I hope this is not confusing. I keep getting push back about the support for the Ukrainians and sanctions from a group that Malcolm Nance calls the “anti-war left.” I have tried to list some of the arguments this group uses for basically taking a hands-off stance about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Similar arguments have been made by Sam Seder (Majority Report), Chris Hedges, Michael Sheer (only much worse), Oliver Stone (Note: If you want to hear the true insanity of this position, listen to the interview Sheer did with Stone) and others.

Part of the Russian disinformation about Ukraine is that it needs “denazification.” People who have adopted this line or something a little less radical, argue that dispensing guns to people will only result in arming fascist groups operating in the country. The Azov group mentioned is a nationalist neo-fascist group, but I don’t think it is part of any Ukrainian civil defense. As for distributing guns, I don’t see what alternative the Ukrainian government had. I am including this information just to make people aware that it is out there.

ANTI-WAR LEFT: The Arguments

Nothing on the MSM is true.  Not one word.

No one should even be watching the coverage on MSM.

Establishing a no-fly zone would start WWIII. 

NATO is an aggressive alliance that threatens Russia.

The West promised Russia that NATO would never expand beyond a unified Germany.

The U.S. military messes up everything it does and the brunt of the messing up falls on the country they are in.

No wars are justified.  They are all imperialist expansion.

If you support any war you are a “war-hawk.”

By implication: The Ukrainian people can and should be sacrificed because of all of the above arguments.

Any arms sent to Ukraine will wind up in the hands of fascist groups.

Notes from: In Defense of Marxism (3/2/22)

NATO’s “expansion to Russia’s borders and stubborn refusal to negotiate” created this problem.  In Defense of Marxism.

Sanctions will hurt ordinary people.

Sanctions will act by “further destabilizing the world economy and compounding the crisis of capitalism.”

“No amount of jingoism from Western imperialism…will prevent the death and destruction of war.”

Our main enemy is at home, “…NATO, and our own ruling class.”

“…we stand opposed to the root cause of war and imperialism – capitalism itself. As long as this decrepit system stumbles on, bloodshed and slaughter will always be a sad fact of life.”

TWITTER:

• Twitter: Joe Biden is the exact right person for the job.  Me: Please.  Twitter: I’d rather have Biden than Trump.  Me: And your point is…I would rather have my cat than Trump.
• Zelensky is tweeting that he is waiting for “positive signals” about Ukraine’s membership of the EU.
• A pro-Ukrainian group has projected a video onto a building in London criticizing the UK for not sanctioning Putin’s inner circle.
• Julia Davis, Daily Beast, is tweeting that Russian state TV is showing a panel of people reassuring the Russian people that Russia can withstand the sanctions and there won’t be any animosity between Ukrainians and Russians.  As soon as Russia “wins,” they are saying, world leaders will line up to meet Putin.  (Note: As somebody said yesterday, if Putin wins, God help us all.)
• Correspondent Francesca Ebel tweets that friends of hers in Russia are leaving the country.  Their ATM cards won’t work. Rumors are that the borders will soon be closed.
• A person who identifies as being from Canada is posting videos.  One of them is supposedly of a US citizen living in Kyiv, condemning Zelensky and his government for distributing weapons to “criminals.”  He is saying that the “AZOV Regiment” a mercenary neo-fascist group is part of the National Guard of Ukraine and is an “officially sanctioned government approved part of the Zelensky “terror regime.”  He then goes on to claim that a video shows “criminals” lynching people in the streets.  I watched the video and there are men kicking and otherwise abusing men laying on the ground and another man tied to a tree, but there is no lynching in the video.  The man asks for people to “please retweet!!!”