Posted on 03/13/2022 8:42:12 PM PDT by DoodleBob
When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24th, it caused a lot of problems for voices on the right and the left.
Putin has a lot of fans in both corners, and these fans had spent years portraying him as a tactical genius, bamboozling us all with his four-dimensional chess moves. Right up until February 23rd, these Putin stans had been assuring us that Putin would never do something as dumb as launch a full-scale invasion of a sovereign democracy.
Ever since then, the right have been able to change gears on Putin fairly seamlessly. This is WAR, and right-wingers absolutely love a good war. Trump is already thinking of ways to escalate the situation ad absurdium.
But what about the left?
Putin has actually cultivated an army of left-wing sympathisers over the years, largely thanks to his support for the RT news network which often broadcasts counter-narratives against the West’s mainstream media. The leftists that appeared on RT (before it recently stopped broadcasting) are not necessarily pro-Putin. But they are anti-West in a way that serves Putin’s propaganda goals, which is why they get a platform.
Many of these left-wingers are fighting a battle that started in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq. They are staunchly anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-war.
Which are all respectable positions. But now they’re in a bind. They can’t support a war, but they also can’t say Putin is bad. What’s a tankie to do? Simple. Just blame the Ukrainians for fighting back:
The ex-RT position is that Ukraine should just surrender
The three tweets above are all from former RT contributors who now find themselves unemployed and stuck in an ideological wasteland.
Their logic basically goes like this:
Russia is much stronger than Ukraine
Lots of people will die in the resistance
It’s sad when people die
Ukraine should stop resisting
Which… kind of seems like saying imperialism is okay? And victims should just roll with it?
Plus, it also assumes that a unilateral surrender would result in no further casualties. Or at least, no casualties beyond the Russian execution list. And any causalities that might arise if Russia continues its expansion into the Baltics.
But that’s ignoring the fact that Putin’s regime is propped up by imprisonment of opposition voices, police brutality against protestors, and state-sanctioned murder. The only way to install a puppet government in Ukraine (one of Putin’s “reasonable” demands) would be to use even more brutal repression.
The pro-Putin left doesn’t seem to care about the question: “What would happen to the Ukrainian people if they surrendered?” They just need a position on Ukraine that doesn’t challenge any of their other beliefs.
How did the far-left end up supporting Putin?
Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane.
In 2003, the United States and Britain launched an illegal invasion of Iraq.
This war was justified under some extremely shady pretexts. Namely, that the country’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was helping Al Qaeda (a lie) and hoarding weapons of mass destruction (also a lie).
If you were around in 2003, you probably remember that people did not take this lying down. The march to war was met with massive civil protests around the globe.
Over 10 million people in 600 cities marched against the war on February 15, 2003. Three million people marched in Rome that day, setting a world record for the largest single protest in history. The record is still unbroken.
People were mad.
Most of these protests were organized by groups like Stop The War in the UK. STW is a group, still active today, that formed immediately after 9/11 with the noble goal of preventing a military response to the terrorist attacks. And they were right about that, as we’ve seen in the intervening years.
STW has very complicated internal politics that would take hours to discuss, but the important thing to know here is that many of the leading members were veteran hard-left figures in the British Communist movement.
These people are furiously anti-capitalist and furiously anti-imperialism, which can sometimes boil down to straightforward anti-Westernism. To this group, anything that the West does is inherently wrong.
It’s wrong because the West is doing it, and it is therefore advancing Western goals. For these people, “West” and “Imperialism” mean the same thing. And the 2003 anti-war moved seemed to prove that they had a point.
My enemy’s enemy is my friend
Putin is catnip for these people because he has been aggressively fighting Western imperialism for years.
Plus, his RT network has personally enriched several of the voices in this movement.
As Putin became move confrontational with the west (Georgia, Crimea, Syria), these people became extremely skilled at taking the Russian side. After all, were all of these actions not a form of anti-imperialism?
If you believe that imperialism=The West, then yes.
And, if you believe that imperialism=The West, then the situation in Ukraine will make your head explode. Because the invasion definitely looks like imperialism, but the West are against it.
How can Putin, a guy who has been anti-West and is therefore great, do something bad?
Crushing democracy in the name of peace
None of the Stop The War-types came out in 2003 and said that Iraqi forces should surrender to prevent loss of life. In recent years, many of them came out and supported the incumbent governments of Libya and Syria.
Why did they stand behind Qaddafi and al-Assad? Because NATO were on the other side.
This position of “lay down your weapons and accept defeat” seems to be a recent idea among the far-left anti-war movement. As far as I’m aware, none of them recommend that either side in Yemen surrender to halt the slaughter over there.
So, what they’re really saying is, “hey, I know that being invaded is bad. But look on the bright side. At least you’re not being invaded by the West.”
Putin has stated Ukraine should not exist as a separate country. Remind me when he said that of Finland.
You refer to a paper he wrote a year or two ago. If he actually believed that, why has he offered them terms that would allow them to be a fairly large sovereign country in control of their own affairs so long as they do not present a military threat to Russia?
"Sovereign" country that's disarmed and only exists at the whim of Putin, who I'm sure, will have no more territorial ambitions.
So you obviously must think neither Finland nor Austria nor Japan have been sovereign since WWII since none of them were armed much at all and each could have been easily smacked down by any major power.
It’s between the nationalist neo-Stalinist left and transnational corporatist progressivism.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s how it looks to me, and this is something I’ve been puzzling over for a few years now. Some kind of split or falling out happened deep in the inner sanctums of the left back in the Obama years, which was visible to us in the total reversal that the Democrats did concerning Putin and Russia. One minute they were all about reset buttons and building a relationship but then all the sudden Putin was their number one enemy and universal boogieman. Something happened to precipitate that and I’d love to know what it was.
Your being ridiculous at this point, Putin has stated clearly multiple times Ukraine should not exist. He has repeatedly taken territory from it. Somehow a disarmed Ukraine would be protected from further Putin annexations, even though you yourself have stated Putin could invade again. Japan is a large island nation, suggesting the US was going to absorb it is ludicrous. The Fins are armed to the teeth and will probably join NATO, so I’m not sure why you keep bringing up these not relevant examples.
Bingo.
We have a winner.
No, you've swallowed the Globalist/Neocon propaganda. Look at the areas Putin is claiming. They are overwhelmingly Russian. The people in those areas are not going to fight the Russians coming in. They welcome them with open arms. If Putin were out to conquer and absorb all of Ukraine why has he offered terms that he has? The claim that he wants this or that this would be his future aim are impossible to support based on the terms he is offering.
Look what percentage of GDP Finland has spent on Defense on an annual basis since WWII. They are not armed to the teeth. Far from it. They've been neutral for over 75 years. They're just fine. Same goes for Austria. The same could go for Ukraine under the terms being offered. Russia is not proposing to rule over ethnic Ukrainians who are Ukrainian speakers. If they were, then I could see your argument, but they're not.
Sure tell the dead Ukrainian's and the ones who find themselves under Putin's police state with destroyed homes, they should be glad they avoided Globalism.
What do you think the Ukrainian state is like? Zelensky has shut down opposition newspapers and thrown his political opponents in jail. Ukraine is not a "democracy". and no, I'm not saying Russia isn't an authoritarian state also. It is. Neither side is very nice.
They never did fight like they meant it. With friends l8ke Dems, who needs enemies? They didn’t send missiles, they just sent thoughts, but sans prayers. Maybe they sent some blankets and feel good gestures and aid that never arrived because the NGOs redirected it to leftwing “civil society” causes, like helping people escape the draft and make it to the US where they are given jobs going door to door signing solar power petitions or providing Spectrum internet service, and of course, registering voters.
Trump actually sent the missiles.
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