Belarus: Imperialists Run the Same Tired Old Script...

Jacobin has an interview with 2 left activists in Belarus. If they are telling the truth, the situation is considerably more complicated than the above posts would indicate. A small sampling of the discussion:

Jacobin wrote:

I don’t see similarities between these protests in Belarus and previous protests in Eastern Europe. Some try to find similarities with Euromaidan in Kiev in 2014, but this is a purely ideological tool to justify Lukashenko and show that no alternative is possible. In contrast to Euromaidan, Belarusian protests have no big far-right groups that lead and use violence. We have a couple of ultras gangs, but after Euromaidan, most of them were repressed by the police. In Belarus, there’s no language and ideological conflict, as in Ukraine. Finally, in contrast to Euromaidan, the Belarusian protests have no leader: traditional opposition figures are in jail, and the presidential candidate Sviatlana Tikhanovskaya is in Lithuania. I am absolutely sure it can’t lead to war like in Donbass: there’s no ideological conflict between West and East, as in Ukraine in 2014.

...

The party of the Left “A Just World” split from the Communist Party in 1996 after Lukashenko’s first referendum shifted the balance of power toward the president. Today, it stands against both Lukashenko and against Western-oriented opposition. The Belarusian Green Party, founded in 1994 and oriented against nuclear energy, developed a left and anti-authoritarian agenda. It is quite strong and, in contrast to A Just World, is less oriented on Marxist-Leninist classics. Also, we’ve got three social-democratic parties, some of whose members do have strong social orientations, but most are part of the Western-oriented oppositional establishment.

Belarus used to have a big and strong anarchist movement, maybe the strongest in post-Soviet space, connected to a punk-hardcore scene. Some of them infiltrated the Green Party; some ended up in jail. It is hard to say anything about anarchists’ activity now, because they are still the main target of repression. Some anarchist groups don’t call themselves “left-wing,” for they wrongly associate it with pro-Soviet “tankies”; some find their support from the Western-oriented nationalist opposition.

Finally, a Russian fashion of “Left YouTube” and Marxist kruzhki (small self-education organizations) reached Belarus in recent years. Unfortunately, much of their content is not so much about their own agenda but a fierce criticism of the Western-oriented opposition. They charm their viewers with Soviet nostalgia or Soviet ressentiment more than propose a positive agenda for building a wide democratic social movement. This Left YouTube and kruzhki are not bad in themselves, but they can’t be seen as the only strategy for the Left, such as they often propose.

...

VA

What is the attitude of these various groups to this political conjuncture and the protests?

KK

Part of the Left is ready to directly support the liberal protest, mostly at the level of grassroots activist involvement and statements. Another part believes that the people have the right to protest, that the police violence is unacceptable and outrageous, and that the elections were rigged, but cannot take the side of the liberal opposition. For its goals are to continue the privatization of enterprises, to curtail free medicine, and introduce even more labor flexibility than we have now.

Recently, a small grassroots initiative has emerged with a purpose of bringing economic and social demands to the workers’ protest agenda, since at the moment, all workers’ protests are centered around broad political demands: Lukashenko’s resignation, the release of political prisoners, lawsuits against the security forces, fair elections.

NDPP wrote:

Oh good. So liberals can support a NATO-backed colour revolution on Russia's borders and feel good about it.

There wasn't even time for you to read the whole interview before you posted this. What a narrow-minded person you are. If a situation doesn't fit into 3 or 4 templates you use to understand the world, you ignore the facts, and force it to fit into one. Intellectual dishonesty personified.

The strongman president of Belarus sent a fighter jet to intercept a European airliner traveling through the country’s airspace on Sunday and ordered the plane to land in the capital, Minsk, where a prominent opposition journalist aboard was then seized, provoking international outrage.

. . . .

The International Civil Aviation Organization, an agency of the United Nations, said it was “strongly concerned” about the incident. The agency said that the “apparent forced landing” of the flight may have violated the Chicago Convention, the 1944 accord that established the core principles of international aviation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/world/europe/ryanair-belarus.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

This is ridiculous. All flights to Belarus should be stopped until the man is released. End of story. 

Amazing how everyone opposing a Slavic strongman is labeled a Nazi.

Belarus said on Monday that a false bomb threat that prompted a passenger plane to be diverted to Minsk where authorities arrested a journalist on board, was written in the name of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

. . . .

Hamas spokesman Barhoum said the group "has nothing to do with that completely."

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/belarus-points-hamas-bomb-threat-plane-diversion-hamas-rejects-claim-2021-05-24/

So was dragging the guy off the plane and arresting him all part of the western plot?

Pondering wrote:

A passenger plane was diverted and forced to land in a country that was not on its schedule. Every single person on that plane was kidnapped. They were forced out of the air by a military escort. That most have been released doesn't change what happened. If the man they took off that plane had murdered a 100 people it still wouldn't be justified. 

Are those going to be the new rules now? Countries can force planes to land if they want someone on it? How can anyone here be okay with that?

I see you agree with the Chinese news agency on this one as do I. This behaviour must be condemned. I for one think it is reprehensible but not substantively different than us ceasing Meng Wanzhou when she was changing planes during a stop over in Vancouver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr-3xyiT0ks

Look, NDPP, everybody else here is as anti-imperialist as you are.  But how, in any universe, is it "anti-imperialist" to support nationalist reactionaries like Lukashenko, Putin, Assad and the Chinese regime that is for all practical purposes capitalist?

How does going that route do anything more to defeat imperialism than supporting Stalin or Mao did?

We're supposed to be for human liberation, not "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

My anti-imperialism is bigger than your anti-imperialism. ;^)

Ken Burch wrote:

Look, NDPP, everybody else here is as anti-imperialist as you are.  But how, in any universe, is it "anti-imperialist" to support nationalist reactionaries like Lukashenko, Putin, Assad and the Chinese regime that is for all practical purposes capitalist?

How does going that route do anything more to defeat imperialism than supporting Stalin or Mao did?

We're supposed to be for human liberation, not "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

 

Don't waste your time.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Look, NDPP, everybody else here is as anti-imperialist as you are.  But how, in any universe, is it "anti-imperialist" to support nationalist reactionaries like Lukashenko, Putin, Assad and the Chinese regime that is for all practical purposes capitalist?

It is white imperialism for you to think that your view of the leaders of other countries has any fucking relevance. The Chinese "regime" is supported by the vast majority of its population and in international affairs is pushing the radical idea of using the UN and other international treaties to prevent the rogue nations in NATO from interfering in the affairs of other countries. So are you going to save them from the government they support? How by carpet bombing Xinjiang like we did in Libya? After all it seems that some of those oppressed Uyghurs were under threat from Qaddafi in Libya before being unleashed on the citizens of Syria.

It is imperialist to think that the NED will lead the way to a better life for the common person any where in the world. People overthrow their governments or reform them. Do gooder imperialists in this century have wrecked death and destruction everywhere they have purported to save people from their evil leaders. Tell me how much better the people of Libya are than under the eveil Qaddafi or how Syria is s0 much better with most of its major cities reduced to rubble. The millions of dead and displaced people love us for our unfailing support for democracy. 

They would rather be dead than red is a very dangerous imperialist trope that kills.

I believe in the power of the people not the NED.

First of all...to hell with the NED.  I have no idea what I've ever posted here that could possibly be equated with support for their essentially fascist agenda.

I don't base my views on any of those countries on what the NED says- and I've opposed the NED every since they got started by doing vicious anti-Sandinista propaganda in the Eighties.

The views I hold- though I didn't invent any of them, by any stretch- come out of a long anti-authoritarian Left tradition that goes back to Rosa Luxemburg's critiques of Leninism, the Krondstadt rising of 1921, the East Berlin uprising of 1953, the Hungarian Revolution of '56, the grassroots independent Left that was emerging in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring, the students of France in May '68, the student and worker activists for democracy and genuine socialism who were martyred in Beijing in 1989, and the independent Left in Russia exemplified by people like Boris Kagarlitsky- and the personal courage of the Pussy Riot collective- and those creating an alternative to religious extremism, social oppression and violence in Rojava, as well as those who push for the establishment of local and regional assemblies and "participatory budgets" on the Sao Paulo model.

I don't support anything remotely like carpet bombing Xinjiang and I don't think I supported the invasion of Libya.  

All I was saying is that history proves that it takes the Left to bad places to ally itself with regimes just because they identify as "anti-American".  

You all know I don't exactly have in depth knowledge of foreign affairs. I haven't understood the defence of China but now I have come to understand, I think, that the point isn't to defend China but rather to say we are in no position to condemn them nor to assume they don't have the support of their people. 

I do think I have been gullible in reading the stories of students being used for propaganda and swallowing them whole, without any question. I know the media is full of propaganda and lies by omission.

Canada's role in the Ukrainian coup was deeper than I realized. I never knew we used our embassy grounds as a staging area for fascist brown shirts. Makes me proud to be Canadian. Libya and the Ukraine are examples of how the people of countries with evil leaders benefit from NATO expertise and aid. Belarus people will be so much better off under fascists like this freedom fighting "journalist."

The Canadian embassy in Ukraine helped the coup forces, as “opposition protesters [Right Sector included] were camped in the Canadian Embassy for a week during the February 2014 rebellion against Yanukovych. ‘Canada’s embassy in Kyiv was used as a haven for several days by anti-government protesters during the uprising that toppled the regime of former president Viktor Yanukovych,’ a Canadian Press story noted.

In June 2014, Ukraine formally integrated extremist far-right militias including the Aidar, Dnipro, Donbass, and Azov battalions which played a crucial role in the Maidan coup, into the National Guard, which is led by Ministry of Internal Affairs.

University of Ottawa Professor Ivan Katchanovski brought Ukrainian media reports to light which reveal that Protasevich served in the press-service of the neo-Nazi-led Azov battalion during the war in Donbass. Verified photos show Protasevich appearing in Azov battalion’s official publication “Black Sun” in 2015. The Ukrainian initiated war in Donbass begun in April 2014, after Donbass citizens voted en masse to join Russia post-Maidan coup, until a ceasefire was agreed in September 2014.

https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/recently-detained-belarussian-ne...

This means that Protasevich effectively acted as an agent of a ministry of the Ukrainian government during his time serving with the Azov Battalion.

And no, I don't think the countries I listed are "worse" than the Western imperialist states- I just don't personally see anything legitimate about them.  It's comparable to the fact that I could never have defended what Brezhnev did to Czechoslovakia in August of '68 on "anti-imperialist" grounds.

NDPP wrote:

I think that it behooves every American including the ones here to focus their attention on an urgent matter the vast majority of humanity well knows to be an absolute and incontrovertible fact. It is American leadership that represents the greatest threat to global progress and world peace not the Russian or Chinese ones they seek to dominate or destroy.

And I don't disagree- I wasn't saying the Russian or Chinese governments were a greater global threat than the U.S., and I've never even believe anything remotely close to that.

My point is that nothing globally progressive or transformative can come of arguing that the governments I mentioned should be considered "anti-imperialist" and given the active support OF the Left.   

It's not as though any good can come of going back to Cold War or "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thinking.  And it's not as though the only possibilities are standing with the State Department or standing with those governments.    

We need to oppose Western efforts to meddle in Russia and China, and I always have opposed those-and having done that, we need to leave it at that.

No good comes of any of us becoming this year's "tankies".

Ken Burch wrote:

My point is that nothing globally progressive or transformative can come of arguing that the governments I mentioned should be considered "anti-imperialist" and given the active support OF the Left.  

I disagree completely with this premise. China and Syria are anti-imperialist. The proof in the pudding is that they are under attack by the empire. Russia is a different animal given it has actually had empires under various forms of government so I would agree that they cannot by definition be anti-imperialists.

I support the government of China's poverty eradication efforts and their pivot to taking the environment seriously. I don't give a flying fuck if they  don't get to endlessly debate who to vote for to go to a parliament to talk and talk and talk because none of them are managers only talking heads with TV friendly smiles. Where we disagree fundamentally is I look at the Chinese system and see them actively reacting to the desires of their people because it polls them all the time. If you are smart and want to go into government to make policy then you join the CPC or one of the other small parties. A Chinese person doesn't go into politics to get rich because as you note China is a mixed economy and the big money is being made by the private sector. There is nothing inherently totalitarian about that idea of politics despite it not being a western liberal democracy. The form is not as important as the performance. In Canada we are polarized in the face of climate change because of our political system. Our citizenship are so left out of the process we have governments both federal and provincial subsidizing oil and gas when the vast majority of Canadians want serious action. I tried protesting and that cost me $500 and it didn't stop TMX. If I want to protest again the sentence is now up to three weeks. That is the rule of law as enforced by our par-military RCMP.

Syria scheduled elections under a constitution the people approved and that is when NATO ramped up the "colour revolution" with its car bombings into a full blown civil war. Many on the ground analysts believed Assad would have won the election but we will never know because the US determined he was not fit to rule. They decided that with the best freedom and democracy intentions on behalf of the Syrian people of course.

Ken Burch wrote:

My point is that nothing globally progressive or transformative can come of arguing that the governments I mentioned should be considered "anti-imperialist" and given the active support OF the Left.   

The question, I suppose, is what progressive or transformative comes of taking the position that the governments the United States hates are just as evil as it says, and should be condemned, but otherwise left alone.

The methods of neutralizing opposition to war in the 21st century are more sophisticated than they used to be, but they do tend to repeat over and over, so they can be easily identified:

1. Pick a designated enemy.

2. Encourage Canadians/Americans to oppose its government. Atrocity propaganda helps here. All the better if the atrocity's something that actually happened, but just making shit up works pretty well, too. In general, to successfully manufacture consent for war, citizens need to think of either the general population of a country or one specific minority group as under the heel of a tyrannical boot, facing starvation and/or slaughter, and ready to greet the invading force as liberators.

3. Slice and dice the opposition. This is the stage we're currently in. The group that eagerly says "I hate that country's government and we need to kill as many of them as necessary to change it!" is pretty small, so the opposition needs to be divided. First, split off the ones who are willing to say there might be non-evil things about the enemy in question. The articulate ones usually get described as a fifth column, rationalizing atrocities because they fully support them and would love to see the enemy carry them out in their own country, as well. Soft supporters are invariably described as useful idiots duped by the regime and betraying its innocent victims. The important thing is to draw hard dividing lines between those people and the group who will agree that the enemy is evil, but aren't quite willing to agree to slaughter them yet. The combination of fearmongering and mockery (see "tankie" having been repurposed to describe those against sending tanks somewhere) is usually pretty effective.

4. Convince the soft supporters of regime change that all warmongering is is disagreement over tactics. Issue statements of condemnation, push for denunciations by international bodies, and finally, if you can't gin up support for outright invasion, pick a proxy or ten, describe them as "moderate pro-democracy rebels", and arm them. Portray every action taken against these groups as further proof the enemy needs to go. Once everyone agrees the enemy's evil, then not wanting to invade them is just support by another name, right? Think of all the innocent people being bombed. We need to liberate them by bombing them. Just a little bombing, at first. Just a no-fly zone. Just a surgical strike on the leadership. Just a safe zone for the good guys. Move the window to the point where only true believers in tyranny would dare to oppose invasion at all.

5. Invade. Kill the designated enemy leadership. Maybe install a puppet regime, but if it's not strategic enough, just ceasing to give a shit (à la Libya) is also an acceptable outcome.

6. Count on nobody remembering any of the outcome by the time a new designated enemy needs to be picked. Look at all the evil those foolish anti-imperialists are supporting! Is there ANY tyrant they won't back?

The amazing thing is that after all the times it's led to utter disaster, people keep falling for, as the thread title puts it, the "same tired old script". Most people are too afraid of the mockery, the accusations of fifth-columnism, and of being lumped in as foolish puppets of tyrants to come out and say "What are you selling, government? Are you saying we should go to war? How many people need to die on our side and theirs in order to achieve your strategic endgame?" A government that said "We should kill half a million Syrians to put ISIS in power" wouldn't find much support. Neither would one that said "We should have a nuclear war with China and kill as many as necessary to install an Islamist government in Xinjiang", or "We should support a civil war in Belarus and a possible nuclear war with Russia in order to get Belarus into NATO." You have to read between the lines for those. At this stage, saying NATO might want what it obviously wants, or that a forthcoming war will be catastrophic, is just tankie talk.