Basically, bunch of pro-Ukraine, pro-fascism and state dept line loving anarchists attacked an anti-war demonstration with incredibly based anti-imperialist and codepink founder Medea Benjamin.
Comments in the linked subreddit are worth reading for some highlights from the article (Trueanon is hilariously much more principled ML than deprogram sub on most days)
Archived link to article: https://archive.is/aZjzQ
People say anarchists in real life are better, it’s only the online ones who are liberals… nope. These people are total shills for the state department narrative. Totally useful tools against America’s enemies.
This is your brain on only caring about “authoritarianism” without understanding authority and letting the US state dept and bourgeois press (along with compromised anarchist media like your favorite zine courtesy of the FBI) define what authoritarian means and give you the scales of most and least authoritarian governments.
And these people are shocked when we denounce left unity. As if they did not denounce it first with violence against us.
Originally I was simply going to ignore this topic as it was too depressing (and I was too tired). After I went to sleep I had a dream(!) partly about it, and my response to the thread was — if I may say so myself — surprisingly good.
To paraphrase what I wrote in my dream:
The Western left needs to get over the fact that this isn’t the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The United States attacked Iraq with the goals of destabilizing its currency, eliminating its products from the market, and preventing a challenge to U.S. hegemony. The Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine was the inevitable consequence of the U.S.’s neoimperialist expansion in the East; economically Ukraine is of little importance to Russia. It is of strategic importance to the U.S.
These two are not the same thing.
Another way of expressing this is there is a primary imperialist power, a primary contradiction like a vampire on the global south and global proletariat at large and that simply is not Russia. It is the US/NATO/EU/Eyes group with the US strongly at the helm (to the point of grievously wounding German industry by blowing up pipelines and them quietly taking it in silence).
This is the result of historical events and forces building up over centuries of time. The US invaded Europe in WW2 and saved the capitalists in western Europe from being liberated by the Soviet troops, they bailed out Britain in WW2 too. The European capitalists had no choice but to cede their power to the US as their new defender and military overseer. But their power in the relationship has been waning (it was really over the moment the US occupied Europe after WW2 in the pretext of defending it against Soviet invasion, a country is not free that is occupied by thousands of heavily armed troops from a foreign nation), their colonial grip was weakened, the US has drained them, subordinated them, had Gladio, has infiltrated them at the highest levels, has probable dirt and blackmail on most of their leadership, spies on them extensively without punishment or hope of escape, can de-facto cripple them at will, has the lion’s-share of military equipment, budget, etc. They are now junior partners, vassals really in this relationship.
The US thus took over centuries of building of European hegemony, colonialism (later neo-colonialism) over Africa, Middle East, etc from Europe. Not only that, the US pumped their culture into Europe, they convinced their peoples they are really as one with the US liberal project, that the US is their project and they the US project. Hollywood is a machine for this purpose but they also through the CIA paid writers, journalists, various forms of culture and manipulated things to bind these people to the US and its dominance.
Thus, if the US were to be mortally wounded tomorrow, it would not be simple for Russia to step into the US’s shoes and just become an imperialist power in the same weight-range in boxing terms. Because Europe would not be able to go along with it, because Europe has turned over the keys already to the US. Russia might like to do this, they are a capitalist power and aspire to be greater but the material and historical realities bind them from it. They bind us to a multi-polar world emerging from the collapse of NATO/US hegemony.
Thus from the perspective of all who want to smash the current order, Russia’s victory (or at least the US and Ukrainian defeat and humiliation and Russia being allowed to ease pressure off itself a little) is a positive for anti-imperialism. It results in acceleration of de-dollarization, it accelerates in the shackles loosening on Africa, even on South America.
It is much like arranging for an internal coup in a country, a mafia, any kind of organization, deposing the stable, well-liked, powerful grip, intelligent leader in favor and with the assistance of the brash upstart disliked by many elements inside with less friends and more enemies. It is a recipe for fragmentation, factions, strife, weakness, more struggle, etc.