{"id":10531,"date":"2023-07-02T22:49:14","date_gmt":"2023-07-03T02:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=10531"},"modified":"2023-07-07T23:46:41","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T03:46:41","slug":"pricey-propaganda-against-ukraine-solidarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/07\/pricey-propaganda-against-ukraine-solidarity\/","title":{"rendered":"Pricey Propaganda Against Ukraine Solidarity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A full-page ad<\/a> in the May 16, 2023 New York Times<\/em> exemplifies the moral bankruptcy and imperial arrogance of some well-funded groups on the authoritarian Left and the pacifist anti-war movement who oppose solidarity with Ukraine\u2019s resistance to Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n

The ad was placed by the Eisenhower Media Network<\/a> (EMN), which is conducting a media campaign<\/a> featuring former military, intelligence, and national security officials. They call for the U.S. to end military aid for Ukraine\u2019s self-defense and to use U.S. diplomatic power to impose a peace settlement. EMN\u2019s principal donor is Ben & Jerry\u2019s co-founder Ben Cohen, who has given EMN more than $1 million<\/a>. The cost of a full-page ad in the New York Times<\/em> is upwards of $150,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The moral bankruptcy of the ad is rooted in its purported neutrality between the aggressor and its victim. “We reject the idea that diplomats, seeking peace, must choose sides, in this case either Russia or Ukraine,\u201d the ad says.<\/p>\n

In reality, the genocidal nature of Russia\u2019s war to recolonize Ukraine was made clear by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his February 21, 2022 speech<\/a> justifying the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here he made claims that he and other Kremlin leaders have been making repeatedly<\/a> for many years. They assert that Ukraine is not a real nation apart from Russia and is merely a fiction created by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The genocidal intentions of Russia\u2019s invasion were reinforced in an article<\/a> by veteran Russian ultra-nationalist Timofey Sergeytsev. The article is entitled \u201cWhat should Russia do with Ukraine?\u201d It was published by the state-owned Kremlin news agency RIA Novosti on April 3, 2022, the same day the Bucha mass murders<\/a> of Ukrainian civilians by Russian occupiers became public.<\/p>\n

Sergeytsev wrote, \u201cDenazification will inevitably include de-ukrainization,\u201d which, he explained<\/a>, means \u201cA significant number of common people are also guilty of being passive Nazis and Nazi accomplices.\u2026 [Ukraine\u2019s elites] must be liquidated as they cannot be reeducated and the social swamp that backed them must be subject to the terror of war and made to pay for their crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

To ferret out people loyal to Ukraine in the Russian-occupied territories, Ukrainian citizens are subject to filtration<\/a> camps<\/a> where those who remain loyal to Ukraine are detained, interrogated, and often subject to forced labor, torture, rape, execution, and\/or deportation to Russia, with abducted children sent to Russian re-education camps<\/a>. The Nuremeburg International Military Tribunal for Germany declared<\/a> following World War II, that wars of aggression are \u201cthe supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” In Russia\u2019s war of aggression, Ukrainian prosecutors have already identified 80,000<\/a> discrete war crimes they want to prosecute.<\/p>\n

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine reported<\/a> in March that these war crimes include \u201cattacks on civilians and energy-related infrastructure, willful killings, unlawful confinement, torture, rape and other sexual violence, as well as unlawful transfers and deportations of children.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported last November that 14 million Ukrainians<\/a>, a third of the Ukrainian people, had been driven from their homes by the Russian invasion. If the ad\u2019s militar experts cannot choose sides between the violence of the Russian aggressors and the self-defense of the Ukrainian people, they have no ethics worth respecting. The ad implores U.S. diplomats and its readers to not choose sides between the Russian war criminals and their Ukrainian victims. But in these circumstances, neutrality is complicity in Russia\u2019s genocidal war of aggression.<\/p>\n

Imperial Arrogance<\/h4>\n

The ad rejects taking sides between Russia and Ukraine, but it does not reject the imperial arrogance of presuming that the U.S. can use its diplomatic power to pacify Ukraine. \u201cAs Americans and national security experts,\u201d the ad reads, \u201cwe urge President Biden and Congress to use their full power to end the Russia-Ukraine War speedily through diplomacy.\u201d What Ukrainians have to say about a just peace settlement is nowhere considered in the ad, reflecting a colonial mindset where only the geopolitical interests of imperialist powers count. What the natives want do not matter.<\/p>\n

Instead of considering Ukrainian voices, the ad is a long narrative about, as one of the sub-headings reads, \u201cSeeing the War Through Russia\u2019s Eyes.\u201d That it surely does, for example, by calling U.S. arms to Ukraine “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.\u201d This characterization quotes without attribution the quip often voiced by Russian leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a>, Putin\u2019s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov<\/a>, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov<\/a>, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu<\/a>, and chair of the international affairs committee of the Russian parliament Leonid Slutsky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Russians, in turn, picked up this catchphrase<\/a> from their ideological fellow travelers among American conservatives<\/a> like Ron Paul<\/a> and Tucker Carlson<\/a> as well as establishment diplomats and professors like Chas Freeman<\/a> and John Mearshimer<\/a>. Others who have also taken to repeating this platitude, like Noam Chomsky<\/a>, Medea Benjamin<\/a>, and The Greyzone<\/a>, are on the fringe of the campist<\/a> Left and peace movements that oppose the U.S.-led imperialist camp of the West with support for the supposedly anti-imperialist camp of the rest, no matter how oppressive, exploitative, and indeed imperialist those governments may be.<\/p>\n

The ad\u2019s passive \u201cunderstanding\u201d for Russia\u2019s aggression is passive-aggressive pacifism. “The immediate cause of this disastrous war in Ukraine is Russia\u2019s invasion. Yet the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia\u2019s borders served to provoke Russian fears.\u201d In other words, Russia invaded but blamed NATO.<\/p>\n

The same passive-aggressive pacifism is exhibited early in the text where it calls for U.S. diplomacy to end the war before \u201cthe war\u201d goes nuclear. It does not acknowledge that it is only Russia that has been making nuclear threats (or is indeed the only nuclear power). The point is to scare the hell out of people so they will pressure the U.S. to make Ukraine concede compromises that accept Russian annexations of Ukrainian lands in order to stop a nuclear war. The ad ignores the dire consequences for nuclear non-proliferation, disarmament, and preventing nuclear war if Russia\u2019s nuclear bullying succeeds. The lessons drawn will be the same lessons that Iran and North Korea drew following the invasions of Iraq and Libya after the latter two nations abandoned their nuclear weapons programs.<\/p>\n