Thread by @theoristPowell

Certain parts of the radical left are really embarrassing themselves and the rest of us over the #UkraineRussiaWar. So let me lay down some points that socialists need to get straight. ... 🧵

1. Obviously the capitalist press frames this conflict in a way that is skewed towards the worldview and interests of western imperialism. No shit, Sherlock. That does not mean that the opposite framing is true, or that Kremlin propaganda is true.

2. Putin is not a socialist; he is the biggest fascist leader in the world today. Russia is not carrying the torch of Soviet communism, it is a capitalist kleptocratic fascist autocracy.

3. Ukraine is not run by neo-Nazis. It has some corrupt politics, some serious human rights issues, and a worrying neo-Nazi movement, but it is still a roughly functional democracy by liberal-democratic standards, FWIW.

4. Crucially: in the local context, Russia is a colonial power, Ukraine is its formerly colonized territory, and Ukrainians are fighting a war of resistance against their former colonizer who has invaded them.

5. Russia has inflicted cultural and physical genocide on Ukraine in the past. The #Holodomor was a real event, not made up by western liberal propaganda. Stalin killed millions to crush the affluent rural peasantry and to crush Ukrainian nationalism.

6. Additionally, both the Imperial and Soviet Russian states imposed a range of cultural policies to Russify Ukraine, including deliberately settling large numbers of ethnic Russians in the east.

7. Putin has repeatedly denied the existence of Ukrainians as a nation, insisting they are really just Russians, indicating a clear intention to inflict cultural erasure on Ukrainians if given the opportunity.

8. Obviously the Western powers are motivated by geopolitical self-interest. This does not change the fact that Ukraine is a sovereign nation and Russia has violated international law with this war of aggression.

8b. International law is fundamentally liberal, of course. But some of its principles overlap with socialism. Socialists need to think carefully about what that means for a socialist anti-imperialist praxis, and not just dismiss it out of hand.

9. There is strong evidence that both Russian and Ukrainian forces have committed war crimes. All such crimes are serious. This does not make the two sides equal or equivalent, however.

10. Working people around the world will suffer from the rise in oil prices and other effects of this war. Capitalists will use this crisis to their own advantage, economically and politically. This is what always happens in crises.

11. It's far from obvious what a socialist anti-imperialist response to this war should be. We don't strike a blow against imperialism by supporting Russian imperialism.

12. The same principles that lead us to support Palestine against Israel or Indigenous peoples against settler colonialism would seem to support Ukraine against Russia. Except that Western imperialism is supporting Ukraine (sort of). So it's complicated.

13. Moral binaries are a legacy of feudal European ideology. Historical materialism does not imply we should simply reverse the binaries, siding with Russia because the US is against them. We are caught in the contradictions of history. There are no innocent positions.

14. I don't know what a socialist critique of this war looks like. But it doesn't side with Putin, deny the Holodomor, or abandon Ukrainians to a new genocidal threat.

End of 🧵

I'm not good at hashtags but for what it's worth here are a few: #Socialist #Putinfascist #nogenocidedenial #antiimperialism Obviously I made some of those up, I don't tweet much, feel free to @ me

PS: I'm sorry for the derogatory tone I started this thread with. That's not actually the best way to have these conversations. I let my anger get the better of me. (1/2)

Genocide denial in particular makes me angry, not just because it's wrong in itself, but because it blocks serious thinking about complex issues. I want socialism to win. For that we need analysis that embraces contradictions. (2/2)