This is part 3 of a 3-part series. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Many analyses tend to present the “Western left” as a vague and meaningless amalgam, making no separation between the many thousands of movements and many millions of thinkers within it. Here I refer specifically to the “anti-war left” as a subunit of the “Western left” to identify the main culprit of campist sentiment, instead of grouping all progressive movements across Europe, North America, and Australia/New Zealand into collective guilt for the behavior of one faction. In this series, “anti-war left” does not necessarily refer to every organization that may espouse occasional campist tendencies, but rather the organizations that specialize in campist activism and campist thought leading.

Imagine If the US Invaded Mexico Today

The campist binary on Ukraine insists, ad nauseum, that there is a NATO and a Russia. Forget all social nuance whatsoever, let us reduce everything to two structural monoliths so that thinking is more convenient and less nuanced.

Let us consider a scenario on the opposite end of the campist binary, which has already been presented in a more abstract world systems assessment by Chomsky. An event that could very plausibly become a reality someday: the US invades Mexico for the purpose of annexing land, extracting resources, and causing total destruction under the pretext of fighting cartels. The Mexican resistance happens to be armed by the Russian and Chinese states. The resistance, comprised of a large portion of the Mexican population fighting for their homeland and livelihood, is likewise led by a Mexican regime that is the exoskeleton of its oligarchy, antagonizing workers and favoring nationalists. Eliminating the cartels acts as the most likely casus belli of this hypothetical invasion, the US version of “denazification.”

Now imagine “anti-war left” logic on Ukraine applied to this scenario, Mexicans must be conflated with cartels, or even the reactionary forces of the Catholic Church. Suddenly the territorial integrity of the US state is legitimate, the Russian and Chinese states are fully responsible for the invasion simply because they pulled the bordering ruling class into their sphere of influence. This is simultaneously laughable and concerning to think about, given the fact that this invasion is not an impossible one at all (it happened already in 1846). Now compare this scenario to Ukraine. In both cases, the conquest-driven exchange of a property system from domestic to colonial necessitates resistance. It would only be ethically consistent as an internationalist to support the resistance in both cases, as both cases are populations in self-defense. It would be entirely inconsistent to support one resistance but not the other.

Conflation of World Systems Analysis With Social Analysis

Fusion of neorealism with campism yields a quite literally nearsighted approach to international relations. First, it suggests that the nation-state system is a zero-sum game between a binary of two powers where one must be prioritized over the other. Second, that the US is the sole problem with all nation-states, functioning as this unipolar monolith of global oppression that must be the sole priority in all organizing, while every other power structure across the world is irrelevant no matter how close or distant its relations with the US.

Centering of the US as a monolith of structural hegemony implicitly antagonizes the interconnected struggles of all marginalized populations by reducing their conditions to an actor that is often only indirectly involved, if at all. Take the historical marginalization of the Tigrayan people in Ethiopia for example, who have been oppressed by Ethiopian power structures for centuries. There is no world systems analysis that can explain how domestic Ethiopian power structures have oppressed Tigrayans for centuries. Though foreign actors have manipulated these power structures and worsened them, world systems analysis does not and cannot address the social foundations of the problem. This likewise applies to a large portion of historically marginalized peoples across the world, Ukrainians included.

Attempts to conflate world systems analysis with social analysis often culminate in social Darwinism, whether intentionally or unintentionally holding ethnic hegemony as a valid status quo. The US is not responsible for creating most of the world’s social power structures, but it is responsible for manipulating them. The US has manipulated Ukrainian power structures to their own disadvantage, but it certainly has not created them. To say that the US has created Ukrainian power structures is to say that the US was present in the time of Kievan Rus and responsible for the separation of Ukrainian identity from Russian identity over a millennium ago, long before “the West” even existed as a coherent political bloc. Well hmm, this delusion of Ukrainians appearing out of nowhere and having no valid identity sounds quite familiar.

Immediate Disarmament as a Privileged Expectation

In the US “anti-war left” in particular, intellectual laziness on internationalism is often derived from the privilege of not living next to a state power that will brutalize and murder everyone around you. Many elements of the Eastern European left, for example, feel that membership in NATO is more of an existential topic than a political one. This is held to the degree that questioning NATO membership is sometimes perceived as favoring annexation.

It is difficult for a lot of folks in the US to conceptualize what external threats feel like since there are none surrounding the US. Virtually all threats in the US derive from the state, not from external powers. This ignorance of the largely white US “anti-war left” also stems from the colonial reality of not being connected to ancestral homeland, nor having a strong will to defend the land one lives on from invasion. This seems to link to internalized white guilt, not being able to understand what it feels like to live in an ancestral homeland, but instead refusing other European peoples the right to defend their own. Reductive analysis from “anti-war left” organizations in the US is therefore understandable given their colonial environment, but not excusable.

In fighting only against US imperialism, the “anti-war left” tends to become desensitized to all other sources of imperialism in the world. When one lives next to the Russian state and their family has been coerced by Russian power structures for centuries, it is reasonable that one would find a net positive in state collective security to deter imminent invasion, even if from NATO, one of the most destructive pacts in modern history. The “anti-war left” tends to conflate this existential understanding with unconditional support for NATO, when in reality that is not at all the sentiment.

Poland’s Razem Party, one of the largest left-wing organizations in the country, is highly critical of NATO’s imperialist nature yet still believes in its immediate necessity in Poland to prevent invasion, which Poland knows very well in its history. This is not supporting NATO as an imperialist structure, but rather understanding the immediate necessity of self-determination through the only vehicle of security available. Its end goal in this pursuit is NATO’s abolition, using NATO as a vehicle to gradually disarm its militaries in unison with global disarmament. In the words of Razem Party:

“Specifically, we expect the Western left, instead of routinely resorting to NATO criticism, to actually come up with alternative proposals on how to guarantee security of Eastern Europe, the Baltic and Nordic countries in the face of Russian imperialism on the continent. Razem, therefore, proposes the development of a European security strategy as a key element to maintaining peace.”

Is one supposed to cancel the large portion of the Eastern European left who find the only mechanism of collective security available to be a temporary existential necessity to prevent invasion? Is one supposed to delegitimize their existence upon hearing this perspective without even asking for their rationale? Apparently all progressive blocs are supposed to be a policy monolith devoid of regional and dialectic nuance. This is the US-centric nature of the “anti-war left,” which holds a brazen superiority complex over international movements.

“If we have to choose between compromise and genocide, we will choose our people.”

-Mazloum Kobanî

Of course, this analysis does not by any means serve to justify the existence of NATO. Slovenian socialist thinker Slavoj Žižek has given some questionable takes in this regard, advocating the expansion of NATO in order for the Ukrainian resistance to succeed. With the Russian state’s nuclear posturing and long-war strategy, it is evident that any possible expansion of NATO would not make much of a difference in the outcome of the war. It would simply make NATO more powerful and more imperialist than it already is, for no cogent reason.

Nobody should have to choose between imperialist collective security and invasion. However, that is the hegemonic constellation of police states that humanity is currently thrust under. There must be no shame in a population choosing collective security with hegemonic powers if it averts subjugation and genocide, but this does not warrant the existence of state collective security in the first place, nor does it warrant the state in general. The idea of hegemony is often a more immediate reality than the Western left realizes. Populations must often choose a collective hegemony to prevent another from invading and committing atrocities. This is precisely where the temporary appeal to NATO emerges from in Baltic and Eastern European leftist circles. It is not meant as political support by any means, but rather as a temporary existential necessity. NATO is very much a threat to Eastern Europe in that it militarizes the neoliberal order, but even so, this is a smaller threat relative to the Russian state for many neighboring countries.

Separation of the existential threat imposed on the Ukrainian people with the Ukrainian state itself is absolutely crucial in this understanding. Critique of the Ukrainian state is of utmost importance, but so is the necessity of popular self-defense amid the grasp of an invading empire. The Ukrainian people are fighting for their homes and their lives, the Russian state is invading them. This is a relationship that cannot be buried under assertions of Western involvement and pontifications about “inter-imperialism.” The Ukrainian people are not NATO, nor is NATO the Ukrainian people. One is an ethnic group, the other a state institution. Conflation of the two amounts to a deeply flawed social analysis rife with dehumanization and social Darwinism.

As stated by Razem Party: “Acknowledging Russian imperialism does not contradict a critique of the USA but rather allows us to move beyond Cold War, or even colonial, ways of looking at geopolitics.” With social nuance in mind, “inter-imperialism” and “denazification” narratives are two wings of the same bird, conflating states, institutions, and fascist subcultures with an entire population just trying to survive in its homeland. The “anti-war left” has long been overdue to discard neorealism as an explanation in its analysis of international relations, yet it holds neorealism as a norm without even realizing its inherent contradictions. This, in turn, perpetuates Cold War modes of thought.

Just because an imperialist power exploits the resistance of a population for its own interests, that does not mean the resistance itself is imperialist in nature. The analysis of “anything the West arms is inherently imperialist” runs inconsistent with OSS backing of the Viet Minh, CIA backing of the Mujahideen, and US backing of numerous other perceived “anti-imperialist” movements throughout modern history. The US has aligned with supposed adversary states on numerous occasions, such as aligning with the Soviet Union on the 1962 Sino-Indian War at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example. Many tend to forget that the CIA has historically been both pro-communist and anti-communist, its preference dependent on US imperialist interests at any given time.

The Ukrainian state is not an imperialist state, nor does it have the capacity to be one. It is, however, backed and manipulated by imperialist powers. The Ukrainian resistance is an ethnic group resisting foreign domination, relying on the Ukrainian state as its vehicle of self-defense. The Ukrainian resistance must accept any support that is offered in order to avert the total subjugation and assimilation of Ukrainians, and this support is often only accessible through the state.

The idea that Ukrainians must lay down their arms is not only insensitive but also social Darwinist to a degree, flirting with a Hobbesian conclusion that the “weak” must capitulate to the “strong” in order to reduce collateral damage. This conclusion wholly rejects social analysis and contradicts the fact that collateral damage began the moment the Russian state invaded. Where analysis must begin is in understanding that the Russian state chose this violence, and the West inflamed it, not the Ukrainian people in either case. While the West has exacerbated tensions leading up to the invasion and armed Ukrainian forces, this does not mean the Ukrainian resistance is a proxy monolith. This is a population, an ethnic group, fighting against occupation and annihilation at the hands of one of the most powerful imperialist states on the planet.

Confronting Militarization Ethically

Thus, with the existential situation of the Ukrainian people in mind, the topic of armament is a tricky one. It is entirely reasonable for an internationalist to be in favor of blocking weapons shipments to Ukraine in principle, as it inconveniences the Western military-industrial complex. Billions of taxpayers dollars have been spent flooding the Ukrainian military with weapons as millions lay starving on the streets across the West, many dying on the sidewalk in plain view without any public services to speak of. There is no excuse for domestic mass murder in the pursuit of global imperialism. As the saying goes: “When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”

The material reality of weapons being in the hands of the Ukrainian people, however, is disconnected from this terror. Read carefully here: transferring material that does not change the neoliberal status quo in the West makes no justification for the neoliberal status quo nor the West, but neither does it negate justification for self-defense. To say that weapons alone are the problem and that they are just now causing mass poverty in the West because of Ukraine is to say there is a new terror, when in reality this terror has already existed since the dawn of capitalism and imperialism.

To put it more simply, the problematic part of weapons shipments to Ukraine is not the weapons shipments themselves, but rather the US and capitalism. The Ukrainian people have every right to wield these weapons in self-defense, but nobody should be paying for them, and the military-industrial complex should not exist at all. Regardless, at this point in the conflict there is no possible reversing of military aid to Ukraine. Instead of this futile idealist focus on ending arms shipments, what an internationalist actually has control over must be considered here.

The very few instances of arms shipment blocking in the West have been from groups entirely unaffiliated with the big “anti-war left” engines, instead they have been independent labor unions. The two most notable actions occurred in Pisa, Italy and Thessaloniki, Greece, initiated by the Unione Sindicale di Base and a coalition of 12 Greek unions respectively. Neither action accomplished a permanent diversion, nor have they been repeated as of fall 2022. It is somewhat odd that many “anti-war left” organizations in the US have been silent on weapons shipment blockages, rarely reporting or endorsing these instances. Organizations in Europe, however, have been far more vocal about them.

While the blocking of shipments to Ukraine is usually well-intentioned, critique of this action is also warranted, as there are clear repercussions to the Ukrainian people. Proponents tend to neglect how this action inherently favors the Russian war machine and naturally tips the balance in favor of the Russian state. Other actions can be done instead that do not give the Russian state disproportionate power, such as confronting the elite who enabled this war in the first place, being politicians, diplomats, oligarchs, and generals. Everyone can act in what they specialize in and brainstorm accordingly. If one has a computer sciences background, hacking and leaking sources of coercion should be the first thing to come to mind. If one has an artist background, tag and wheatpaste the hell out of the military-industrial complex. If one has a mutual aid background, mutual aid is the most necessary response to a crisis anywhere in the world, whether that means supporting displaced communities where one is or going to the location in need of support if asked and if able to do so.

Even something as simple as disseminating resources with those affected by conflict is far more important than meticulously searching for someone to blame and being perpetually angry about a situation one cannot change as an individual. There are actions for every capability and every set of expertise. Actions against militarization are weakened when homogenized into the “anti-war left” engines, as they nullify everyone’s collective capabilities. Arms shipment blocking is a well-intended action necessary to combat the military-industrial complex, but it is not one that leads to any meaningful change or relief in the case of Ukraine.

We did not see any energy in blocking shipments when the Turkish state invaded Afrin, when the Ethiopian state invaded Tigray, nor have we seen this passion for blocking shipments to Indonesia, Morocco, and many other Western-backed genocidal states. Sudden prioritization of blocking shipments to Ukraine in some Western movements seems to come from a Eurocentric understanding of internationalism. In the case of Ukraine, this action inherently favors the agressing war effort over the defending one, contradicting the both-sidesism analysis of “anti-war left” movements. If one sets aside the idea of state institutions for a moment, one may find that blocking arms shipments to Ukraine empowers an invasion by the 5th largest military in the world while weakening self-defense of the highly vulnerable population it is invading.

With all this in mind, blocking arms shipments is usually justified to combat any military-industrial complex. For Ukraine, however, this actually creates a net negative of harm and does not lead to any meaningful change. Preventing Ukrainians from having weapons would actually prolong the war, as negative peace would lead to decades, if not centuries of recurring conflict. The intention in the shipment blocking, as suggested by the Greek union coalition statement on Thessaloniki, is less so ending the war and more so contesting NATO. This is a very worthy intention, but it is one that requires ethical actions that do not have unethical repercussions.

Redeeming the “Anti-War Left”

It should be noted that this series is not meant as a character assassination of the “anti-war left,” nor as a critique of its contributions against US imperialism, but rather as a call to question its harmful complicity with state power structures and its normalization of performative activism in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War.

In its defense, the “anti-war left” is a powerful engine of organizing that has contributed a significant amount to international consciousness in the West, otherwise its statements would be irrelevant. It is the go-to bloc for any baby internationalist looking to expand their understanding of internationalist organizing in the West. The “anti-war left” holds a presence in virtually every large city across the West and has been active in its current form since the beginning of the Cold War, rising not coincidentally alongside realist and neorealist thought. Yet, as flawed as it is, the “anti-war left” is still (usually) one step up from the “praxis is calling everything I don’t like revisionist” crowd of hardline Marxist-Leninists. It is not devoid of organizing value by any means. One should never underestimate the “anti-war left” as an ideational force nor dismiss it as an internet subculture.

Though its policy (and lack of policy) aligns with campism more times than not, it also encourages baby internationalists to seek deeper nuance beyond the prescribed soundbites. The “anti-war left” is excellent in its critique of Western imperialism and corresponding world systems. In fact, it is so good at defining world systems that it neglects social nuance in the process, relying on regurgitated state narratives and direly obsolete neorealist approaches to fill in the gaps. At the end of the day, approaches favoring Chinese and Russian imperialism to US imperialism might as well just conclude with “my colonial status quo is better than your colonial status quo, and there are only two you can choose.”

Campists will argue that not centering the US in all organizing is an excuse for inaction, but what action does the “anti-war left” actually commence beyond performative campaigns that follow weak traditions of social democracy? Calling your senator made you feel good, but did your senator comply? Signing a petition made you feel good, but what did it accomplish? Organizing a local rally of “Ukrainians don’t deserve solidarity because NATO and Nazis” made you feel good, but how are you actually changing anything? Are you actually helping anyone? These are mechanisms the “anti-war left” uses to rationalize its own inaction while claiming everyone else isn’t doing anything. Calls to action with anything more substantive than the social democracy routine are almost never to be found, mutual aid for affected populations even rarer.

One would think, in condemning inaction, the “anti-war left” engines would at least officially endorse arms shipment blockages and act to make them more frequent? We have scarcely even seen this. Instead, the “anti-war left” traps itself in a cycle of self-perpetuating symbol and performance following the traditions of social democracy.

Everyone is “anti-war” as a vague umbrella term, but peace studies as a field includes a wide range of theories from liberal pacifism to neorealism, many of them of greater symbolic value than practical value in this pursuit. The “anti-war left” as a political bloc within this field insists that the end of war can be achieved by jumping from point A to point Z without considering every letter in between, being a complex set of social relationships, state hierarchy, hegemony, power structures, power relations, and political metaphysics that world systems analysis fails to realistically consider. It attempts to reduce social concepts to neorealist soundbites that accomodate world systems analysis when in reality they cannot be reduced to soundbites at all. In theory, the “anti-war left” presents a peaceful socialist utopia that catches the eye and harbors an intense feeling of internationalist agency. In practice, it is really just advocating status quo negative peace with some aesthetical anti-US flavoring. Few recent conflicts have shown this more glaringly than the Russo-Ukrainian War has.

Just as there is nuance in all things, there is nuance to the “anti-war left.” Organizations or journals such as Left Voice may have a campist approach to one issue, and an entirely anti-campist approach to the next. This is not to reduce solidarity and support of platforms that hold mixed approaches, but rather to critique them when these backward tendencies are prevalent so that they do not slip further onto the path of social Darwinist thought. Given its size and agency, the “anti-war left” must be held to some standard of critique with its proven susceptibility to social democratic relapse.

For starters, there must be an internal mechanism of critique. In most of the “anti-war left” engines, DSA and PSL especially, dogmatic campism is enforced through a strong-chair committee system. In some cases, if a chair decides they do not like the political makeup of the committee body, they will simply onboard as many members needed to suit their preferences. This almost always leads to anti-authoritarian members being drowned out and campists becoming a majority in “anti-war” committees. For a personal example, in one DSA chapter that shall not be named, the chair of the chapter international committee curiously onboarded a wave of Dengist-aligned members to support a pro-Belt & Road Initiative “Hands Off China” campaign while non-Dengist members were driven out. One sees this first hand if around these “anti-war” committees long enough, and the author certainly has.

Given its many internal problems and exclusionary history, it is thus no surprise in the least that the widely influential “anti-war left” has missed so heinously on Ukraine. For those of us organizers who take action for all marginalized peoples and their fight for self-determination, we will not cave to campist propaganda on Ukraine nor on any crisis, and we will continue to be a presence of dissent against campism until grassroots internationalism is realized. For now, the “anti-war left” engines are not effective nor credible vehicles of internationalism, and Ukraine has reflected this the most obviously.

Actualizing an Internationalist Approach to Ukraine

Puppet masters around the world attempt to coerce and co-opt Ukrainian self-determination with their own interests in mind, both normatively and militaristically. Meaningful analysis of Ukraine must center its population, not the state, and not the institutions manipulating the state. Neorealist assumptions tend to dehumanize populations in self-defense by conflating them with states and backers. In refusing to take a side, the “anti-war left” always ends up taking a side, and often the side of the oppressor.

On the same hand, meaningful solidarity with the Ukrainian people must not be Eurocentric, nor can it be selective. Western fixation on Ukraine has led to widespread ignorance of invasion and genocide in other parts of the world. Populations affected by imperialism in the Global South are selectively ignored wherever energy is expended on the spectacle in Ukraine.

Economic instability has been felt as a result of billions of taxpayers dollars pouring into Ukraine while inflation makes itself known, but this is nothing new. It is an inherent and predictable component of capitalism that has existed for centuries and cannot be changed overnight. Actions countering this must not expect some sudden diplomatic solution or capitalist collapse, they must be practical: reducing harm, confronting oppressive structures, and confronting the elite as much as possible while ensuring the lasting self-determination of all marginalized populations.

Contrary to campist assumptions, the invasion of Ukraine is not a war against NATO nor the West. It is a war against the Ukrainian people. NATO, the militarized wing of Western neoliberalism, has undoubtedly taken advantage of Ukraine to expand its power, playing a large role in inciting the invasion. Yet, at the same time, NATO is not actually a main actor in the war itself. It is indirectly involved, but not directly.

The discussion of NATO is irrelevant on the ground of Ukraine when everyday people are being slaughtered, when an apartment building was just bombed to ashes across the street, when a hospital was just obliterated with Kalibr cruise missiles and body parts of children are scattered around your neighborhood. The vast majority of those affected by this invasion are not in any way responsible for the flaws of the Ukrainian state, nor even the existence of the Ukrainian state to begin with. Much like the peoples of Kurdistan, Syria, Palestine, Burma, Afghanistan, Yemen, and so many other destabilized regions of the planet, those who suffer most are humans who bear no responsibility in the decisions of state, party, and oligarchy. Yet, at the same time, many of them choose to resist foreign aggression to defend their homes, their livelihoods, and their families. They have a right to self-defense against colonial occupation, even when their only vehicle of this resistance is through a capitalist state.

As described by Ukrainian progressives themselves, solidarity with the Ukrainian state negates solidarity with its population. The carceral Ukrainian police state, with its cesspit of an oligarchy led by Zelensky, must be removed from all traces of solidarity. It must also be understood that the Russian speakers of Donbass have been marginalized by the Ukrainian state, and that this is partly what the Russian state abuses as a casus belli. Though the people of Donbass have a right to self-determination as do all populations, the Russian state has distorted their interests to fit its hegemonic model. This has been emulated in the fascist structure of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics respectively.

The most salient progressive route Western radicals can take is actively supporting those who fight for a future of progress in Ukraine, not standing on the sideline while exuding meaningless statements that favor Russian occupation. There are numerous groups on the ground fighting for this future in Ukraine, and they have been ignored entirely by the “anti-war left.” “No war but class war” is often thrown around aimlessly by campists and socialist pacifists, meanwhile those who are actually fighting the class war in Ukraine have been routinely snubbed and written off as fascist sympathizers.

Expectations in solidarity must be predicated on social realities in marginalized and targeted populations, not wishful idealism that will never materialize. If one’s support for a protest movement or resistance is predicated on socialist utopia, one will simply be perpetually angry. Populations fight for immediate relief with the vehicles at their immediate disposal far more often than they fight for a long-term political structure that has failed to communicate and resonate with them.

Liberal and reactionary factions alike often take advantage of this urge for immediate relief, toying with the narratives to simply reshuffle the incumbent system with a fresh oligarchy and ruling class. Progressive radical movements, already suppressed and muted by the state, most often fail to instantly resonate with a large portion of the general population. Class consciousness and intersectionality are a long-term process, not a short-term one. It must be recognized that this does not in any way delegitimize the causes and goals of mass protests, which again are often focused on immediate relief. Just because a protest movement becomes co-opted, this does not mean the movement’s intentions are invalid by any means.

Though it is often liberals who are viewed as the disarmers of marginalized populations in Western society, the “anti-war left” is not far off. When an organization claims resistance but also advocates the disarmament of marginalized populations across the world, one should be concerned. Liberals, social democrats, and the “anti-war left” often share this disarmament mentality in common, even when it leaves populations facing genocide with nothing to defend themselves. The “anti-war left” bears ethical intentions yet perpetuates what it is fighting against through a confused and contradictory set of statist policies.

Lobbying for the war to suddenly end with diplomacy is a cop-out from supporting affected populations. Considering the futile nature of expecting immediate disarmament, the act of blocking arms shipments is an ethical dead-end that amounts to more harm than benefit. Meaningful action is not found in the social democratic routine of the “anti-war left,” it is found in black bloc and mutual aid.

Just as there is a degree of selective solidarity required to solely block weapons shipments to Ukraine, disproportionate support for Ukrainian anti-authoritarians at the expense of movements in the Global South also clearly derives from a Eurocentric standpoint. Even with these problems, flawed action is better than no action. It has become clear that the “anti-war left,” has no practical or ethical answer on Ukraine. This war has exposed the broader pattern of the “anti-war left” becoming an obsolete organizing vehicle stuck in Cold War thought processes, which are sourced in a confused neorealist campism.

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, otherwise keep the words “proletariat” and “worker” the hell out of one’s mouth. Ukrainian anti-authoritarians require special consideration and solidarity in this resistance, as they hold the ideational tools of sustainable autonomy that inevitably confront Ukraine’s crony capitalist oligarchy, which happens to control the state through Zelensky.

May the Ukrainian resistance prevail against colonial occupation, and may all states feel the accountability of young resisters powered by a force more mighty and more immortal than any structure of coercion: internationalism.

This is part 2 of a 3-part series. Read part 1 here and part 3 here.

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. Contrarily, anti-authoritarian thinkers, including Ukrainian progressives, more often perceive the conflict as an opportunity to dig deeper through a maze of social layers, condemning NATO imperialism while also holding that a population has a right to defend itself. The “anti-war left” relies on its convenient neorealist Cold War binaries of West vs. East, while others have moved on from these obsolete binaries in an increasingly multipolar society.

Ethical Solidarity

The question of solidarity in Ukraine is indeed a question that comes with many layers, even when considering progressive forces. Campist approaches tend to homogenize their solidarity into a vague umbrella of the “working class” whereas anti-authoritarian approaches tend to take a more specialized approach to solidarity, emphasizing the class war components of the war and progressive forces on the ground.

While RevDia and other radical units have called for international membership, internationalists should not be passing up or abandoning movements such as the Rojava revolution to join the Ukrainian resistance. This comes off as Eurocentric and misguided when there are already tens of thousands of foreigners fighting for Ukraine, compared to a small handful in Rojava, Burma, West Papua, and other regions of the Global South that are likewise facing existential threats and in need of volunteers.

It must be understood that liberation movements of the Global South are vulnerable as a result of the Ukraine attention vacuum. Police states are once again abusing the neoliberal sphere of consensus as an opportunity to strike a little more quietly but with just as much damage. Solidarity in every struggle for autonomy must not shift just because a European population is in a period of self-defense.

To phrase this in a way that makes sense to some Westerners:

Ukraine is being invaded in Kurdistan, Ukraine is being invaded in West Papua, Ukraine is being invaded in Western Sahara, Ukraine is being invaded in eastern Congo, Ukraine is being invaded in Chiapas, Ukraine is being invaded in Armenia, Ukraine is being invaded in Tamazgha, Ukraine is being invaded in Azawad, Ukraine is being invaded in Tigray, Ukraine is being invaded in Wallmapu, Ukraine is being invaded in the Amazon, Ukraine is being invaded across the Global South. All struggles against state hegemony are interconnected, and one must never feel that Ukraine necessitates more solidarity than anywhere else.

Prioritizing support for Ukrainian anti-authoritarian groups has led some movements of the Global South to feel abandoned by internationalists. This Eurocentrism is something that Western anarchists must review and question more deeply. For internationalists thinking of a region in need of assistance, Ukraine should not be the first to come to mind. On the other hand, elements of the Ukrainian left have expressed their abandonment by the “anti-war left” in the conflict, suspended in the common narratives that there is no Ukrainian left and that the Ukrainian people are a fascist or reactionary monolith. Many in the Ukrainian left now identify campism as the most serious problem blocking international solidarity.

Responses From the Global South

The Ukrainian state has spared no subtlety accepting ethically questionable support from some of the world’s most hegemonic and genocidal states, leading various marginalized populations to adopt an adversarial stance against the Ukrainian resistance. Incidents of racism in Ukraine as well as the rejection of displaced Afghans in favor of the whiter Ukrainians by Western states has led to an overall negative perception of the Ukrainian resistance among some diaspora populations. This racism begins in European identity itself, with codified separation of Russians from Europeans. Some Western states refused to accept Russians fleeing the mobilization but wholeheartedly accepted displaced Ukrainians. This is nothing short of Russophobia and Fortress Europe in plain sight, then externalized onto diaspora populations from the Global South.

It does not end at the Ukrainian state when the UN approves of genocide abroad in the name of Ukrainians, however. In September 2022, Ukrainian UN Peacekeepers departing the Democratic Republic of Congo were transported back to Ukraine via Ethiopian Airlines, an airline known for its complicity in the Tigray Genocide. The Ukrainian state happens to share a Bayraktar brotherhood with the Ethiopian state under their mutual support from the Turkish state. This partnership has also antagonized the Tigrayan people, who are suffering from genocide at the hands of the Ethiopian and Eritrean states.

Responses to Ukraine among progressive movements outside of the West yield a much wider set of nuances. By accepting a Turkish security pact and massive Bayraktar drone contract without hesitation, the Ukrainian state has alienated numerous communities around the world impacted by Turkish imperialism. The targeted Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), for instance, has understandably taken a more cautious approach to the war, identifying the Eurocentric double standards of the Ukraine spectacle in Western society.

Potential backing from Wagner Group and the Russian military incentivizes separatist movements to support the Russian state, particularly for movements in the Global South and the liberalized post-Soviet realm respectively. Some movements may look to historical Russian intervention in Abkhazia and Donbass as indicators that backing or security guarantees from a great power may eventually become a reality, opening up a new window of opportunities to resist. In the Rojava revolution, for example, Russian military presence has helped deter invasions from the Turkish state. This is a strategically-minded policy in a movement, aiming to harness an imperialist power for the immediate relief of a marginalized population. From a lens of self-determination, this is permissible so long as it is not abused to replicate coercive structures. One must distinguish existential appeasement policies from genuine Ukrainian state antagonization of marginalized populations through its cooperation with imperialist powers.

The Zapatistas (EZLN) have generally taken an anti-state and anti-capitalist stance to the war, clearly identifying the Russian state and capitalist interests as the main culprits. Though Zapatista communiques have not explicitly lent support for the Ukrainian resistance, they do not deny its necessity either, taking an approach that does not fall in line with the “anti-war left.” The communiques identify capitalist interests as the main cause of the invasion, but also that these capitalist interests are rooted in Russian statism first, then externalized through invasion, which necessitates resistance. Some signs from the March 2022 Zapatista march against the invasion read: “Stop the wars of capitalism that murder and conquer the people of Ukraine for economic, political and ideological interests,” and “Wake Up peoples of Mexico and the world because one day sooner or later they are also going to wage unjust wars against us, we must organize.”

The official Zapatista communique from March 2022 emphasizes the Russian state as the “aggressor force,” and goes on to assert that their solidarity lies with those who “are engaged in the struggle for life in Ukraine and Russia…l@s ucranian@s and rus@s who fight in their geographies for a world with freedom.” The statement concludes: “Without bending, we shouted and called to shout and demand: Out with the Russian Army of Ukraine.” Some have interpreted the Zapatista statements as full-on support for the Ukrainian resistance, however, it appears the Zapatistas want to express their solidarity with certain elements of the resistance without any room for misinterpretation as the state.

Unlike with most organizations to the north of the Mexican border, the solidarity in the Zapatista responses evidently has an object and a subject, being the Ukrainian people in their fight for self-determination, but also Russians who are in resistance against their state. This is a consistent anti-war statement, being one that identifies defense of autonomy as a fundamental right, but also one that identifies the state capitalist nature of the tensions that led to the invasion. There is no talk of “inter-imperialism” anywhere to be found, because the Zapatistas realize that the Ukrainian state is hardly an imperialist state. They also realize that it is certainly not an anti-imperialist one. The Zapatistas make a point to separate the Ukrainian state from their idea of the “resistance” in Ukraine, that it is a capitalist state invading a population and a land who are also unjustly represented by a capitalist state, and that the Ukrainian resistance must both be against the invading forces and against the Ukrainian state. The communique mentions in the fifth section:

“Fifth.- In short, these our relatives, who also raise the flag of the @libertarian, stand firm: in resistance those who are in the Donbas, in Ukraine; and in rebellion those who walk and work the streets and fields of Russia. There are detainees and beaten in Russia for protesting against the war. There are murdered in Ukraine by the Russian army.

It unites them among themselves, and them with us, not only the NO to war, but also the repudiation of ‘aligning’ with governments that oppress their people.

In the midst of confusion and chaos on both sides, they are held firm by their convictions: their struggle for freedom, their repudiation of borders and their nation states, and the respective oppressions that only change flags.”

Though this may sound ambiguous at first, when one connects the dots it becomes apparent that the Zapatista statements fall directly in line with Ukrainian anti-authoritarian forces on the ground without directly mentioning them. Ukrainian anti-authoritarian units were lesser known at the time (and still are due to censorship and selective solidarity), but were still very much present and gaining traction. The statement does not identify which organizations it is referring to in particular, but one can infer based on the “flag of the @libertarian” that at least one anti-authoritarian militia was part of this communication, given that a seemingly negligible number Ukrainian left-libertarians have opposed resistance to the invasion. If taken literally, it would be a reasonable hypothesis that Black Flag Ukraine was included, given that they are among the most visible flag-wavers among the Ukrainian left-libertarian bloc and also one of the more established groups. They also happen to have their own militia, fighting on the frontlines against the invasion.

Certainly these responses differ widely from the pseudo-internationalist approaches commonly found in Western organizing circles. The Zapatistas acknowledge the presence of Ukrainian progressives on the frontlines and hold solidarity with them. Why is that so hard for the “anti-war left” to do?

Deconstructing the “Anti-War Left”

As Marxist-Leninism scholar Tom Dale suggests in his piece “Lenin, Ukraine, and the Amnesia of the ‘Anti-war Left’,” many elements of the “anti-war left” in the West hold ambiguous analyses of Ukraine pockmarked with glaring contradictions and inconsistencies. Some have been blacklisted in anti-war circles (author included) for their belief that Ukrainians have a right to self-determination and self-defense against an imperialist power, while they are often welcomed in many anti-authoritarian circles that hold a more consistent analysis of self-determination. A prominent “anti-war leftist” of DSA who will not be named here said of the Dale piece: “the article is a polemic in favor of US war policy in Ukraine wrapped in a veil of pseudo-Marxism and totally devoid of the kind of concrete analysis of concrete conditions that the author laments.” He went on to explain: “As socialists our primary responsibility is to oppose/resist the war policies of our own government.”

Sounds great, but what does that actually look like? The “anti-war left” response to Ukraine has been a strictly performative one, pouring energy into vague statements while refusing to support even the most basic relief efforts for affected populations. In many cases, the “anti-war left” looks fruitlessly to US Congress and Nancy Pelosi for a diplomatic solution in the classic social democratic move of appealing and appeasing instead of resisting. It is rather odd when an organization suggesting that the US is at the core of all imperialism also turns to the US for a resolution while legitimizing both its diplomacy and electoralism. Nothing says controlled opposition like the “anti-war left” lobbying the US while claiming to be a front of resistance to it. Strictly performative “anti-war” campaigns have popped up in cities across the West while affected populations have been entirely ignored, diverting solidarity from those who need it.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

DSA’s response to Ukraine, and armed conflict in general, is mostly controlled by a small handful of its International Committee membership in the Anti-War Subcommittee (which is nearly impossible to get accepted into). Much like the other “anti-war left” engines, DSA’s positions suggest that Ukrainians are monolithic “working classes” that have no right to defend their home. DSA’s ignorance on Ukraine has been pointed out by Ukrainian progressives themselves.

DSA International Committee (DSA IC), a member of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, has notably echoed the inconsistent campist approach to Ukraine. In its first and only recent statement on Ukraine in January, which has been widely critiqued by socialists, DSA IC referred to Maidan as the “2014 US-backed Maidan coup,” completely neglecting Ukrainian progressive perspectives on Maidan and choosing to obscure all social nuance. DSA National Political Committee (DSA NPC), on the other hand, took a more mild approach in its February statement. Instead of reducing the entire conflict to the US and calling Maidan a US-backed coup, DSA NPC calls to “accept any and all refugees resulting from this crisis” and withdraw the US from NATO. In DSA NPC’s defense, the statement makes a coherent proposal, being to accept refugees. Still, there is no plan of action that is attached to this proposal, nor any resources to support said refugees.

DSA’s “Resources & Actions” tab on the Ukraine page includes nothing to support anyone affected by the war. Instead it is a laundry list of apologia articles to defend the DSA’s statements, some articles even framing DSA as an innocent victim to undue criticism. DSA couldn’t be bothered to even link something as simple as nowar.help for said refugees seeking support. This is nothing new, however. DSA’s responses to every crisis from Afghanistan to Burma have been devoid of any mutual aid. This is when an internationalist starts to understand that DSA IC and NPC don’t really care about helping anyone, they just care about the symbol.

DSA International Committee’s August 2022 panel on Ukraine featured no more than two Ukrainians on a panel of six guests, being Olena Lyubchenko and Yurii Sheliazhenko. A self-identified pacifist, Sheliazhenko has been especially tokenized as a mouthpiece for DSA and other “anti-war left” organizations to support narratives of “inter-imperialism,” platformed for the purpose of policy self-validation. Platforming of Yurii also serves to detract attention from the many radical progressive groups on the forntlines, including Ukrainian feminists. This then reinforces the common dehumanizing assertion that anti-authoritarians are meaningless Western simps, and that revolutionary feminists are devoid of meaning in Ukraine. Though DSA tends to frequently flirt with campist thought, it has at least included anti-campism as an element of controlled opposition within the organization.

Nonetheless, the DSA IC has firmly embedded itself in the campist organizing bloc, placing DSA in the Peace in Ukraine Coalition alongside a large portion of “anti-war left” organizations in the West. DSA IC (really only the Anti-War Subcommittee) and CODEPINK have led this coalition, making them arguably the most influential organizing vehicles for Ukraine. CODEPINK and DSA IC mimic each other frequently, lobbying US Congress and holding feel-good events that do nothing for anyone.

DSA IC and NPC certainly do not reflect the whole of DSA, however. Fellow DSA dissident Dan La Botz has been a crucial voice in actually using DSA to support those affected by war. In his meaningful response to Ukraine, La Botz has shown once again after the unpopular purge of Palestine Solidarity Working Group that the DSA central committees are out of touch with local and regional chapters.

International League of People’s Struggle US (ILPS-US)

Updated policy on Ukraine among the “anti-war left” has certainly been few and far between. Take ILPS-US, for example, a well-respected organization in the “anti-war left” that has not made any new announcement or statement on Ukraine since February. After giving a highly reductive analysis of the prelude to the war, ILPS-US concludes its first statement on Ukraine with:

“What’s happening in Ukraine elucidates the corrupt nature of imperialism and inter-imperialist struggles. The battles between the West and Russia during the height of a global pandemic are deplorable…Working people do not support inter-imperialist war!”

This was followed by another statement:

“Russian intervention comes after 8 years of US and NATO intervention. The ILPS-US stands with all peoples fighting for independence and sovereignty from the forces of US-led imperialism and their fascist puppet regimes.”

Is Donbass alluded to in “all peoples fighting for independence and sovereignty from the forces of US-led imperialism,” or does this include any portion of the Ukrainian population at all? Is the Russian state a “fascist puppet regime” of the US? If it is only Ukraine, then how is this an “inter-imperialist” conflict at all? These concepts must be clearly defined and not danced around in an unintelligible blurb that reeks of campism.

Though it is perfectly reasonable that the Russian state is categorized as imperialist, this analysis completely fumbles in its interpretation of Ukraine as somehow being an equally imperialist power due to its backing from NATO, reducing the Ukrainian resistance to “battles between the West and Russia.”

ILPS-US also states: “This is an anti-Russia campaign and doesn’t address any concrete issues we’re currently facing.” The “Ukraine as an anti-Russia” hypothesis suggests that the Ukrainian people are collectively responsible for the Russian state’s dissatisfaction. It is curious that many “anti-war left” organizations have adopted this position, which lies at the heart of the Russian state casus belli. Claiming “anti-war” nonpartisanship while insisting that the Russian state’s casus belli is legitimate houses a hypocritical and aimless analysis that favors the invader.

On the contrary, the Russian state has abused Donbass as an anti-Ukraine, utilizing Donbass as a justification to invade the entire region. After just barely gaining Yanukovych in 2010, the Russian state adopted an irredentist policy encompassing all of Ukraine, claiming the Ukrainian state as its own property.

From there we must look at the larger “anti-war left” engines, Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) second among these organizing giants behind DSA.

Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL)

Though PSL has renewed its statements since the beginning of the invasion, its approach has not changed in the slightest. PSL’s main statement from February has already been unpacked thoroughly by Socialist Alternative, so we will not go too in-depth on what has already been rejected. That being said, some of its points are concerning enough to include here, given that they have been doubled down on and emulated by organizations across the West. PSL states:

“While we do not support the Russian invasion, we reserve our strongest condemnation for the U.S. government, which rejected Russia’s legitimate security concerns in the region with total intransigence that they knew could provoke such a war. This is the consequence of decades of U.S.-NATO bullying and humiliating Russia…The role of the U.S. antiwar movement is not to follow the line of countries in conflict with U.S. imperialism, but to present an independent program of peace and solidarity and anti-imperialism…The menace of war can only be defeated by international solidarity among the peoples of the world and a resolute struggle against U.S. imperialism, which must demand the abolition of NATO. No war on Russia!”

Again we see easily spoken buzzwords that are attached to no object or subject. It is implied that peace will suddenly appear if NATO is abolished, contradicting this idea that the Russian state is half of the “inter-imperialism” in Ukraine. Solidarity is mentioned aimlessly, this time with nothing connected to the word. PSL then ends its statement with a laughable “No war on Russia!” as if this is an invasion of Russia. PSL claims not to follow the line of countries in conflict with U.S. imperialism, but then what line is it following if only condemning one imperialist power and not the other? Certainly one of neither practical nor ethical significance.

Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition (ANSWER Coalition)

Though it is one of the larger “anti-war left” engines, we need not include any sizable description here on ANSWER Coalition’s dizzying information warfare designed to disarm populations and keep police state regimes in pristine condition from Ethiopia to Myanmar. ANSWER Coalition has long earned its reputation of being a defender of hegemonic states and ruling classes, standing with anyone who opposes the US no matter how genocidal. Few organizations in the West more naively encapsulate in their policy “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Though highly influential in the “anti-war left,” ANSWER Coalition is even too campist for the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, being one of few “anti-war left” engines in the US not to join. Answer Coalition still collaborates extensively with many of its member organizations, however, including CODEPINK.

Progressive International

Progressive International, an ideologically diverse coalition of progressive movements and organizations around the world (some arguably reactionary), opted to give an extremely short three-sentence response to Ukraine in March 2022:

“War is a crime.

We stand with the victims of the Putin government’s brutal invasion in Ukraine and with the people in Russia suffering from a war that the people did not choose.

We call on progressive forces to push for an immediate diplomatic solution that protects all refugees, guarantees the universal right to self-determination, and moves to dismantle all military-industrial alliances like NATO that endanger peace across the world.”

The statement reflects a balance of many conflicting approaches in Progressive International, yet shows arguably the most equal parity of influence from both campists and those in favor of self-determination in all reviewed statements. NATO is directly mentioned in the statement, but not the Russian equivalent CSTO, perhaps exhibiting slight dominance from campists. When a coalition has ardent campist organizations like Qiao Collective in the same room as ardent anti-authoritarian ones like New Bloom, it is surely difficult to make a consensus beyond two or three short sentences.

This may reflect the broader problem of Progressive International being a feel-good coalition in name only that does not actually lead meaningful policy, as it is inherently bogged down in a range of schisms and contradictions. In February 2022, Razem Party withdrew from Progressive International followed by the departure of Ukrainian progressive journal Spilne in April, both citing its perceived lack of concern for Ukrainian self-defense. So, there clearly was not even a consensus after all.

People’s Summit

This year’s People’s Summit includes not just actions but also a series of conferences within the belly of the beast, as Guevara would say. It is an important presence of dissidence against the most destructive empire on the planet. It is not a summit that is actually internationalist, however, as there is a highly selective criteria for which marginalized populations get solidarity and which do not. This is because a large portion of its panel guests are associated with state ruling classes.

In one concerning example, in the Democracy Beyond the US Empire forum on September 24, 2022, Eritrean diplomats were invited no less than three weeks after the Eritrean state launched its second invasion of Tigray and extended the Tigray Genocide, which the Eritrean state had already been participating in for two years. The People’s Summit preconception that the Eritrean state is anti-US is questionable, given that there is a history of incumbent Eritrean dictator Isaias Afeworki begging the US to build a military base then turning on the US for a Russian base instead when the US declined.

The People’s Summit, organized by “anti-war left” engines including CODEPINK and ANSWER Coalition, legitimizing a regime currently causing immense violence, war, and destruction in East Africa while sending indigenous populations to the brink of extinction. Why not just invite the Russian state too? Why not invite every imperialist state if the injury of some has no relevance to the injury of all? To People’s Summit, if you can have genocidal powers boost your anti-US talking points then surely the struggle of their subjects is meaningless.

The host of one People’s Summit forum, in his opening statement, said:

“We also know who our enemy is. We know who the enemy of the planet is, we know who the enemy of humanity is, and that is the one and only US empire.” This sounds wonderful until “one and only” suggests all imperialism and all suffering is grounded in the US alone, and Eritrean diplomats are sitting in the room right after helping their regime rape and slaughter thousands.

Trotskyist Responses

Trotskyists appear to be the most conflicted on Ukraine, with one faction supporting the Ukrainian right of self-determination, another taking the “inter-imperialist war” route, and another yet claiming that the Russian state is not imperialist at all.

Sam Carliner of Trotskyist-aligned Left Voice falsely claims that “Ukraine lacks a progressive movement in the struggle for its independence from both reactionary blocs in action,” being the pro-West and pro-Russia camps. Once again, this analysis entirely neglects the progressive blocs that do in fact exist in Ukraine, and also reduces the Ukrainian people to being a reactionary monolith. One would be curious to know Carliner’s opinion of Hamas and reactionary elements of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in relation to Palestine if reactionary elements of a nation are to define solidarity with a marginalized ethnic group, and why he would be neglecting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in this assessment. By this logic, because every ethnic group has a set of reactionary political factions, we should just forget self-determination in its entirety.

It is worth noting that Trotsky himself played a major role in Ukraine’s messy political destiny, having led the betrayal of the Black Army in 1919 from which he then blamed the ensuing chaos on Stalin alone. Trotsky was tasked with the early phases of state collectivization in Ukraine, enforcing its annexation through bloody purges and peasant massacres. Without Trotsky’s betrayal of the Black Army, the social and political situation of Ukraine would be unrecognizable in relation to today’s Ukraine. In fact, the Soviet Union may still exist if anti-authoritarians were not purged. Nonetheless, Trotsky did provide credible insight on Stalin’s enabling of the Holodomor in Ukraine.

Noam Chomsky

At 93 years of age, Chomsky is still in his peak discursive form. One has to hand it to him. Chomsky has notably sided with the “anti-war left” in his analysis of Ukraine. A rare miss, but not a surprising one given his past analysis of the Yugoslav Wars, which was clearly complacent toward the Serbian state. This is important because Chomsky is one of the leading intellectuals of the Western left. Whatever he says is usually followed and repeated by a large number of organizations and thinkers.

Chomsky’s modus operandi of analysis on Ukraine has generally been to expose the US instead of making a complete analysis of social conditions, or providing a practical proposal beyond “diplomacy.” For internationalists, looking to Chomsky on whom to support and what should be done in this conflict is about as effective as looking to a stone to become liquid on its own. The connection is just never really there, and if it is, it would take millennia of external pressure to achieve. Thankfully Chomsky stops short of faulting Ukrainians for the conflict and dehumanizing them, but framing Ukrainian self-defense as some US proxy ragdoll is one of Chomsky’s weaker assessments in his tenure.

In Chomsky’s defense, he is among few in the “anti-war left” who have actually updated their responses since the beginning of the invasion, first calling for Ukraine to capitulate and now calling for broader negotiations since the Ukrainian resistance currently has momentum. In his recent interview on New Politics, he states that “Ukraine should receive weapons for self-defense” but does not seem to offer any extension of this assessment beyond conflating it with NATO. Nonetheless, much of the “anti-war left” has clearly gobbled up his initial points and repackaged them in their statements.

Responses of Symbolic Nothingness

In most statements from the “anti-war left” there is no clear object or subject of solidarity described beyond this monolith of “working people” and “workers.” At best, the statements yield extremely vague criteria of solidarity that hold no material significance, throwing both Ukrainian and Russian “working people” into a category that does not exist on the ground. Homogenizing an invading military with a defending population is not how solidarity works. Throughout human history, there has never been a single conflict that is so simple one can say “solidarity with working people” and call it a day thinking some form of progress is being accomplished.

At worst, the statements dehumanize Ukrainians by conflating them with Western imperialism and make no attempt at even seeking a subject of solidarity outside of the Russian state.

“Anti-war left” statements have been inconsistent soundbites that bear little nuance even from a dialectic materialist standpoint. Mixed journals such as Left Voice make an attempt to analyze imperialist interference at the expense of social analysis while campist journals such as People’s World have blamed the conflict entirely on “Ukrainian fascists.” The responses are all similar in that they meticulously seek someone to blame, meanwhile development of solidarity for the invaded population is brushed off as an afterthought if not altogether ignored. They strictly emphasize that there is someone to be blamed and nobody to be supported, that “working people” are most affected yet are apparently undeserving of any further consideration. It is as if the statement itself is more important than the actual reality on the ground.

“Anti-War Left” as a Philosophy of Contradictions

“One of the big victories of the CIA has been creating a situation in which large groups of western leftists assume, without any evidence, that any genuine act of working class revolt against oppression in a foreign country must have been secretly organised by the CIA.” -Zoe Baker

“Anti-war left” philosophy, in holding sedentary resistance against US policy supreme, contradicts grassroots internationalism, holding most significantly the interconnectedness of all struggles. The former tends to isolate populations and confine them to struggle solely against their own states, while the latter tends to emphasize breaking communication barriers and forming a global front that contests all imperialism. The “anti-war left” is therefore incompatible with grassroots internationalism. This is evidently reflected in the frequent emulation of destructive Kremlin narratives and hypocritical legitimization of US diplomacy. While claiming to fight imperialism, the “anti-war left” has succumbed to just about every imperialist actor involved.

Perhaps most importantly, the “anti-war left” policy of selective solidarity for marginalized populations makes it pseudo-internationalist. Organizations such as ANSWER Coalition and PSL have directly supported US policy in some cases without asking questions, as we see with the Tigray War. In fact, ANSWER Coalition and PSL have been among the Ethiopian state’s most vocal genocide supporters in the West, trying to create a US-Ethiopian state dichotomy that doesn’t actually exist at all. Western backing of the Ethiopian state is completely neglected while regime narratives of anti-Tigrayan racism are normalized.

The “anti-war left” has also, on occasion, shown its support for fascist protests in Europe. The International Magazine, a widely acclaimed campist magazine, tweeted its endorsement of the September 2022 fascist protests in Czechia simply because they were anti-EU and anti-NATO. Normalizing fascist collaboration seems to follow a concerning legacy of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) making tactical alliances with the Nazis in the 1930s. While the KPD antagonized anarchists by taking a complicit position with the Nazis back then, many in the “anti-war left” today antagonize anarchists by taking a complacent position with the Russian state today. Some even condemn the formation of grassroots resistance against the US, such as the formation of autonomous zones that create de facto dual power, simply because anti-authoritarians are involved.

Overall the “anti-war left” is not anti-war by any means, but rather pro-intrastate war that results from status quo negative peace, police statism, and broken diplomacy. There are only rare anti-authoritarian exceptions to this, such as Socialist Alternative, who may flirt with “anti-war left” identity but generally espouse anti-campist views. Socialist Alternative is one of very few large socialist organizations in the US that takes a unique approach to the conflict, insisting that “the Ukrainian people have a right to resist imperialism” while calling for the “forming of democratically run, multi-ethnic defense committees linked to working-class structures, like the unions that Zelensky attacked prior to the war.” Other movements such as Disrupt Land Forces also emphasize demilitarization while supporting defense of self-determination.

When one perceives internationalism as “leaving people to solve their own problems” while encouraging an isolated and sedentary position against one’s own occupying state, one contradicts and delegitimizes the inherent interconnectedness of human struggle, and therefore delegitimizes internationalism. It is more or less to say to marginalized populations: “Want to resist? Stay isolated, nothing else matters and nobody should help you.”

The perils of “anti-war left” gatekeeping can be just as destructive as this pseudo-internationalist mentality, withholding solidarity for a population simply because it does not fall into the Marxist-Leninist-Hoxhaist-Maoist-Sankarist-Kropotkinite-Unicornist-Saxophonist interpretation of never-never land and the political metaphysics of a cumulonimbus cloud. The excuses for withholding solidarity are often extremely childish. The Workers League of Australia’s excuse for denying Burmese people solidarity in the wake of the 2021 military coup, for example, was that rebels fighting the military were supposedly US-backed “terrorists.” This was accompanied by no credible context to speak of. To hell with even critical solidarity for the immediate relief of a population, we’ll just full on reject its humanity entirely.

One should never call themself an internationalist if there is a gag rule on solidarity for any marginalized population. This includes the Russian-speakers of Donbass in the east of Ukraine, Hungarians and Romanians in the west of Ukraine, and Romanis spread across Ukraine, all of whom marginalized by an ethnocentric state power structure that makes little effort to recognize their existence.

Now, when a population’s freedom contradicts the power monopoly of the Chinese state, all bets for “anti-war left” solidarity are off. The word “Uyghur” has become synonymous with terrorism and Adrian Zenz in the eyes of much of the “anti-war left,” with no functional understanding of their social situation as an ethnic group beyond Chinese state narratives, no communication with Uyghurs themselves, and no consideration of their revolutionary history in the East Turkestan People’s Revolutionary Party. Imagine making exceptions to the basic human rights of all marginalized populations simply “cause the US agrees,” as if the validity of a population’s human rights is determined by what the US thinks. This is accompanied by the pervasive preconception that supporting a population’s self-determination means justifying US intervention to achieve it.

Not much energy will be wasted here on neoconservative perspectives on Ukraine with the “nuance is when map” crowd of the Institute for the Study of War and other military sciences think tanks that promote deeply fascist Fortress Europe narratives. It should be worth noting, however, that both neoconservatism and campism stem from the same international relations theory tree. They both hold similar understandings of states and conflict, as they are both tied to realism. Regarding interpretation of international relations: liberalism, social democracy, campism, and neoconservatism are all closer to one another on the theory tree than they may appear on the surface. All insist the state to be the supreme actor of international relations with little to no social nuance required.

Likewise, little energy will be wasted critiquing the liberal approach, sometimes known as the North Atlantic Fellas Organization (NAFO), the opposite pole of the campist approach which tends to defend the Ukrainian police state itself as well as Zelensky. This is the most common mainstream approach found in the West, which campists and internationalists both counter. Liberal parties in Europe have cracked down heavily on members who express dissent with unfettered flooding of Western taxpayers money into Ukraine, going as far as banning their own delegates.

Subconscious Neorealism and Competing Internationalisms

The “anti-war left” tends to perceive all interstate wars from a monolithic lens, reducing the state as the central unit of analysis while entirely ignoring social nuances of the populations involved. This approach does not come out of nowhere, in fact, it has unmistakably Eurocentric foundations following a history of Cold War-spawned neorealist thought. Obsolete neorealist-aligned approaches have not changed in any meaningful way since their beginnings in post-WWII realist thought, sharing many state-centered commonalities with liberal approaches to international relations. There is a reason why notorious realist Henry Kissinger holds a nearly identical approach to Ukraine as the “anti-war left.”

University of Chicago academic John Mearsheimer, for example, has held a considerable influence over this neorealist approach shared by many liberal and “anti-war left” circles alike. Mearsheimer, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, is a social Darwinist zealot whose tendencies can be viewed clearly in a brief list of his quotes. Among them: “In the anarchic world of international politics, it is much better to be Godzilla than Bambi,” and “Great powers must be forever vigilant and never subordinate survival to any other goal, including prosperity.” Though Mearsheimer has been widely critiqued for his social Darwinist tendencies, he also shares a nearly identical approach to Ukraine as the “anti-war left,” as he is one of the academic influencers of its policy.

Much of the neorealist school follows the legacy of Hans Morgenthau, who popularized realist thought in a series of publications following WWII in which he insisted that states are the central actors of international politics, and that human power is rested in them alone. Tracing realism back even further we find its roots in Thomas Hobbes, who laced social Darwinism with nihilism to create what we know of today as the realist school of international relations. Considering the Eurocentric roots of realism and its corresponding philosophies that have also influenced Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches to international relations, it is not a surprise that many neorealists hold the European republican nation-state model as a static political system that cannot be altered in any way. It is thus also unsurprising that any neorealist-influenced approach will reduce analysis to states and institutions, constantly seeking a binary of West/East, US/Russia, NATO/China, etc., without considering the social reality of the populations most directly affected.

This subconscious neorealism is often complemented by meaningless soundbites from Twitter and Reddit, where the “anti-war left” forges its echo chamber in a maze of catchy buzzwords and glittering generalities. When one refers to the “Western left,” the “anti-war left” is an unmistakable pillar of it. Though the largest “anti-war left” organizations are based in the US, their influence has seeped across a sizable amount of self-described anti-imperialist groups in Europe such as Young Struggle, and occasional movements of diaspora populations such as International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS) serving the Philippine diaspora. These organizations are rarely conscious of where their lines of thought actually come from and what they have fused with.

Neorealism has been adopted by state socialists and twisted into campism. Internationalist labor organizer Dan La Botz explains: “Campists argue that those who criticize the so-called anti-imperialist nations (Russia, China, etc.) place themselves on the side of U.S. imperialism.”

“Campist,” then, is a more theory-based version of the term “tankie,” which traces back to proponents of the 1956 Soviet Invasion of Hungary, although the two may arguably be interchangeable. Campism is countered by a more intersectional internationalism, which we deem here as “grassroots internationalism.” La Botz describes grassroots internationalism interchangeably as “socialist internationalism,” expressing with the example of Uyghur persecution:

“The truth is that socialist internationalists who support the Uyghurs do so despite the fact that the U.S. government says it supports them. We do so for our own reasons and while continuing to oppose U.S. imperialism. We do so because the Uyghurs, like the Poles and the Irish in Marx’s time, have a right to self-determination, and shouldn’t be politically, economically, and culturally subjected to China’s authoritarian state and its Han nationalism.”

If every struggle against state and capitalist power structures is interconnected, then internationalism is, in itself, the interconnectedness of these struggles.