I think anyone who is convinced that the U.S. left - the DSA and leftist magazines particularly - are completely lost to us on the question of Ukraine to read this. A candid examination of facts should make it clear to anyone on the left that Ukraine deserves support & I think that’s possible
A big reason why I stopped associating with rose Twitter was because a lot of them came out as pro-Russia in February 2022 and I realized then that a lot of "leftists" don't have any real political opinions beyond "America bad"
I think the perception that the US Left is anti-Ukraine is not because anti-Ukraine sentiment is actually super common on the US Left (every fellow US leftist I know is pro-Ukraine), it's that the ones who *talk about Ukraine all the time* are the anti-Ukraine ones
I don’t mean to get dark but I think a huge reason why many leftists have come to hate Ukraine and its cause is quite simply that they have been made fools on the issues. They (we, really, though not me personally) were wrong on the invasion, wrong on the Kharkiv offensive, etc. It’s wounded pride
Yeah a lot of people wanted Ukraine to throw in the towel immediately before the Kharkiv offensive or the liberation of Kherson and ended up looking extremely bad as a result
I vividly remember how genuinely angry a lot of leftists on old twitter were that Ukraine was winning. I also think it undermined a lot of their priors about Russia, which as far as I can tell mostly just stem from some weird Soviet nostalgia. Even though Putin is clearly antithetical to Lenin
they both really like killing people!
We've pretty much been seeing the terminally online left with all its soviet-fetish Russophilic baggage get slapped in the face with reality in real time with the fact that modern Russia is a core nexus of the current international far right/fascist push that they so oppose at home.
They are faced with a choice, they either snap back to reality that Russia is their enemy too, or descend into the spiral of cultish tankie-ism and red-brown campist lunacy, if not abandoning their leftism altogether.
bsky.app/profile/mega...
But as every schoolchild knows, Nirvana did not bring down the USSR, Scorpions did!
In some ways, yes. In preserving the Russian empire, no.
I'm hoping negative polarization to Trumpism can bring a lot of folks back to the fold
I already see the Chapo Boys talking about ukrainian civilians in terms they previously only reserved for Gazans and Yemenis so that’s a good sign. Pathetic and immoral that they can’t identify both Israel and Russia as fundamentally the same force, though I guess you could say the same of liberals
Two-thirds of genpop Dems opposed the War in Gaza from the start. I think you're confusing genpop Dems with the upper echelon of Dem party, where pro-israel interests are very overrepresented.
I doubt Felix has suddenly located a moral compass in the last five months or so, he was calling for zelensky to have a cell next to Sullivan in the Hague and convinced trump had the right tack in march
Look I have several Ukrainian friends and I spoke at a gathering of theirs right after the invasion began. Him and his boys can get fucked for everything they’ve said and done regarding that conflict. But i’m glad they’re shifting anyway, because that means low trust weirdos also will
I would like that but I'm afraid the well is poisoned
yeah that might be right. on the other hand, these people DO have strongly held convictions on certain domestic issues (and on Gaza) but they’re stunningly ill-informed on much of the rest of the world and so they take their cues from their podcast thought leaders. Like chuds with Rogan.
Can't remember if this was before or after they had mark "every rock in ukraine hides a nazi. Also I didn't really rape those women I said I raped back when you could get away with it" ames on
like can’t stress this enough but i heard a clip and…like he had this glee in his voice talking about Ukrainian soldiers getting wounded and killed in Russia’s summer offensives. It’s immoral. And all because the Ukrainian Army made him look like a fucking idiot for a year.
I had an ex-friend who basically turned into this. You can corner them and rattle off Putin’s crimes and they blanche a little and say they just want peace but as soon as they go back to friendly confines it's all jokes.
They think Ukraine is 150% Azov and Palestine is -150% Hamas. Genuinely. And yeah same experience here with a couple acquaintances. The correct position is to support all peoples against imperialism, everywhere, full stop. It’s also an easy position to have. One wonders why it is hard for them.
You can't swing a stick in Europe without hitting a far right nationalist and the only thing that makes Ukraine’s unique in any way is they can't be bought off by the russians.
sidebar, but props to both Matthew and yourself because this has been a very cathartic conversation for me. Being a pro-ukraine leftie makes me feel insane sometimes. And isolated
Yeah like, on the one hand, fuck em and i wouldn’t get a beer with em, on the other hand, Azovstal and Mariupol. So let’s at least acknowledge the utility of their insane bloodlust
when they have ames on to talk about ukraine i literally feel nauseous
it’s eternally the funniest thing that everyone in that space (rightfully) hates Taibbi but they can’t ever call him a sex pest, because it immediately indicts Ames, who is inexplicably their War Expert in combo with noted idiot Dolan
I have respect for the normal people in dsa but 4 years in they clearly dont have the numbers or influence to do anything about the campists and the end result is the org just ignoring the most blatant act of imperialism in our lifetimes entirely
📌
Third time's the charm.
Negative polarization to Trump is something that only happens to libs though. Most of the far left is far too smug for that
It's just vulgar "America Bad"-ism
Leftists hate Ukraine mainly because they are campists who think that any challenge to US hegemony is good
well i’m a leftist and so is the guy who posted the article and so is the subject of the article and none of us feel that way. there’s definitely a segment of them who are like this though
Yes I should’ve said “leftists who hate Ukraine”
yeah you’re right on the money there
I can’t find your post in the other thread but I was going to say I think the reason you are a leftist who doesn’t have a ghoulish opinion on Ukraine is because you do not hate libs more than fascists, which a lot of the online left does
You would be correct, and also for the record I generally like liberals and view them as people who care about being good but maybe we just don’t agree on how to get to utopia
The thing is that the campist "left" people basically never reach having any power here, unlike say how Corbyn did in the UK. The Squad is uniformly pro-Ukraine, and for an older example Bernie Sanders fully supported Bill Clinton bombing Serbia.
I think Ukraine support is overwhelming in my local left.
Yeah, there are a number of annoyingly loud irony poisoned leftists on Bluesky specifically who have terrible takes on Ukraine, but I’ve never thought they represented a majority view among leftists.
Most of the problem stems from -Jacobin publishing on the subject is weirdly anti-Ukrain, mostly b/c Branko -The DSA is the most recognizable leftist group in the US and they let a group of weird campists use the name 'International committee'
Tempting to make Ukraine my entire personality and declare anyone whose views are less pro-Ukraine than mine - which, don't'cha know, is everyone - to be soft on genocide. (Nah: I don't get much of an endocrine hit from that reward loop.)
There’s also stuff like this out there. For the record, I don’t stan politicians (no matter where/who) but in respect to this war, I support Ukraine & strongly oppose Russia.
Yeah that author seems like a cool guy - I helped edit another piece from him for @liberalcurrents.com www.liberalcurrents.com/drawing-on-u...
Oh nice! Thank you for sharing. Also making a note to add this to my subscription list. I read a few pieces a little while back & somehow forgot so this was fortuitous.
As far as I can tell the DSA IC opinion papers are as binding as they are connected to reality, which is to say, not at all, but they sound extremely official and seem like they try to depict themselves as the decision making body of the DSA in international affairs - and they *hate* Ukraine
I see this excuse for them all the time and as far as I can tell there’s not much merit to it. This is part of the DSA’s national platform! Their bad opinions aren’t an accident; they’re just a bad organization with bad ideas.
It is good that they are unable to recruit candidates that can win any major election who openly agree with these ideas but it is bad that they can recruit any candidates at all.
The National Political Committee (main national leadership committee) is majority revolutionaries at this point, and dis-endorsed AOC The actual democratic socialist members say things like "some chapters are good" and "they aren't strong enough to kick us out"
The question I've been asking myself for years is why are they still there? Why have they not been removed and replaced with people that are not psychos?
I don't think the DSA has that kind of capacity
First person to invent a way for a leftist org to easily purge itself of nuts will usher in the Golden Age of Humanity but until then we gotta make do
Didnt they just vote to give themselves to discipline some members over Gaza opinions?
Yeah I'm sure the mechanisms in place are inadequate but the lack of interest in amending them is a tacit signal that openly pro russia rhetoric is within the acceptable bounds.
And they are institutionally anti-NATO so being pro-Russia is not a huge leap
There's more!
There’s a lot of Chomsky/Parenti/Naomi Klein brain in self-consciously left spaces that analyzes foreign affairs entirely through theory and 2nd order refractions of internal American debates. The whole anti-NATO thing is completely this.
Right, it's more likely people will get kicked out of the DSA for moderation, because the extremists are a majority in national leadership
Even when DSA was basically the Bernie Sanders campaign between elections the people who self-select for foreign policy work on the left are gonna end up like this, unless there's something like an Iraq War to provide focus. And then these days I fully expect natl DSA to officially condemn Mamdani.
DSA internal politics are miserable
They are obnoxious and no one wants to deal with them
Seems like the perfect reason to get rid of them
Unfortunately the mechanisms are very weak, and it appears that the IC is our quarantine for them.
If they really had no support it shouldn't be hard to get rid of them.
You are aware of how obnoxious this cohort is right?
While they haven't been replaced, they've certainly been reined in. The IC is now forced to have all of their statements approved by the NPC, and since then they've basically disappeared from the discourse on all issues, and afaict the IC doesnt do any tangible anti-Ukraine organizing.
But why haven't we gotten rid of these folks anyway? Why tolerate them at all? Well, the only way to get rid of them is essentially to purge them. And the thing about purges in socialist organizations is: you can never have just one. And thats an existential threat to the org.
Why not just abolish the committee? What benefit is there to having a permanent committee that is known to serve no purpose other than to produce braindead negative PR? Is there some reason the DSA needs to have an International Committee?
Basically, it seems like there's 4 answers people have. 1. "I agree, let's get rid of the IC and focus on other stuff"; 2. "I don't care, do not make me think about the IC"; 3. "The IC currently does good work when its not making statements" (will elaborate further below);
And 4. "Socialism is a global movement, and we live in the global hegemon, so we need *some* body to do international work and articulate a foreign policy vision for DSA. We need an IC, we just need to change it, or change its ideological makeup".
...if you kick people out of an organization, then you can kick people out of the organization? Yes. Any organization can kick people out for not following its rules. If you don't, then you don't have any rules, you have a free for all.
Not because the rapidly anti-ukraine people are so numerous, but because anybody could be on the wrong side of the next issue. It makes every internal conflict existential for each faction. It's fundamentally corrosive.
The whole reason people know about DSA and actually talk about it, and why DSA isnt just another org like SAlt or PSL etc is that DSA doesnt do purges, splits,or schisms. So the right remedy imo was taking these peoples power away and subjecting their decisions to a democratically elected body.
It’s an older and more widespread issue than those two—Chomsky, Pacifica Radio, Scahill, etc. Until all these guys stop believing that US imperialism is the font of all evil worldwide, more or less to the exclusion of every other actor, they are going to be problem.
A lot of this is literally just Noam Chomsky's dogshit foreign policy takes
Chomsky compared Putin's invasion of Ukraine to the Nazis.
He also thinks the US is doing big bad Imperialism by supporting Ukraine. The guy's takes are dogshit.
Both can be true.
So what's your point? Being against supporting Ukraine means supporting russia.
I would like Ukraine to win but we're not supporting them for moral reasons.
Ok but supporting Ukraine is still a moral act.
The Ukrainians don't care about that so neither should the Americans. The US has an opportunity to do something undeniably morally good, that is to help a small country being invaded by its larger imperialist neighbor and in the process help to stop more irredentism /imperialism in the future.
“Hitler was bad but so was Lend Lease” actually is not coherent
Not an accurate analogy but yes it would be incoherent if it were.
You just said Chomsky compared Putin’s invasion to the Nazis so I don’t think the analogy is mine
nope!
Sadly for him, Chomsky the legacy is far slower at the helm than Chomsky the man
Left opinion on Ukraine in the US is usually tacitly pro-Russian "neutralism." There are tons of exceptions at the local level but anywhere that matters, including at the highest levels of DSA, there isn't much pro-Ukraine sentiment
I've never met a pro Russia leftist irl
I've met tons
It doesn't get said explicitly most of the time. There's a code to it.
Yeah so they talk a lot about the need to remain "neutral" or oppose NATO expansion, etc.
Or just have screwball anti-colonial views that are all over the place -- like they've been cribbed from a bathroom wall in a bad bar.
"Don't you know that I have seen an alleged video, and with my own eyes, of Ukrainian soldiers shooting surrendering Russian soldiers!? How can you support such a Fascist country!? No, I will not investigate the size and scale of Russian war crimes. Inquiry is a trait of western degeneracy Comrade."
Typically they use Chomskyist linguistic weasel-concepts to espouse their political ideologies in a manner that shelters them from genuine disagreement and scrutiny.
Yeah afaict they view the Maidan as a Liberal (pro eu/capitalist) movement so they’re at best indifferent to it or deeply suspicious of all the right nationalists groups who mobilized for it. So from their perspective it’s people they don’t like fighting a bulwark against US hegemony.
Which of course denies agency to millions of people in Eastern Europe who want to be part of the EU/NATO. Like, I don’t think Lithuanian basketball fans would wave NATO flags if they didn’t think being part of NATO is an unambiguous good. youtu.be/ibhix9Jjrvk?...
Probably a good PR move for Ukraine would be for one mayor to just start implementing hard left policies and see if they can get a fan club going
Only left pro-EU party in Ukraine is on hiatus because all of their cadre joined the military iirc
Jacobin has been incredibly dumb on foreign affairs for its entire existence, mostly because of that guy.
who are US leftists that don’t want to support ukraine ?
Party for Socialism and Liberation, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Revolutionary Communists of America, Communist Party USA, American Communist Party, Green Party, DSAIC, and the full cast and listener base of Chapo Trap House
The DSA International Committee stands out
I don't know how rabid they are about it but PSL is... not great? Though one came up to me at a rally *while I was holding a big Ukrainian flag* to hand me some generic literature. I asked him if the group supported Ukraine and he was like.... "ummmm... we support the working people."
well PSL is literally a cult so the particulars of their views aren't so important
ah, thanks for the info. They organized a large rally/march in April (?) here and I agree with a lot of stuff on the surface (abolish ICE, trans rights are human rights, abortion is healthcare, etc) but I didn't go beyond that.
(I also didn't read the flyer the guy handed me)
I basically put them in the same bucket as JW. Obviously an advantage of such a group is that they have people putting in a ton of work to organize shit lol
as a DSA member - PSL ain't done nothing but waste paper, if it was up to me we'd have a wall between those two orgs
On paper there is one since wise DSA members of the past banned anyone who is a member of democratic centralism group.
A member of PSL literally murdered two Israelis at a Jewish event, after extensive stochastic terrorism by the group (they were giddy about 7.10).
thanks. not familiar with them. from what i can find they have around 80k members. doesn’t make sense to me that any “left” group would support russian aggression.
The full argument is that the Ukrainian government is crypto-Nazi, was attempting to genocide Russian-speakers, and were pushed into war by NATO/US seeking to hurt Russia. If you believe those three things you can easily talk yourselves into supporting Russian victory.
I mean Jacobin is definitely lost to us on Ukraine. Completely unhinged coverage since 2014.
I have become a weird "but who is the Left" person these days exactly because I would say a shitton of people like me who are reclaiming "liberal" are some form of social democrat who are agnostic on who owns the means of production but are sick of loud campists & tankies who own it online.
Positioning myself as “somewhere between Kautsky and Bernstein” is true if I’m talking to nerds, but too many of the Very Online leftists are like the guy who once asked me when he found out what my PhD is in, “how dreamy was Trotsky, really?” but they’ve mostly replaced Trotsky with Putin apologia.
Yeah, I went to a real-as-fuck humanities grad program and I had to read so much goddamn Marxist theory that I'm actually kind of disappointed in these kids, like, "did I read Hardt & Negri's Empire and Agamben so a bunch of dipshits can say they're leftier than me cuz I prefer outcomes to fights?"
When any other group of Americans get really into Russia propaganda we just admit they are on the right
