A Warmongering Cuckoo in Anarchists’ Nests

Source: https://laffranchi.info/guerres/
Translation: CEDAS-ASCED

Gaza being crushed by bombing, starvation, and sniper fire has plunged all of us into a brutal pessimism that reveals to us that fascism is indeed alive and well. How can Israel’s war in Gaza and the West Bank be described as anything other than “ethnic cleansing”, genocide?

Years ago, we could believe that humanity – despite its capitalist brutality and destructive productivism – could maybe be able to listen to reason. From the Arab Springs to the climate struggles, from the Iranian women’s revolts to the Afghan women’s resistance… we held onto glimmers of hope.

We have just commemorated the two-year anniversary of the Russian attack on Ukraine. This provides an opportunity for the media and governments to put the issue back on their agenda. In light of a potential withdrawal of American support for Kiev, as military aid is now prioritized for Israel (and in the event of D. Trump reelection), the goal is to prepare European opinions to support the Ukrainian war effort.

According to the European warmongers – led by Ursula Von der Leyen – war on European Union territory is portrayed as probable in the years to come. There is a “doxa” that suggests a ceasefire and negotiations without Ukraine regaining its borders before February 2022, or even March 2014 (Russia’s annexation of Crimea), would be a reward to the aggressor. Putin, presented as a new Hitler, would take advantage to rebuild his forces and launch new attacks against Poland, Romania, the Baltic countries… all the way to Berlin or Paris! These European “hawks” thus believe they must take the lead with massive rearmament of member countries (weapons mainly purchased from the United States, needless to say).

We heard Emmanuel Macron mention the deployment of ground troops to participate in the defense of Ukraine. For the French president, everything is conceivable to prevent a victory for Russia, including becoming a co-belligerent. Strangely enough, this statement coincided with a conference titled “Internationalism by Example” organized by a Ukraine Committee in Lausanne on February 29th 2024, to honor internationalists who died in combat after joining the Ukrainian army. According to one of them, they were inspired by “anarchist, anti-fascist, and democratic socialist political traditions” and fought “not only for the freedom of the Ukrainian people, but for the Freedom of the entire region and beyond”: a variant of the “doxa” mentioned above. So here is a fringe of the left, the far-left, “anarchists” involved in the struggle for the defense of “democracy,” the “free world,” against Russian fascism… trailing behind Macron, the EU, NATO!

If we follow this “left-libertarian-Westernist” conception, we would have to choose between democracy and totalitarianism, between the West and the Axis of Evil. We are being replayed the “Cold War” scenario, but this time it’s a hot one, and we’re urged to choose our side.

We certainly know that, in the history of the libertarian movement, there was the “Manifesto of the Sixteen” (1916) where during the First World War, anarchists (Kropotkin, Jean Grave…) sided with the Allies because they considered the German aggression “a threat – carried out – not only against our hopes for emancipation, but against whole human evolution.” A year earlier, a much larger number of anarchists, including Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Luigi Bertoni, F. Domela Nieuwenhuis, and Errico Malatesta, faithful to their anti-militarist principles, had, in a joint declaration, denounced the war whose cause lies “in the existence of the State which is the political form of privilege…” Later, Malatesta was to add that the “sixteen” had turned into “government anarchists”.

This division, which is more than a century old, is still relevant today. There are anarchists – including us – who do not believe in a progressive evolution of capitalism; who see the increasingly authoritarian developments of so-called democratic systems… and on the other side, those who dream of a new compromise between capital and labor that would allow – at least for some – fulfillment of their aspirations within the framework of this system.

This divide was obvious last summer at the International Anti-Authoritarian Meetings in Saint-Imier during a debate about the Ukrainian war. The activists from the Italian Anarchist Federation (FAI) denounced the space given in “support for the war policies of States,” highlighting the fact that a workshop titled “Anarchists at War” was held in the main hall on Saturday, at the most favorable time, on the busiest day. On this occasion, according to the members of the FAI, critical and anti-militarist interventions were censored… FAI members should know that it is notably within their International of Anarchist Federations (IFA), through the Libertarian Federation of the Mountains (Swiss Jura) integrated into the Francophone Anarchist Federation, that we find supporters of the enlistment of “anarchist” volunteers in the ranks of the Ukrainian army. The cuckoo is in their nest!

On the stand of the Libertarian Federation of the Mountains in Saint-Imier, we saw a mass of brochures titled “Anarchists on the front lines against Russia’s war” where “internationalist anarchists fallen in Ukraine” are honored.¹ In the introduction of this publication, we learn that, in Ukraine, “anarchists are working to build an anti-authoritarian military unit and develop a path of resistance far from nationalism.” Who can believe such nonsense? While we witness a war of attrition, the front has become a veritable “meat grinder” that sacrifices hundreds of thousands of proletarians on both sides. Those who imagine a reality resembling that of the early months of the Spanish Civil War,² and decide to engage, would find themselves thrown into the heart of a high-intensity industrial conflagration in which no autonomy is possible. In this regard, one cannot compare resisters who commit sabotage or attacks, during the Second World War for example, to regimented soldiers.

The possibility of organizing independent military units outside of the State in Ukraine is a pipe dream at best and, at worst, a lie, used by political groups to sell their wares to a naive audience. Symmetrical warfare (from stronghold to stronghold) leaves little room for an armed organization of the exploited to consolidate in an area outside of state control. The nature of the current war in Ukraine has deprived the working populations of any possibility of independent military initiative from the outset. This does not mean that initiatives of resistance and mutual aid cannot be carried out clandestinely.

Of course, we do not deny that Russia is the aggressor, that its army has committed atrocious crimes, and that its regime is particularly repressive against opposition movements. Tens of thousands of people are sentenced for political offenses (it is said that there have been 116,000 convictions in the last six years, an unverifiable figure). A large number of conscripts have left the country to escape mobilization, many refuse to fight and desert the battlefield… But on the Ukrainian side, the situation is not rosy either regarding people’s rights. With martial law, political parties have been banned, and labor rights have been degraded by new legislation adopted by parliament in 2022.

In Ukraine, there are consistent anarchists who are opposed to the war; who resist by helping each other; by organizing for the defense of working conditions; by trying to help deserters, etc. Deserters are becoming more numerous: more than 25,000 are said to have managed to leave Ukraine, and almost as many have been caught trying to cross the border; last autumn, the Ukrainian national police already recorded some 8,000 criminal proceedings opened against draft dodgers… As expressed in their own way by the Karkhiv Assembly collective, “Ukrainian workers will have to become anarchists and truly live as such, not just complain about the authorities in their kitchens. Not only to avoid official employment (…) but also to strive to break all ties with the State and live clandestinely, including by stopping the use of medical care, selling their car, and resetting their bank card programmed to be blocked in case of failure to appear for a summons.”³

Let’s go back to the Lausanne conference, and the metaphor of the cuckoo. The only speaker whose identity appears is a politician: Stefanie Prezioso, a member of the Union Populaire, a new party composed in part of former Trotskyists. This is a far cry from the Zimmerwald Conference (1915), where Lenin denounced as a betrayal the nationalist capitulation of the leaders of the Second International (socialist), or the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (negotiated by Trotsky in 1918) where the young Bolshevik power agreed to lose 800,000 km2 of territory to obtain peace. Now, these so-called “internationalists” encourage young people to join a bloodbath, highlighting “anarchist” martyrs, what a turnaround!

There are two possibilities: either Putin is an irrational madman, and bringing him to his knees would directly lead to the Third World War and the annihilation of humanity; or the war he has unleashed can, at least in part, be explained by perceived threats also felt by a portion of the Russian population. In any case, the only possible way out is negotiation, a ceasefire… This might have been successful at the end of March – beginning of April 2022, during the talks in Istanbul, if Boris Johnson had not convinced President Zelensky of the unwavering support of the West during a trip to Kiev on April 9th. With the recent failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, the inevitable compromise risks coming under less favorable conditions.

The reasons that led Russia to attack Ukraine were outlined by Carlos Taibo in a text published on Swiss anarchist blog laffranchi.info. He recalls that the promises made to Gorbachev, then to Yeltsin regarding security were not kept; that NATO has incorporated countries that were part of the USSR or the Warsaw Pact, dangerously approaching the Russian border; that Russia’s docility, which supported the US military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and did not react to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was rewarded only with the arrogance of the West…⁴

Should we remind those who will label us as “Putinists” or “appeasers” that explaining a context does not imply approving an action? When it comes to Israel’s attack by Hamas, our “leftists” don’t hesitate to point out that this Islamist organization is also the result of policies pursued by the Israeli state for decades, and that its crimes cannot justify the massacre of the Gazan population… The West’s support for Israel is rightfully condemned. However, when it comes to Ukraine, should we align ourselves with the powers in place? We believe that Putin is also a “creature” and that the war waged against him by Western powers through Ukraine is not lost for everyone.

Among the winners are the United States, which has managed to drastically reduce Europe’s supply of Russian gas and oil, shipping by boat their more expensive liquefied gas to the Old Continent… Not to mention the sales of arms and other military equipment already mentioned. From a geostrategic perspective, the long-term weakening of Russia primarily benefits the United States. China can also benefit, strengthening its ties with the increasingly hostile Global South towards European countries. For the latter, the longer the war lasts in Ukraine, the higher the bill will be. This bill will be paid by workers and the poor, not the capitalists, for whom the “creative destruction” of wars is beneficial for business. To contain discontent, increasingly repressive regimes are being put in place, as observed with the Macron government, among others. Between Putin-style dictatorships and so-called democracies, there is no difference in nature, but differences in degrees of violence against the exploited. This violence also varies depending on whom it targets and the power dynamics that can be opposed to it.

With nationalism and religious fundamentalism, “capitalism carries war within it like a cloud carries a storm” (Jaurès). This holds true for Ukraine, for Palestine, but also for forgotten wars like the one in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has been ongoing since 2004 and is resurging. Here too, capitalist interests play a decisive role: the soils of the DRC (especially in Kivu) contain between 60 and 80% of the reserves of coltan, a strategic metal…

Unlike those who rely on war to advance human rights, our anti-militarism, our rejection of war, is not variable. Do not count on us to encourage military engagement in the service of a State.