burned self-made “Russian diplomas” of the Georgian Dream deputies in front of the Ministry of Education (very few of them are likely to have such an academic degree, as most of them were educated in the West). Students who refuse to join the anti-Russian frenzy have a hard time: “I was attacked by my professor because I took part in the Eurasian Linguists Congress in Moscow,” Elizabeth Jorjadze*, who graduated in Georgian Philosophy from Ilia State University in Tbilisi this year, told jW. Ilia University urged the organizers of the conference to remove all information that linked Jorjadze to the university. The university had been founded under President Mikheil Saakashvili, who had whipped the country onto a western course with proto-fascist policies in the 2000s, and works together with Sovlab, also against the government.
“The Georgian Dream has been pursuing a policy of normalization with Russia for twelve years, especially in economic relations,” Sonja Schiffers, Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation South Caucasus, recently made clear in an interview with Deutsche Welle, which the West is no longer prepared to tolerate. The Socialist Platform of Georgia, the voice of the country's severely weakened Marxist opposition, assumes that the Western regime change armada will not hesitate to “incite a civil war.” It warns of the transition from a “limited democracy” to a “fascist dictatorship” in the event of an overthrow and appeals to the population: “Do not allow the Ukrainization of Georgia!”
*The name has been changed by the editors.
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