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

Tag: politics (Page 1 of 2)

Inverse oppression is not liberation.

Inverse oppression is not liberation.

Calling to commit genocide against a dominant ethnic group is still wrong. It still implies that there are groups of people who don’t deserve to live, not because of what they have individually done, but because of the cruel actions of their government. Targeting your own citizens because they speak the “oppressor’s language” isn’t going to free you from domination; it’s merely going to tear your country apart because your blinkered nationalism has caused you to forget who is also on your side.

I don’t mean this to be a saccharine “why can’t we just get along” plea. I don’t mean that we have to suck up to people who don’t value our lives. Fuck them. But I won’t endorse essentialist claims about how, for example, Russians exist solely to oppress Ukrainians and must be destroyed. This is toxic garbage. Nobody exists solely to oppress anyone else. When you claim that someone’s very existence is oppressive, you sound like a fucking fascist.

Most social justice activists aren’t like this. Most want to find a place for themselves within a pluralist society. But they are drowned out by a loud minority that calls for blood at the earliest opportunity.

Turning misogyny around and claiming that men are all domineering brutes who want to subjugate women doesn’t lead to women’s liberation—it just causes misogynists to double down and act worse because “women hate us anyway.” And “reverse misogynists” are often the ones who end up becoming TERFs, since they believe in sexual determinism. If you’re born with this bodily configuration, you’re virtuous; if you’ve got the other kind, you’re damned.

Certain “woke” academics and students think that antiracism means dehumanising white people, straight people, or cis people—and those white, straight, and cis people will turn around and escalate their racist, homophobic, and transphobic claims because they think that non-white and LGBTQ+ people are out to get them. They think they’re going to be oppressed, too. When they talk about being “decolonial,” they want to become the new colonisers instead, wiping out history and rewriting it to fit a new “liberated” agenda. (And some are perfectly fine with some colonisers like the Chinese.) They conflate cultural exchange—a near-universal in all human societies—with crude cultural appropriation, like white people wearing stupid fake Native American headdresses at Coachella.

Real liberation occurs when societies can reckon with historical inequities and find ways to live alongside each other. We must not tolerate racism, sexism or any other prejudice. But this demand must be separated from retributive, eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth “morality.” There is a difference between fighting for one’s rights—even with violence—and wanting to eliminate the other side. For example, I don’t want white Americans to be wiped out. I want them to start seeing their non-white counterparts as full members of society.

I am tired of hearing that calling for reconciliation and kindness, rather than calling for blood, means “siding with the oppressor.” Unfortunately, a lot of oppressed people think that liberation means doing what the other guys did to them. The oppressed can become oppressors. One cursory look at a history book will show this to be true. The Russians were oppressed by the Mongols. Later, they turned around and oppressed Mongolic groups like the Buryats. Jews were and are oppressed in Western societies and the Arab world. But now the Israeli state (not Jews as a whole, just the Israeli state) is oppressing Palestinian Arabs, and those Arabs, as well as their Iranian allies, are now calling for the oppression of Jews as a whole. Both Jews and Muslims are marginalised religious and ethnic minorities in the West, and this complicates politics among Israel’s allies. Anti-Zionism is shot through with antisemitism, and Zionism is shot through with Islamophobia. And there are people who are both oppressor and oppressed—for example, non-white Americans may serve in the army and still struggle with racism at home. I side-eye anyone who talks about “The Oppressor” as though this is a permanent category, an indelible mark of evil.

I do not believe in tit-for-tat morality and I will never endorse it, even if it is masked as “liberation.” I’m not against the use of violence to send a message (though it should occur only after non-violent options have been exhausted), but it has to be targeted—and it should not be directed at civilians or private citizens. I’m sick of this Manichaean bullshit, and I hate that social justice movements have been infected with it.

If you are obsessed with eliminating groups of people, you aren’t freeing anyone from literal or figurative bondage. You just want to be the new master.

“Sex-based rights” is a misnomer hiding a reactionary agenda

Instead of using a trans-inclusive definition of gender discrimination, conservatives and TERFs want to base claims of discrimination on assigned sex at birth, rather than gender identity or presentation. They call this “sex-based rights.”1

The problem with this argument is that transphobia is a form of sex discrimination. By telling members of one assigned sex that they may not be referred to by pronouns that align with their gender identity, wear the clothing that suits their gender presentation, or that they cannot get treatment or surgeries that help alleviate gender dysphoria, they are practising sex-based discrimination. I’m not the only one to use this argument—the United States Supreme Court, not known for its progressivism, ruled in Bostock that homophobic and transphobic discrimination in the workplace were unconstitutional, since they targeted people for discrimination based on sex assigned at birth.

It is more accurate to call “sex-based rights” sex-based restrictions. Just as digital rights management is designed to restrict how people use and distribute computer files, the principle of sex-based rights is designed to restrict the range of gender expressions and identities based on one’s assigned sex. Supporters of DRM say they want to protect and empower copyright holders (typically large corporations). And supporters of sex-based restrictions say they want to protect and empower women.

But sex-based restrictions don’t empower or protect women. Instead, they are sumptuary laws harking back to the Victorian era. Or in contemporary society, the laws in theocratic Middle Eastern states like Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. These restrictions also reinforce the anti-feminist idea that one’s assigned sex at birth defines one’s moral character. That if you were assigned male, you are automatically a rapist and pervert, and if you were assigned female, you are a delicate flower in need of protecting. These are patriarchal stereotypes that merely reinforce the idea that men and women will never be equal.

Some feminists—the ones who believe in inculcating gender equity in future generations—focus on cultivating gentleness and compassion in men, and assertiveness and strength in women. Supporters of sex-based restrictions do not do that. Instead, they reinforce the idea men are strong, dominating and predatory, and women are delicate, weak and nurturing. This isn’t feminism. In fact, it’s quite the opposite—it is merely the inverse of patriarchal “values.”

Homophobia and transphobia are sexism. Neither should be welcome in a tolerant society.

  1. (Come to think about it, the constant use of “sex” feels very old-fashioned, too—feminist activists started shifting towards “gender” fifty years ago. I prefer this not just for political reasons—“sex” is too easily confused with sexual intercourse.)

 

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.

German-owned Politico publishes piece defending SS veteran

The European edition of Politico, which is wholly owned by Germany’s Axel Springer conglomerate, published an op-ed by Keir Giles on the Yaroslav Hunka affair. Giles, a British Russia expert, claims that SS-Galizien was cleared of all crimes in a Canadian investigation (but not the Nuremberg trials) and that Hunka was forced to make a difficult decision because of the threat the Soviets presented to the Ukrainians. He dismisses the complaints of Jewish groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, even though it is Jews who were the Nazis’ primary victims. Every acknowledgement of Ukrainian nationalists’ complicity with the Nazi regime is Russian propaganda and no more.

If I didn’t know it was from Politico and not Euromaidan Press or Ukrainska Pravda, I’d have thought Giles’s essay was Ukrainian propaganda.

The Nuremberg Trials declared all SS divisions criminal organisations with one exception: the Equestrian SS [second link is in Russian]. This means that SS-Galizien was not cleared at Nuremberg. In an article (rehosted by the author on academia.edu—the actual site is paywalled and unavailable on Sci-Hub) for the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, the historian Per Anders Rudling makes clear that the the volunteer members of SS-Galizien were not mere dupes or heroic Ukrainian freedom fighters. Members of the division had to swear oaths to Hitler, and they were educated in Nazi ideology. SS-Galizien committed multiple war crimes against Poles and civilians. Ultranationalists affiliated with the Ukrainian government—especially Volodymyr Viatrovych, the former head of Ukraine’s Institute for National Remembrance—have attempted for years to play down the atrocities that fascist and Nazi-affiliated Ukrainian nationalists have committed.

I don’t get why some of Ukraine’s supporters have to bend over backwards to defend its worst elements. By doing so, it simply hands the Russians more material for their propaganda.

Bad pro-Ukraine arguments: “Svoboda barely got any votes” and “Jewish President”

A common refrain among Ukraine’s uncritical supporters is that Kiev is free of far-right movements because extreme nationalist parties (e.g. Svoboda) barely got any votes in the last election. But this is a poor argument, since movements outside a country’s legislature can still exert influence on politicians’ decisions. For example, the British Conservative Party has been pushed further to the right because of more extreme parties and movements. The UK Independence Party has held only two seats in Parliament since its creation, and only one of those MPs won his seat in a general election. Despite UKIP’s lack of parliamentary representation, however, it was successful in achieving their main goal: withdrawing the United Kingdom from the European Union. UKIP accomplished this by pushing the Tories to the right on immigration. Not wanting to be outdone by Nigel Farage & Co., the Tories introduced more and more xenophobic policies designed to appeal to the base. Theresa May introduced the hostile-environment policy, designed to discourage migrants from settling. Tabloids like the Daily Mail and Daily Express launched incessant “crusades”—as the Express terms them—to drive out economic migrants from poorer EU countries like Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland. (The United States, on the other hand, seems to incorporate its radicalising elements into the party structure—consider the Tea Party movement and its eldritch offspring, the Trump/MAGA movement.)

The other irritating argument I come across is “Ukraine has a Jewish president, so there’s no more antisemitism now.” Sadly, I see this coming from the same people who would see the absurdity in the statement “Obama was Black, so there’s no more racism in America.” Zelensky’s election does show real progress in Ukrainian society, just as Obama’s election showed progress in American society. But that doesn’t mean that the work is over. It’s far from over when Ukraine has streets and monuments in honour of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, or when the American South is full of statues to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. It’s not over when the Ukrainian press bends over backwards to defend a member of the Waffen-SS who was given a standing ovation by the Canadian parliament, and it’s not over when people continue to sing the praises of the Confederate Army, even though they fought for the right to “own” other people and extract their labour.

Ukraine doesn’t need far-rightists in parliament for them to influence its social policy, and Zelensky’s Jewish background does not insulate the country from criticisms of its ultranationalist tendencies. Claiming otherwise is merely spouting Kiev’s state propaganda.

You should support Ukraine’s fight against Russia, even if your support is strictly harm reduction, as mine is. But for the love of God, please stop airbrushing over Ukraine’s far-right movements. Argue on humanitarian grounds. Argue on anti-Putin grounds. Argue on national-security grounds. But don’t pretend that extreme nationalism and far-right movements don’t exist. This does no one any good—especially not Ukrainians.

 

 

’Once a foreigner, always a foreigner’: How transphobia in the UK looks like xenophobia

The UK has gained the epithet ‘TERF Island’ for good reason: the Conservative government and its supposed opposition have launched a sustained attack on trans people’s right to self-determination since Boris Johnson took control of Downing St, and Rishi Sunak is probably even worse than his predecessors, including Liz Truss, whose premiership had the lifespan of a mayfly. I focus on the Tories here for expedience, but Labour are no improvement: the pusillanimous Blairite Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has simply parroted the Tories’ views with slightly less vitriol.

As nauseating and pervasive as it is, however, transphobia is only one of the prejudices the Tories have expressed and encouraged over the thirteen miserable years they have been in power, either on their own or in coalition. Disabled people, working-class people and job-seekers, and migrants have also been persecuted, vilified and dehumanised by the Tory regime.

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Russia’s Own-Goals: How Moscow Fuels Ukrainian Ultranationalism and Far-Right Movements

Last week, I talked about how Ukraine constantly scores own-goals by doubling down on extreme nationalism, Nazi apologias, and other toxic tendencies that seem to give credence to Russian propaganda about Ukraine’s being a “Nazi state.” I would be remiss, however, to ignore Russia’s role in the rise of reactionary Ukrainian chauvinism. After all, it is Russia who initiated the Ukrainian crisis, starting with its annexation of Crimea and ending with the full-scale “special military operation” launched last year.

By attacking Ukraine, Russia is enabling Kiev’s most chauvinistic, anti-Russian politicians and activists to pass new laws restricting the use of the Russian language, openly display Nazi and fascist imagery, defend the reputation of Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera, marginalise predominantly Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the South and East, launch dumb campaigns to “cancel” the use in English of Russian names for Russophone cities like Kiev and Kharkov (a practice I have not adopted here), lobby international theatres and concert halls to ban Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, pulp thousands of Russian and Russian-language books from Ukrainian libraries, encourage the harassment of people who use “non-state languages” (that is, Russian), go on witch-hunts for fifth columnists who are merely critics of the current regime, ban opposition sites like Strana from being accessed within Ukraine, rehabilitate the reputation of the Galician SS, hire military spokeswomen who call Russians “Mongols” who aren’t “real Europeans” with “real European values,” name streets after Bandera and other Nazi collaborators, and make threatening promises to cleanse Crimea of all Russian cultural or linguistic influence should it fall back under Kiev’s control. Because of Russia’s attacks, many Ukrainians are adopting nationalistic views—the kinds the Russians loathe for their unsavoury association with Nazism and fascism—to distinguish themselves from their larger neighbour. Ukraine has formed its entire post-Maidan identity around Not Being Russia—and Russia has contributed to it with its actions. It is hard to want to have a close relationship with Russia when Putin is behaving the way he is. He is merely inflaming the thing he has supposedly set out to fight. If he wants to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, he is doing a miserable job at it.

None of this is to excuse Ukrainian politicians for their vicious chauvinism, especially when it is directed at Ukrainian citizens who refuse to adopt the ultranationalism imposed by the post-Maidan governments. I will never defend the Kiev regime beyond supporting its military victory over Russia. But Russia’s actions have contributed to the noxious extremism emanating from Kiev. The biggest losers in all this are the Ukrainians, especially those in the south and east. The Russians bomb their cities and abduct their children, but the Ukrainian authorities have no desire to integrate them into its increasingly ethnonationalist, chauvinistic state.

If Russia wants to put a stop to Nazism in Ukraine, if it wants to regain its influence on the world stage, if it wants to prove its strength, it must withdraw itself from this needless war of attrition. It is time for Russia to remove its troops and come to the negotiation table. Ukraine’s counteroffensive has fizzled, but that does not mean that the Russian “special military operation” is successful. Not by a long stretch. This—and only this—is how Putin can “denazify” Ukraine.

 

Ukraine’s Own-Goals: How Kiev Unwittingly Feeds the Russian Propaganda Machine

Although Ukraine is much further along the path to a functioning democracy than Russia is, it still has disturbing authoritarian, ethnonationalist tendencies—and many of those tendencies have caused Kiev to score own-goals, thereby feeding the Russian propaganda machine1—and possibly leading many Ukrainians to collaborate with Vladimir Putin’s tyrannical regime.

Putin’s pretexts for invading an independent country are bogus. No, Ukraine is not conducting a genocide against ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The Ukrainian government is not led by Nazis. And the presence of the US and NATO in Ukraine is not an existential threat to the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, the refusal to acknowledge the country’s role in World War II, its rigid linguistic policies, and its suppression of dissent contradict the image of progressive democracy that Ukraine wants to project. What’s more, Ukraine’s embrace of ultranationalist policies is a threat to the country’s national security.

Erratum: In an earlier version of this post, I referred to Ukraine’s interim minister of free speech and information as “Nestor Shufrych.” Shufrych is the official who was replaced after being accused of high treason. The interim minister is Yevgeny (Yevhen) Bragar. 

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There is no such thing as the “collective West”

If I see the expression “collective West” in English-language articles, I tune out immediately, since I know that I’m going to encounter undiluted Kremlin propaganda, either from Russians or foreign admirers of the Putin regime, including tankies, vatniks, so-called libertarians, and ultraconservatives, and it often comes alongside disparaging attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, feminists and others who challenge the patriarchy. For some, it reflects a hostility towards liberalism—that is, non-authoritarian politics, rather than the European sense of deregulated free markets or the American sense of barely-left-of-centre views. And for others, it is merely a catch-all term for the United States, NATO, the European Union, and possibly Australia and New Zealand alongside them.

But this unity is a myth—and Russian officials and propagandists know full well that there is no singular “Western consensus.”

Here’s why.

Trumpers, Tories, and TERFs—oh my!

Russian propaganda may portray Ukraine’s supporters as libertine, decadent states devoid of conservative “family values,” but this is not in keeping with these countries’ domestic policies. We’ll use four countries as examples: the United States, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Though I’ll be sticking to four countries, we could easily substitute France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, all of which have right-wing governments or nascent far-right movements.

United States

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of American politics knows about our extreme polarisation. The idea that this country is a free-for-all feminist and LGBTQ+ paradise is easily disproved by the spate of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-woman bills, laws and executive orders pushed through by doctrinaire Republican legislators, Supreme Court “justices” and state governors over the past two years. Our rights may have advanced in more progressive states like California, Massachusetts, and New York, but they have regressed in red states, including Texas, Missouri, and Florida.

Russian officials will find a lot in common with governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, all of whom have launched crusades against LGBTQ people, Black activists, and anyone else who challenges the established conservative order. And Donald Trump is back on the campaign trail, this time using culture-war issues like trans youth to keep his ultraconservative voters engaged—and ensure that he doesn’t lose support to DeSantis and other Republicans who appeal to Christian fundamentalists.

And although some “America First” Republicans (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene) have questioned the need to provide Kiev with more military support, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has approved multiple military-aid packages.

Poland

Poland, one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, is an extremely conservative Roman-Catholic-dominated country not known for its LGBTQ+ friendliness or feminist attitudes. It’s probably a hair away from Russia in this regard—the dictatorial repression may not be as extreme, but the conservative environment is still suffocating for queer Poles. The country even has “LGBT-free zones” (mostly in the south-east): something unthinkable even in the reddest of red states, at least not formally. There are liberal and progressive Poles, just there are liberal and progressive Russians and Italians, but they do not control the national government. Poland is considered one of the worst countries in the EU for LGBTQ+ people, and yet it works closely with Kiev in the anti-Putin war effort.

Italy

Italy is an unwavering supporter of Ukraine’s efforts to repel the Russian invasion. It is also led by Giorgia Meloni, who is the furthest-right Italian leader since Benito Mussolini. Her Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is an outgrowth of old-school fascist movements. Far-right politicians in other countries—for example, the leaders of Germany’s AfD and the French Rassemblement National (National Rally, formerly Front National)—have balked at providing Kiev more support, but Meloni is not among them.

Although Italy is a safer place for LGBTQ+ people than Russia or Hungary, it has the fewest legal protections or rights for LGBTQ+ people in Western Europe; it lags far behind countries like Germany, France, the UK and Spain, which have all legalised same-sex marriage, allow for legal transition, include hate-crimes protection, and more.

United Kingdom

The Conservative-led British government has consistently supported Ukraine throughout the full-scale invasion, but their support for Kiev in no way suggests that the country is as liberal or progressive as Russia claims it is—unless they mean “classical liberal,” rather than “non-authoritarian” or “social libertarian.” Some of the loudest pro-Ukraine media outlets are also some of the most conservative, especially the Daily Mail and Daily Express, along with the more genteel Times and Telegraph.

Although British politicians are comparatively less hostile toward queer and trans people than their Polish, Italian, or Russian counterparts, there has been an alarming rise of homophobic and transphobic rhetoric coming from both Tory and Labour politicians, as well as the press. Some Tories, such as Suella Braverman of the Home Office and the “Equalities” minister Kemi Badenoch, are especially hostile. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were not known for their social progressivism either. The days of David Cameron and Theresa May are long over. The UK, once listed as the most LGBTQ+-friendly country in Europe, no longer has that reputation—it has been slipping in the rankings over the past eight years.

It’s also important to remember that the UK has been the primary exporter of homophobia and transphobia. For example, the “anti-buggery” laws in African and Caribbean countries like Nigeria, Jamaica and Uganda are colonial leftovers that the locals now see as their traditional values. Before “muscular Christianity” arrived on the African continent, many cultures, such as the Igbo of what is now Nigeria, had more fluid views of gender.

Why the “collective West” charge is disingenuous

The Russians’ condemnation of the “collective West” has nothing to do with the political composition of NATO or EU states. It doesn’t have jack shit to do with LGBTQ+ rights or “moral decay.” It is just an excuse to legitimise its attempts to annex the entirety of Ukraine to the Russian state. No self-respecting leftist should use the “collective West” narrative; it’s merely self-serving Kremlin waffle.

In fact, American evangelicals have worked with Russian Orthodox fundamentalists to persecute queer and trans Russians. The media has covered Russia’s exploitation of our internal tensions for its own geostrategic interests—for example, the “Heart of Texas” and “Black Matters” Facebook groups that popped up during the 2016 election.

There is no such thing as the collective West—only countries that aren’t lining up to do Russia’s bidding.

 

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