An interview with Noam Chomsky, by C.J. Polychroniou for Truthout (o1/03/2022).
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took much of the world by surprise. It is an unprovoked and unjustified attack that will go down in history as one of the major war crimes of the 21st century, argues Noam Chomsky in the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows. Political considerations, such as those cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin, cannot be used as arguments to justify the launching of an invasion against a sovereign nation. In the face of this horrific invasion, though, the U.S. must choose urgent diplomacy over military escalation, as the latter could constitute a “death warrant for the species, with no victors,” Chomsky says.
Noam Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most important intellectuals alive. His intellectual stature has been compared to that of Galileo, Newton and Descartes, as his work has had tremendous influence on a variety of areas of scholarly and scientific inquiry, including linguistics, logic and mathematics, computer science, psychology, media studies, philosophy, politics and international affairs. He is the author of some 150 books and the recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards, including the Sydney Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), and of dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world’s most renowned universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and currently Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.
From the CrimethInc. collective (05/03/2022), an exile from Donbas and a protester in Russia tell their stories.
To help people understand what is taking place in Ukraine and Russia, we present accounts from anarchists in both countries. In the first, a displaced person from the capitol city of the “Luhansk People’s Republic,” one of the two areas of eastern Ukraine that was ruled by Russian-funded separatists until the invasion, describes his experience attempting to escape from the war zone and the conditions that prevail in Ukraine right now. In the second, a Russian protester describes the challenges that Russians are facing as they attempt to mobilize against the war under extremely repressive conditions.
For March 8, we share a rich reflection on “anarchafeminism” by Chiara Bottici, followed by a recorded performance of the same, as well as an earlier lecture on anarchism.
1. Why anarcha-feminism?
It has become something of a commonplace to argue that in order to fight the oppression of women, it is necessary to unpack the ways in which different forms of oppression intersect with one another. No single factor, be it nature or nurture, economic exploitation or cultural domination, can be said to be the single cause sufficient to explain the multifaceted sources of patriarchy and sexism. Intersectionality has consequently become the guiding principle for an increasing number of left-wing feminists, both from the global north and from the global south. As a result, there is hardly any publication in the field today that does not engage with the concept of intersectionality — whether to promote it, to criticize it, or simply to position oneself with regards to it.
Thoughts born of a protest march in solidarity with Ukraine …
“Patriotism as a feeling of exclusive love for one’s own people, and as a doctrine of the virtue of sacrificing one’s tranquillity, one’s property, and even one’s life, in defence of the weak among them from slaughter and outrage by their enemies, was the highest idea of the period when each nation considered it feasible and just, to subject to slaughter and outrage the people of other nations for its own advantage.” The words are Leo Tolstoy’s and they are perhaps difficult for many to accept in the current context of the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine, and when so many understandably and willingly seek to support and defend the Ukrainian state.
But for Tolstoy, there is no good patriotism to oppose to bad patriotism, for they are all conducive to a “definite feeling of preference for one’s own people or State above all other peoples and States, and therefore it is the wish to get for that people or State the greatest advantages and power that can be got; and these are always obtainable only at the expense of the advantages and power of other peoples or States.”
But can this still be said of the Ukrainian government’s and the Ukrainian peoples’ defence of their country? What advantage could they seek, as a nation, in defending themselves?
Our contention – and it would seem to us that this is something that we would share with all anarchists – is that in taking up arms against the Russian army, one is not, or should not – if it is possible to make moral demands in such a situation –, defend a flag, a government or a state, but the freedom of all to self-governing equality, something that recognises no state or sovereign borders. A war to perpetuate nation-state forms is, in the end, to feed future violence and wars.
To desire the well-being for one’s “own” community, for those with which one lives and creates, in such a way that it does not infringe on the well-being of others, is to desire the same for everyone. And this is not only not patriotic; it is the “reverse of patriotic”.
Patriotism is the fuel which sustains the hierarchy and oppression of government, economic rulers and religious authorities. For this reason, the ruling classes inflame patriotism, “perpetrating every kind of injustice and harshness against other nations, they provoke in them enmity towards their own people, and then in turn exploit that enmity to embitter their own people against the foreigner.”
Freedom from inter-state war, peace, will only come, for Tolstoy, with the end of governments, states. “To deliver men from the terrible evils of armaments and wars, which are always increasing and increasing, what is wanted are neither congresses nor conferences, nor treaties, nor courts of arbitration, but the destruction of those instruments of violence which are called governments, and from which humanity’s greatest evils result. To destroy governmental violence only one thing is needed: it is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and above all—is immoral.”
We share Leo Tolstoy’s essay Patriotism and Government of 1900.
A woman and a child walk as they flee from Ukraine to Hungary, after Russia launched a massive military operation against Ukraine, at a border crossing in Beregsurany, Hungary, February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
I know that this outburst, outside the framework of geopolitics, devoid of the contextualisation of historical background, economic interests, or international balances, may seem superficial and puerile, but these days I cannot rid myself of a thought that repeats itself without my even wishing it, like conceptual garlic that adds bitterness to these fearful times. How macho, how male, I feel, what an excess of machismo, I intuit, how much male chauvinism is ahead of us, I tremble.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine proceeds, anarchists throughout Russia continue to mobilize in protest, joininng thousands of other Russians. Here, we publish two statements from longtime Russian anarchist projects that offer some analysis of the situation in Russia and how the invasion of Ukraine might shift it.
Protests are scheduled in Russia for tomorrow (Sunday, February 26). We are still waiting for a report from our contacts in Ukraine, which we will publish when it arrives.
Russia itself has become an information battlefield in the course of the invasion. The Russian government has attempted to block access to Twitter so that Russians will not see what is happening in Ukraine or, for that matter, elsewhere in Russia. On the other side of the barricades, the Kremlin website was hacked. Whether the Russian people decide to support this invasion at great cost to themselves—or to oppose Putin’s agenda at great risk to themselves—may well determine what happens in Ukraine in the long run.
“Peace is a privilege reserved for those who can afford not to fight in the wars they create—in the eyes of madmen, we are just figures on a chart, we are just barriers in their path towards world domination.”
A proclamation by Russian President, Vladimir Putin, gave the green light for Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. Putin claims that Russia’s act of war against Ukraine is aimed at supporting the Russian-occupied Crimea and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Ukraine, which is flirting with NATO membership at Western instigation. On Tuesday, 22 February, Russia recognised the independence of its informal protectorates in Donbas, exacerbating existing tensions with the Euro-Atlantic axis that supports the Ukrainian regime.
Against War and Militarism: Resolution of the IWA Founding Congress(1922)
Militarism is the system of monopolistic State violence for the purpose of defence and expansion of the national theatre of exploitation (defensive war or war of aggression), for bringing fresh theatres of exploitation under control (colonial war) and for coming down hard on the rebellious popular masses (strikes, unrest, rioting).
In every instance, the object is to preserve and increase the profits of the ruling classes, to wit, the proletariat’s enemy class.
Militarism is the last and the mightiest resort at the bourgeoisie’s disposal in keeping the working class under the thumb and snuffing out its struggles for freedom.
AT THIS most critical moment it becomes imperative for every liberty-loving person to voice a fiery pro- test against the participation of this country in the European mass-murder. If the opponents of war, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would immediately join their voices into a thunderous No!, then the horror that now menaces America might yet be averted. Unfortunately it is only too true that the people in our so-called Democracy are to a large extent a dumb, suffering herd rather than thinking beings who dare to give expression to a frank, earnest opinion.
Front to front are the two enemy defenses: the barricade of the people and the military trench. The barricade shows to the sun its enormous, irregular bulk, and appears to be proud of its deformity. The military trench flaunts its geometrically plotted lines, smirking at its hunchbacked rival. The people, mutinous, are behind the barricade; the soldiers are found behind the trench.
Noam Chomsky: US Military Escalation Against Russia Would Have No Victors
An interview with Noam Chomsky, by C.J. Polychroniou for Truthout (o1/03/2022).
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took much of the world by surprise. It is an unprovoked and unjustified attack that will go down in history as one of the major war crimes of the 21st century, argues Noam Chomsky in the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows. Political considerations, such as those cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin, cannot be used as arguments to justify the launching of an invasion against a sovereign nation. In the face of this horrific invasion, though, the U.S. must choose urgent diplomacy over military escalation, as the latter could constitute a “death warrant for the species, with no victors,” Chomsky says.
Noam Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most important intellectuals alive. His intellectual stature has been compared to that of Galileo, Newton and Descartes, as his work has had tremendous influence on a variety of areas of scholarly and scientific inquiry, including linguistics, logic and mathematics, computer science, psychology, media studies, philosophy, politics and international affairs. He is the author of some 150 books and the recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards, including the Sydney Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), and of dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world’s most renowned universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and currently Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.
Continue reading →