#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #UK #UKRAINE #WAR #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) UK, ACG: War drums beating (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]

 The war in the Ukraine has ignited a wave of war fever throughout the world.

Ukraine is portrayed in the Western media as bravely fighting a war of
self-defence against the Russian bear, in analogies with "Brave Little Belgium"
from the First World War. Alongside this is an outbreak of Russian hating here in
the UK, including the ludicrous banning of concerts by the Russian composer
Tchaikovsky and university courses on the Russian novelist Dostoevsky, the
cancelling by the Royal Opera House of a Bolshoi Ballet residency etc. It's the
same in the USA, where Russian musicians and performers are being cancelled. This
is being cheerlead by the Western liberal intellectuals, who are infected with
war enthusiasm and are giving the green light to censorship. Ordinary Russians
working in Western Europe are demonised and subjected to hate. Russia Today, the
mouthpiece for propaganda for the Putin regime, has been closed down in the UK
and throughout Western Europe.

The Labour leader Keir Starmer threatened ‘left' MPs like Diane Abbott and John
McDonnell with withdrawal of the party whip over their support for the Stop the
War Coalition (STWC), which looks like it will be next to be put on the list of
proscribed organisations for Labour Party members. These ‘left' MPS then
spinelessly capitulated and withdrew from speaking at a STWC rally. Labour Shadow
Defence spokesperson, Lord Vernon Coaker, described the STWC as ‘fifth
columnists' and ‘Putin apologists'.

Meanwhile the Tory Secretary for Education, Nadhim Zahawi, threatened action
against academics at Edinburgh, Leeds and Leicester universities whom he
described as "pro-Putinist" for daring to suggest that neither side in the war
should be believed. As a result, the Universities Minister, Michelle Donelan, is
putting pressure on the vice-Chancellors of these academics' universities. Rob
Halfon, the Tory MP and chairman of the education select committee, in a
questions session on education in the House of Commons, babbled about
"pro-Putinist propaganda at some of our leading universities". In the same
session, Tory MPs talked about teachers being "aided and abetted" by
"politically-motivated trade unions" to push a "far-left agenda". One of these,
Jonathan Gullis, said that "minority of woke warrior teachers think it is
acceptable to push extremist nonsense onto pupils such as white privilege and try
to cancel important historical figures such as Sir Winston Churchill" and that
they were aided and abetted " by some trade unions such as the National Education
Union (NEU)," going on to say that "The failed and disgraced NEU demanded the
welfare state was reformed before approving pupils going back to school". He
asked schools minister Robin Walker if he would hold unions to account to prevent
them using teachers to push a "far-left agenda". Backing him up on this, the Tory
Minister for Schools used this to reinforce the Johnson regime's new guidance
on ‘political impartiality' in schools, to suppress the opinions of teachers.

The media and MPs attacked striking London Underground workers, labelling them as
agents of Putinism. This attack began in the Daily Telegraph, in an article
written by Associate Editor, Gordon Rayner, entitled "The enemy underground:
how ‘Putin apologists' brought London to a standstill". This attack was endorsed
by Chris Bryant, a leading Labour Party member. The Daily Mail and the London
Evening Standard joined in this attack on the tube strikers. The reference to the
"enemy underground" is a clear reference to Margaret Thatcher's description of
striking miners in 1984-5 as "the enemy within". It was then used to justify
vicious assaults on the miners, and may well now be used to any who oppose fire
and rehire, attacks on pensions and conditions, and the rising cost of living, as
well as environmental protestors.

Meanwhile social media companies have suppressed posts talking about far-right
groups involved in the Ukrainian opposition to Russia.

Thus, a renewal of the Cold War and a rise of McCarthyist witchunts has been
facilitated by Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

This drive to repression and censorship is reflected in Russia, where opposition
organisations and media are facing severe repression, and where thousands of
anti-war protestors have been rounded up and imprisoned. Putin has said "The
Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and
traitors and will simply spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into
their mouths - spit them out on the pavement... I am convinced that such a
natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our
country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to respond to any challenges."
Mirroring the moves in the West against critics of the war, Putin described his
own anti-war opposition as "fifth columnists".

The War in Ukraine

The Putin regime will be bogged down in a war that it cannot win, against a
nation of 40 million. Already it has lost a significant number of leading members
of the military. Even if Putin captures Kyiv and overthrows Zelensky, he cannot
sustain a long-term occupation. He plans a neo-Tsarist expansion, merging Russia
with at least parts of the Ukraine and in alliance with his allies in Belarus and
Kazakhstan. No revolutionary can support the Putin regime and support for the
anti-war opposition in Russia should be endorsed, as indeed should desertion and
mutiny within the Russian military and actions like the cutting of railway supply
lines by Belarusian railway workers. A war of attrition, involving mounting
Russian casualties, may trigger moves by sections of the Russian ruling class and
the military to bring about regime change and depose Putin. At the most
optimistic, this could lead to a new revolution in Russia.

However, whilst opposing Putin's Russia, we cannot endorse support for Ukraine.
Some British leftists like the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign of Chris Ford, the
Alliance for Workers' Liberty, Anti-Capitalist Resistance and the Labour
Representation Committee are taking the side of Ukraine, in other words taking
sides in an inter-imperialist conflict. Some anarchists, both here and abroad,
are being drawn into the call to support "a free Ukraine".

As for STWC and their friends, whilst we should oppose McCarthyist witchhunts
against them, their failure to condemn Putin's aggression in anything more than a
lukewarm fashion is summed up in the STWC statement that "Britain should be
advancing serious diplomatic proposals to defuse the tension and seek a solution
to the crisis rather than ratcheting it up." They align with France and Germany
in the need for "a new all-inclusive security architecture in Europe, not under
the hegemony of any one state. We demand that the British government and the
Labour Party distance themselves from the policies and priorities of the USA and
develop an independent foreign policy." The STWC proved wanting in its opposition
to the Iraq War, failing to endorse mass direct action against war efforts in
Britain. It is proving wanting again and a new anti-war movement needs to come
into being that equally opposes Putin and NATO, argues for the opening of borders
not just to Ukrainians but to other refugees from imperialist wars, and calls for
mass opposition towards the drive to war, snatching the drumsticks of those
beating out a war tattoo.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2022/03/21/war-drums-beating/
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