The end of inCulto's video.

The video's not part of a scheme to get more Euros into the Lithuanian economy, but it is an alleged attempt at spreading goodwill among Europeans. The song, "Velkuom" or "Welcome," is inCulto's offering to represent Lithuania in the Eurovision contest this year in Greece. Lithuanian free-lance artists Pet Punk, who had previously animated inCulto's great video for "Boogaloo," animated this one as well. Mix in a little viral marketing, and, well, our email boxes are full.

Yet despite how pleasingly cute the song is (including the jarring reference to sex tourism), and despite how popular it was in Lithuania itself (Eurovision representatives are voted on by the people, American Idol style), it came in second place. The winning song, "Mes nugalėtojai!" or "We Are the Winners," is by nonce-band LT United. Group founder Andrius Mamontovas refers to LT United as a "rinktinė"—an all-star team, of sorts, employing the sports metaphor that unites LT United's effort to win Eurovision with Lithuania's success on the international basketball court. This peculiar move—of making a nonce-band—has been controversial, and the song itself has stirred controversy as well, even if only since it uses the word "Eurovision," which is apparently against the rules.

On the flip, I try to document, with videos and links to articles, about the phenomenon of LT United, and why, perhaps, the diaspora should be sending around clips of "We Are the Winners" instead of "Welcome."

Lietuvos Rytas reports today that, despite the name that Lithuanian football is making for itself by Vladimir Romanov's flooding of Hearts with Lithuanian players, who will probably be playing in the Champions League next year, the national team itself is not particularly impressive, slipping to 99th in the FIFA World Rankings.

Iceland, Northern Ireland, and Uganda have passed Lithuania as it slips to 99th. To think there was a time when I was still about 40/60 on the chances of Lithuania's making it to Germany this summer.

Property is theft.

Then, over New Year's in Chicago, my friend Saulius was wearing a black shirt with a hammer and sickle in red upon it. Afterwards, I was asked about my opinion regarding his shirt. I was put in a position to be like the man who hassled me at LT Days. I was to say something like, yes, it's totally tasteless for Saulius to wear that shirt, considering what "those people" did to "my people."

I, of course, didn't. But I didn't like the reasons I gave. It's not that they were weak, but they didn't properly engage in the actual horrors of Stalinism. I maintain, as I did, that much of what we take for granted today was won by people fighting and organizing under the red star, but that's still evading the terror, etc., of Stalin's regime. But there's something else that's also important, coming out of the shirt, which is the rehabilitation of the USSR brand coupled with its abstraction to the level of taboo—such that the hammer and sickle begins to take a place interchangeably with the swastika, as diametric symbols of totalitarianism, opposing poles of evil and extremism.

The problem is, though, that that tabooing is not only wrong and misguided, it's an invitation to political danger. In asserting that Saulius's walking around a bunch of diaspora Lithuanians with a shirt featuring a hammer and sickle is equivalent to, say, dressing as Hitler and going to a synagogue, the asserter is engaging in a fascist project of recuperation, in which communists are slandered at the cost of covertly supporting a new fascism.

Below, I flesh this out with the help of an article by Žižek.