The Anderson Files: U.S. Left’s confusion and division over Ukraine

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March 31, 2022

Volume XXIX, Number 30

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U.S. left’s confusion and division over Ukraine

by Dave Anderson

When Russia invaded Ukraine, a spontaneous non-violent, anti-war rebellion broke out in the Eastern country. Putin is now crushing any dissent with North Korean-like repression. It is striking that so many of the Russians who protested told foreign reporters how deeply ashamed they were of their country. A popular anti-war Russian rapper said he was inspired by the protests of Americans against their country’s war on Vietnam in the 1960s.

Noam Chomsky has argued that the rst responsibility of U.S. citizens is to criticize our own government’s dirty deeds. In this spirit, we carried signs saying “Not in Our Name” at protests against U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, Iraq, Chile and Central America. When Biden calls Putin a “war criminal,” we point out that George W. Bush should also have been sent to the Hague. is goes against a certain messianic nationalism. It’s common for most politicians to say that America has a unique mission to transform the world. is exceptionalism can breed a dangerous arrogance.

It can also breed an inverted exceptionalism by a part of the left that assumes that the U.S. is always a bad actor on the world stage.

As the invasion of Ukraine began, Taras Bilous penned “A Letter to the Western Left from Kyiv” for openDemocracy, a U.K.-based media organization. He is a Ukrainian historian and democratic socialist activist.

He criticized leftists who curiously blamed NATO for the Russian invasion. He said, “I am not a fan of NATO... I know that NATO’s eastward expansion undermined e orts directed at nuclear disarmament and forming a system of joint security. NATO tried to marginalize the role of the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooper-