A Letter to the Western Left from Kyiv

A Letter to the Western Left from Kyiv(opendemocracy.net)

20 points by walden789 4 years ago | 8 comments

avs733 4 years ago |

I’ve seen this narrative start to pop up a lot attacking “the left” about the Ukraine situation.

The odd part is I have yet to say anyone saying the things that they are told they should stop saying.

This all seems like a really aggressive attempt to preemptively narrow one side of the window of acceptable discourse.

walden789 4 years ago | |

It has nothing to do with a general attack on "the left". Bilous himself is a leftist. The point is criticizing a specific part of the western left which understands itself as anti-imperalist but by fully concentrating on the west and NATO totally lost sight of quite real non-western imperalism which manifests itself in Ukraine right now.

avs733 4 years ago | | |

>The point is criticizing a specific part of the western left

My point wasn't about who said it or what they are referring to...I'm clear on that.

My point was I keep seeing critiques of a position I do not see actually existing in discourse. It seems like, since this started, there has been a concerted effort to attack a strawman.

'Focus' is such a strange thing to critique and just rings hollow. I really honestly haven't experienced anyone who talks about just western imperialism...maybe I'm blind and naive here but the fact that this is suddenly a critique is really sketchy to me.

fmajid 4 years ago | | |

Reminds me of the late socialist former president of France François Mitterrand: "The anti-nuclear protesters are in the West, and the missiles in the East".

throwaway4good 4 years ago |

Had it no been for the strategic pivot to Asia containment policy of China, that have created a de facto China Russia alliance, then Russia likely would have assessed the cost of invading Ukraine too high.

iso1210 4 years ago |

In the UK the only people backing Russia publiclly were obviously Nigel 'Oswald' Farage, but also Corbyn and co.

Corbyn (who led the main opposition party from 2015-2019, nearly becoming PM in 2017, and then falling to a massive wipeout in 2019) has already been fired from Labour, but his "gang" were all there queueing up to worship Putin until they were bluntly told they'd be sacked.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-labour...

The Stop The War coalition was formed to stop the west attacking Afghanistan and reached its height with Iraq, a reasonable view point.

Turns out that it's not Putin's fault Russia invaded, it's all America's fault. Probably Tony Blair too for some reason.

ykevinator2 4 years ago |

I don't follow, left good or left bad?

dekhn 4 years ago | |

no, blogpost bad.