The war and "the left" - what do "we" do?

[LDC]

Bit shit that video! Editing and content.

 

[hitmouse]

Bit shit that video! Editing and content.

Have you watched the first one? I thought the first one in the series was pretty decent, will try to get around to watching the new one soon.

 

[LDC]

Have you watched the first one? I thought the first one in the series was pretty decent, will try to get around to watching the new one soon.

No, not seen that yet hitmouse. There's another one coming I think as well, a follow-on from the one zahir posted above.

 

[zahir]

Asia Commune interview with Denis Gorbach

Interview with Gorbach Denis-Ukraine - Asia Commune

Interviewed by Don Samantha – Trade union (CGT) activist and political activist based on public Sector – Sorbonne University, Paris Gorbach Denis was born when Ukraine was still part of the USSR, in an industrial town in Eastern Ukraine called Kryvyi Rih. All the members of his...

asiacommune.org

 

[zahir]

Statement from Operation Solidarity

 

[strung out]

Noam Chomsky says we should listen to Trump

 

[frogwoman]

Lol the same guy who said hed threaten to nuke Russia?

 

[hitmouse]

The article I mention is now up here:

No War But Class War: Against State Nationalism and Inter-Imperialist War in Ukraine – Abolition Media

abolitionmedia.noblogs.org

It's worth a read, a fairly well-argued and thoughtful setting out of a particular line. I also think it's deeply wrong, infuriatingly so in some places.

A new critique of that article - very much recommended, I think this is one of the best anarchist articles I've seen on the subject:

"In the Spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard" - Addressing Confusion about the War in Ukraine

We recently received this anonymous contribution, and we publish it as a part of ongoing discussion on the Russian invasion against Ukraine. Text does not necessarily reflect collective views of Autonomous Action. A text recently appeared on It’s Going Down decrying support for anarchists in...

avtonom.org

Entitled “No War but the Class War,” it begins with a quotation from Rosa Luxemburg and concludes with a dedication: “In the spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard.” These two historical figures—a Jewish Marxist from Poland, active in Germany, and a Jewish anarchist from Ukraine, active in France—are conscripted to legitimize the authors’ polemic.

This juxtaposition between Luxemburg and Schwarzbard is typical of the quality of the scholarship of the whole text. While Luxemburg indeed wrote that “the international proletariat” should “intervene in a revolutionary way” in response to the First World War, Schwarzbard—contrary to the authors’ implications—took a different path. Though an anti-militarist, Schwarzbard enlisted in the French military as soon as World War I broke out and fought against Germany for a full year and a half before going to Ukraine to fight alongside other Jewish people against pogromists and alongside other anarchists against the reactionary White Army.

Let’s spell out Schwarzbard’s military career in detail, so there is no confusion about this. In August 1914, as soon as Germany invaded Belgium and France, Schwarzbard—already long an anarchist—volunteered for the French Foreign Legion. “Like thousands of others,” he later wrote, “I believed that the land was threatened by German militarism.” While explicitly opposing French colonialism and understanding that (as he put it) “the war would not establish justice in the world,” Schwarzbard nonetheless believed that if Germany conquered France, it would be a catastrophe even greater than war. Moreover, Schwarzbard regarded the Russian Tsar—an ally of the French government—as one of the foremost propagators of anti-Semitism; he must have weighed this consideration as he made his choice, the same way that many anarchists in Ukraine today weigh their opposition to NATO, the Azov battalion, and the Ukrainian government while nonetheless mobilizing against Russian bombs and tanks...

We don’t have to agree with Schwarzbard’s reasoning or with his decision to enlist—or with his apparent enthusiasm for militarism. But if we want to honor his memory and grasp the complexity of the choices he faced—let alone to act “in his spirit,” should we deem that advisable—we owe it to him not to misrepresent his life for our own purposes...

As anti-militarists, we can’t endorse Schwarzbard’s decision to serve in a state military. But for the authors of “No War but the Class War” to imagine that they are speaking on Schwarzbard’s behalf when they denounce anarchists fighting in Ukraine today is the height of irony.

This error shows how quickly things can go wrong when you don’t bother to do a little research—when you assume, as some anglophone North Americans tend to, that you already know everything there is to know about a subject and those who disagree with you must simply be “US/NATO-aligned” or “fascist-minimizing.”

...
We can criticize Schwarzbard and others like him for risking their lives to defend state democracies rather than fighting to overthrow them. We can argue that they should have formed an anarchist military and immediately attacked all the other (much bigger) armies, or that they should have fled, leaving the entire battlefield (and their hapless neighbors) to other forces. But if we want the Schwarzbards of the world to reject state militarism, too, we had better make proposals that address their actual needs and concerns. Otherwise, they will rightly disregard our criticism as idle talk, no matter how many Rosa Luxemburg quotations we toss at them.


It’s one thing to say that it is not anarchist to participate in a state military mobilization. Of course it’s not! Under duress, anarchists do all sorts of things that are not anarchistic, that do nothing to advance any anarchist project—laboring to enrich capitalist bosses, for example, or paying rent to landlords. If we can understand why workers alienate their labor in return for a wage in order to survive, we can understand why they might join a state military in hopes of resisting an invasion, as well. This is not to justify what Schwarzbard did, nor to suggest that militarism solves the problems it purports to address; it is just to ground our discussion in reality...

At the worst points in their text, the authors of “No War” employ the sort of methodology via which alienated information consumers create conspiracy theories, associatively arranging random material they have encountered online. In one case, they link approvingly to an article by a writer for the Ron Paul Institute in which the author (who lives in Chile and seems to have no particular credentials regarding Ukraine other than appearances on Russian state media platforms Sputnik and RT) promotes bona fide conspiracy theories and puts “global white supremacist terror threat” in scare quotes—arguably “minimizing fascism,” if anyone is. This is an indication of what sort of echo chambers the authors have been spending time in instead of communicating with anarchists in the affected regions...

In fact, there is a broad consensus among practically all of the significant Russian anarchist projects that anarchists in Ukraine, including those in the Resistance Committee, have a right to participate in the territorial defense without being accused of being pro-state, pro-fascist, or pro-NATO. You can find this consensus among practically all of the significant Belarusian anarchist projects, as well, and it is shared by anarchists in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

There are fierce debates and conflicts between anarchists in all of these countries, and these will likely only intensify as the war drags on. But the critics from Oakland and San Francisco appear to be out on a limb by themselves in claiming that the Resistance Committee are fascist adjacent and that the only possible outcome of their experiment is the further development of fascism and the expansion of NATO’s power.

If the authors of “No War but the Class War” had found any credible statement from anarchists in any of those countries accusing the anarchists of the Resistance Committee, Black Flag, Operation Solidarity, Assembly, or some other Ukrainian anarchist initiative of being pro-fascist, surely they would have directed us to it, rather than linking to The Daily Star (a cheap tabloid from the UK) and someone from the Ron Paul Institute. It’s also worth noting that no Russian, Belarusian, or Ukrainian anarchists have republished or translated their article.

We could conclude that the discrepancy described here indicates that nearly all the anarchists across the entire former Eastern Bloc are fake anarchists, and only a handful of real anarchists in Oakland and San Francisco are keeping the faith. Or we could conclude that we should not depend on a couple anarchists in US metropolises for a proper analysis of events in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, especially not when we can hear from anarchists in the latter regions themselves.

 

[LDC]

A new critique of that article - very much recommended, I think this is one of the best anarchist articles I've seen on the subject:

"In the Spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard" - Addressing Confusion about the War in Ukraine

We recently received this anonymous contribution, and we publish it as a part of ongoing discussion on the Russian invasion against Ukraine. Text does not necessarily reflect collective views of Autonomous Action. A text recently appeared on It’s Going Down decrying support for anarchists in...

avtonom.org

That's very good, thanks!

 

[Dystopiary]

From Operation Solidarity: pictures from May Day solidarity demos in different places in (mostly) Europe I think, including Madrid, Bologna, Gothenburg, Dresden, Warsaw and Hamburg:

Operation Solidarity – Day 67 – Operation Solidarity

Operation Solidarity – Day 68 – Operation Solidarity

London:

 

[zahir]

This article by Taras Bilous is worth reading.

Self-Determination and the War in Ukraine - Dissent Magazine

We cannot know how Ukraine will develop after the war. But we know there will be horrible consequences if Russia wins.

www.dissentmagazine.org

Two months ago, when I wrote “A Letter to the Western Left from Kyiv,” I hoped that the shock of the Russian invasion and the voices of the Ukrainian left would push Western leftists to reconsider their approach. Unfortunately, too many of them have failed to do so. In their analyses of the war, Ukrainians are just victims in need of humanitarian aid, not subjects with desires that should be respected.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone on the left—not by a long shot. Scandinavian left-wing parties as well as Eastern European ones have listened to Ukrainians and supported arms supplies to Ukraine. Some progress is taking place among U.S. socialists. But unfortunately, even a joint statement by Ukrainian and Russian socialists hasn’t convinced enough people to support military aid. Let me try to address the left once more.

 

[Wilf]

This article by Taras Bilous is worth reading.

Self-Determination and the War in Ukraine - Dissent Magazine

We cannot know how Ukraine will develop after the war. But we know there will be horrible consequences if Russia wins.

www.dissentmagazine.org

Excellent piece I thought. Actually quite understated in the way it plots a path through the various leftist arguments, without focusing on the horrors of the invasion as a single justification for the Ukrainian resistance.

 

[hitmouse]

Yeah, always useful to see voices from the Ukrainian left actually analysing the balance of forces in society there regarding the far right and its opponents.

 

[hitmouse]

Here's a thing happening tonight:

 

[hitmouse]

Also, big twitter thread from someone currently at a trade union conference in Ukraine:

 

[ska invita]

Just posting this here to watch later - quick dip seems good

 

[The39thStep]

Also, big twitter thread from someone currently at a trade union conference in Ukraine:

The groups that have the ' right' line

 

[Dystopiary]

Also, big twitter thread from someone currently at a trade union conference in Ukraine:

Thanks for posting this!

"Day 2: Mireille Fanon* Mendès-France from the Fanon Foundation describes the Russian invasion as a classic example of colonialism, complete with the narrative that the colonised are irrational and require permanent supervision of the coloniser

*Yup, it’s Frantz’ daughter"

Wow.

 

[Dystopiary]

Twitter thread from hitmouse's post #975 in one place =

Thread by @tom_churchmouse on Thread Reader App

 

[zahir]

"Now it's definitely time to act" - interview with a member of the Anti-Authoritarian Squad - Pramen

After the war began, many of our comrades in Kiev became either volunteers or members of the Anti-Authoritarian Squad within the Territorial Defense. Now the squad is mainly engaged in training and guard duty. When the enemy was still in the Kyiv region, the guys went to frontline positions to...

pramen.io

After the war began, many of our comrades in Kiev became either volunteers or members of the Anti-Authoritarian Squad within the Territorial Defense. Now the squad is mainly engaged in training and guard duty. When the enemy was still in the Kyiv region, the guys went to frontline positions to help the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) with surveillance from drones, participated in transporting refugees through the green corridor, and went out on calls from citizens about sabotage groups. We talked to Ilya, an anarchist from Russia who has lived in Ukraine for almost 3 years and participated in the 2020 Belarus uprising. About the difficulty of mastering the craft of war, the role of arms in liberation and the political prospects of our region.

 

[Dystopiary]

I wasn't sure what the right thread for this was.

Today at the 9th May march in St Petersburg, someone held up a picture of Igor Volohov, Ukrainian activist killed defending Kharkiv.

 

[hitmouse]

New Vice article on the Met oligarch defence eviction, apparently involved 176 officers at a cost of £80,000:

Guess How Much Cops Spent Kicking 4 People Out of a Russian Oligarch’s Mansion

Grassroots activists organising aid for Ukraine told VICE World News they could have ordered 150 bulletproof vests with the amount it cost to police the protest.

www.vice.com

 

[oryx]

New Vice article on the Met oligarch defence eviction, apparently involved 176 officers at a cost of £80,000:

Guess How Much Cops Spent Kicking 4 People Out of a Russian Oligarch’s Mansion

Grassroots activists organising aid for Ukraine told VICE World News they could have ordered 150 bulletproof vests with the amount it cost to police the protest.

www.vice.com

Profit before people, yet again.

Interesting musings in the article about how this money could have really helped Ukrainians, and whether the police would have deployed a similar level of resources to poorer neighbourhoods (I think we know the answer to that one).

 

[hitmouse]

Profit before people, yet again.

Interesting musings in the article about how this money could have really helped Ukrainians, and whether the police would have deployed a similar level of resources to poorer neighbourhoods (I think we know the answer to that one).

"The response was as Londoners would expect when a possible burglary is in progress," they said.

 

[ska invita]

disappointing from Lula (though precise quotes on what he has said on the subject are lacking)

Why is the Brazilian left supporting Putin’s Russia?

In the eyes of many Brazilian leftists, the only real imperialism is US imperialism.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[LDC]

This is pretty good, lots on the poor analysis and response by some of the left.

Putin’s conquest of southeast Ukraine: Vexed questions of ‘negotiations’, gotcha moments and real imperial interests

Russia’s conquests in southeast Ukraine: Putin’s expanded Russian empire (Source: Al Jazeera, May 12, 2022) By Michael Karadjis As Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s horrific aggressi…

mkaradjis.com

 

[zahir]

«Let's not get into the wrong fight! We must support the Ukrainians without thinking twice or holding back»

More than eighty writers and academics call on "all those who demand freedom for themselves" to "stand with the Ukrainians."

commons.com.ua

Since February 24, Vladimir Putin has been waging a war of conquest against Ukraine. His army has been bombing and destroying cities, killing civilians by the thousands, as it did in Chechnya and Syria. The Ukrainians are resisting. We must support them without thinking twice or holding back.

In most of our countries, however, too many people have sided with the Russian dictator. In the name of anti-imperialism that has turned into passionate hatred over the years, they are applauding anyone who is opposing the West.

We measure the overwhelming responsibility of Western powers large and small for the devastation of our world. We have denounced the wars they have waged to ensure their continued dominance over vast regions, including our own, and condemned their defense of indefensible dictatorships to protect their interests. We know their selective use of the values they claim, letting refugees from the South die at their doors and welcoming "their own" with open arms. But let's not get into the wrong battle. All those who demand freedom for themselves, who believe in the right of citizens to choose their leaders and to refuse tyranny, must stand with the Ukrainians today. Freedom must be defended everywhere.

For our part, we refuse to support any dictatorship on the pretext that its opponents are our enemies. By defending Putin's war, we are depriving ourselves of our own right to be free.

Dima Abdallah, writer (Lebanon-France);
Gilbert Achcar, political scientist (Lebanon-United Kingdom);
Mario Aguilar, islamologist (United Kingdom);
Nadia Aïssaoui, sociologist (Algeria-France);
Younès Ajarraï, cultural advisor (Morocco);
Sanhadja Akrouf, feminist activist (Algeria-France);
Cengiz Aktar, political scientist (Turkey);
Hala Alabdalla,filmmaker (Syria);
Tewfik Allal, community activist (Algeria-France);
Chawki Azouri, psychiatrist (Lebanon);
Malika Bakhti, engineer (Algeria-France);
Brigitte Bardet-Allal, professor (France);
Ali Bayramoglu, journalist (Turkey);
Yagoutha Belgacem, artistic director (Tunisia-France);
Souhayr Belhassen, honorary president of the FIDH (Tunisia);
Akram Belkaïd, journalist (Algeria-France);
Rabaa Ben Achour, academic (Tunisia);
Sana Ben Achour, professor of law (Tunisia);
Tahar Ben Jelloun, writer (Morocco-France);
Ali Bensaad, geographer (Algeria);
Raja Ben Slama, director of the National Library (Tunisia);
Karima Berger, writer (Algeria-France);
Mohamed Berrada, writer (Morocco);
Sophie Bessis, historian (Tunisia-France);
Karim Emile Bitar, professor of international relations (Lebanon);
Antoine Boulad, writer (Lebanon);
Rafic Boustani, demographer (Lebanon);
Nora Boustany, journalist (Lebanon-United States);
Soha Bsat Boustani, consultant (Lebanon);
Abdallah Cheikh Moussa, academic (Tunisia-France);
Khedija Cherif, sociologist (Tunisia);
Alice Cherki, psychoanalyst (Algeria-France);
Noam Chomsky, linguist (United States);
Ahmed Dahmani, academic (Algeria-France);
Kamel Daoud, writer (Algeria);
Godofredo de Oliveira Neto, writer (Brazil);
Albert Dichy, literary director (Lebanon-France);
Karima Dirèche, anthropologist (Algeria-France);
Nacer Djabi, sociologist (Algeria);
Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, writer (Argentina);
Anne-Marie Eddé, academic (Lebanon-France);
Dominique Eddé, writer (Lebanon);
Hanan El-Cheikh, writer (Lebanon-United Kingdom);
Abbas Fadhel, filmmaker (Iraq);
El Hadj Souleymane Gassama (aka Elgas), writer, (Senegal);
Amira Hass, journalist (Israel-Palestine);
Milton Hatoum, writer (Brazil);
Ahmet Insel, political scientist (Turkey);
Ramin Jahanbegloo, philosopher (Iran);
Kamel Jendoubi, human rights activist (Tunisia-France);
Salam Kawakibi political scientist (Syria-France);
Tahar Khalfoun, academic (Algeria-France);
Driss Ksikès, writer (Morocco);
Abdellatif Laabi, poet (Morocco);
Smaïn Laacher, sociologist (France);
Kamal Lahbib, human rights activist (Morocco);
Ahmed Mahiou, jurist (Algeria);
Charif Majdalani, writer (Lebanon);
Ziad Majed, political scientist (Lebanon-France);
Georgia Makhlouf, writer (Lebanon-France);
Farouk Mardam Bey, publisher (Syria-France);
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, writer (Senegal);
Khadija Mohsen-Finan, academic (Tunisia-France);
Célestin Monga, economist (Cameroon);
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, academic, Islamologist (Iran-France);
Boniface Mongo-Mboussa, writer (Congo-Brazzaville-France);
Wajdi Mouawad, playwright (Lebanon-France);
Madeleine Mukamabano, journalist (Rwanda-France);
Nabil Mouline, historian (Morocco);
Lamia Oualalou, journalist (Morocco-France);
Cécile Oumhani, writer (France);
Atiq Rahimi, writer (Afghanistan-France);
Michèle Rakotoson, writer (Madagascar);
Arundhati Roy, writer (India);
Lamine Sagna, academic (Senegal-United States);
Antonio Carlos Secchin, writer (Brazil);
Nada Sehnaoui, visual artist (Lebanon);
Leïla Shahid, former ambassador (Palestine);
Muzna Shihabi Barthe, human rights activist (Palestine);
Wole Soyinka, writer, Nobel Prize for Literature (Nigeria);
Wassyla Tamzali, essayist (Algeria-France);
Nadia Tazi, philosopher (Morocco-France);
Hyam Yared, writer (Lebanon).

 

[Dystopiary]

«Let's not get into the wrong fight! We must support the Ukrainians without thinking twice or holding back»

More than eighty writers and academics call on "all those who demand freedom for themselves" to "stand with the Ukrainians."

commons.com.ua

Chomsky tho. "Putin only invaded cos of NATO, not centuries-old, ongoing Russian imperialism, and Ukrainians asking for weapons is just Western propoganda. But I defo support Ukrainians!"

 

[zahir]

Chomsky tho. "Putin only invaded cos of NATO, not centuries-old, ongoing Russian imperialism, and Ukrainians asking for weapons is just Western propoganda. But I defo support Ukrainians!"

There was a bit of puzzlement about this:

 

[Dystopiary]

There was a bit of puzzlement about this:

Yes, saw that!