And here we are. This is one outcome of arguing that one imperialism is less bad than another, that some people are oppressed while others either don’t exist (,Putin’s original playbook) or don’t really matter. Palestinians good, Ukrainians, Kurds? Not so much.
Clare Daly (ex MEP; a twice defeated Irish election candidate in 2024) was on the RTÉ 1 TV “Upfront with Katie Hannon” programme on February 17 2025, supporting the Trump-Putin stab in the back of Ukraine. She is like the peace activists who backed the Hitler-Chamberlain 1938 agreement selling out Czechoslovakia. A year later this “peace in our time” deal, promoted by a British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously waving a piece of paper, paved the way for World War 2 in Europe and Nazi occupation of France, Holland, Belgium, Poland plus many more.
We also saw the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939, followed in 1941 by – guess what? – a Nazi invasion of Stalin’s Russia.
Let us recall the various Clare Dalys, spiritual daughters of Stalin – one of whom claimed in 2022 that predictions Putin intended to invade Russia were “insane”.
Pro-Ukraine anti-war activists got it right, for example Donnacha Ó Beacháin :
3 years ago today I was in a TV studio expressing scepticism about Putin’s claim he was withdrawing troops from Ukraine’s borders On the same program Russia’s ambassador said anybody who suggested Russia would invade Ukraine was “insane”. Russia launched its full-scale invasion the very next week
Here is an account of the warnings Stalin ignored prior to the Hitler invasion in 1941.
Unlike the Germans, who saw the Non-Aggression Pact as necessary but temporary, Stalin had illusions that it might be lasting. Owen Matthews quotes from a 1966 interview with Marshal Zhukov, conducted by Lev Bezymensky, a Soviet historian and war veteran. In January 1941, Zhukov and others had warned Stalin of ominous German troop movements. Stalin wrote to Hitler, asking politely whether these reports were true. Hitler replied that they were, but he swore ‘on my honour as a head of state that my troops are deployed … for other purposes. The territories of Western and Central Germany are subject to heavy English bombing and are easily observed from the air by the English. Therefore I found it necessary to move large contingents of troops to the east where they can secretly reorganise and rearm.’ Stalin believed him.
Source : Winston Churchill : His Times, His Crimes, Tariq Ali, Verso Books,
The 2025 Trump-Putin partition policy is a spiritual daughter of the 1922 Treaty which peace politicians used to stab Northern Nationalists in the back by implementing the partition of Ireland. This gave us, in the prophetic words of James Connolly, “A Carnival of Reaction” – 2 sectarian counter-revolutionary states on one small island.
Like James Connolly, Grace Plunkett (widow of 1916 Easter Rising martyr Joseph Plunkett) understood that partition, pretending to be peace, meant a sham freedom for Ireland.
So, today, it should be obvious to all on the left : oppose a peace and partition plan promoted by 2 violent untrustworthy sociopaths.
Ask the people of Canada, of Mexico, of Greenland. Ask the people of Ukraine, of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, of Poland , of Finland.
A dictatorship hosting another dictatorship to negotiate with an aspiring dictatorship about the future of a democracy that’s not represented.
Two superpowers opening discussions on the future of a country which one of them is still invading, without that country
Are the international pro-solidarity left organising solidarity with Ukraine? Answer Yes
A physical and online conference in support of the Ukrainian people’s national and social rights
No to partition! Russian troops out!
This important conference will address the grave threat posed by the incoming Trump administration’s intention of imposing on the Ukrainian people a deal agreed with Putin’s Russia.
Violating international law, it would partition Ukraine and entrench the occupation of territory annexed since 2014 and expanded by Putin’s full-scale war since February 2022. It would produce a “peace” imposed through Western acquiescence in the dismembering of Ukraine, with parallels to the 1938 Munich Agreement that handed Nazi Germany 30 per cent of Czechoslovak territory.
The vulnerable position presently confronting Ukraine’s war of just resistance is a direct result of the failure to provide necessary aid by key states, despite their boasting that they “stand by Ukraine”.
The dire prospect of a partitioned Ukraine partly under Putin’s control would be the product of the appeasement policy of those sections of big business anxious to restore and develop their Russian commercial ties. In contrast, the Solidarity With Ukraine conference of progressive forces—of trade unions, socialists, social democrats, green, feminists and other social movements—will take place on the understanding that the partition of Ukraine cannot bring peace.
The only road to a just and lasting peace requires the complete withdrawal of Russian forces. While they remain in any part of Ukraine it will be impossible for Ukrainians to freely determine their own future.
Any peace negotiations should be with Ukraine as a main partner: the war should not and cannot be solved as a horse trade between the great powers at Ukraine’s expense.
Against the decline in aid and a possible Trump-Putin deal, the organisers and sponsors of the Solidarity With Ukraine conference advocate a surge in military support to strengthen Ukraine’s position in any negotiations, and to be able to continue its just resistance if no security guarantees acceptable to Ukraine are achieved.
That military aid must be accompanied with unconditional financial support for Ukraine’s reconstruction and the cancellation of its debt. We reject the corporations’ self-interested argument that solidarity with Ukraine’s armed and unarmed resistance must mean accepting the dismantling of social rights and services, either inside Ukraine or in the countries giving it support.
The struggles of Ukraine’s working people and their trade union organisations, and of the country’s feminist, environmental, LGBTIQ+ and human rights organisations have been indispensable to the country’s resistance, primarily against the Russian invasion but also against anti-social policies adopted by the Zelensky government. They are also the best guarantee that reconstruction will be in the interest of Ukraine’s social majority.
The message of representatives of such Ukrainian movements will be a central feature of the plenary sessions of the Solidarity With Ukraine conference.
They will also participate in workshop sessions that will provide an invaluable opportunity to increase understanding of Ukraine’s complex reality and develop practical solidarity initiatives with Ukrainian partners.
The conference will also adopt a final declaration, with the goal of giving as much publicity as possible to its position in favour of a just peace and just reconstruction for Ukraine and its people.
The final text and the Solidarity With Ukraine conference program will be published soon.
How To Vote on November 29? Oppose Any Coalition with FFFGGG – Stop the Far Right : Vote Left, Transfer Left
FFFGGG Equals ; Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Greens, Gombeens.
The 2020-2024 coalition government was composed of three parties : FF, FG, and the Greens – and was regularly supported by Right-to-Racist Gombeens (Independents) in the last Dáil.
In this context it is important to know the identity of left-wing and right-wing independent candidates.
A Cedar Lounge Blog writer has done a great job identifying credible candidates on the left who are often categorised as independent. Link : Possible Left Independents in the next Dáil
During the interview Cristina asks Ilya about Pablo Gonzalez (real name Pavel Rubtsov ) who was accused of espionage in Poland. See postscript about an Irish connection at the end of this fascinating interview.
Ilya Yashin—Interview with Cristina Mas, Ara, September 30, 2024
Ilya Yashin is a Russian opposition politician who was released from prison on August 1, in the prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States. Since his exile in Germany, he has been touring several European cities to reach out to the Russian diaspora, which has taken him to Barcelona. Yashin, now 41, was jailed in 2022 for criticizing the invasion of Ukraine on his YouTube show. He was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for denouncing the Butxa massacre. He is now free thanks to the largest prisoner exchange of the Cold War, in which sixteen Russian political prisoners and U.S. citizens Evan Gershkovitx and Paul Whelan were exchanged for prisoners in the West claimed by Russia, including Spain’s Pablo Gonzalez, accused of espionage, and Vadim Krasikov, who shot a man in the head to death in a Berlin park on Moscow’s orders.
Provisional results of the 2024 European Elections, as at June 19. Source: results.elections.europa.eu
At first glance it looks as if the parties to the left of the social democracy held their ground against the surge of the far right and mainstream right that marked the June 9 European Union (EU) parliamentary elections (see here for results in detail).
Although the smallest of the European parliament’s seven groups, The Left managed to maintain its EU-wide vote at 5.4% and increase its seat tally from 37 to 39 in the 720-seat assembly.
In addition, left green Members of the European Parliaments (MEPs) and those representing stateless nations (part of the Greens group as the European Free Alliance) at least maintained their numbers in the chamber.
Yet the Greens group as a whole shrank from 71 seats to 53 while that of the liberals (known as Renew) fell from 102 to 79. This drop reflected that the environmental issues that in part drove the big advance of these parties in the 2019 election were less important for many voters this time.
The campaign was dominated by insecurity about the future, the cost of living (particularly housing), the fear of war, the “immigration threat” and intolerance of difference.
In this grim atmosphere the biggest growth went to the mainstream right European People’s Party and the two far-right groups (Identity and Democracy and Conservatives and Reformists): taken together the right and far right won an extra 30 seats, bring it to 324.
Because it would take only 37 ungrouped MEPs to join them to from a reactionary majority, the June 9 result poses with new urgency two old questions about politics in the European parliament. How much, if at all, does the real balance of political forces in the chamber differ from that among its formal groupings? And how much does membership of a group represent disciplined commitment to its positions?
Left divisions over Ukraine
The questions are sharply relevant in the case of the Left group, where differences over what stance to take towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine were already pointing towards a split before June 9.
On May 31, Li Andersson, chairperson of the Finnish Left Alliance told the Helsinki Times that these differences could not be tolerated in the group in the new legislature. Referring to Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, Irish left independent opponents of military aid to Ukraine, Andersson said: “The Nordic Green Left as a whole [covering Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands] is of the opinion that if they manage to win re-election, they can’t join our group.”
For Andersson, the same went for the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance: For Reason and Justice (BSW), a split in Germany from leading Left group member Die Linke (The Left). BSW opposes military aid to Ukraine and supports resuming the gas trade with Russia, in common with most of Europe’s far-right parties.
With the final tallies counted and remaining seats filled, People Before Profits (PBP) Dublin South West and RISE members Diarmuid Flood and Paul Murphy review the deeply polarised Local and European Elections and outline five key takeaways.
For the second election in a row, dramatic political changes took place in the course of the local and European elections. Sinn Féin started the year polling around 30% and yet ended up with less than 12% nationally in the local Elections. Independents and Others started the year with around 15%, but won close to 25% on June 6th. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael both hit 23%, coming from the high teens and around 20% respectively. In many ways, these appear to be the opposite political trends to what we saw in the General Election of 2020. Back then, Sinn Féin grew dramatically as hope for an end to 100 years of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael rule propelled them to be the biggest party in vote share for the first time ever. Volatility is clearly in the air.
However, what we saw in the five weeks of the election campaign did not come from nowhere. The election catalysed and accelerated existing processes. In the absence of major progressive social struggles, with the exception of the Palestine solidarity movement, the political terrain has undoubtedly shifted rightwards. Ireland has caught up with most of the rest of Europe and the Global North, with the emergence of a reactionary social movement in opposition to asylum seekers and the growth of a racist, climate denialist, anti-LGBTQ, and sexist far-right.
Daly and Mick Wallace were part of the left group in the last parliament, but the chairperson of the Left Alliance (Finland) disagrees strongly with the Wallace-Daly Ukraine policy.
Li Andersson, Chairperson of the Finnish Left Alliance, says Daly and Wallace parroted Putin’s propaganda :
Andersson said MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace from Ireland, two fierce critics of support for Ukraine, can no longer sit with The Left. Despite also parroting Russian propaganda and seeking to torpedo resolutions on Russia, and seeking to torpedo resolutions on Russia, Daly and Wallace have been allowed to continue as members of The Left.
In Finland, the Left Alliance won big in the European parliament elections :
Finland’s results in the European election bucked a continent-wide trend of rising support for parties on the outer fringe of right-wing politics, with the Left Alliance and the National Coalition winning big at the expense of the nationalist Finns Party. Leftist leader Li Andersson received more votes than any other candidate has ever received in a European election. By 8:34pm, with just 60 percent of the vote counted, she had already beaten Eurosceptic Centre Party grandee Paavo Väyrynen’s total of 157 668 votes in the 1996 election. She ended up getting nearly a quarter of a million votes. Andersson was visibly delighted after the results were announced. ”I’m still in shock. This is an incredibly fantastic result, much better than I could have ever dared to expect,” she said.
Li Andersson (Left) got the highest number of votes of any European election candidate in Finnish history. Image: Tiina Jutila / Yle
CHAIRPERSON of the Left Alliance Li Andersson says The Left, one of the seven political groups in the European Parliament, should clean out members who question support for Ukraine and show sympathy for Russia.
“The groups are always reformed at the start of the term, and we want changes to the group that make it more cohesive on foreign and security policy,” she said to Helsingin Sanomat on Tuesday.
The Left Alliance is part of The Left in the European Parliament.
Helsingin Sanomat reported earlier this week that several members of the political group voted this term against resolutions concerning Ukraine, questioning the need for support – especially military support – for Ukraine. Some members have also criticised the economic sanctions slapped on Russia over its war of aggression in Ukraine.
An analysis conducted by the newspaper found that the group has divided on votes concerning Ukraine, with support coming from parties from the Nordics and opposition from parties in Central and Southern Europe.
Andersson, who herself is vying for a seat in the European Parliament, pointed out that The Left has nonetheless unanimously condemned the war of aggression prosecuted by Russia.
“I’ve stressed that there are certain things we won’t compromise on. The entire group has condemned the war unequivocally. Had that not been the case, we would’ve left the group or someone else would’ve had to leave,” she stated.
“On other issues, you can see that other parties differ from us in terms of their security policy analysis. They don’t reflect the thinking of the Left Alliance.”
How Russia and Ukraine support are viewed by other parties in the group is becoming a threshold question within the Left Alliance – one that defines what parties are capable of co-operation, according to Helsingin Sanomat.
Andersson said MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace from Ireland, two fierce critics of support for Ukraine, can no longer sit with The Left. Despite also parroting Russian propaganda and seeking to torpedo resolutions on Russia, Daly and Wallace have been allowed to continue as members of The Left.
“The Nordic Green Left, [the umbrella party for left-wing parties in the Nordics], as a whole is of the opinion that if they manage to win re-election, they can’t join our group,” stated Andersson.
Sahra Wagenknecht, a German left-wing populist who has opposed military aid to Ukraine and called for the resumption of gas trade with Russia, is similarly not welcome to The Left, according to Andersson.
“We’ll represent our stance in every vote. MEPs of the Left Alliance will vote in favour of supporting Ukraine,” she pledged.
Helsingin Sanomat on Wednesday wrote that the European Parliament’s political groups have generated more discussion than previously in the run-up to the elections, a reflection of the groups’ growing importance in decision-making.
Johanna Kantola, a professor of political science at the University of Helsinki, said to the newspaper that the groups have marked differences: while the largest groups in the parliament – the centre-right EPP, the social democratic S&D and liberal Renew Europe – have highlighted their European and supranational nature, some of it has been lip service.
National interests are visible in votes and the groups exercise no group discipline, she said.
The Greens and European Free Alliance is a genuinely supranational group with a shared set of values, according to Kantola.
Finnish parties in the European Parliament have been aligned as follows: the Christian Democrats, Movement Now and National Coalition have been part of the EPP, the Finns Party of the ECR, the Social Democrats of S&D, the Centre and Swedish People’s Party of Renew Europe, the Left Alliance of The Left, and the Green League of the Greens and EFA.
Riikka Purra, the chairperson of the Finns Party, stated in mid-May that the Finns Party would stay in the ECR even if the group was joined by Fidesz, the party led by authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
“We don’t have another group to go to, and you can’t be without a group. That’s when you need other structures that make it possible to co-exist,” she was quoted saying in Brussels on 14 May by Helsingin Sanomat.
Readers are urged to support this initiative :
We invite you – organisations and individuals – to sign the declaration “Ukraine: A People’s Peace, not an Imperial Peace”. Please find the declaration and our accompanying letter below. Different language versions are provided.
“Sitting MEP Clare Daily has lost her European Parliament seat in the Dublin constituency.
She was excluded on the 17th count and becomes the first outgoing MEP to lose her seat in the election.
Asked how she felt following the loss, she told RTÉ News: “You had no interest in talking to me for five years, so I’ve no interest in talking to you.”
Ms Daly hugged Independent Ireland candidate Niall Boylan before swiftly leaving the count centre at the RDS.”
The best that can be said about Niall Boylan is that he is a mini-Trump who should be shunned, like the mini-Hitler political trash which transferred heavily to him in the Dublin Euro-parliament election contest.
Garrett Mullan discusses an Anti-Ukrainian statement published by Dublin Communities Against Racism.
Irish Left With Ukraine activists were shocked to see anti-Ukrainian content in a post published online by Dublin Communities Against Racism (DCAR). The post by DCAR was meant to be a left position in response to the Dublin riots following the stabbing outside a primary school in Dublin’s Parnell Square on November 23 2023.
Garrett Mullan is on the right of this photo, demonstrating outside the Dublin Embassy of Russia; two elected representatives are also holding the ILWU banner : Mary Lou McDonald TD (President, Sinn Féin); John Lyons (Councillor, Dublin City, Independent Left)
Joan McKiernan, who has been a socialist activist in both the United States and Ireland, reports. Joan also writes for Against the Currenthttps://againstthecurrent.org/joan-mckiernan/
When I was teaching college sociology, I used to do a session on the bizarre things that Americans believe or don’t believe. Like, only 60% of Americans believe in evolution. 10% believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, to mention a few notable examples. Long ago, Mark Twain remarked, “It is easier to trick the average person, than it is to convince them that they have been tricked.”
I should not have been surprised then during the Trump era and the pandemic, we saw so many Americans accepting untruths, refusing masks and vaccines, refusing to believe that Covid was real, even as they went to their deaths. And during these years after Trump’s defeat, so many still refuse to accept facts, electoral counts, data. We are told there are alternative versions of facts!
So now we have the same lack of truth applied to support for Ukrainians resistance against the Russian invasion and destruction of their country. Recently, this was seen in this article, The Con Artists Who Blame Ukraine Aid for America’s Social Problems, in which independent presidential candidate and anti-vaxxer, RFK Jr., Green Party candidate Cornel West, Glenn Greenwald, and other Putin apologists are making disingenuous, pseudo-populist arguments against U.S. support for Ukraine. Rather than looking at capitalist exploitation, the Trump tax cuts, unemployment and low wages for the majority, they are blaming the Ukrainian support for all of the US social problems. https://newrepublic.com/article/173902/ukraine-war-cost-russian-propaganda-rfk-jr-greenwald
The reliance on untruths, twisted thinking and re-writing of history is no longer just an American characteristic. This week Irish member of the European Parliament, Clare Daly, came out with her own bizarre explanation of how to deal with the Ukraine war. She says, “The US sat down with the Taliban.” praised the role of United States in the Irish Good Friday Peace Agreement and said the international community should try and do something similar in Ukraine. She accuses the West of giving arms in order to keep the war in Ukraine going!
Neutrality is not opposition to ‘both sides’, or to Ukraine, in the war in Ukraine. But it is being presented that way in the build up for the People’s Forums On Irish Neutrality being held throughput the month of June.
A range of organisations are hosting fora in Limerick , Dublin, Cork and Galway. Some of them are organising demonstrations at the three locations of the government Consultative Forum on International Security Policy at Galway, Cork and Dublin.
There is also another, separately organised apparently, public meeting in Dublin on 24th June.
There are some heavy hitters speaking at some of the meetings, like Clare Daly, Mick Wallace, George Galloway, Bernadette McAliskey, Medea Benjamin and Yanis Varoufakis.
Many of the speakers have been associated with strong opposition to solidarity with Ukraine and with blame on NATO and ‘the West’ for the war. The hosting organisations largely represent positions between regarding the war as a war of NATO against Russia and regarding the war as a war between NATO and Russia.
A leading figure in Galway Alliance Again War posted on Facebook (11th June) what is designated as “an excellent article by Scott Ritter on the West’s proxy war against Russia”.
In its newsletter to members (9th June) urging them to support the People’s Forums On Irish Neutrality, People Before Profit says,
“They [the government] are using the Ukraine war to end neutrality. But a recent poll shows that 87% of people support a ceasefire to facilitate negotiations. If we had a government that really supported neutrality, it would be promoting negotiations”.
“That means recognising that the war in the east has been going on for nearly a decade, and that the western powers represented by NATO have developed a firm policy of expansion taking in most of the east European states on or close to Russia’s borders. Russia was opposed to Ukraine joining NATO which it saw as a threat to its own security…One year on, this is clearly a proxy war between NATO and Russia, with western troops stationed very close to Russian borders, two formerly neutral countries – Sweden and Finland – joining NATO, Ukraine becoming a de-facto member of NATO, and the provision of weapons growing.”
The only mentions of what might be the wishes and intentions of the people of Ukraine, in an article devoid of any reference to Russian war crimes are, “In Ukraine, there are even demands for cluster bombs and phosphorus weapons”and “We stand in solidarity with all those protesting, and with those in Ukraine and Russia who are bravely raising their voices against war.” Who in Ukraine is bravely raising their voices against the heroic resistance of the mass of the Ukrainian people? There is not a word of solidarity for those in Ukraine raising their bodies and weapons against Russia’s war upon their lives, their homes and their freedoms.
On its Facebook page on 27th April PANA (Peace and Neutrality Alliance) introduced a video with:
“In this short video [US economist] Jeffrey Sachs gives us a brief historic background on the ongoing proxy war between Russia and the United States in Ukraine and explains why we need immediate peace and negotiations here to avoid a nuclear war between these superpowers.”
Among the speakers at the People’s Forums, George Galloway was a regular contributor on RT (Russia Today), a Russian government television station. On 14th February 2022 he famously tweeted:
“Y’all said #Russia was about to invade #Ukraine. I told you it wasn’t. You were wrong. I was right. Again. Show some bloody humility. Especially if they’re not even paying you to act like an idiot” (my emphasis – DD.)
In an interview with the Global Times on 12th February 2023 he said:
“The West is ready to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood, but not their own…They [the Russian leadership] just want not to have enemy missiles on their border. That’s why Ukraine will have to be completely demilitarized and properly neutralized before this conflict can end.”
At the Eurasia Media Forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in May 2019 George Galloway shared a plush platform with far right Trump strategist Steve Bannon:
A speaker at the second Dublin meeting (24th June), Neutrality: Who Cares?, Medea Benjamin of the US ‘women-led’ peace organisation CODEPINK, together with Nicolas J.S. Davies, wrote the book War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published last year. It is probably the premier text now of the ‘proxy war, NATO caused it’ current throughout the English-speaking world. It was famously reviewed in a podcast by Bill Weinberg and in an article by Linda Mann, ‘Their Anti-Imperialism and Ours’.
In his podcast Bill Weinberg (11th December 2022) indicates, page by page, how the Benjamin and Davies book designates the 2014 popular Maidan revolt a US orchestrated coup, “engineered” and an “operation”, bemoans the “flooding” (sounds familiar) of Ukraine with Western weapons, and repeats the ‘arguments’ against Ukrainian nationhood, including those in Putin’s pre-invasion speech. Weinberg indicates how the book sets out to legitimise the Russian referenda for ‘independence’ in the Donbas separatist republics, regrets how the “corporate media” “amplifies” “allegations” of Russian war crimes and compares reports of Russian atrocities to the notorious Kuwait atrocity reports, and opposes cultural boycotts and sanctions against Russia. And Weinberg points out how it reflects the New York Timeseditorial gently suggesting concessions brokered over the heads of the Ukrainians, talks up Russia’s security concerns and ‘encirclement’ from NATO, and NATO’s “role” in provoking the war, and chants the US and NATO’s undoubted crimes while neglecting Putin’s and Wagner’s record in neighbouring countries, Syria and Africa.
Linda Mann picks out for special attention a passage from Benjamin and Davies which both justifies the invasion and which, as Mann says, implies that “an aggressive war was on the table from the beginning”:
“The massive Western [military] support put Russia in a predicament…. In November 2021, Russia still enjoyed ‘escalation dominance,’ meaning that it could bring greater military force to bear than the US or NATO in any war in Ukraine. But Russia’s escalation dominance would keep diminishing as Ukraine’s military was gradually armed and trained up to NATO standards, with or without actual NATO membership.
“This meant that from Russia’s perspective, if they were going to have to fight to defend the Donbas and Crimea, every year they waited to do so would reduce their escalation dominance, tipping the balance in favor of Ukraine and increasing the risk of a potential nuclear war with the US and NATO.
“The United States military was well-aware of the predicament in which it was deliberately placing Russia’s leaders” (pp. 66 – 67, my emphasis – DD).
Medea Benjamin attended the (poorly-attended) Rage Against The War Machine rally in Washington on 19th February. This event brought together ‘leftists’ like herself and right-wingers and far-right-wingers, and featured some attendees with Russian flags and Z signs. She was to speak but told Chris Hedges, who did speak, in an email that,
“I supported the Rage Against the War Machine Rally from the time of its conception and I support it today, even though I will not be one of the speakers because the organisation I have been associated with for 20 years, CODEPINK, urged me not to speak…”
In the same article Chris Hedges wrote:
“I will also be joined by Ron Paul, Scott Horton and right-libertarian, anti-war figures whose political and cultural opinions I often disagree with. The inclusion of the right-wing has seen anti-war groups I respect, such as Veterans for Peace, refuse to join the rally. VFP issued a statement sent to me on Friday saying that ‘to endorse this event would have caused a huge disruption in VFP and had little effect on the outcome of the demonstration.’”
Sevim Dagdelen, an MP and deputy leader of Die Linke party in Germany, was a regular guest on the Russian state television channel Russia Today. There “she repeatedly explains that the European Union, the German government and NATO had overthrown the Yanukovych regime with the help of fascists in Ukraine”(Suddeutsche Zeitung, 16th March 2014). She dismissed fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, days before the invasion, as an “information war” and reminiscent of 2003, when the US and the CIA “drew the world into a murderous Iraq war” with “told stories” (NTV, 13th February 2022). “NATO has expanded, not Russia” Sevim Dagdelen told a primetime audience [on the ARD channel] a week before the invasion. (Politico, 24th February 2023). In March 2020 the leadership of Die Linke were “appalled” by Dagdelen and others in the Sahra Wagenknecht caucus of the party for blaming NATO for the Russian invasion (SPIEGEL Politik, 1st March 2022). She refused to call the massacres in Bucha and Mariupol “war crimes” (Zeit Online, 11th May 2022).
Dagdalen’s ally in Die Linke, Sahra Wagenknecht, and writer and feminist Alice Schwarzer have led the “negotiations and compromises” initiative in Germany around their Manifesto for Peace “in which they call for a halt to arms deliveries and for negotiations”(quote from Alice Schwarzer’s website introducing the Manifesto). They and other signatories organised the Rebellion for Peace rally in Berlin on 25th February 2023. “Speakers at the rally on Saturday included Wagenknecht, Schwarzer, a US-based professor… Jeffrey Sachs [again – DD], and a retired Bundeswehr officer turned private sector consultant, Erich Vad. All argued for negotiations with Russia, some were highly critical of NATO and the German government”(Deutsche Welle website, 27th February 2023).
Wagenknecht and the rally faced criticism from her own party Die Linke, before and after the event, even though the party holds “a position comparable to Wagenknecht’s on Ukraine: that Berlin should engage more for negotiations and less for weapons exports. However, the party has often sought to distance itself from its outspoken former leader’s comments on the war.”(Deutsche Welle, ibid).“Leading members had warned that the rally would attract far-right factions of Germany’s society. Observers noted many isolated cases of pro-Russian or right-wing symbols among the participants. Germany’s populist far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was vocal in its support for the event while also noting the participation of its members” (Deutsche Welle, ibid). When asked whether AfD politicians could also take part in the demonstration, co-organiser, and former Finance Minister, Oskar Lafontaine replied that there was no “attitude test “ (Global Happenings website, 24th February 2023).
“‘Our fears were confirmed,’ Die Linke‘s vice chairperson Katina Schubert told the SuddeutscheZeitung newspaper [following the rally]. Schubert used the term “Querfront” (cross-front) to refer to collaborating with conservative revolutionaries, an expression used in Germany’s Weimar Republic…‘Whoever starts a call appealing to the cross-front, reaps the cross-front,’ Schubert said. Schubert said that ‘the confusion of victim and perpetrator was a recurring theme in thespeeches’” (Deutsche Welle, ibid).
At the end of the rally, Lafontaine, Wagenknecht, Schwarzer and Vad, as well as Left Party politician Sevim Dagdelen, stood hand in hand on the stage.
In January Clare Daly and Mick Wallace were among 19 members of the European Parliament to vote against a resolution calling for the establishment of a special international tribunal to prosecute Russia’s leadership for the crime of aggression against Ukraine (Irish Times, 19th January 2023). In April 2022 Mick Wallace told the radio station, Ireland South East, that, “In my opinion Ukraine is being used by the US and NATO in their war to undermine Russia.” In October 2022 Clare Daly and Mick Wallace were among 26 MEPs to vote against a resolution to condemn “gunpoint” referenda and call for increased support for Ukraine.
“I condemn the illegal aggression of Russia, but I disagree with a one-sided narrative that excuses the Western role in what is now happening. I urge a ceasefire, negotiations and genuine EU efforts to secure a peace. I oppose the policy of collective punishment, sanctions that also hurt European citizens, the flooding of Ukraine [sic] with weapons, and other actions that escalate the war and run the risk of igniting a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. I find much to agree with in this resolution. But unfortunately, this text also contains elements I cannot vote for. Demands for pumping even more weapons into Ukraine, demands for neutral states to abandon their neutrality, unrealistic conditions for ending the conflict, the continuation and entrenchment of a sanctions policy that isn’t helping anyone, and the presence of ominous threats and bellicose rhetoric which only inflame tensions and make peace less likely. That is why I cannot vote in favour of the resolution.”
Another speaker is Catherine Connolly TD. She accompanied Clare Daly and Mick Wallace on one of their journeys to Bashar Al-Assad’s sector of war-torn Syria. Her take on another of Putin’s wars may be illustrated by her address to the Ukrainian ambassador visiting Dáil Eireann on 23rd February 2022 (the day before the invasion):
“I do not want to waste my time giving my opinion of Putin. I am on the record about it. He is a dictator with no respect for democracy. NATO’s role in all of this has already been outlined by some colleagues on the left, but certainly not on the right. NATO has played a despicable role in moving forward to the border and engaging in warmongering”
Our neutrality and theirs
Neutrality is under pressure from government, media and establishment, using the war in Ukraine to open the possibility of ending Ireland’s formal military neutrality. It must be added that this pressure is accelerated from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Putin has been the best recruiter NATO could hope for, ending Finland’s and Sweden’s long-standing neutrality overnight. The biggest diffusion of the assault on neutrality in Ireland would be the defeat of Putin’s aggression.
Ireland’s neutrality does need to be defended. A broad alliance organising a campaign of meetings and demonstrations is needed. But the campaign should be about neutrality. It should not be about equating both sides in the war in Ukraine, blaming NATO and ‘the West’ for the war, opposing the military means for Ukraine’s defence or pushing a strategy of ‘ceasefire and negotiations’ now which would halt Ukrainian defence and freeze the murderous Russian occupation in its present positions.
Irish neutrality is perfectly compatible with demanding that Russia withdraw from Ukraine immediately and stop its barbarous assaults on civilians and civilian infrastructure, with support for the right of Ukraine to arm and defend itself, with support and solidarity for the Ukrainian people and labour movement, and with backing for self-determination for Ukraine.
Irish neutrality – in so far as it still survives or ever really applied at all – is about staying out of superpower military alliances and remaining neutral in wars between the powers or between countries or forces waging rivalries for local capitalist domination. In practical words it might be expressed as staying out of NATO and common European armies, and not multiplying military spending when there’s a crushing housing crisis (or at all). That neutrality should be maintained and defended. It is the neutrality that we who support the resistance of the Ukrainian people claim! It is the neutrality that we have as much right to defend as any alliance of political positions seeking to monopolise and define neutrality for their own purposes in relation to the war in Ukraine. Those claiming to defend Ireland’s neutrality are, for all practical purposes, not neutral when they oppose military aid to Ukraine. In effect that policy if implemented would lead to the defeat of Ukraine, and victory for Russian aggression.
No socialist, democrat or humanitarian should be neutral in a war of liberation of an oppressed people, a war of revolution against capitalism, a civil war against counter-revolution or a war of democracy against dictatorship or fascism, or, as in the case of the war in Ukraine, a war of national defence against an imperialist invasion. The left wasn’t neutral on Vietnam. The left wasn’t neutral on Iraq. February 2022 was not July 1914. When we are ‘anti-war’ we realise that there is a huge difference between wars of occupation and domination and wars of resistance. When we are neutral we remember the words of Desmond Tutu that, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”. When we long for peace, as we always do, it is not the peace of the graveyard, Pax Romana, the peace of capitulation or acceptance of the status quo, but the peace of justice and of the defeat of aggression, torture, reaction, rape, mass murder and ecocide.
James Connolly as ever put it so well in January 1916:
“We believe that in times of peace we should work along the lines of peace to strengthen the nation, and we believe that whatever strengthens and elevates the working class strengthens the nation. But we also believe that in times of war we should act as in war. We despise, entirely despise and loathe, all the mouthings and mouthers about war who infest Ireland in time of peace, just as we despise and loathe all the cantings about caution and restraint to which the same people treat us in times of war. Mark well then our programme. While the war lasts and Ireland still is a subject nation we shall continue to urge her to fight for her freedom.” (‘What Is Our Programme’, Workers Republic, 22 January 1916).
The view of the war in Ukraine as a war by NATO, or a ‘proxy inter-imperialist war’, and an urge to deny all support to Ukraine, even sanctions on Russia, even training on de-mining, underpins the neutrality being presented in the June series of People’s Forums On Irish Neutrality and the ‘Conversation’ on Neutrality:Who Cares?. The view – obvious to almost everyone independent of the shocking campism which is almost universal across the organised radical socialist left in Ireland – that Ukraine has been subject to aggression, invasion, war crimes and occupation, supports the belief that neutrality cannot be an argument for denying solidarity to Ukraine or for effectively giving succour to Putin. That neutrality cannot be an excuse for almost complete ‘anti-war’ inactivity on the streets against the horror right here in Europe. A horror that cannot be downplayed and has been recognised by the UNHCR as the largest annual global increase of people forcibly displaced in decades (Irish Times, 15th June 2023).
Certainly there are supporters and organisers of these events who are interested only in the principle of neutrality, or who firmly believe that a just peace is a possible option right now in Ukraine. And one of the Dublin speakers (from Sinn Fein) has often expressed his solidarity with Ukraine. But we must go on the declared positions and records of the principal figures to observe what is being broadcast through these initiatives.
The cancellation of the original venue for the Galway meeting, or the venues of similar meetings in London and Vienna, is not an appropriate or democratic response to them, or even to the strongest apologists for Putin. The meetings should be allowed go ahead without hindrance or disruption and the case for solidarity with Ukraine argued, and given a voice, in other fora like this one.
That opinion poll
The deployment of the PANA (Peace and Neutrality Alliance) opinion poll in their newsletter supports the ‘ceasefire and negotiations’ position of People Before Profit. Many of the organisers of these meetings are determined to maintain this position, so boldly led by Sabina Higgins in July 2022 yet so promptly clarified by President Michael D. Higgins in a statement which called for “an immediate Russian withdrawal”. Indeed some of the speakers in these Forums signed the Oireachtas members’ letter last February reiterating the ‘ceasefire and negotiations’ position. This too was promptly clarified by Senator signatories “endorsing stronger sanctions, recognising the importance of prosecution for war crimes”, condemning “the illegal Russian invasion”, recognising “Ukraine’s right to national sovereignty” and supporting “initiatives towards peace based on the strong principles of the UN Charter” including “Article 51 on the inherent right to self-defence”.
A PANA press release on 25th May 2023 carried the results of an Ipsos Omnipoll it had commissioned which,
“Reveals 87% of people in Ireland support a ceasefire to facilitate negotiations to end the War in Ukraine…The question asked: “Are you in favour or not in favour of a ceasefire to facilitate negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to end the war?” The response was: In Favour 87%, Not in Favour 8%, DK/No Opinion 5%. This is a massive endorsement of PANA’s position taken at the very start of the war.…In the year that marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that brought the war in Ireland to an end through a process of a ceasefire and negotiations, should we not retain this same philosophy in the horrific war now raging in the Ukraine.”
Whatever about the effect of a question on ‘peace’ put to people by a pollster, the same 87% or so of Irish people are very likely to give a similarly positive response to a question of Russia getting its troops out of Ukraine now, or of whether Ukraine should be given the resources it needs for its defence.
Actually the PANA (Peace and Neutrality Alliance) poll jars with a series of recent polls whose finding would not at all support the thrust of PANA’s message on the war.
An Irish Times/IPSOS poll (reported 28th October 2022), found that,
“An overwhelming majority of voters (72 per cent) say that Ireland and the EU “must continue to stand by Ukraine even if this means energy shortages”, with just 20 per cent disagreeing with the statement.”
As reported in The Irish Examiner (24th February 2023) a poll by the European Commission,
“found 76% of Irish people expressed satisfaction with measures taken by the EU to support Ukraine following the start of the war with Russia a year ago. It is the second highest level of support among the 27 EU member states after Portugal (79%) and considerably above the EU average of 56%. The Eurobarometer poll also showed even higher levels of satisfaction among Irish people with the Government’s reaction to the invasion. According to the survey, 78% of respondents in Ireland have supported measures taken by the Government to date. The EU average is 55%.”
On neutrality the findings would moderate perceptions that the eroders are vastly out of step with the Irish people:
“However, Irish people were less enthusiastic than most Europeans about having a common EU defence and security policy. Just over two-thirds (69%) were supportive of such a measure compared to the EU average of 77% with other countries including Austria, Romania and Sweden even more lukewarm about a common defence and security policy.”
The Irish Examiner (28th March 2023) reported on another Eurobarometer poll which indicated that,
“…91% of people here [in Ireland] agree the EU should reduce its dependency on Russian energy as soon as possible, compared to the EU average of 84%…The public here are much more likely to be satisfied with both the Government’s (78%) and the EU’s (76%) reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine than the EU averages of 55% and 56%.”
A new Irish Times/Ipsos poll (Irish Times, 17th June 2023) shows people holding the line on Irish neutrality, with 61% saying they support Ireland’s current model of military neutrality (a decline in support for neutrality of five points since last year). There is 55% support for “significantly increasing Ireland’s military capacity”. “More than half of all voters”, the paper reports, “say that Ireland should continue to accept all Ukrainian refugees who arrive.” In an Irish Times/Ipsos poll last year 36% said that Ireland should continue to accept Ukrainians “no matter how many arrive”. On refugees in general 48% said “they think that there are ‘too many refugees in Ireland now'”, but, the Irish Times says, “the numbers suggest that at least some of those…also believe that Ireland should keep taking them”.
And whatever about Irish opinion, in a Gallup poll across Ukraine in September 2022, 70% of Ukrainians favoured fighting to win, and 91% of those who backed the war defined victory as retaking all seized territory. In a poll conducted in October 2022 across the ‘pre-February’ territory of Ukraine by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 86% of respondents answered that it is necessary to continue the armed struggle anyway, even if shelling continues. In particular, 71% among them fully agree with this opinion (the remaining 16% rather agree). Only 10% of respondents answered that it is necessary to proceed to negotiations to stop the shelling as soon as possible, even if it is necessary to make concessions to Russia.
In May 2023 the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted a telephone poll across Ukraine, except for Crimea, in its latest round of questions about the population’s readiness for territorial concessions. 84% of respondents continued to adhere to the view that no territorial concessions are acceptable, even if this means that the war will last longer and there will be other threats. Only 10% believe that in order to achieve peace and preserve independence, it is possible to give up some territories.
The nuanced and varied, but almost universal, consensus on Ukraine, on the Irish organised radical socialist left, is conspicuously put on display in the unitary and cross-over platforms for these People’s Forums and Conversations. It is a consensus that essentially abandons the people of Ukraine, and either soft-peddles on Putin or blames ‘the West’ equally for the war. It is a consensus that is branding the left as defenders of dictatorship and playing right into the hands of politicians, press, publicists and propagandists that have always tried to brand the left in this way.
Two Irish MEP’s Mick Wallace (Ireland South) and Clare Daly (Dublin) have created a serious problem for themselves, the left in Ireland, and the left abroad. They analyse international conflicts using a politically poisonous method.
This politically poisonous method stalks the mainstream radical left and established anti-war organisations. That poison has a name : Campism. Justine McCarthy accurately observes that the Ireland South MEP is using “victim blaming… the lowest form of defence”. Many readers have not heard the term campism, and do not know what it means. Other readers do know what it means, but do not want us to learn anything more – because they know they use a less obvious version of the same poison and see nothing wrong with this chosen political method. Mick Wallace has given us a chemically pure example of this political poison by denouncing the feminist inspired uprising in Iran. Other practicioners on the left prey on ignorance and prejudice by – for example – refusing to engage in active solidarity with Ukraine – the victim of a violent imperialist, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal Russian invasion.
Pierre Rousset wrote an extensive article on this subject in October 2014. It is recommended reading today.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 