I don't think I'm one of them either. I'm one of mine.

Category: No Tanks! (Page 1 of 2)

ProleWiki is always good for a laugh.

The last I checked, China, Russia, and Iran all had empires. All three of these countries have had leaders typically called emperors.  “Anti-American” and “anti-imperialist” are not synonymous. If you’re an expansionist country with a leader called an emperor, you’re an imperialist power or have a history of imperialism. Russia, China, and Iran may have different geopolitical interests from the US and its allies, but that doesn’t stop them from being imperialist powers.

There are tankies—yes, hardened Stalin-idolising tankies—in Russia who seem to get the difference.

A screenshot of ProleWiki's "state media of anti-imperialist" countries, including Chinese, Iranian and Russian state media.

My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse…

…I mean, a left movement that manages to avoid the following things:

  • Praising Hamas or other theocratic terrorist organisations (eg, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah)
  • Writing in a way that’s inaccessible to the people they claim to stand for (usually the working class, and sometimes disabled people if it’s disability-studies scholars who sound no different from their non-disabled counterparts in all the worst ways)
  • Politicising identity to the point that people turn into two-dimensional “oppressor” and “oppressed” classes (usually based on ethnicity, race, or gender) without nuance or distinction
  • Thinking that YELLING LOUDLY WITHOUT CLARIFYING YOUR POSITION is a GOOD WAY TO MAKE A POINT IN AN ARGUMENT. Extra points if you use the clapping 👏 hand 👏 emoji 👏 or repeat your sentence three times, first time in regular type, then italicised, then boldfaced
  • Promoting ideas that are impossible to implement on a large scale unless there’s a transitional period between the current and ideal states
  • Claiming that state propaganda organs like RT (Russia), Sputnik (Russia), TASS (Russia), the Korean Central News Agency (North Korea), Xinhua (China), Press TV (Iran), Global Times (China), TeleSUR (Venezuela), Prensa Latina (Cuba), Al Mayadeen (Lebanon), or Orinoco Tribune (Venezuela) are real “anti-imperialist news”
  • In contrast, relying solely or primarily on Western state media like Radio Liberty/Radio Free Asia (USA), BBC (UK), Deutsche Welle (Germany), or France 24, though this is more of a centre-left phenomenon. Although these sources are much more reliable than their Russian, Chinese, or Iranian equivalents, they tend to gloss over the faults of pro-Western regimes like Ukraine, South Korea, Japan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia
  • Using only pro-government sources (there are sites that criticise the government without defending Russia) about the Ukrainian conflict, including Kyiv Independent, Kyiv Post, Ukraine Crisis Media Centre, Euromaidan Press, and Ukrainska Pravda. Ukrainian propaganda is less likely to make shit up than Russian propaganda, but it often treats Kiev’s repression and ethnocentric nationalism as a good thing
  • Using conspiracy-theory-laden websites like The Grayzone, MintPress News, Donbass Insider, and Moon of Alabama as reliable sources about China, Russia, or Syria
  • Spreading conspiracy theories in the name of “anti-imperialism,” including debunked claims about Syria’s gas killings and Ukraine’s purported biolabs
  • Treating activism like the Oppression Olympics, even though that’s a game nobody actually wants to win
  • Creating new political parties instead of trying to push existing ones further to the left (yes, I’m kind of an entryist; deal with it)
  • Related to the last point, running presidential or other candidates that have no chance of winning—why run anyone for office if you know damn well that a candidate from the People’s Socialist Party of Freedom, Equality and Liberation has zero chance of winning against the Democrat or Republican (or mainstream equivalents in other countries, like the Tories and Labour in the UK, or the German Christian Democrats and Social Democrats)
  • Refusing to build coalitions across the left because purity politics makes it impossible, thereby allowing the right to split us up and indirectly help leaders like Donald Trump, Geert Wilders and Jair Bolsonaro come to power
  • Expressing essentialist ideas about genders, races or cultures (“Russian culture exists to oppress Ukrainians,” “Indigenous Americans are noble sages,” “men are all rapists,” “‘real’ women are delicate flowers who need ‘sex-based rights’ to protect them from evil trans women”)
  • Calling anyone who disagrees with them “reactionary” or “pseudo-left” (Trotskyists do this a lot)
  • Focusing more on style than substance (“trans women” versus “transwoman”, #KyivNotKiev)
  • Venerating past and present tyrannical dictators like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, “respected comrade” Kim Jong Un and the rest of his family, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin (who isn’t even a leftist, much less a communist), Xi Jinping, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, Daniel Ortega, ad nauseam
  • Focusing on foreign policy to the exclusion of domestic policy
  • Focusing on domestic policy to the exclusion of foreign policy
  • Treating Volodymyr Zelensky (and by extension the bumbling Ukrainian central government) as though the were the second coming of Winston Churchill
  • Throwing around jargon like “anti-imperialist,” “settler colonial,” “decolonise,” “bourgeois,” “proletarian,” “imperialist,” “neoliberal,” and “geopolitical economy” without being clear about what they mean
  • Reducing all relationships of dominance and oppression to the control of the means of production or the lack thereof (which is silly, since racism, all sexisms and xenophobia can occur under any economic system, including socialism)
  • Supporting right-wing authoritarian states because they’re opposed to US policy (mostly Russia and Iran)
  • Supporting authoritarian communist or socialist states because they’re opposed to US policy (mostly China, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Syria)
  • Treating politics like a sports game
  • Spouting ableist views—including fat-shaming—because their concept of class or identity organising completely ignores the idea that disability is political
  • Treating the writings of Marx and Engels (or somethings Lenin, Stalin, and Mao) as holy writ
  • Siding with anti-Western states because they’re “anti-imperialist” (as though China and Russia weren’t expansionist empires, which is the analogue of Japanese, Ukrainian or Taiwanese boosting of Western imperialisms because they’re against China and Russia)
  • Supporting reactionary, xenophobic movements like Brexit (a common view among some British communists, as well as the perennial candidate and professional fruitcake and anti-vaxxer Jill Stein) because they’re against the EU’s neoliberalism
  • Dismissing reports of sexual abuse because they’re a “distraction” from the class struggle
  • Denying genocidal actions of anti-US regimes (China in particular)
  • Claiming that their movement, whether Trotskyism, orthodox Marxism–Leninism, anarchism, or any other tendency, is the only way to solve society’s problems
  • Uncritically defending Ukraine or other pro-Western countries with deeply problematic policies (more common in North American and Western European mainstream media, though views like this sometimes appear among social democrats and other more moderate leftists)
  • Dismissing, defending or promoting racism, misogyny, homophobia or transphobia on the grounds that feminism, pro-LGBTQ activism and antiracism distract from the class struggle
  • Constantly putting political one-upmanship over the real lives, concerns and feelings of actual human beings

Unfortunately, this seems impossible to find, at least for now. I know I can’t agree with everything I find, but the lacuna between my views and theirs is staggering. (But mainstream centre-left politics leaves me unsatisfied, too, and anything on the right is obviously out of the question.)

Right-libertarianism and Marxism are more similar than you’d expect

I use “Marxism” and “right-libertarian” loosely to refer to ideas that, respectively, focus on the dichotomous struggle between the bourgeoisie (owners of the means of production, especially people who extract labour from their employees or consumers) and the proletariat (people who have nothing but their work to give), or the dichotomous struggle between the winners (those who benefit from capitalist conditions) and losers (those who have not managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps).

Both these ideologies present a zero-sum view of humanity, though they take different perspectives: Marxists focus on the conflict between collectives, and right-libertarians seem these conflicts as individual. Both have a zero-sum character that reminds me of Social Darwinism. For one to survive, the other must be eliminated. This kind of winner-takes-all thinking is pervasive and seems to have brought us nowhere.

The frustrating thing is that right-libertarians often have valuable things to say about freedom of speech and expression, though they are often dismissive of how groups of people experience systemic oppression. A lot of them think that sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia will be vanquished in the free marketplace of ideas—or that these forms of prejudice are even justifiable because they continue to exist. And Marxists have an acute understanding of how economic inequality and exploitation lead to poverty, suffering and misery—but they don’t always care about individual rights and support the suppression of dissent. And like their right-libertarian counterparts, they may pooh-pooh racism and other systemic oppressions—or uphold them—because they’re secondary to the class struggle. (And then you have the identity-reductionist counterparts, but they are distinct enough from Marxists and right-libertarians that I’ll deal with them separately.) All these are counterproductive, reductive mindsets that ignore the complexities inherent to human existence.

People who reduce all human relationships between “oppressor” and “oppressed” ethnicities…

…are the race-reductionist equivalent of vulgar Marxists who view everything through the lens of the eternal struggle of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. All they’re doing is taking a crude interpretation of Marxist theory and using race instead of class. Even the Marxists recognise that that the class struggle changes over time—that’s why it’s called dialectical materialism, not static materialism.

Honestly, I’m more willing to buy that a transactional relationship, such as the worker–owner dichotomy in conventional labour structures, or the dichotomy between political leaders and constituents, is more likely to be the source of systemic oppression, rather than the relationship between, say, Japanese and Koreans. But some inequitable balances of power, such as sexism, undoubtedly predated societies that were able to develop complex transactional relationships. (Also, all these relationships—yes, even culture—are mutable. People marry into different cultures, start companies, lose all their money while gambling in Vegas. The perceived value of different relationships can change over time as well, even if the traits of a group have not—for example, the Germans are viewed differently from how they were in the early 20th century.)

On “decolonial” states

Since the forces of imperialism which oppress independence are allied on an international scale, the struggle to oppose imperialist domination and oppression and defend independence, too, cannot but be an international undertaking. Because of the community of their historical backgrounds and interests, the formerly oppressed nations and peoples who have been subjected to colonial slavery, with their independence and sovereignty downtrodden by imperialism, are united together on the same front of struggle to oppose imperialism and defend independence.

The peoples of small countries who have long suffered oppression by foreign forces need so much the more the sense of national dignity and revolutionary pride.

The heroic struggle waged by our anti-[imperialist ruler] revolutionary fighters of the past is an example that teaches the truth of real life and struggle to the younger generation who have not experienced the ordeals of the revolution. Schools should make great efforts to educate the students by referring to the shining examples set by our anti-[imperialist ruler] revolutionary fighters of the past.

Picture this: there is a state that has recently overthrown its imperialist overlords, led by a charismatic guerrilla fighter. Built on principles of national self-determination, sovereignty, self-sufficiency and community cohesion, the new anti-imperialist, decolonial state works quickly to unify its people after a brutal war. Local culture is protected thanks to robust laws that are designed to uphold its people’s national heritage.

Click the “read more” tag to find out what that state is.

Continue reading

ProleWiki: Tankies have created the funniest/most infuriating thing I’ve seen all week

Tankies have created their own counterpart to Wikipedia: ProleWiki.

A picture of a blonde light-skinned man saying, "North Korea is a socialist workers' paradise!" He's wearing a dark-red T-shirt with a red star on it and is giving the viewer the thumbs-up.

You can learn that the correct name for Americans is actually “Statesians.” You’ll also learn that North Korea—I mean the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—is a happy workers’ paradise, not a totalitarian hellhole full of people who are fed a healthy diet of propaganda rather than actual food to eat. Russia’s RT, Iran’s Press TV, and other state media from authoritarian states, as well as conspiracy-mongering publications like CovertAction Magazine and The Greyzone, are now “anti-imperialist media.” And you’ll learn that virtually anything wrong in the world is a “Statesian” plot led by the CIA. The words “bourgeois,” “capitalist,” “ruling class,” “means of production,” and “material” are thrown around liberally.

A picture of a frowning light-skinned woman with purple hair, saying, "The kulaks had it coming!" She's wearing an off-the-shoulders pink top with a teal sleeveless shirt underneath, and there is a black choker with a teal pendant around her neck.

And to the editors of ProleWiki, Stalin and Kim Jong-un are deeply misunderstood men who want to do right by their people, not iron-fisted tyrants. And Xi Jinping is praised by way of a quote from that stalwart champion of human rights, Fidel Castro. In general, if the media say anything negative about the USSR, North Korea, China, Cuba, Vietnam, or any other “actually existing socialist state,” it’s bourgeois propaganda.

At least the ProleWiki editors are pro-LGBTQ, unlike some other Marxist–Leninists who see anything non-heteronormative as being bourgeois, idealist, or degenerate. I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

 

Hamas is an oppressive, right-wing, authoritarian government. Leftists need to stop defending it.

I’ve said this before and I will say it again: Hamas is a right-wing, repressive, theocratic, authoritarian, dogmatic, inequitable, terrorist organisation. If it gains control over what is now called Israel, it will be no better than the current Israeli government. Instead of Jewish-supremacist nationalism, it will bring Muslim-supremacist nationalism.

Just two months before Hamas started its attacks, people in Gaza were protesting against Hamas’s mismanagement and repression, as well as Israeli oppression. Hamas responded by beating protesters and clamping down on dissent. Hamas claims to speak for the people of Gaza, but it doesn’t give a shit about their welfare. Gazans are starving, unemployed and struggling to survive, while Hamas leaders are living high off the hog. For example, Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, is a millionaire. The Gazan government has been known to harass and muffle journalists.

What happened in August was a legitimate pro-democracy protest. What Hamas is doing, on the other hand, is terrorism.

Hamas may have a lot of popular support despite its clear failings—but then again, so do Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, despite the wartime political repression occurring in both Russia and Ukraine. Ironically, the defenders of Hamas (as well as leftists who refrain from condemning it) are often those who criticise Kiev for its repression of opposition politicians and journalists, its association with American and NATO imperialism, the promotion of Nazi sympathisers among some ultranationalist politicians and activists, and its disregard for ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Hamas’s repression is worse than Ukraine’s, but because the West is not supporting Hamas, contrarian leftists continue to support it without criticism. Ukraine, at the very least, aspires to be democratic; Hamas does not. This is why, despite my severe misgivings, I have not completely turned against the idea of offering Kiev military aid. Hamas, on the other hand, deserves no support from the left. Nor does the Israeli government.

Instead, leftists must reject both Israeli and Palestinian nationalism, as well as the leaders who promote it. Although Palestinians are clearly the victims of Israeli oppression, it is dangerous to counter eliminiationist nationalism with more of the same thing, this time with a crescent instead of a Star of David. Neither the Israeli nor Palestinian leadership is worthy of our support.

If you’re looking for a Palestinian Nelson Mandela, he won’t be in Hamas

This isn’t a contrarian opinion in the Western mainstream media, but it is contrarian for a leftist: I do not support the Hamas uprising. This is not because I agree with the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, especially in Gaza—in fact, I find Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians repugnant.

But if Israel is analogous to South Africa, Hamas and its leaders are no Nelson Mandela. Hamas uses civilians, including children and the elderly, to strike fear into the hearts of all Israelis—and Jews generally. Hamas thrives on fear, intimidation, nationalism, chauvinism, hatred, religious dogmatism, obscurantism and authoritarianism. They have included elderly Holocaust survivors among their hostages. Hamas ostensibly fights for freedom, but it restricts the civil rights and liberties of its own people, even absent of Israeli or Egyptian control.

Hamas is a terrorist organisation.

I am not opposed to the use of violence to defend or agitate for freedom. Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress, for example, used both violent and non-violent tactics to topple South Africa’s apartheid regime. The ANC’s goal was to establish legal, social and political equality for Black South Africans. It was not to establish an antisemitic, chauvinistic, religious and ethnic nationalist state. The ANC’s primary targets were government buildings and officials. They did not attack hundreds of revellers at music festivals during religious holidays. Hamas killed more people in one day than the ANC did in ten years. It bears more resemblance to the Nazi-sympathising Ukrainian “freedom fighters” who slaughtered Jews and Poles in the interwar period and World War II—think of the wizened SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka, so recently applauded by Canada’s Parliament and Volodymyr Zelensky.

Hamas is a terrorist organisation.

Palestine deserves better. But that “better” does not, or should not, include Hamas. I do not and will never support Hamas. Even anti-Zionist leftists should resist supporting a right-wing, ethnic nationalist, fundamentalist religious movement that will bring nothing but more oppression, fear and war. Even the tankies’ beloved Russia hasn’t come out defending Hamas. Movements for liberation should inspire hope. They should lead people to dream of better lives than they or their parents had. They should respect the freedoms of those seeking liberation. Hamas has done none of those things. The government in Gaza is an authoritarian regime that resembles the other Islamist states in the Middle East, and its goal is to terrorise Israelis into leaving and creating yet another Iran or Saudi Arabia in its place. Israel has a lot to answer for, but Hamas is not the solution.

In fact, Hamas is a terrorist organisation.

 

“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a cliché, but it’s an accurate one

Apologias for, and minimisation of, Russian and Ukrainian fascist and far-right movements span the political spectrum. Tankies and Christian nationalists alike present Russia as a strong counterpoint to Western—well, American—dominance, either because of its foreign policy or its repudiation of social-libertarian values like feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and due process. Liberals, progressives, and centrists view Ukraine as liberal, progressive David fighting off the authoritarian Russian Goliath. And neoconservatives who have never got over the Cold War simply hate Russia reflexively and want to see it challenged once and for all. These varied interests have made strange bedfellows out of Moscow’s and Kiev’s supporters—but one thing ties together uncritical supporters of the Ukrainians or Russians: a refusal to acknowledge far-right and fascist movements in either country.

The pro-Ukrainian/anti-Russian coalition

Liberals, centrists, moderates, progressives, certain leftists, Brexiteers, neo-Nazis, anti-imperialists, white nationalists, and neoconservatives contort themselves to defend, excuse, or minimise fascist and far-right movements in Ukraine. This is clear through the motley band of countries that supports Ukraine or condemns Russia: the centre-left American, Spanish, German, and Canadian governments; the centrist French government; the centre-right British government; and the right-wing Italian and Polish governments. Poland’s social policies, especially for LGBTQ+ people, are only fractionally better than Russia’s—though at least Poles have freedom of movement thanks to the Schengen treaty.

Although liberals, progressives, and leftists stand for freedom of speech and expression and rightly oppose reactionary political movements in the West, they are unaware of, or choose to ignore, Ukraine’s far-right movements and their influence over the country’s civil society.

The pro-Russian/anti-Ukrainian coalition

Tankies, certain non-tankie leftists, paleoconservatives, progressives, soi-disant libertarians, neo-Nazis, multipolarists, anti-imperialists, Trumpers, Brexiteers, white nationalists, and alt-righters contort themselves to defend, excuse, or minimise fascist and far-right movements in Russia.

Ironically, rightists who defend Russia will raise the matter of Ukrainian far-right movements while promoting Christian nationalism, homophobia and transphobia, misogyny, and other reactionary ideas that sound just as fascist as they claim the Ukrainians are. Many tankies, meanwhile, will profess to be against gendered discrimination and right-wing religious movements, but excuse Russia’s repressions because it is a bulwark against American and NATO hegemony.

Right-libertarians’ motivation is a bit different—they are obsessed with minimising government spending if it has no direct effect on their lives, and so they focus on highlighting Kiev’s failings to stop their governments from providing Ukraine with weapons or humanitarian aid. In many cases, their motive is primarily selfishness, rather than true support for Russian policies. “Libertarians” who do actively support Russia are better called paleoconservatives.

Whitewashing Ukraine

The Kiev government has a tendency of scoring own-goals and appeasing nationalist movements, but it is far from being a Nazi regime. It is a worker-unfriendly neoliberal state whose social policies are usually more progressive than Russia’s. It is a wobbly democracy riddled with corruption, ethnic discrimination, and polarisation, but it can probably be fixed in the next decade under competent leadership.

Ukraine more than deserves support to fend off the Russian invasion—but that doesn’t mean that we can dismiss the relationship between Ukrainian nationalism and fascist movements. We do not have to defend the Azov battalion or claim that Ukrainian SS troops were victims of the Nazi regime when it is they who helped slaughter countless Jews as a trial run for the gas chambers.

Zelensky is no Nazi. But the Ukrainian government has been too spineless, too afraid of the far-right movements, too stubborn to admit that Ukrainian nationalism has an unsavoury side, to call these movements out for what they are. This is doubtless because Russian propaganda has unfairly caricatured Ukraine as a Nazi regime.

Whitewashing Russia

As for Russia, its position is indefensible. Any legitimate criticisms the Putin regime raises about far-right movements in Ukraine are hollow, since Russia itself is a far-right state. Nazis are primarily characterised as enemies of Russia, rather than persecutors of vulnerable minorities, including Jews, Roma and Sinti people, disabled people, queer and trans people, and political dissidents.

Putin persecutes many of the same populations that the Nazis did, especially queer people and dissidents, as well as Ukrainians who do not want to be “governed” by Russia (which is most of them). Paleoconservatives, alt-righters, Trumpers, and some white nationalists understand this—and this is why they want to cut aid to Kiev and serve as mouthpieces for the Kremlin. As for the tankies, multipolarists, and other leftist Russia apologists, they couldn’t care less what authoritarian regimes do to their people or the countries they attack as long as they’re rivals of the US and its allies.

Concluding remarks

Leftists—usually anarchists, Trotskyists, and democratic socialists—appear to be the only ones who condemn oppressive movements and policies in both Ukraine and Russia. This is the morally correct position to take.

We cannot tolerate fascism from either the Russian or Ukrainian side. It is possible to show solidarity with Ukraine and provide them support without sweeping its problems under the rug. We can reject linguistic and social discriminations against Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians without defending Putin’s monstrous actions in Ukraine. We can repudiate the excesses of Ukrainian nationalism while supporting their resistance against Russian domination. And we can defend Russian dissidents, as well as critics of the Ukrainian government, without assuming that any of these people support repression from either Moscow or Kiev.

 

Tankies suck at Russian

If you’re going to present yourselves as USSR and Russia fanboys, can you at least get the grammar in your name right? The Stalinist “US Friends of the Soviet People” group calls itself “США друзья советский народ [SShA druzya sovetskiy narod].” This is extremely bad Russian. I know only a little Russian myself, but I know just enough to tell that this is wrong. Russian has a case system, so the idea of “of” is expressed using the genitive case. The way it is now, it’s “USA Friends Soviet People” with no clear relationship between the words. I think the correct version would be Американские друзья советского народа or Друзья США советского народа. They should have had this checked by someone who knows Russian, but then again, I think these people like to LARP as Soviets without doing any research.

Graphic that says США Друзья Совиетский Народ, or poor Russian for American Friends of the Soviet People

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