Remember the War in Ukraine? People Are Still Dying, and the Western Establishment is Still Fueling the Conflict
A friend of mine recently asked me what my thoughts were about a certain news digest site called Tangle. “We're a non-partisan politics newsletter that gives you a 360-degree view on the news,” Tangle’s website reads. “No spin. No clickbait. Opinions from the left, right, and center so you can decide.” The newsletter has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, presumably people who value getting a broad swath of opinion. The outlet’s sizeable reach is the only reason I’m bothering to weigh in.
It is very telling what is actually presented in Tangle’s recent newsletter on the war in Ukraine. The different media pieces it selects from to give “left, right, and center” are not actually left and right (two terms which, albeit, are increasingly gray and incoherent in the modern U.S. context), but rather Democratic/Republican, Neoliberal/Neoconservative, two slight variations of the hue of establishment thought. What Tangle offers is all very mainstream, not much different than anything you can hear on NPR (which is free, by the way, to all you paying Tangle subscribers).
On the “right,” Tangle quotes such wisdom as: “By reinforcing key positions and ensuring that every move is calculated and purposeful, Ukraine can better withstand Russian advances and protect its territorial integrity,” from The Hill, as well as “It’s time for Washington to get firmly behind [Ukrainian President] Zelensky and his generals and bring this war to a just conclusion,” from the New York Post. And on the “left,” we get: “It’s time for fresh thinking at the White House too — and for the administration to finally deliver the strategy for victory in Ukraine that Congress mandated as part of its last aid package in April,” from the Washington Post.
Brilliant.
Laughably, the newsletter’s author, Isaac Saul, even categorizes the New York Times as on the left with the Washington Post. What kind of world do we live in where the “paper of record” — which has never met a Western war it didn’t lovingly manufacture consent for — along with the paper owned by multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos could possibly be considered as on the left? Has Isaac Saul ever heard of The Daily Worker or Appeal to Reason? Or, to pick non-defunct outlets, the World Socialist Website, the Black Agenda Report, Truthout, In These Times, The Empire Files, Breakthrough News, Jacobin, Consortium News, ScheerPost, The Grayzone, Monthly Review, Mint Press News, Counterpunch, Geopolitical Economy Report, The Real News Network, Novara Media, Truthdig, Democracy Now!, or Current Affairs?
There is absolutely no voice given in Saul’s newsletter to a systemic, anti-war critique of U.S. policy, let alone an anti-imperialist one, two positions that could actually be considered leftwing. And, worse still, Isaac Saul's personal take on the war in Ukraine is little more than simple-headed Western propaganda. These two passages from him are the worst offenders:
First, and primarily, my hope is that Ukraine's incursion into Russia can change the fundamentals of this war. Remember: Russia started this. It invaded Ukraine because Vladimir Putin believes a country of 40 million people belongs to Russia — Putin has not been shy about his motivations. One of the great injustices of the war has been that Putin can invade Ukraine, turn life to hell for its millions of citizens, and then lie to his own people with impunity about what is going on. Ukraine's incursion into Russian-controlled territory changes that — it brings the war to Russian citizens in a way that cannot be avoided.
And:
Perhaps some moment will wake us up from our slumber. For instance, a new Department of Justice indictment alleges that two former RT (formerly “Russia Today”) employees have laundered millions of dollars through a media company that is bankrolling Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and other U.S. pundits. This is not Russia fear-mongering or "hoaxes," but an actual reminder of the way Russian operatives try to influence life here at home. We wrote yesterday to be wary of Russian interference stories as they’re designed to try to divide us further — and to be prepared for them to keep coming as we head into November.
It’s true, Russia invaded Ukraine. That's an indictable war crime, plain and simple. But to claim that "Russia started this" is to be totally ignorant of the history of the region and U.S. meddling within it, just in the last 10 years, let alone since the dissolution of the USSR. This is also plain and simple: the war in Ukraine would not have happened if the U.S. did not incite it. My two articles on the conflict, "As Western Media Again Becomes A Cheerleader For War, Bias in the Press Mirrors Imperial Ideology" and "I Want The Circle To Be Broken Already," provide much more essential historical and political context than what is aired in Tangle’s newsletter. These critical omissions are a severe disservice to Saul’s readers, and, given that more nuanced analyses of the Ukraine situation appeared in mainstream outlets such as the Guardian prior to Russia's invasion, such an oversight, frankly, reads as intentional. If Saul only wants to present mainstream views on a given topic, fine, but then he can’t pretend that he is offering anything different than what you can find on the big cable T.V. networks. He can’t be disingenuous by labeling calls by Democrats for more money and arms to Ukraine as leftwing. And he can’t just elide the (sadly uncommon) reporting that has somehow managed to make its way into the mainstream press about Ukraine’s deep problems with systemic corruption and far-right nationalism.
As to the second passage by Saul, I haven't looked into those specific allegations against former RT staff, but I'm shocked by the credulity Saul has for the U.S. Department of Justice, which has been targeting leftwing organizations that have spoken out against the U.S. stoking the war in Ukraine as well as continuing to facilitate the ongoing genocide in Palestine. These sorts of claims against those who defy U.S. policy are particularly offensive because they suggest that no sane person would choose to oppose the two capitalist parties in the U.S. if that person wasn't influenced by malign foreign agents (this is the Red Scare all over again). I assure you, no leftist, or general anti-establishmentarian, needs a paycheck from a foreign power in order to hate what the U.S. does on a daily basis. Additionally, U.S. intelligence agencies have specifically targeted RT for *gasp* giving voices to third parties and anti-imperialists (see my first article for more detail on that). Our intelligence agencies do not target people who are disrupting our (nonexistent) democracy, they target people who threaten to disrupt our unjust and unbearable status quo.
This above passage from Saul also demonstrates an incredibly low, common chauvinism and hypocrisy. I couldn't even begin to touch on the level of meddling that the U.S. has done and continues to do throughout the world in order to destabilize any nation or movement it doesn't like. I can say with utter certainty, the extent to which Russia is involved in influencing U.S. policy pales in comparison to what Israel does to U.S. politics, legally, with its hundreds of millions of dollars given to politicians and think tanks, not to mention its stoking of Zionist movements on college campuses and the grooming of the next generation's lawyers and judiciary. Russia's actions pale in comparison to what the U.S. does around the world, including inside Russia. And I must emphasize, sadly, this isn't just a "whataboutism" or a two-wrongs-make-a-right kind of argument. To say so is a mere deflection of responsibility and a weak excuse for a counterargument. The argument is this: You cannot be taken seriously in any critique that you make if it is unprincipled. Either something is wrong, always, in every instance (with differences of severity of course), or you're actually just doing special pleading and propagandizing in service of the most violent empire the world has ever seen — the United States. If we can get away with our crimes, but you choose to ignore such instances in favor of someone else’s misdeeds, then you have no footing on which to say that others cannot get away with their own crimes too. The disastrous War on Terror proved this, but idiots willfully remain idiots.
Furthermore, decrying foreign powers who are not our allies is about as morally useful as decrying the Ottoman Empire. We, as U.S. citizens, have a special responsibility to decry what our nation does, precisely because it is ours, paid for with our blood and our money. We have this responsibility because we actually have a chance to change what our nation and our allies do. Focusing on the crimes of our state’s official enemies is exactly what the state wants us to do. I prefer to oppose our state's machinations (because they are evil and inhuman), and I don't take seriously anyone who throws stones in only the direction of our state's official enemies.
Finally, two essential voices on the war in Ukraine (amongst other topics), John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs, who are not radical socialists but instead have trucked within some of the highest levels of the mainstream for decades, in academia and economic advising respectively, have been giving much more sane analyses of this conflict with an eye towards identifying the overarching immoral structures and individuals that have led to this terrible war and how best to stop the bloodshed both now and in future crises. Mearsheimer's and Sachs' critiques have been suppressed in the mainstream press, for all the usual reasons such critiques are not printed, and thus they are not represented in Tangle's newsletter either.
Perhaps hundreds of thousands of people have died on both sides of the fighting in Ukraine. U.S. officials have made clear that their intent is to use Ukrainian blood to sap Russian resources. Just like the Kurds before them, Ukrainians are useful canon fodder for the U.S. empire’s dastardly proxy wars. A news outlet that airs nothing but mainstream voices on the war in Ukraine is dumbly participating in the war’s costly perpetuation, measured in irrevocable human lives, and is thus complicit in the carnage. And when all you bother to present in your “balanced” assessment of the daily news are the dual mouthpieces of establishment thought, those same mouthpieces that were dead wrong about every other Western imperial war before this one, how much value are you really bringing to your subscriber base? Again, they might as well just go listen to NPR, and that shit is free.