Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

We need to talk about #Westplaining.
It’s a term coined by the Eastern European left to describe a tendency of certain Western leftists to ascribe everything that happens east of Germany to Western policy.
Thread/

Those I read on the Eastern European left really hate Westplaining. Why? Because it denies their lived reality. It supposes that anyone living beyond 15° East has no agency, and is passively subject to the whims of Western strategy.

It suggests that Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia etc were manipulated by the West into joining NATO, because they have no interests or will of their own. It suggests that Putin is a mere puppet of Western machinations, who can be yanked about as if he were made of rags.

It’s a classic colonial trope, a subject-object relationship. Only Westerners have agency and interests: the rest of the world is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled with meaning and intention by our good or evil schemes.

In particular, the Westplainer narrative suggests that the West set a trap for Russia that it couldn’t help walking into. Often, they talk of Russia as a bear, that has fallen into this trap. Because, of course, it has no human intelligence of its own.

I come across examples most days. Here are a few:
middle-east-online.com/en/us-foreign-… consortiumnews.com/2022/02/04/wha…
canadiandimension.com/articles/view/…
thecradle.co/Article/column…
wsws.org/en/articles/20…
counterpunch.org/2022/03/11/rus…

The far right uses a similar narrative: express.co.uk/news/world/157…

Typically, these articles suggest a complete absence of engagement with Eastern European leftists. The references are to other Westerners. It’s a conversation they are having with each other, about people they have not met and to whom they do not listen.

Do Westplainers really think they know something that the Kremlin doesn’t? That after a couple of hours googling, they've seen into the dark heart of Western strategy, and the Russian government hasn’t? That Putin is being led blindly into a trap they have spotted and he hasn't?

This story suits Putin very well, and he tells a cynical version of it himself: I was provoked, I had no choice, Russia is encircled by NATO and has to strike back. It is used to disguise a highly aggressive, imperialist strategy of his own.

It’s notable that some of those who treat him as a mindless victim of Western scheming are also happy to recite blatant Kremlin propaganda, for example grossly overemphasising the influence of Ukrainian fascists, and describing the 2014 revolution as a “US coup”.

The “US coup” meme has the remarkable distinction of simultaneously channeling both Russian imperial and Western imperial propaganda: “those little Ukrainians couldn’t possibly have organised their own revolution, could they? It must have been done for them - by us.”

None of this is to suggest that the US and Europe do not have their own grim strategy. They do, and it can be just as cynical and aggressive as the Westplainers say it is. But the point is that it does not exist in a vacuum.

Nor is it unknown to either the Kremlin or to people living in countries that border the Russian Federation. Nor are they without responses and strategies of their own.

Here’s a succinct summary from someone who knows 1000 times more about it than I do, @Subzorro1
freedomnews.org.uk/2022/03/04/fuc…

Here's a powerful thread on this theme by @TerezaHendl
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1501856…

And a salutary article by by @jan_smolenski and @jan_dutkiewicz: newrepublic.com/article/165603…

Here are some more articles I would love you to read. Thanks.
commons.com.ua/en/us-plaining…
inquiriesjournal.com/articles/986/t…
bostonreview.net/articles/ukrai…
freedomnews.org.uk/2022/03/07/a-t…
opendemocracy.net/en/odr/a-lette…

Reading the responses to this thread, it seems to me that some people are trying to force Ukraine in the 2020s into a frame that might have worked for Latin America in the 1980s. The world has changed, but their analysis has not.

Here's another crucial and enlightening article, by @PopovaProf and @OxanaShevel
slate.com/news-and-polit…