The violence of the oppressed
JVL Introduction
Peter Beinart tackles head on the issue of violence perpetrated by those who are oppressed.
He does not condone it, he expresses revulsion about it. But he offers a way of making sense of it.
So, when blacks rioted in Detroit in 1967, he quotes Martin Luther King Jr saying that, while undoubtedly crimes had been committed, “these were derivative crimes”.
And Robert Kennedy, condemning “riots” and “uncontrollable mobs” but also talking of “the violence of institutions.”
Similarly, if Ukrainians were in time to turn on the Russian invaders, murdering Russian civilians in the process, he suggests that America’s leaders would see this violence as a deplorable but understandable response to the violence inflicted upon them.
They wouldn’t say they stemmed from cultural pathology or incendiary textbooks.
Why, then, do they do so where the Palestinians are concerned?
This article was originally published by The Beinart Notebook on Mon 4 Apr 2022. Read the original here.
How to Oppose Violence in Israel-Palestine
It’s 2032. Russia occupies Ukraine. Moscow has fragmented Ukrainians geographically and legally. Some Ukrainians enjoy citizenship but face structural discrimination. Many lack citizenship and live without free movement under military law. Many others have been expelled and cannot return. Suddenly, over the space of a few days, Ukrainians begin murdering Russian civilians. What would we say?
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I find your graphic both simplistic and offensive.
On a site that has any pretensions to be socialist, please reflect before waving your blue and yellow flags, be they of the Brussels or Banderite persuasions.
There are few to no parallels between Palestine and Ukraine, as should be evident from the hypocrisy and hysteria that abound today. (I would refer you to Tony Greenstein’s knowledgeable writings about Ukraine and the origins of Zionism).
Our flag is red, our opposition to war and imperialism unflinching.
Here is Oliver Stone’s excellent film about Ukraine, which should be required watching for anyone who cares about the issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcmNGvaDUs
As the late Joan Maynard MP said: “When both the front benches agree with each other, it’s a bad day for the working class.”
[JVL web – edited down for length]
The Ukraine is being portrayed as an all loving Country, innocent of anything nasty and it’s being invaded by an Evil Country, so that the people will side with Ukraine.
Well, none of that is true.
The Treaty that ended the Cold War and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Russia agreed to allow any Country in the Soviet Union that wanted to become Independent can. (Which happened).
NATO, with its driving force the US, agreed not to expand NATO Eastward along Russias border.
Not only did they expand NATO Eastward into the newly Independent Countries but the US built Fully Armed Military bases in them. Putin warned that Russia would have to respond, especially if Ukraine was invited to join. He was ignored.
The US was behind the 2014 Coup in Ukraine that saw Regime change, the new government that the US was supporting, allowed the US to install three BioLabs in Ukraine.
They, the US, was arming Ukraine with hi-tec defensive weapons, trained their army in defensive warfare. The reason has now shown to be, they wanted to force Russia to invade, why, because the Russian Economy was growing, mostly because of its Oil and Gas Industries, where as the US economy is in dire trouble. Germany was signing up to build a Gas pipeline direct from Russia to Germany, this was a threat to the US Liquid Gas Industry, who were planning to be the only supplier of Liquid Gas into Europe. This speeded up the need to push Putin to attack Ukraine, that would stop the Gas pipeline going ahead, there was no way Germany would/could still seal the deal. (The first US shipment of Liquid Gas arrived in Europe last week).
The whole of the Western Media was primed to push the propaganda line, ‘Poor Ukraine, Evil Russia’ and that is exactly what has happened.
Considering we are all very closely related and all stem out of Africa it is a shame we can be manipulated by the power hungry to reduce other people so we can kill them, its has been going on for too long, there is another way.
Ieuan Einion feels offended by the association of the Ukrainian flag with the Palestinian cause. I have news for Ieuan: there are many Palestinians, not to mention Syrians, Iraqis and others who take bitter pleasure from the attention which is drawn to their cause by the harsh exposure of western hypocrisy in relation to so many other aggressive crimes against humanity which have been systematically ignored by the world’s elites.
To be fair to the late Joan Maynard, whose not very profound anecdotal soundbite Ieuan Einion misquotes, what she is actually reported to have said is “If both front benches are agreed, it’s probably bad news for the workers”. If only life were that simple the workers would all be anti- vaxxers.
To those “anti-imperialist” campists whose dogmatism and state of denial about the nature of Putin’s régime allows them to impose a preconceived geopolitical narrative on events, contemptuously ignoring or dismissing the voices of the Ukrainian and Russian left, allow me to remind them of their ideological antecedence.
When in September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and Britain declared war on Germany with the agreement of both front benches, the British Communist Party initially supported the war, but on orders from Moscow after the USSR seized the remaining eastern part of Poland in line with its infamous non-aggression pact with Germany, the CP quickly reversed policy a month later, declaring the war to be an “imperialist war” and calling for a British government which would pursue peace negotiations with Hitler. This remained the party line right up until June 1941 when Hitler foolishly attacked the USSR, instantly transforming the “imperialist war” into a great patriotic war in the eyes of the British CP.
Of course the Polish people and the slaughtered Jewish children of the Warsaw ghetto remain eternally grateful to the heroic British communists for their pacific struggle against imperialist war during those two years; and if they don’t that must surely be because, as everyone knows, Poland now has a vicious NATO-loving imperialist government and the slaughtered Jewish children are unfortunately no longer able to express their opinions.
For the fake anti-imperialist campists who swallow and regurgigate Putin’s propaganda wholesale, whole swathes of historical reality, from the genocide in Chechnya to the carpet bombing of Syrian civilians, need to be eliminated, or explained away with ever more rocambolesque conspiracy theories. More generally people who live in countries outside the western orbit are denied any agency; if the US opposes their rulers then clearly those rulers must be “anti-imperialist”. As for the ignorant natives living in those countries who dare to oppose those rulers, they are just US puppets or worse: Jihadis or Nazis. Don’t even bother asking them what they think, even if they have the temerity to call themselves socialists.
As European history from nearly a century ago so tragically demonstrates, the sincere naivete of totalitarian inspired human herds knows no bounds. Nevertheless, despite similarities in barbarity and much of the ideology, Russia is neither Nazi Germany nor Stalin’s USSR. Only the herd-like stupidity of camp followers remains the same.