Campism does not know how to separate states from nations, nations from populations, and populations from communities. Its social understanding starts and ends at states and organizations. One must separate the Ukrainian state from the Ukrainian people, and one must separate the Ukrainian people from the ethnic minorities of the region.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is a conflict that exposes the deep chasms on what self-proclaimed internationalists perceive as internationalism, what self-proclaimed anti-imperialists perceive as anti-imperialism, and even what self-proclaimed socialists perceive as socialism. Many organizations of the “anti-war left” in the West have taken a route of intellectual laziness, frequently regurgitating Russian state narratives directly from the Kremlin as they are most convenient to counter Western state narratives.
The Ukrainian people have a right to defend their self-determination and autonomy, the Russian state is the aggressor, and the West has taken advantage of Ukrainian politics for its own imperialist benefit.
The New Politics Winter 2024 issue is now out, featuring articles on Israel’s war on Gaza, American and international politics, decolonial climate justice, a debate on Che Guevara, and political theory. Articles will be gradually released on the web.
