A Response on Ukraine and “No War But Class War”

Submitted by R Totale on May 15, 2022

The recent text, “No War But Class War: Against State Nationalism and Inter-Imperialist War in Ukraine” is an interesting and worthwhile one, setting out a well-argued case for a particular anarchist position, and I’m glad to see it being circulated. It’s also, in my opinion, seriously flawed, and almost insultingly wrong in some cases. Here are a few notes on the content:

In passing, while not a major point, I was slightly disappointed to see the authors warning against “uncritical “allyship” with any European nationalism.” The anarchist position against all forms of nationalism is a bold and important one, and I’m not sure what the purpose of adding qualifiers to it is, unless to suggest that the nationalism of a Bolsonaro or a Modi is somehow more virtuous and desirable?

More importantly, one of the major planks of their argument is:

…the imperative anarchist, as well as Leftist, platforms continue to insist on – that we “listen” to anarchists in Ukraine – will not address structural issues any more than “listening” to marginalized individuals in the US. It’s not surprising, but it’s still disappointing to see anarchists who deride basic ally politics, in the context of Black and other nonwhite struggles in the US, deploy them in the context of Ukraine.

But if we take a moment to compare “anarchists in Ukraine” and “marginalized individuals,” we can immediately see that one of these categories is not like the other, and anyone trying to equate the two is clearly up to something. One of them describes the overlap of an identity category and a political position, the other is just an identity category. This is an important difference. The true analogy to “listen to marginalized individuals” would be “listen to Ukrainians.”

Such a slogan may be tempting at times, especially when dealing with that variety of US leftist whose understanding of the outside world clearly comes entirely from other US leftists who go on Tucker Carlson sometimes, but it is indeed “basic ally politics,” of the kind that entirely fails to deal with the vast diversity of opinions that will always exist in any identity position.

“Listen to anarchists in Ukraine (and indeed Russia and Belarus),” on the other hand, is a very different position – one that starts out by looking for people who share our basic values and principles, and then seeks to learn from people who have more understanding of their own context than we do. To say that we should listen to them doesn’t mean that we have to turn our brains off and uncritically accept everything they say, but that their positions do deserve serious consideration. And that if someone wrote an article about race where their only engagement with Black anarchists was to talk shit on them, or an article about feminism where women anarchists were only mentioned in order to dismiss them, that might raise a few eyebrows as well.

The authors suggest that to take a position of solidarity with Ukrainian anarchists is to “obscure the struggles within struggles.” I agree with them that such struggles should be a key focus for anarchists, but not about who’s doing the obscuring. As someone who believes that groups such as the Resistance Committee are worth supporting, I’d say that’s at least in part because of the role that they can potentially play in the struggles within the Ukrainian resistance; I’d say that it’s the authors’ position, which seems to operate on a simple equation that “Resistance Committee = the state = Azov” that obscures such struggles.

Another point of agreement is where they write:

As millions of displaced people flee the country, the situation opens a strategic opportunity to attack border enforcement systems and infrastructure, build solidarity structures (as some anarchists already have) that offer transport, shelter, and assistance to refugees, as well as other migrants, and fight for the principles of anti-racism/anti-fascism throughout this process… Now is the perfect time for anarchists to intervene at these chokepoints of social control…

I fully agree that such interventions sound desirable, and it would’ve been good if they could’ve expanded further on the solidarity structures that some anarchists are already building; it’s my understanding that the useful practical projects that exist on the ground tend to be aligned with the ABC Dresden/Operation Solidarity tendency that’s fully supportive of resistance within Ukraine, which would seem to slightly undermine the article’s attempt to set the two things against each other.

Moving on to the question of minimizing fascists, they write “there are fascists on all sides” in scare quotes, presumably to set up a position they’re arguing against rather than something that’s straightforwardly true. There is some truth in the claim that Ukraine’s far-Right has been institutionalised within the Ukrainian state, although even there it’s not clear whether we can say that the Ukrainian far-Right is more institutionalised than in the so-called People’s Republics, and it certainly isn’t the Ukrainian state that has ties to the far-Right paramilitaries accused of massacres in Mali.

More interesting for antifascists is the question of what it means for far-Right forces to be integrated into the state. The authors would presumably argue against anarchists becoming part of the Ukrainian, or any other, state, on the very solid and justifiable grounds that doing so would automatically undermine their autonomy and radicalism. Do we really think that nazis are magically immune to the same pressures and processes? Of course, the contradictions between anarchists and the state are far sharper than those between fascists and the state, but anyone who’s learned even the most basic lessons from the three-way fight approach will realize that the interests of nazis are not identical to those of a neoliberal like Zelensky. The debate around the significance of the Azov battalion and how far it’s been successfully defanged and declawed is certainly not yet settled, but the article doesn’t give much consideration to those questions.

Another flaw of this section is that it seems to take an ahistorical approach, citing sources from all over the last seven or eight years without indicating when they’re from, as if Ukrainian politics had just been proceeding in a single direction this whole time, and without distinguishing between conditions under Porosheko and under Zelensky, or before and after the resignation of Avakov. It’s hard to imagine anyone taking an article seriously that treated the US far-Right as being essentially the same, or heading in the same direction, in 2017, 2020 and today.

This section also contains some of the most explicit arguments against any support for Ukrainian anarchist resistance, on the grounds that the group includes Arsenal Kyiv ultras, and some Arsenal Kyiv ultras called a temporary truce with Nazis and had some cooperation with third-positionists in 2014. To be clear, while I don’t claim to be an expert on how to navigate difficult conditions such as those faced by antifascists during the Maidan, I don’t think that cooperation with “national anarchists” is a good thing; but if we’re going to be making arguments about the Resistance Committee, I’m more interested in hearing about what that group is doing now, rather than about the bad decisions that a subcultural street formation made eight years ago, even if there is some overlap between the two.

Concluding this section, they write:

Not only has any Left or anarchist movement, with any chance of countering the far-Right, been successfully marginalized by neo-Nazis, fascists and the broader far-Right movement since 2014, but also, within the framing of war between the Ukrainian state and the Russian Federation, there are no liberatory horizons. That is the issue. It’s important to be clear about that.

And that is one way of approaching the issue. Another would be this: in 2014, the anarchist movement failed to organise themselves as a serious material force, and were marginalized, with consequences that we can all agree are disastrous. In 2022, the anarchist movement is making a real attempt to constitute a serious material force, one that’s serving as a pole of attraction for other leftists and antifascists… and the authors of “No War…” decide that it’s important to attack them and argue against any support for this effort.

Beginning the next section, they write that the far-Right:

…is, in fact, the tendency positioned to most benefit from war. Given this context, anarchist platforms that insist on supporting the RC and/or the broader military the group is a part of are colluding with neoliberal and ultranationalist war mongering and espousing militarism.

Again, this logic seems twisted to me – the far-Right seem like they’re likely to benefit from the current situation, and so…it’s important to oppose the attempt to form an antifascist force that could contest their narratives and offer an alternative to people who justifiably want to resist Russian imperialism?

They caution that, “The US itself has a history of invasions, proxy wars, regime change “operations” and empowerment of far-Right forces around the world that dwarfs the imperialist aspirations of the Russian Federation under Putin,” but if you’re writing a whole article that attacks the idea of “lesser evilism,” it seems a bit inconsistent to then dig out your evil-measuring equipment to prove that Russia is the lesser evil after all. Bafflingly, they then add that “In fact, through calls for sanctions against Russia, the US is currently disrupting Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and increasing exports of liquefied natural gas.”

No-one except for very self-obsessed Americans thinks that US natural gas is an important factor here. What is the actual argument about “the US… disrupting Europe’s dependence on Russian oil” supposed to be – is it that the US masterminded Russia’s invasion of Ukraine so they’d have an excuse to increase natural gas exports? Or that the war was happening anyway, but that European economic sanctions against Russia are solely down to calls from the US? What would be happening if the US wasn’t making those calls for sanctions, are we supposed to imagine that European governments would all just say “well, one of our major rivals has just launched an invasion of a country that was heading towards membership of our bloc, but that’s no reason to react, we’ll just sit here and not do anything to show disapproval?” This feels like classic imperial narcissism, and it’s slightly astonishing to see someone start off an article by quoting Rosa Luxemburg and then wander into making arguments that only make sense if you forget that European states are imperialist powers with their own interests.

Perhaps the most interesting section of the article is a reflection on the contradictions of Rojava solidarity efforts. As someone whose own tendency to ask awkward questions has often (not always, but often) meant that I’ve been more of a critical observer of than an active participant in Rojava solidarity projects, I would very much like to see North American anarchists making an active effort to engage with the difficult questions that have often gone unanswered around Rojava. Above all else, I’d like to see more engagement with the difficult set of relationships between the PYD/YPG/YPJ, non-Kurdish Syrian revolutionaries, Assad and Russia, which have often been left out in favour of a simple narrative of “Rojava vs ISIS” or “Rojava vs ISIS and Turkey.” (Respect to Hamilton anarchists for being an honorable exception to this.)

Sadly, “No War…” continues the failure to engage with these questions, which is a shame, because learning from the experiences of Syrian revolutionaries might help the authors to be a little less blasé about Russian imperialism. Still, I would be interested to hear more about what they see as the differences between those of anarchist guerrilla forces and the narratives that became dominant in the Rojava solidarity movement.

It does also feel somewhat odd to see, after all the attacks on the Resistance Committee for not being pure enough, the authors championing the International People’s Guerrilla Forces and International Freedom Battalion, while also freely admitting how closely those groups were/are allied with Turkish Maoists and Marxist-Leninists. As though all the criticisms and arguments that anarchists have always made against Maoists and Marxist-Leninists somehow don’t apply to TİKKO or the THKP-C/MLSPB!

As I’ve mentioned, I’d like to hear more about the arguments the authors hint at here, but from what I have seen, I think I’m more convinced by the more limited anti-fascist position that argues that life under the more democratic capitalism of the PYD is preferable to the horrors of ISIS or Assad. That might not be the most inspiring and uncompromising slogan, but some of us found it more convincing than some of the overheated rhetoric coming from IRPGF types that tried to portray a small group of people picking up guns, posing with English-language banners aimed at Western audiences, and making friends with Maoists as a dramatic leap forward in anarchist theory and practice.

Less impressive is their attempt to highlight an alleged double standard by comparing the current situation in the Ukraine to that in the US in August 2020, when Kyle Rittenhouse’s killing of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber was followed by Michael Reinhoehl shooting Aaron Danielson. For some reason, the deaths of Rosenbaum and Huber disappear in their telling, which mainly aims to condemn Crimethinc and other projects for calling for de-escalation in August 2020 while reacting differently today, a supposed double standard that they can only explain through “defensive allegiance to whiteness” (as opposed to the Blackness of Vladimir Putin, perhaps?)

I’m not convinced that it’s possible or helpful to make any direct or straightforward comparisons between the deaths of three anti-racists and one fascist in August 2020 and the current war, but if they really want to go down that route, I’d suggest that one possible explanation for the different reactions might be that in August 2020, the situation was one that had the potential to escalate to further para/military conflict, but that potential escalation could still be prevented; whereas the situation in Ukraine after the Russian invasion had begun was one where a military conflict was ongoing. I’m not convinced that wanting to avoid further militarization of a conflict in one situation, and recognizing that a military conflict is already happening in a different situation, is quite the shocking hypocrisy the authors of “No War…” seem to think it is.

Approaching the conclusion, and almost 4,000 words into their argument, they finally offer a few words of criticism for the Russian state, before issuing one of the stupidest lines of the entire piece: “We can oppose a Russian victory while finding antifascist value in a Ukrainian defeat.”

By way of comparison, in 2001 Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, a regime that anarchists would have little sympathy for. Indeed, if we were getting into evil-measuring, it might well score worse than Ukraine under Zelensky. Can you imagine anyone at the time of the US invasion suggesting that they could find antifascist, or anti-fundamentalist, value in an Afghan defeat, and expecting anarchists to take them seriously? And how well would that stand up today?

To take just a few examples, we’ve seen how the previous Russian occupation of Afghanistan ended up contributing to the strengthening of the brutal reactionaries who formed the Taliban; and then how the American occupation of Afghanistan eventually ended with the Taliban triumphing once again; and how the occupation of Iraq led to the horrors of ISIS finding room to grow. And yet some anarchists can see “antifascist value” in this invasion and occupation. At the risk of being accused of “basic ally politics,” is it any surprise that this antifascist value is less visible to our comrades in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus?

No war but the class war is an important principle, and if we depart from it, whether in Ukraine, Rojava or anywhere else, it’s important to keep it in mind, and to stay open to critiques from those who refuse to cross that particular line. But when those who would advocate for it seem to lapse into apologies for Russian imperialism – whether in the explicit form of “finding antifascist value in a Ukrainian defeat” and putting scare quotes around the very concept of “Russian disinformation,” or the more implicit form of writing long articles about the conflict, antifascism and the far-Right that never once mention Wagner, Rusich, the Russian Orthodox Army, and so on – it becomes harder to take their critiques seriously.

At this point in time, my sympathies are still with those who are trying to organise anarchist and anti-fascist projects within Ukraine that could point in the direction of a less bleak future, whether those take the form of mutual aid efforts or direct resistance to the invasion. Certainly, they’re operating in challenging conditions, ones that make it hard to put our shared principles into practice, but I remain unconvinced by the idea that our comrades in Ukraine, who seem to have the support of those in Belarus and most of the Russian movement, are all just getting it wrong.

Comments

A Response to a Response About Militarism, Nationalism and War

Canadians protesting against NATO forces in Canada.

A contribution to the "No war but class war" debate, defending the original article's position and criticising the "A response" text.

Submitted by R Totale on May 15, 2022

By Mike Gouldhawke (Métis & Cree, Treaty 6 territory)

The anonymous author of a recent response to the text “No War But Class War: Against State Nationalism And Inter-Imperialist War In Ukraine” starts off by claiming that they were “slightly disappointed to see the authors warning against uncritical allyship with any European nationalism.”

Personally, I’m disappointed to see that someone else is disappointed by critical thinking around state nationalism, particularly European and subsidiary settler colonial nationalisms. I’m also not sure what the purpose of expressing disappointment in critical thinking would be other than to discourage others from engaging in it and thereby protect the particularly flimsy narrative of someone else.

While conceding that the “anarchist position against all forms of nationalism is a bold and important one,” the author wonders “what the purpose of adding qualifiers to it is, unless to suggest that the nationalism of a Bolsonaro or a Modi is somehow more virtuous and desirable?”

Firstly, I wonder why we should care how bold such a claim is, rather than how correct it is, since that would seem to be what’s most important.

Secondly, I wasn’t among the writers of the “No War But Class War” text, but I’d speculate the purpose of singling out European nationalism is because that’s what we’re actually dealing with at the moment and where we’re at, both in terms of Russia’s war on Ukraine as well as the support that Euro-American settler states, the United States and Canada are giving and have been giving to the Ukrainian military, including it’s explicitly fascist and therefore nationalist regiment.

A position against all states and their nationalisms moreover does not require one to ignore the fact that some states are more powerful than others, as is the case with the U.S. being more powerful than Canada, and Russia being more powerful than Ukraine. Canada is still an imperialist and colonialist state regardless of it being much smaller in terms of population and much less powerful than the U.S.

Thirdly, it seems to me that the response author only brings up the Brazilian and Indian presidents as a moralistic sleight of hand, suggesting without any evidence or reasoning that the writers of the “No War But Class War” piece are implicitly suggesting that the nationalism of those presidents is “somehow more virtuous and desirable.”

This despite the writers explicitly critiquing all nation-states and their nationalism, not just the nationalism of particular presidents.

Rather than deal with the actual analysis of the piece in question, the author of the response to it continues to attribute secret ulterior motives to the writers, claiming that they are “clearly up to something,” simply because they critiqued the political position that listening to arbitrarily-selected individuals from an attacked group (anarchist or otherwise) can or should be the basis of anarchist analysis and practice.

The response author even falsely implies that the only purpose of the original article was to dismiss anarchists in Ukraine. If this were actually the case, an article containing analysis and positions (these also not limited to being about anarchists in Ukraine) would not have been necessary in the first place. The writers could have simply dismissed anarchists in Ukraine privately and without any wasted effort in terms of writing an article.

The response author claims that listening to anarchists in Ukraine is different from listening to all Ukrainians because it “starts out by looking for people who share our basic values and principles, and then seeks to learn from people who have more understanding of their own context than we do.”

However, this would be the opposite of the abandonment of critical thinking suggested at the start of their response. Anyone can call themselves “anarchists,” but not all anarchists mean the same thing by it. To find people who share our values and principles would precisely require going beyond superficial labels to discover what the content behind the label is, and this requires critical thinking and actual information, not vague uncritical cheerleading for certain aesthetics.

No doubt, those who live in a place likely know more about their context than those outside it. But this applies equally to North America as to Ukraine, since anarchists here likely know more about North American states’ military support for the Ukrainian state, how this plays into expanded militarism here, and the history of military force being deployed here in North America against Black and Indigenous peoples. Anarchists here have a clear and present stake in opposing the militarism of North American states.

Even if a North American anarchist was to defer all responsibility for critical thinking on Ukraine to their most trusted and familiar Ukrainian comrade, this would still do absolutely nothing to divest that North American anarchist from their responsibility of understanding and opposing North American states and their militarism. Even putting aside thinking and instead relying on natural sympathy alone, it’s not clear why this sympathy for people in Ukraine would override sympathy anarchists here feel for all those targeted by North American states and their militarism, both here and abroad, especially if their own people are among those targeted. The Americas are not a sacrifice zone for the supposed greater good somewhere else, anymore than anywhere else in the world should be for here.

The response author claims, with reference to the Resistance Committee, that the “No War But Class War” writers are obscuring the character of the struggle in Ukraine. The Resistance Committee is worth supporting, the responder proclaims. But they don’t deal with the point made in the “No War But Class War” article referencing a report by an anarchist in Ukraine, where it is stated that “Initiatives such as the Resistance Committee are formed within the military structure of the Ukrainian state.”

The response author falsely claims that the “No War But Class War” writers are putting forward a “position, which seems to operate on a simple equation that ‘Resistance Committee = the state = Azov’”.

This is not in fact the case, as the writers of the “No War But Class War” article never draw up such an equation.

Furthermore, how the Resistance Committee actually operates and whether it does so under the Ukrainian state is not a “position” at all, nor an “equation.”

It is either a practical fact that the Resistance Committee operates under the official military structure of the Ukrainian state, or it isn’t. The anarchist position, at least one anarchist position, is to oppose all states and their armies, and to be clear about whether self-proclaimed anarchists are actually acting on their own or as part of a state’s official army.

How an autonomous militia could operate in practice in a high-tech war zone involving two official armies (Ukrainian and Russian) is not something the response author, or any other anarchist has even mentioned let alone tried to explain, as far as I’ve seen. The author of the response seems to be the one doing the obscuring, not the writers of “No War But Class War.”

The response author even decries any attempt to separate actually autonomous anarchist initiatives to support migrants from participation in an official military structure, claiming that the writers of “No War But Class War” are attempting to “set the two things against each other,” as if this would be a bad thing for anarchists to do, as if this isn’t something anarchists have always done.

The response author then questions whether the Ukrainian far-right is more institutionalized than the Russian far-right, links to a story about Russian paramilitary massacres in Mali, and claims that the official Ukrainian fascist military battalion Azov is somehow being denied its autonomy and radicalism by the Ukrainian state, that it is still supposedly a question as to “how far it’s been successfully defanged and declawed” by the state.

We might instead question whether it’s been “defanged and declawed” at all, and why a fascist military battalion that’s more tightly-managed by the state would be acceptable. The fascists’ interests don’t need to be identical to the neo-liberal Ukrainian president for them to be amenable to each other, and both opposable by anarchists.

The incorporation of anarchists and fascists into the military also shouldn’t be equated with each other, since anarchists are ostensibly opposed to the state, while fascists are very much in favor of it. The state can use fascists to their benefit and fascists can benefit from integration into the state. The same should not be true for anarchists. If the state is trying to integrate anarchists, it’s to weaken or destroy us.

The response author seems to be trying to minimize the significance of fascist groups in Ukraine and the harm they are doing to Roma and other people. Precisely the kind of minimization the “No War But Class War” writers critiqued others for engaging in.

The responder also dismisses the “bad decisions that a subcultural street formation made eight years ago” (in making a truce with “national anarchists” and fascists) because of the potentially better things the same people might be doing now in the Resistance Committee. Critical thinking and positions against fascist movements are to be set aside for a supposed greater good, something that some anarchists, at least elsewhere, can’t necessarily afford to do even if they wanted to.

The response author goes on to make the seemingly grandiose claim that “In 2022, the [Ukrainian] anarchist movement is making a real attempt to constitute a serious material force, one that’s serving as a pole of attraction for other leftists and antifascists,” without any evidence of this actually being the case, and while expressing dismay that the “No War But Class War” writers might detract from support for this effort simply by making a critique.

But if a material force crumbles in the face of mere critique and analysis, we might feel the need to consider how forceful and real this material force actually is, whether we really want to support it, and whether it even needs our support, since the Canadian and American states are already supplying more weapons, military equipment and intelligence to the Ukrainian military than ragtag groups of anarchists in North America ever could, even if they wanted to.

The response author implies that building this nominally-anarchist force in Ukraine will help build opposition to the far-right that stands to benefit from the current situation. But building a force within an official army is not the same as building an autonomous force. And this is mere speculation at any rate.

The response author then somehow gets baffled by a critique of “lesser evilism” that also acknowledges the relative strength of the American empire. However there is no contradiction between two things being bad, one thing being worse, and taking the position that therefore we shouldn’t support either thing. This is precisely what the critique of “lesser evilism” consists of.

Then the response author hurls an unfounded accusation of being “very self-obsessed Americans” at the writers of “No War But Class War,” simply because they analyze how the U.S. state (which they find themselves in) and American capitalists seek to use this war to their benefit. One would think that anarchists in the U.S. opposing the U.S. state and American capitalists would be admirable to anarchists abroad instead of repugnant.

At any rate, in order to be in solidarity with others, one needs to start with one’s own struggle, where one is at, and this begins with an analysis of what the state and capitalists are doing in whatever country we happen to live in. Simply labeling anarchists in other countries as self-obsessed or narcissistic is not a form of analysis.

As the response author proceeds in their article, they continue to cast aspersions at the “No War But Class War” writers, accusing them of being “blasé about Russian imperialism” and of having attacked “the Resistance Committee for not being pure enough,” stances the writers do not actually take in their article. Again, the response author’s point seems to be to deflect from actual critique by making a straw-man argument against the article’s writers and disparaging their character.

Then the response author engages in a bizarre sarcastic comparison of the critique of American anarchists’ defensive allegiance to whiteness to “the Blackness of Vladimir Putin, perhaps?”

The point of this oddly abrupt and racist quip seems to be to suggest that American anarchists couldn’t possibly have a defensive allegiance to whiteness if they also oppose the white president of another country, but I’m not sure how this logic is supposed to follow. All white people don’t have to agree with each other at all times in order for them to still feel a defensive allegiance to whiteness. More basic class divisions within a country don’t even undermine this allegiance.

The response author follows up by equating anti-fascist militancy in the U.S. to “further militarization of a conflict.” However, militancy and militarism are not the same thing. The difference is exactly the one which the author deflects from throughout their whole response, the difference between autonomous groups and the state.

A difference that played out in this case precisely in the use of paramilitary force by the American state in the extrajudicial execution of an anti-fascist, Michael Reinoehl, by police.

For the overly-polite response author, “one of the stupidest lines of the entire piece” that they are critiquing is when the “No War But Class War” writers state, “We can oppose a Russian victory while finding antifascist value in a Ukrainian defeat.”

The response author incredulously asks, “Can you imagine anyone at the time of the US invasion suggesting that they could find antifascist, or anti-fundamentalist, value in an Afghan defeat, and expecting anarchists to take them seriously?”

This however completely misses or reverses the point of defeatism, which for anarchists in North America at the time meant the defeat of North American states in Afghanistan, just as currently, anarchists in North America cannot cheer for North American states to benefit from their military support of the Ukrainian state.

Today Afghanistan remains one of countless reminders that imperialist states like Canada and the U.S. have only a negative role to play in any part of the world, including here in North America.

Moreover, we should always remember that states aren’t equivalent to peoples.

Finally, the response author falsely accuses the “No War But Class War” writers of somehow lapsing “into apologies for Russian imperialism” because they state they can find “antifascist value in a Ukrainian defeat.” However, the responder here leaves out the first part of the same sentence, where the writers stated, “We can oppose a Russian victory…” and fails to mention that the “No War But Class War” writers pointed to past collaboration between Russian and Ukrainian fascists.

The responder ends their piece with an appeal to their own sympathy “with those who are trying to organise anarchist and anti-fascist projects within Ukraine that could point in the direction of a less bleak future…”

The responder asks how comrades in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia could possibly be “just getting it wrong.”

But sympathy is not the question. Nor is how many things an ambiguous conglomeration of comrades in those countries might be getting righter or wronger with regards to a situation they are more familiar with than we are here in North America.

The question is the State itself, its militarism and nationalism, the relation between fascist or nationalist movements and the State, and finally, how anarchists in North America analyze their own situation, so as to even be capable of solidarity in the first place.

We can’t and don’t need to sacrifice our own opposition to North American states and their associated fascist and nationalist movements in order to oppose invasions and wars overseas. Just the opposite. We oppose all nation-states, militarism, fascism and state nationalism here, there and everywhere, for ourselves and in solidarity with others.

Comments

Another reply on Ukraine, war and class war

A Ukrainian antifa mural depicting the Azov battalion and Russian "Z" symbols both crossed out.

The author of "A response on Ukraine" responds to critics of that article. This response first appeared on the Autonomous Action site.

Submitted by R Totale on May 15, 2022

It’s good to see that my article on Ukraine and anti-war/class war positions has provoked a few responses, and I hope that discussion will continue elsewhere. By this point, the most important arguments have probably been made, so there’s a danger that diminishing returns and petty point-scoring might set in; but for what it’s worth, here’s a few comments on the two responses.

One response, from an anarchist who fought in Rojava, is relatively short and straightforward. On a factual note, they dispute whether the Turkish Marxist-Leninist group THKP-C/MLSPB were or are involved in the International Freedom Battalion. Other participants in the IFB, for instance in this interview, do list the MLSPB as one of the IFB’s component groups. Perhaps they’re wrong; but even so, if we exclude the MLSPB altogether, that would still make it a coalition of at least four other Marxist-Leninist groups and two Maoist groups together with Tekosina Anarsist. That is to say, a coalition dominated not just by non-anarchist groups, but by the kinds of groups who, in most situations, we would have no problem identifying as being hostile to anarchism.

To say that the IFB is a coalition primarily dominated by non-anarchist groups is not to say that anarchists are or were wrong to take part in it. But it is to say that it still feels strange to see people holding it up as a more righteous alternative to the supposedly unacceptable compromises made by Ukrainian anarchists.

They also criticize me for failing to mention “the large-scale medical project that the anarchists created and engaged in”. I fully agree that medical and other caring work is important and undervalued in comparison to other, more visible and easily glamorized, forms of militancy. But I can also remember how the IRPGF presented themselves at the time of their foundation. It wasn’t critics of the IRPGF who decided that their introduction video should contain lots of shots of guns and weapons and no mentions of medical work, or indeed that their flag should contain a picture of a gun rather than medical equipment; if former members now think that focus was misguided, that’s fine, but they can’t blame other people for remembering the way that they chose to present themselves.

It might be straying too far from the current discussion, but it would certainly be worthwhile having a broader discussion of the attractions and flaws of militant aesthetics, and what seems to be a tendency among some anarchists to orientate toward groups that fit a certain image of militant struggle, without properly evaluating how far those groups fit with our aims and values. We could ask, for instance, why it is that Abolition Media has taken to running completely uncritical coverage of the Colombian FARC and ELN - not critical analysis of how those groups relate to current struggles within Colombian society, but simply reproducing reports of their actions without comment.

Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of the “anarchist who fought in Rojava” response is what it doesn’t mention - at least six years after these questions were first raised, and in response to an article that explicitly raised the issue, there’s no attempt at an independent anarchist analysis of the relationship between Rojava, non-Kurdish revolutionaries, and Assad. The question of the SDF role in the fall of Aleppo, and what all this means, is still left unaddressed. I don’t think there are any easy answers to these questions - “Rojava should have simply simultaneously defeated ISIS, Turkey, Assad and the Russian and Iranian interventions” is a line as simple and as unhelpful as “the Ukrainian working class should simply rise up and overthrow Zelensky and defeat Azov while also fighting off the Russian invasion”. But it’s the fact that they’re difficult and complicated that means that more thoughtful analysis would be welcome, and makes the continued silence so disappointing.

While Turkish Marxist-Leninists and Maoists tended to be militant supporters of Rojava, this line was not echoed by their ideological comrades in other parts of the world. In the US and other Western countries, many tankies were happy to dismiss and attack the entire project, on the grounds that the US and other NATO countries were providing support to the YPG/YPJ, and that told them all they needed to know. For those of us who argued against such simplistic positions then, and were also not convinced by the rejection of any support for Rojava on “no war but the class war” lines, it’s disturbing to see similar lines of argument emerging from anarchists.

The other response, from Mike Gouldhawke, is more substantial. It opens with an expression of disappointment at my criticism of the line warning against “uncritical allyship with any European nationalism”, asking why I would warn against critical thinking. There seems to be a misunderstanding going on here, as I wasn’t objecting to the call for critical thinking, but rather to the decision to introduce a qualifier, as if there are some forms of nationalism where uncritical allyship would be an appropriate response. So we can add Mike Gouldhawke’s reading comprehension skills to the list of things that people are disappointed in. Similarly, the line about Modi and Bolsonaro was an, admittedly provocative, attempt to think through where taking a less critical attitude to non-European nationalisms could lead.

Gouldhawke accuses me of wanting to listen to “arbitrarily-selected individuals” from Ukraine. This glosses over the distinction between individuals and organized collective projects such as Operation Solidarity and the Resistance Committee, which I think is quite an important one, but I think it’s “arbitrarily-selected” that’s the really telling phrase here. For some North American anarchists, those who are not connected to any ongoing networks of international solidarity and action that include participants from former Eastern Bloc countries, and do not have any close connections with anyone working in those countries, or indeed with any groups that include migrants and refugees from those countries, the choice of whether to listen and who to listen to may well be an arbitrary decision. For some people, there’s a bit more at stake.

To give one example, people who were paying careful critical attention to the Network case will understand why some of us have a great deal of respect for ABC Dresden, as a group who have a track record of approaching difficult situations with honesty and integrity, and why we might think of the A2Day collective in Russia as a group who are certainly not willing to silence their criticisms of alleged comrades in the name of false unity.

Other people may not have been paying this kind of attention, and that’s fine. The world is a big and complicated place and you can’t pay attention to everything. There’s nothing wrong with not being familiar with the recent history of the anarchist movement in Russia and Eastern Europe, it just means that you should probably not be writing articles about that subject. To be fair, at some points Gouldhawke seems to be suggesting that the real victims of the war in Ukraine are people living in North America, which is certainly a novel approach, but not a particularly helpful one in my opinion.

Developing the “war in Ukraine is really about North Americans” position, Gouldhawke writes:

“No doubt, those who live in a place likely know more about their context than those outside it. But this applies equally to North America as to Ukraine, since anarchists here likely know more about North American states’ military support for the Ukrainian state, how this plays into expanded militarism here, and the history of military force being deployed here in North America against Black and Indigenous peoples… it’s not clear why this sympathy for people in Ukraine would override sympathy anarchists here feel for all those targeted by North American states and their militarism, both here and abroad, especially if their own people are among those targeted. The Americas are not a sacrifice zone for the supposed greater good somewhere else.”

As far as I can follow this line of argument, it seems to suggest that, when analyzing a war happening elsewhere, the issue of “military force being deployed here in North America” should be a primary concern for North American anarchists. To be clear, I have never said anything endorsing military force being deployed in North America, and I don’t think I’ve seen any Ukrainian anarchists or their supporters doing anything along those lines, so I struggle to see where this particular argument is coming from. If Gouldhawke cannot imagine a way to maintain opposition to one state at home, while also acting in solidarity with those fighting another state elsewhere, I would suggest that might be his own problem rather than a dilemma for the anarchist movement more broadly.

Gouldhawke also questions “[h]ow an autonomous militia could operate in practice in a high-tech war zone involving two official armies (Ukrainian and Russian)”, saying that this point “is not something the response author, or any other anarchist has even mentioned let alone tried to explain, as far as I’ve seen”. In which case I would direct him to try learning more about Rojava, as there are many sources available covering precisely that question.

On the question of mutual aid initiatives and work with migrants, Gouldhawke stresses that anarchists should “separate actually autonomous anarchist initiatives to support migrants from participation in an official military structure”, skipping over the point that, as far as I can tell, the majority of these “autonomous anarchist initiatives” are connected to groups such as ABC Dresden and Operation Solidarity, which are also supportive of military resistance. As of April 19, Operation Solidarity have just started a separate fundraising account solely for refugees and war victims, but again it will still be the same group running both accounts, so it might seem a bit of a stretch to call it autonomous.

Of course, human beings are complicated creatures, and it’s perfectly possible for a single person or group of people to behave in ways that are self-contradictory. But still, the line that “we should support the good autonomous anarchist initiatives, like the work of ABC Dresden and Operation Solidarity, and oppose the bad statists who are aligned with the official military, like ABC Dresden and Operation Solidarity”, seems a bit muddled and confused to me.

Gouldhawke also criticizes me for making “the seemingly grandiose claim that “In 2022, the [Ukrainian] anarchist movement is making a real attempt to constitute a serious material force, one that’s serving as a pole of attraction for other leftists and antifascists,” without any evidence of this actually being the case”. I’m fully willing to admit to my mistake here - as I was drafting the piece, I meant to add in all the supporting links I was thinking of, but in this case I forgot to edit in the link to an interview with Vitaliy Dudin, of the Ukrainian democratic socialist organization Sotsyalnyi Rukh/Social Movement. Having now provided the relevant link, I trust that Gouldhawke will agree that the projects initiated by Ukrainian anarchists do indeed seem to be serving as a pole of attraction for other leftists and antifascists.

He also disputes the characterisation of the Resistance Committee as being a serious material force, sneering that “if a material force crumbles in the face of mere critique and analysis, we might feel the need to consider how forceful and real this material force actually is”. Which is certainly a snappy line, but not one that holds up to a great deal of scrutiny. Whether in Rojava, North America, Ukraine or elsewhere, it’s possible to name any number of examples where liberatory movements have constituted a serious material force, while also facing opposition from much stronger state forces, and so have been in urgent need of all the help they can get. When looking at the Wet’suwet’en facing raids from the Canadian state, or Turkish attacks on Rojava, I would suggest that offering solidarity might be an appropriate response; if someone decided to firstly attempt to undermine those solidarity efforts, and then mock the targeted group for how quickly they “crumble”... well, you can decide for yourself how you would view such a person.

Gouldhawke professes to being baffled by my critique of the conspiracist idea that European sanctions on Russia are really about American natural gas exports, writing that “[o]ne would think that anarchists in the U.S. opposing the U.S. state and American capitalists would be admirable to anarchists abroad instead of repugnant”.

For anyone else who struggles with this idea, a few comparisons. To start off with, it is, I think, now broadly accepted among anarchists and other radicals that “white allies” who insist on making every conversation about them, their privilege and their guilt, are not very helpful, that this particular form of “white people opposing whiteness” is more repugnant than admirable. Similarly, there are U.S. liberals, leftists and perhaps even anarchists who, in the name of opposing the U.S. state, see its hand at work in everything from uncontrollable rowdiness at Black Lives Matter protests to kids setting off fireworks. These people are not very helpful, their focus on the U.S. state is more repugnant than admirable, because it leads them to mis-identify things which are actually separate from it, like insurgent crowds and kids with fireworks, as being about that state.

A similar observation could be made about North American observers who viewed Rojava as really being about the U.S. state and a CIA plot to undermine the sovereignty of Syria; or those who viewed social movements in Hong Kong as really being about the U.S. state and a CIA plot to undermine China; or those who can only understand the 2014 Maidan as being about U.S. intervention, rather than putting in the effort to try and understand the internal tensions within Ukrainian society that led to it.

Returning to the debate around August 2020, Gouldhawke complains about me “equating anti-fascist militancy in the U.S. to “further militarization of a conflict.” However, militancy and militarism are not the same thing. The difference is exactly the one which the author deflects from throughout their whole response, the difference between autonomous groups and the state.”

Again, to describe the situation in the US in late August 2020 as just being about “anti-fascist militancy” means erasing the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings in Kenosha. If we take a more rounded view, and include the killings of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber as part of a situation that people might want to de-escalate, then it becomes easier to see that anarchist analysis cannot be as simple as “state bad, autonomous groups good”. Forces can be autonomous from the state and still be contradictory, or even outright opposed to liberation.

To assess how far a development is genuinely subversive, and how far it can lead to the re-assertion of some forms of hierarchy, is a more complicated challenge; as I’ve mentioned above, I think one question worth bearing in mind is how far it allows all participants in a movement to be fully involved and have their contributions valued, and how far it tends towards a macho glorification of the gun over caring and reproductive work.

There’s not else to add about the remainder of the essay that wouldn’t just be repeating what’s already been said, although I would critique the formulation that “Afghanistan remains one of countless reminders that imperialist states like Canada and the U.S. have only a negative role to play in any part of the world”. Given the relative importance of Russia and Canada in Afghanistan’s history, why put the emphasis on Canada here, why not “imperialist states like the U.S. and Russia” or even “imperialist states like Canada, the U.S. and Russia”?

If Gouldhawke’s understanding of anarchism and internationalism means always talking about Canada as much as possible, and doing his best to avoid uttering any criticism of states that aren’t aligned with Canada, then that’s up to him; but he may find that presents serious difficulties when trying to communicate with comrades outside of North America, if that’s something he has any interest in.

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Anarchist who Fought in Rojava: Response to ‘No War But Class War’ Debate

Two people in balaclavas hold a black flag depicting a gun and red star.

A further contribution to the "No war but class war" debate, criticising the "A response..." article and comparing the situation in Ukraine with that of Rojava. This article was originally published on Abolition Media and It's Going Down.

Submitted by R Totale on May 15, 2022

Disclaimer: commenting on this text, Enough is Enough wrote: "In contrary to the part about funding of the resistance in Rojava in the article on Abolition Media, many anarchists on the European territory supported funding of the Kurdish resistance in Rojava (& beyond), actually we organized two campaigns ourselves. Maybe its because we have direct contact with many Kurdish groups, as millions of people with kurdish backgrounds are living in Europe, that we funded several of these groups directly. The piece on Abolition Media is written from an US perspective and obviously without much knowledge about the situation on the ground in Ukraine and other parts of eastern Europe. Parts of the funding of Operation Solidarity is used for mutual aid projects for the population in Ukraine, something which “response to a response” is ignoring completely. And we could write a lot more about the piece on Abolition Media, but we won’t, it’s just too tiring. But people should decide for themselves.

I left Rojava nearly three years ago now and up until this point has chosen to remain quiet, leaving the writing to those who prefer to talk rather than act. I’ve looked on as the Ukrainians have gotten more support amongst the western anarchist milieu than the Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Yezidis and others could have ever imagined.

In the first month alone tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised for the “anti-authoritarians”. Truckloads of medical ifaks, plate carriers, optics, thermals, and other combat supplies were sent at a moment’s notice. There was zero hesitation amongst western anarchists when it came to mobilizing solidarity efforts for those affected by the Russian invasion.

My initial reaction was one of confusion. If the anarchist milieu has the capacity to fundraise money and donations on such a massive scale why in Rojava were we rationing what little celox we had and sharing a single plate carrier amongst many comrades rotating it based on who was going to the front? Our donations were in the hundreds of dollars and our collective funds were mostly built upon the stipend given by YPG. I recall the personal project of a close heval (comrade) who later fell sehid (martyr) which was to raise enough funds to obtain a single thermal for our unit. A project he spent months trying to coordinate and in the end was a failure. Simply no one cared enough to contribute.

The wildly disproportional logistical international solidarity for the struggle in Rojava compared to that of Ukraine aside. I find the ideological creation of the Ukrainian resistance as sacred to be the most disturbing. Recently an article was published on Abolition Media as well as with a disclaimer on It’s Going Down. It was a critical take on the situation in Ukraine. I’m not going into the merits of the article because that simply is not the point of this piece. However, the article has caused shockwaves in the milieu by committing blasphemy against anarchism’s new sacred cow: the Ukrainian resistance. A response article was published to IGD some days after and it is this which I’d like to respond to. Both the initial article and the response deal with a comparison between Rojava and Ukraine. The conflict voyeur who authors the response begins engaging with the question of Rojava by stating, “As someone whose own tendency to ask awkward questions has often (not always, but often) meant that I’ve been more of a critical observer of than an active participant in Rojava solidarity projects, I would very much like to see North American anarchists making an active effort to engage with the difficult questions that have often gone unanswered around Rojava.”

From the very start of their discussion they admit that they were a critical observer of Rojava and ask the North American anarchists to engage in the “difficult questions unanswered around Rojava”. This isn’t necessarily wrong insofar as analyzing the contradictions of the Rojava project is beneficial for further radical development. It does, however right from the get-go demonstrate an entirely different approach than that of the unquestioning support for Ukraine. The struggle in Rojava which has a many decades-long history of radical politics and participation in militant struggles from training and fighting with Palestinians to contemporary resistance to Turkish Fascism and occupation was born and remains firmly within the revolutionary struggle. Rojava is very much at least within our purview if not tangential to our tradition. The resistance in Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with the anarchist tradition whatsoever. Sure one can make arguments about the necessity of defense against encroaching imperialist interests and that’s all fine and good but it’s not a radical project. So then why is any criticism of the Ukraine resistance met with overhand bad jacketing and slander? I’ve never encountered something in the anarchist milieu to be so impenetrable to critique and elicit such a vile response if one dares to. From the Zapatistas to the Spanish Civil War to Rojava, everything is fair game for critique but daring to be critical of Ukraine is met with a venomous assault and accusations of apologism for everything from rape to genocide.

I’ll continue quoting the drivel of this arm-chair author. They go on to state, “It does also feel somewhat odd to see, after all the attacks on the Resistance Committee for not being pure enough, the authors championing the International People’s Guerrilla Forces and International Freedom Battalion, while also freely admitting how closely those groups were/are allied with Turkish Maoists and Marxist-Leninists. As though all the criticisms and arguments that anarchists have always made against Maoists and Marxist-Leninists somehow don’t apply to TİKKO or the THKP-C/MLSPB!” This quote is a perfect example of not letting absolute ignorance stop you from spewing your dumb opinion. First, where does this author pull MLSPB from? MLSPB didn’t even have people in IFB, they had a few kadro in Seri Kaniye, and there was limited interaction with them. As far as their discussion of TiKKO it was a relationship of material solidarity and TiKKO respected the full autonomy of the anarchists. TiKKO allowed political protection to the anarchists while they built capacity and diplomatic relations with the broader movement. Furthermore, there were many discussions with members of TiKKO recognizing the antithetical political positions and necessary conflict if the situation ever changed.

The author’s discussion of tentative alliances with communists demonstrates the absolutely absurd purist standards they held anarchists in Rojava to while simultaneously apologizing for cooperation with nationalists and the literal state military in Ukraine. It should be noted here that there is NO anarchist battalion in Ukraine. If you believe otherwise you need to research the topic further. They may be clustered but they are dispersed amongst regular territorial defense units. They are necessarily working alongside at the very least liberals if not nationalists and take their orders directly from the Ukrainian military. So according to the author, this is no problem and we can’t be too critical but damn those anarchists in Rojava for having an autonomous unit that had tentative diplomatic relations with some communists.

The last point that the author uses to delegitimize anarchist militants who lived, fought, and died in Rojava is as follows, “That might not be the most inspiring and uncompromising slogan, but some of us found it more convincing than some of the overheated rhetoric coming from IRPGF types that tried to portray a small group of people picking up guns, posing with English-language banners aimed at Western audiences, and making friends with Maoists as a dramatic leap forward in anarchist theory and practice.” Here from the comfort of rhetorical fantasy the author attacks anarchists for “picking up guns” and “posing with banners”. First off, what do you think the RC is doing? Every single day there’s a new drop in telegram of them waving guns and sending messages to their supporters in the west. They make these posts precisely for the western IGD reader. And second, this is a massive oversimplification of what the project in Rojava was in order to dismiss it as larping foolishness. There’s no mention of the large-scale medical project that the anarchists created and engaged in often operating as the only medical unit directly on the front line. Or perhaps the experience and training it gave to many radicals in the tradition of the Bekaa Valley? Omission of these critical aspects is essential for the author’s narrative of westerners going to play militant.

The fact that I’m still defending anarchists going to Rojava years later while any criticism of Ukraine is met with moral outrage and vehement personal attacks demonstrates that western anarchists have a peculiar and visceral attachment to the situation there. I can only conclude that this is indicative of latent white supremacy within the anarchist milieu. Anyone who points out any contradictions with the situation in Ukraine is immediately ripped to pieces and bad-jacketed. People were openly shedding tears on anarchist podcasts for those in Ukraine while not a drop was spilled for the occupation of Afrin or Seri Kaniye. In fact, the radical milieu has largely forgotten about Rojava, and even when they did care, the solidarity efforts were infinitesimal compared to that of those in Ukraine.

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