As the proxy war between Russia and NATO rages on, the phenomenon of reflexive left-bashing (which I commented on previously) has continued as well. This post from a couple of weeks ago is as illuminating of an example of this as I could ask for, so let's blog about it. While I won't go through every point, I did want to touch on a couple of specifically rage-inducing mistakes the author makes.
First is this list of supposed "lies and idiocies":
"I think it’s worth recalling all the lies and idiocies that have been repeated since the start of the conflict: First, we were told war was impossible, it was a figment of the Western imagination; then we were told war was inevitable, because it was provoked by the West; we were told that they intended to trick Putin into a destructive quagmire; then we were told this was part of Putin’s grand master plan to defy the West and create a new world order; then, that Russia’s total victory was assured in a matter of hours, then days, then weeks, and that news of Ukrainian success was all propaganda; then, that Russia’s serious reversals were actually pre-planned and a new offensive would eventually overwhelm Ukrainian defenses. This moving, parrying, retreating discourse seems to follow or anticipate the retreats of the Russian army itself, trying to dig in to new positions, only to have shift again."
I'm not going to claim all of these assertions are true, as it's clear in hindsight that some of them are wrong. That said, it's important to note that a) I'm not aware of a specific person/group that has held all of these positions (the author makes no effort to elucidate this either), and b) lumping all of these statements together helps to hide the fact that some of these things are undeniably true. What this rhetoric accomplishes then is to establish a respectable narrative of the war from a liberal perspective that treats any deviation, legitimate or not, as immediately worthy of suspicion.
"But how about the people who buy it, repeat it, and create their own variations on its themes? What could possibly account for all these contradictory and absurd positions, which have been uttered at different times by the same people? All these sentiments are all the product of a single proposition: the Western democracies are always wrong, both morally and practically. When the West struggles and fails, it’s because of its decadence and senility, a sign of its imminent collapse, when it prevails, it’s because of its dastardly wiles and the limitlessness of its ill-gotten resources. Russia’s appeal in the West, which crosses the traditional boundaries of right and left, is irresistible for those who believe the worst crime imaginable is Western hypocrisy. Since this hypocrisy is the only unforgivable sin, Russia’s crude and cynical exercise of power, it’s barely plausible justifications for its actions, its overt gangsterism at home and abroad, is seen as a virtue."
The author makes two key mistakes in this passage. One is that his argument essentially equates critiques of US power as being exclusively attribution error, which forecloses the possibility of very real structural critiques. Two, it ignores the reality and the omnipresence of actually existing US hegemony. Even if we grant that the US is not the primary instigator of this conflict (which is not a given), it is clear from their lack of diplomacy and their surplus of arms shipments that they are using their position of power to support and perhaps even encourage the continuation of this conflict. And if one is a subject to this hegemonic power, I would argue that it is actually a moral imperative to speak against it. More to the point, as much as the term "leftist" signifies anything specific, it signifies anti-capitalism. The US is undeniably head of the global empire of capital, and as such, should be the primary adversarial state apparatus of anyone who claims allegiance to the left.
"This leads to mind-bogglingly absurd positions: self-avowed Marxist-Leninists cheering on Lenin’s great enemy, Russian chauvinism, self-declared defenders of European Civilization and “traditionalist” Christians rooting for the destruction of the cradle of Slavic Christianity at the hands of who at other times they would deride as Chechen bashi-bazouks. In the coming months and years, we will likely see the one turn into the other: Red becoming Browns, Browns turning Red, Christian becoming atheists, atheists becoming Christian, “new systems” declaring the essential compatibility of Orthodoxy and communism, of international socialism and national chauvinism, politics shrugged off and then adopted as any other affectation, like health fads or sudden tastes for the exotic Orient, but having the added benefit of granting the appearance of serious conviction and purpose. Here we get an insight into the unifying principle of all these supposedly disparate tendencies: a type of base, moronic cynicism. More than anything else, it is this moronic cynicism that takes itself to be devilish cleverness that is the governing ideology of the Russian state and society, and it attracts all its global admirers."
Unlike other paragraphs, there isn't necessarily anything here that is factually untrue. The problem instead is more one of degree. Ganz does not name anyone specific, but the only knowledge I have of "self-avowed Marxist-Leninists" matching this description are sex pests and literal cryptofascists. Not only do I question if these people I assume he has in mind are "leftist" to any meaningful degree, but it's not clear that there are all that many of these people or that they hold any significant purchase in any larger left-oriented power structures (which barley exist in the first place). By building what is effectively a straw-man argument against an unnamed, unrepresentative other, and then claiming this will lead to the dreaded "red-brown alliance," he is implicitly smearing anyone who might advance anything approximating this vague position as a potential fascist collaborator. To this, I will again ask the questions: What does this suspicion of others accomplish? Who does this serve? Does it actually help the people of Ukraine? Or does it help further entrench the premises that will lead to their continued immiseration?
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