A letter from Kyiv to the Western Left

A letter from Kyiv to the Western Left

Taras Billus/Text

Wang Liqiu / Translator

Taras Bilous, “A letter to the Western Left fom Kyiv”, Open Democracy , 25

February 2022, 5.20pm, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/a-letter-to-the-western-left-from-kyiv/ . Translated under the Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial) license (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Taras Billus is a Ukrainian historian, activist for the social movement organization SotsRukh , and editor of the academic journal Commons: Journal of Social Critique , focusing on topics related to war and nationalism.

"Anti-imperialist for fools" means turning a blind eye to Russia's actions.

I wrote these words in Kyiv under fire.

Until the last minute, I hoped that the Russian army would not launch a full-scale invasion. Now, I can only thank those who leaked information to US intelligence.

Yesterday, I spent half a day thinking about joining the defense force. That night, Russian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a comprehensive mobilization order, and the Russian army also entered to prepare to defend Kyiv. The situation made the decision for me.

But before I go to work, I want to give them my thoughts on the reaction of the Western left to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

First of all, I would like to thank those leftists who are protesting in front of the Russian embassy right now, and I even want to thank those leftists who took the time to realize that in this conflict, Russia was the invading party.

I want to thank the politicians who pressured Russia to stop aggression and withdraw its troops.

I would also like to thank our delegation of UK and Welsh MPs, trade unionists and activists for supporting us and listening to our delegations during the days of the Russian invasion. [1]

I would also like to thank the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign [2] in the UK, which has been helping us over the years.

This article is about another part of the Western Left. Those on the left who imagine a "NATO invasion of Ukraine", those who do not see Russian aggression, for example, the New Orleans chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) [3] .

Or the DSA International Committee, which issued a statement that was uncritical of Russia [4] (a big thank you to American professor and activist Dan La Botts and others for their criticism of this statement [5] ).

Or those leftists who criticize Ukraine for not adhering to the Minsk agreement [6] , while ignoring the breaches by Russia and other so-called "people's republics".

Or those who exaggerate the influence of the far-right in Ukraine without paying attention to the far-right in the "people's republic" and criticizing Putin's conservative, nationalist and authoritarian policies. Part of the blame for this happening lies with you.

Your actions are part of a broader phenomenon in the Western "anti-war" movement, often called "campism" by left-wing critics. [7] Anglo-Syrian activist Laila Shami gave it a louder name: "Anti-Imperialism for Fools". [8] Read her great article from 2018, if you haven’t already. Here, I will only repeat the central thesis of that article: in the Syrian war, most of the activities of the Western "anti-war" left wing have nothing to do with preventing the war. They only oppose Western intervention, while ignoring or even supporting Russian and Iranian intervention, without saying what their attitude is to the "legally elected" Assad regime in Syria.

Shami writes, "Many anti-war groups justify their silence on Russian and Iranian interference by arguing that the 'primary enemy is at home'. This pretext frees them from any serious power analysis to figure out what actually is Who are the main actors driving the war?"

Unfortunately, with Ukraine, we see the same ideological platitudes again. Even after Russia recognized the independence of the "people's republics" earlier this week, Blanco Marchetik, a writer for the American left-wing publication Jacobin, wrote a piece devoted entirely to criticizing the United States. article. [9] When it came to Putin's actions, he only commented that Russia's leaders "showed only less kind of ambition". Is this serious?

I'm not a NATO fan. I know that after the end of the Cold War, this group lost its defensive function and engaged in an offensive policy. I know that NATO's eastward expansion undermines efforts to nuclear disarmament and to build a joint security system. NATO seeks to marginalize the role of the UN and the Security Council and European cooperation, smearing them as "ineffective organizations". But we cannot go back in time, and in finding a way out of this situation, we must face the current environment head-on.

While chattering about the unofficial US commitment to NATO (“never move a foot east”) [10] made by former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, has the Western left ever mentioned a commitment The 1994 Budapest Memorandum to Guarantee Ukraine's Sovereignty? While frequently supporting the "legitimate security concerns" of Russia, the country with the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal, did they ever think of Ukraine, which was a piece of paper under US-Russian pressure (Budapest Memorandum) - the result , in 2014 Putin still trampled on the document - and gave up the security concerns of nuclear-armed countries? Have the leftists critical of NATO ever thought that Ukraine is the main victim of the changes brought about by NATO expansion?

Time and time again, the Western left has responded to criticism of Russia this way: Hasn't the US also invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries, they say? Of course, we also need to bring these countries into the discussion - but how exactly?

The argument on the left should be that in 2003, other governments did not press the US enough on Iraq. Instead, now, it is necessary to put less pressure on Russia on Ukraine.

an obvious mistake

Just imagine, in 2003, when the United States was preparing to invade Afghanistan, and Russia threatened the United States with escalating the war, as the United States has done in recent weeks.

Imagine again what the Russian left would do in that situation, according to the dogma of "the main enemy is at home"? Will they criticize the Russian government for "escalating" the war, saying that "it should not risk being drawn into the internal contradictions of imperialism"? Obviously, in that case, such behavior is wrong. Why was this less obvious in the case of the invasion of Ukraine?

In another article [11] in Jacobin earlier this month, Marchetik even said that Fox News' Tucker Carlson was "exactly right" about the "Ukraine crisis" . What did Carlson do? He questioned the "strategic value of Ukraine to the United States." [12] Even Tariq Ali, in the New Left Review [13] , cites the calculations of German Vice-Admiral Kai-Achim Schoenbach in favour, who said that considering the Russia may be a useful ally to contain China, and giving Putin "respect" on the Ukraine issue has "low, if not cost, cost" [14] . Are you serious? If the United States and Russia agree to join forces to start a new Cold War against China, is this really what we want?

reform the United Nations

I'm not a fan of liberal internationalism either. Socialists should criticize liberal internationalism. But this does not mean that we should support imperialist countries to divide up the "sphere of interests". Instead of finding a new balance between the two imperialisms, the left should fight for the democratization of the international security order. We need a global policy, a global system of international security. We have the latter, which is the United Nations. Yes, it has many problems, and it is often scolded and not wronged. But you can criticize something for knocking it down, and you can criticize it for improving it. As far as the United Nations is concerned, we need the latter. We need a left-wing vision of reforming and democratizing the United Nations.

Of course, this does not mean that the left should support all UN resolutions. But strengthening the UN's role in resolving armed conflicts in general helps the left minimize the importance of military-political alliances and reduce the number of victims. (I wrote in a previous article [15] that the UN peacekeeping force could have helped resolve the Donbas conflict. Unfortunately, this matter has lost its relevance.) After all, we also need United Nations to address environmental crises and other global problems. The reluctance of many international leftists to resort to the United Nations is a terrible mistake.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Jacobin's Europe editor David Broad wrote that the left "should not apologize for opposing the US military response." Biden had no intention of doing that either, as he has said many times. But many on the western left should honestly admit that their response to the "Ukraine crisis" was a fucking bummer .

My point of view

Finally, I would like to briefly talk about myself and my views.

The Donbas war has been a major issue dividing the Ukrainian left for the past eight years. Each of us has formed our own position based on personal experience and other factors. Therefore, this article will be written differently by another Ukrainian left wing.

I was born in Donbass, but my family speaks Ukrainian and is also very nationalistic. In the 1990s, he became involved with the far-right after witnessing Ukraine's recession and former communist leaders (whom he had opposed since the mid-1980s) getting rich. Of course, he is both anti-Russian and anti-American. I still remember what he said on September 11, 2001. After watching the collapse of the Twin Towers on TV, he said those responsible for the incident were "heroes" (he doesn't think so anymore, and now he believes the Yankees blew up the towers on purpose.)

At the start of the Donbas war in 2014, my father joined the far-right Aidar battalion as a volunteer, my mother quickly fled Luhansk, and my grandparents stayed in their village (where the fell into the hands of the "Luhansk People's Republic"). My grandfather denounced the Europlaza revolution in Ukraine. He backed Putin, who he said had "restored order in Russia." However, we all try to stay connected (though not much political) and help each other. I also try to understand them sympathetically. After all, my grandparents worked on collective farms all their lives. My father is a construction worker. Life has not been kind to them.

The events of 2014 — the revolution after the war — pushed me to the opposite of most Ukrainians. In my case, the war killed nationalism and pushed me to the left. I want to fight for a better future for humanity, not for nations. My post-Soviet traumatized parents didn't understand my socialist ideas. My father expressed disdain for my "pacifism," and I had an unpleasant exchange with him after an anti-fascist protest holding a sign calling for the dissolution of the far-right Azov regiment.

When Zelensky comes to power in 2019, I hope that will prevent the catastrophe that is happening now. After all, it is difficult to demonize a Russian-speaking president who came to power on the Donbas peace plan, and whose jokes are loved by Ukrainians and Russians alike. Unfortunately, I was wrong. While Zelensky's victory changed many Russians' attitudes toward Ukraine, it did nothing to prevent war.

In recent years, I have written about civilian victims on both sides of the peace process and the Donbas war. I try to push the conversation. But now, those efforts are in vain. There will be no concessions. Putin can plan what he wants, but even if Russia takes Kyiv and establishes an occupation government, we will still resist it. The fight will go on until Russia leaves Ukraine and pays for all the victims and all the destruction they do.

Therefore, my final words to the Russian people are: let's overthrow the Putin regime. This is good for you and for us.

Attached to Shami's article:

Syria and the "anti-imperialist" of fools

Laila Shami/Text

Wang Liqiu / Translator

Once again, the Western "anti-war" movement has begun to mobilize around Syria. This is the third time since 2011. For the first time, Obama intended (but did not act) to crack down on the military might of the Syrian authorities after the chemical attack in the Ghouta region in 2013. (Annotation: This matter is considered to have hit a "red line".)

The second, in the wake of the 2017 chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, was ordered by Donald Trump, but only on an empty Syrian government military base. The April 7 chemical attack in Douma killed at least 34 people, including many children sheltering from bombing in basements, as the United States, Britain and France took limited military action against Syrian government military assets and chemical weapons facilities. The targeted attack of the operation, the third mobilization began again.

Judging from these three large-scale mobilizations of the "anti-war" left wing in the West, the first thing to point out is that these movements have little to do with "ending the war." More than half a million Syrians have been killed since 2011. The vast majority of civilians who died were killed by conventional weapons, and 94 percent of those victims were killed by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian coalition . The war, which erupted after the authorities' brutal crackdown on peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators, did not attract any anger or concern. No one is outraged when dynamite keg, chemical weapons and napalm fall on democratically self-organized communities, or when hospitals and aid workers are targeted. Civilians are only consumables; genocidal, fascist regimes, with their military might, are not. In fact, what the slogan "Hands off Syria" is really trying to say is "Hands off Assad" and often supports Russian military intervention. This was confirmed at a recent demonstration organised by Stop the War UK, where many flags of the Assad regime and Russia were disgracefully displayed.

These anti-war leftists showed profound authoritarian tendencies, they put the state/regime itself at the center of political analysis, and thus often extended the concept of solidarity to the state/regime, which was seen as the mainstay of the movement for freedom The actors, not the oppressed or the less disadvantaged. Turning a blind eye to the social warfare within Syria itself, these leftists see the Syrian people (if they exist) as mere pawns in a geopolitical chess game. They kept chanting: "Assad is the legitimate ruler of a sovereign state". [However,] Assad inherited his father’s dictatorship and never held a fair and free election, let alone won one; It was the Syrian-born rebels and civilians who fought, to a large extent, Syrian-born rebels and civilians.

Turning a blind eye to the social warfare within Syria itself, these leftists see the Syrian people (if they exist) as mere pawns in a geopolitical chess game. They kept chanting: "Assad is the legitimate ruler of a sovereign state". [However,] Assad inherited his father’s dictatorship and never held a fair and free election, let alone won one; It was the Syrian-born rebels and civilians who fought, to a large extent, Syrian-born rebels and civilians.

If an elected government starts raping dissidents on a massive scale, who else would think that government is legitimate? Such a position is possible only in the context of the complete dehumanization of Syrians. It is racism to think that Syrians cannot get - let alone deserve - better rule than one of the most brutal dictatorships of our time.

These authoritarian leftists, under the guise of "anti-imperialism", support the Assad regime. Assad is considered part of an "axis of resistance" against US imperialism and Zionism. The Assad regime itself has supported the first Gulf War or participated in illegal U.S. extradition programs in which many suspected terrorists were tortured by the CIA in Syria. Syrian authorities may have killed more Palestinians than Israel, but this horrific title is often overlooked; Syria is more willing to use the country's armed forces than to liberate the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights Suppress internal dissent.

This "anti-imperialist" of fools sees imperialism as synonymous with American action. These people don't seem to realize that the United States has been bombing Syria since 2014. In liberating Raqqa from Daesh, the United States has disregarded all considerations of international norms and proportionality of warfare. More than a thousand civilians died as a result, and according to United Nations estimates, 80 percent of the city is now uninhabitable.

Annotation: Daesh is the acronym for "Islamic Organization of Iraq and the Levant" (ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī 'l-Irāq wa-al-Shām) in Arabic. , its pronunciation is similar to the Arabic "stomp" (Daes), so it can better reflect people's attitude towards fighting terrorism.

And those mainstream "anti-war" groups have not organized protests against the intervention or called for the protection of civilians and civilian facilities. Instead, they embraced the "counter-terrorism" discourse - once the preserve of neoconservatives, and now even the Syrian authorities are joking - and now all those who oppose Assad have become Going to engage jihad terrorists. When Assad sent thousands of secular, peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators into his gulag, tortured them to death, while releasing militant Islamists from prison, The terrorists turned a blind eye to Assad's atrocities.

Likewise, the Syrian people in the liberated areas are holding rallies against extremist and authoritarian groups like Daesh, Nusra, Ahrar Al Sham Continued protests have also been ignored. They argue that Syrians are not "sophistication" enough to have multiple opinions. Civil society activists in Syria (including many amazing women), citizen journalists, humanitarian workers, are all irrelevant to them.

These pro-fascist leftists seem to turn a blind eye to any imperialism of non-Western origin. Combining identity politics and egocentrism, they look at what's happening in Syria through the lens of "what does this mean for Westerners"—only white people have the power to make history.

According to the Pentagon, there are currently about 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria. For the first time in Syrian history, the United States has established a large number of military bases in the Kurdish-held north. Anyone who supports Syrian national self-determination should take note, but these people, in front of tens of thousands of Iranian troops and Iranian-backed Shiite militias, or the Russian Air Force in support of the fascist dictatorship In the face of the murderous bomb attack, it seemed insignificant.

Russia has now established a permanent military base in Syria, while offering exclusive rights to oil and gas in the country as a reward for its support. Noam Chomsky has argued that we cannot regard Russian intervention as imperialism because the Syrian regime invited Russia to bomb the country. According to that analysis, the US intervention in Vietnam is not imperialism. After all, the South Vietnamese government invited the US to intervene.

Many anti-war groups justified their silence on Russian and Iranian interference by arguing that "the main enemy is at home." This pretext saves them from having to do any serious power analysis to figure out who the main actors are actually driving the war. For the Syrians, the main enemy is indeed at home - that is, Assad, who has been implicated in what the United Nations calls "the crime of extermination." Without realizing their self-contradiction, many of these people are also speaking out against Israel's ongoing crackdown on peaceful demonstrations in Gaza, and this is justifiable.

Of course, one of the main ways imperialism works is by denying the voice of the local people. In this spirit, mainstream Western anti-war groups hold meetings on Syria without inviting any Syrian speakers.

Another major political faction that supports the Assad regime and organizes anti-US, British and French attacks on Syria is the far right. Today, the discourse of fascists and those of the "anti-imperialist left" are practically indistinguishable. In the US, white supremacist Richard Spence, alt-right podcaster Mike Enoch and anti-immigration activist Ann Coulter all oppose US attacks Syria. In Britain, former British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin and Iraqi terrorist Katie Hopkins also joined the protests.

Where the alt-right and the alt-left often intersect is that they both promote various conspiracy theories to exonerate the regime. They claim that the chemical massacre was fake, or that the aid workers were members of al-Qaeda, so it was legal to attack them. Those who spread such reports have no knowledge of the situation in Syria, nor the ability to substantiate their claims. They often rely on propaganda mouthpieces from Russia or the Assad regime because they "don't trust mainstream media" or media directly influenced by Syrians.

Occasionally, these two seemingly opposing factions on the political spectrum converge to openly cooperate. The "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism" (ANSWER coalition), which has organized several demonstrations against "Assad" in the United States, has such a history. Both groups often promote and promote Iraqiphobic and anti-Semitic narratives. They all share the same arguments and memes.

There are many legitimate reasons for opposing foreign military intervention in Syria, whether by the United States, Russia, Iran, or Turkey. None of these countries acted in the interests of the Syrian people, democracy or human rights. Their purpose of action is only their own interests. Today's US, UK and French interventions are not so much about protecting Syrians from mass atrocities as they are about enforcing international norms that do not allow the use of chemical weapons -- and this, after all, is about preventing the day when these Weapons were used on Westerners themselves.

More foreign bombs will not bring peace and stability. These countries also have little interest in forcing Assad to step down, which, on the contrary, would help end the worst atrocities. But while opposing outside interference, one also has to come up with an alternative to protect Syrians from killings. It is morally undesirable to expect Syrians to shut up and die in silence in order to protect the higher principle of "anti-imperialist". Time and time again, the Syrians have proposed many alternatives to foreign military intervention to end the violence, but they have been ignored time and time again.

So, when all diplomatic options have failed; when a genocidal regime is protected from international condemnation by powerful international backers; when the daily bombing is stopped, the siege of starving people is ended, or With no progress in releasing prisoners afflicted on an industrial scale, the question remains: what to do?

I don't have an answer either. I have been firmly opposed to any foreign military intervention in Syria, I support a process led by the Syrians themselves to free themselves from tyranny, and I support international efforts to protect civilians and human rights and ensure accountability for all actors responsible for war crimes. All efforts. A negotiated settlement is the only way to end this war -- but even in that direction, there has been no progress as ever.

Assad and his supporters are determined to thwart all progress, seek a total military victory and crush any remaining democratic alternatives. Every week, the Syrian authorities are taking the lives of hundreds of Syrians in the most brutal way imaginable. In the chaos created by the regime, extremist groups and ideologies flourished. As civilians continue to flee in the thousands, the Assad government is implementing legislative procedures such as Decree No. 10 to ensure these refugees never return to their homelands. Under the weight of its own incompetence, the international system itself is collapsing.

Words like "Never Again" also became hollow. There is no mass popular movement to unite the victims. Instead, victims face slander and slander, and the suffering of ridicule or denial, in which their voices are either absent from the discussions, or they are swept away from Syria or arrogantly ignorant of Syria, the revolution, or the war. Trust the doubts of those who know you best. It is this desperate situation that has led many Syrians to welcome the actions of the United States, Britain and France, who now see foreign intervention as their only hope, even though they know the dangers such an intervention could pose.

One thing's for sure: I'm not going to sleep or sleep over the targeting of Syrian authorities' military bases and chemical weapons factories -- attacks that could provide Syrians with a short-term cure for their daily killings. And I will no longer see as allies those who impose grand narratives on the realities of life, those who support savage regimes from afar, or those who peddled racism, conspiracy theories, and denial of atrocities.

[1] https://rev.org.ua/vizit-solidarnosti-z-angliї-ta-uelsu/ .

[2] https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/ .

[3] https://www.facebook.com/NewOrleansDSA/posts/243157674659620 .

[4] https://international.dsausa.org/statements/no-war-with .

[5] https://newpol.org/what-the-dsa-international-committees-ukraine-statement-gets-wrong/ .

[6] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/russia-ukraine-what-are-the-minsk-agreements/ .

[7] https://newpol.org/issue_post/internationalism-anti-imperialism-and-the-origins-of-campism/ .

[8] https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-anti-imperialism-of-idiots/ . See https://zhs.globalvoices.org/2018/05/13/16001/ for the Chinese version.

[9] https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/with-putins-ukraine-incursion-hawks-in-washington-got-exactly-what-they-wanted .

[10] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early .

[11] https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/neo-mccarthyism-russia-ukraine-bernie-sanders-putin-media .

[12] https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/neo-mccarthyism-russia-ukraine-bernie-sanders-putin-media .

[13] https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/news-from-natoland .

[14] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/23/german-navy-chief-quits-after-saying-putin-deserves-respect-over-ukraine .

[15] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-needs-un-peacekeepers-heres-why/ .