Dublin City Council has voted unanimously to fly the Palestinian flag at City Hall on Dame Street for seven days. Great decision.
The Ukrainian flag should flutter alongside the Palestinian flag. Solidarity with the people of Palestine and Ukraine – under genocidal bombardment from the states of Israel and the Russian Federation.
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)
On November 15 2023 Dáil Éireann (parliament of the 26 county Irish state) debated 2 opposition motions calling for immediate action against the genocidal war waged by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people living in Gaza. Holly Cairns TD (Teachta Dála [Dáil Deputy]) leader of the Social Democrats party, introduced a motion calling for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Ms Ehrlich. The text of Holly Cairns’ speech is below.
The deputy from Cork South-West pulled no punches :
When did EU leaders lose their humanity? At what precise moment? Was it when Israel cut off supplies of water, food, medicine and fuel to 2.3 million people in Gaza, and no one shouted “Stop”? Was it when more than 5,000 children were slaughtered, and no one shouted “Stop”? Was it when the fuel ran out and incubators keeping premature babies alive were turned off and no one shouted “Stop”? Was it on Friday, when the death toll reached more than 11,000 and no one shouted “Stop”? Was it at the weekend, when they had to stop counting the bodies and still no one shouted “Stop”?
Holly Cairns TD, Leader, Social Democrats
The opposition motions were defeated by 85 votes to 55 (expel the Israeli ambassador from Ireland) and 80 votes to 60 (refer Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Parties supporting the Cairns motion were Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, the Labour Party, and Solidarity-People Before Profit.
International solidarity with Palestine is growing very rapidly. The Jewish state of Israel is conducting a war of genocide against people living in Gaza. The world’s population is also witnessing a Russian war of genocide against the people of Ukraine. These statements are not made lightly. Here is a recognised definition of genocide :
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people[a] in whole or in part. In 1948, the United NationsGenocide Convention defined genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly
The alarm has spread to the highest levels of the United States government. We re-publish a New York Times report, dated November 14 2023.
More Than 500 U.S. Officials Sign Letter Protesting Biden’s Israel Policy
The signers, representing some 40 government agencies, reflect growing internal dissent over the administration’s support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
This article comes with a strong recommendation from Joan McKiernan :
“This terrific article should be widely circulated….
“I must say that with all the classes I had long ago in the IS (International Socialists) on the Russian Revolution, I have no recollection of discussions of Ukraine. So the author’s discussion of that history is important for all of us involved in supporting Ukraine now.”
Paul Le Blanc is launching a new book in Dublin on Tuesday November 7 (the anniversary of the October revolution) in the New Theatre, behind Connolly Books in Temple Bar. Doors open at 7pm, with Paul Le Blanc giving a short talk on Lenin’s politics and theories starting at 7:30. This will be followed by an interview including opportunity for some questions from the crowd.
Paul Le Blanc reviews a critical thread of Marxist theory and history on the right of national self-determination, and the question of Ukraine, concluding that revolutionaries today need to defend the current resistance to the Russian invasion including its rights to seek arms.
In his critique of ultra-left sectarianism, Lenin denounced a tendency to present quotes from Marx as the basis for settling on a tactical orientation to guide us through the complexities of our own time. He insisted that “what is most important, that which constitutes the very gist, the living soul, of Marxism” is “a concrete analysis of a concrete situation.” That is certainly the case when we are considering realities so complex as the Russian-Ukrainian War.
I have attempted such a “concrete analysis of a concrete situation” in an 8900-word article entitled “Making Sense of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine” for the online publication Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal. In the final 2400 words of the article, I seek to relate the larger analysis of the invasion to previous Marxist theory and lessons from revolutionary history. I urge readers to consult the first 6500 words of the larger article. At the same time, I am hopeful that my review here of some of the relevant history and theory will be useful for those working to sort things out regarding these momentous developments.
(c) Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images. All rights reserved
As Israel’s assault on Palestine continues, apparent similarities with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grow. Israel’s “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip – cutting off water, electricity and food to more than two million inhabitants – echoes Russia’s intentional destruction of our energy infrastructure last winter. This, among other things, earned Russia the label of a “terrorist state” among Ukrainians.
From the moment an evacuation order for northern Gaza’s 1.1 million inhabitants was announced, Ukrainians must have known it would expose the most vulnerable – the elderly and sick – to certain death. We know that when people have no viable alternatives, they often prefer to stay.
The images of widespread devastation that reach us from Gaza, which suggest the Israeli army’s disregard for international humanitarian law, also resemble those from Mariupol or Bakhmut last year. Israel – like Russia in Ukraine – has been accused of bombing residential areas, evacuation corridors and the only exit point from the city, Rafah.
Of course, Hamas’s brutal attacks on civilians in Israeli kibbutzim also appear similar to Russia’s massacres in Bucha in March 2022. It is only right that these were condemned by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyi and the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. But their messages of support for victims and their families were accompanied by problematic assertions, including Zelenskyi’s truly catastrophic conclusion that Israel has the unconditional right to defend itself.
Hypocrisy is shared by many political actors on the left and the right. We witness genocide against the Palestine people and genocide against the Ukrainian people. It is the job of the left to practice critical solidarity in each case. Ukraine’s political leader (Zelenskyy) is not left-wing. Palestine’s political leadership in Gaza is anti-left (Hamas). Resistance has to be enabled. Many on the left have a blind spot on this issue. In the case of Ukraine we must prevent the creation of a Palestine/Gaza in Europe by backing armed resistance against Putin’s genocidal invasion.
We present a meme and a counter-meme.
Spot the Inconsistency No.1 :
Spot the Inconsistency Number 2 :
Holly Cairns TD (Social Democrats Leader, Cork South-West) spoke in the Dáil (the Irish parliament) on this issue on October 12 2023. She got it right.
War crimes are not defined by the identity of the perpetrator – they are defined by the act.
The mass murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas is a war crime.
The slaughter of Palestinians – and cutting off food, water and energy to 2 million people in Gaza – is a war crime. pic.twitter.com/AFALiFnmHb
We wish to thank Dick Nichols, European Editor of the Australian Magazine Green Left Weekly, who drew our attention to an important article on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, written by the well-known Marxist scholar and historian Paul Le Blanc.
The author takes the side of Ukraine Against Russia :
I favour the defeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion and victory for Ukrainian self-determination.
I oppose imperialism in all its forms – including Putin’s invasion and NATO.
I oppose capitalism and favour its replacement with the genuine political and economic democracy of socialism everywhere: the United States, Ukraine, Russia etc.
A momentous development has drawn my attention away from the unfolding climate catastrophe on which I have been riveted. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a major factor fragmenting the left-wing forces I hoped would become a major force in the revolutionary struggle for climate justice and human survival. Recently, I have met Russians and Ukrainians — and others from Brazil, Argentina and the United States — who have all made it clear to me that I cannot avoid dealing with this issue.1
In this article, I will attempt to do three things:
Review what some on the left assert either in favour of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or against the Ukrainian response;
Review Russian and Ukrainian realities and views on the war; and
Touch on essential aspects of Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion (including where the weapons come from).
In the footnotes I offer sources that have influenced my analysis and that I believe may be useful for those seeking to make sense of these realities. But I owe it to readers to indicate my own position from the outset. This is my bottom-line:
Two days ago Democratic Left, Democratic Socialists of America’s online publication, ran Eric Lee’s article about his recent visit to Ukraine. It was entitled “Notes from Kyiv: Which side are we on?”
DSA has now answered that question — by removing the article from its website.
Thanks to Des Derwin and Adam Novak for drawing our attention to this Undemocratic Anti-Socialist Censorship hatchet job.
We are advised this is the result of a decision taken by the organisation’s National Political Committee.
We are advised that the long-standing editor of Democratic Left, Maxine Phillips, has resigned in protest.
Notes from Kyiv: Which side are we on?
September 26, 2023 by Eric Lee
Kyiv: A temporary memorial to those who have given their lives to defend Ukraine. Photo by Eric Lee
As I walked around Kyiv on a beautiful, sunny morning in early September, I noticed the scaffolding in the city’s squares. Statues had been covered up to protect them from bomb damage. Later, I saw a statue with no protection around it– a graffiti-covered memorial to a Red Army general whose name nobody remembered. I was told that this statue had been covered by protective scaffolding before the war. The protection was removed when the war broke out. There was some hope that Russian bombs might solve the problem of what to do with this relic of Soviet rule.
You cannot understand the war in Ukraine without knowing its history. This was made very clear to me in a conversation I had with Olesia Briazgunova, who works for one of Ukraine’s two national trade union centers, the KVPU (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine). I suggested that I saw some similarities between the situation in Ukraine today and the Spanish Civil War.
Olesia stopped me right there and asked if there had been genocide in Spain. I said there hadn’t been. She said, “Well there’s genocide here — and the Russians have been trying to wipe out the Ukrainian nation for a very long time.” I thought of Stalin’s terror-famine of the early 1930s, which Ukrainians call the Holodomor, and which they rightly consider an act of deliberate genocide. She had a point.
Review Author : Ian Parker is a Manchester-based psychoanalyst and a member of Anti*Capitalist Resistance.
This book was first published in 2014 in French – the English language translated edition is recent. The content preceded the genocidal Russian invasion of all Ukraine in 2023, which is reshaping the radical left all over the world. In my opinion a notable feature of the pro-Ukraine solidarity left which is today emerging everywhere, is a political convergence between healthy revolutionary Marxist (Trotskyist) currents and anarchist inspired revolutionaries.
John Meehan August 31 2023
Anarchism is a tricky subject for many Marxists. We know that anarchists should be our allies, but there is bad blood between us and them; blood, anarchists would say, that is mainly theirs. This book Revolutionary Affinities: Towards a Marxist-Anarchist Solidarity (2023, PM Press) by two Marxists, Michael Löwy and Olivier Besancenot, just translated into English, shows that this way of viewing the history overlooks many connections between the two traditions, and, more than that, there are many things that we Marxists need to learn from anarchism.
Confusions
There are a number of sticking points that are bound up with representations of anarchism in popular culture and the bitter history that Marxists keep repeating to account for failures of revolution. One is the appropriation of the term by liberal individualists – those who want to keep a distance from any particular political commitment because they don’t trust “politicians” (which is of itself often an understandable suspicion of authority) – and they tend to use the term as an excuse. How many times have you heard a friend or family member say that they won’t take a position or do anything to change the world because they are “a bit of an anarchist”? But there are plenty of bureaucratic and apolitical characters around the world who use the term “Marxist”, so that isn’t good reason to tar all the anarchists with the same “petit bourgeois” brush.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 