First published in Spanish at publico.es on December 12. Translated by Art Young for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Subtitles and footnotes added by translator.
I am going to be very harsh: there is something morally nauseating about Western hypocrisy, which has always killed civilians or let them be killed everywhere in the name of democracy and human rights. But there is something no less repugnant in the hypocrisy of the self-styled “anti-imperialist” left, which effectively manages to smother the dreams of liberation of many ordinary people under a mountain of pontifical studies looking on “balance of forces”, “capitalist interests” and “foreign manipulation”. Curiously enough, these studies always present the United States or one of the “pawns” it has manufactured in CIA laboratories as the central actor. These left analysts always know everything, no matter what is happening or where. They apply their 20th century schemas to an increasingly complex and elusive reality, and scorn all those who are “deceived” into struggling and dying by Evil, which only ever has one name and one goal. Samuel Johnson said “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels”. The same could be said of “geopolitics”: it too is the refuge of the lazy, the fanatics and, in general, the conspiracy theorists. To be sure, it is an unfortunate fact that no one can avoid geopolitics; it is impossible to understand anything about what is happening in the world today without meticulously analysing the situation on the ground. But the hypocritical and sectarian nature of certain leftists’ geopolitical obsession is revealed by the fact that the more they focus their attention on the Great Game or World Chess, the more factors they ignore. One after the other, they proceed to ignore any factor that does not fit their monotheistic version of history; the most important of which are the very peoples in whose name they claim to be acting. When something happens somewhere in the world that they cannot fit into their schemas (be it Maidan in Ukraine or the “Arab revolutions”), the first thing that they do is abandon the most inconvenient actor: the people. They do this with a dehumanising contempt whose nihilism competes with that of the European far right. Implicitly or explicitly, this contempt has entailed supporting [Russian president Vladimir] Putin in Ukraine and [former president] Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The role and bias of this geopolitical obsession becomes very clear as soon as one compares, for example, their different attitudes toward Palestine and Syria. When it comes to Palestine, Palestinians have the right to fight the occupation by any means necessary; but the same does not apply to Syrians who are fighting tyranny. When it comes to Palestine, the left invokes human rights, international law and even the United Nations with its international courts; the rest of the time it disdainfully denounces these same norms and institutions. On the other hand, when it comes to Syria, the left has justified bombings and massacres in the name of the same “war on terrorism” it rejects elsewhere, and rightly so. When it comes to Palestine these leftists do not raise the issues of Hamas’s Islamism or the intervention of the Iranian theocracy; instead they speak of Israel’s crimes and the Palestinians’ right to sovereignty. When it comes to Syria, on the other hand, all the talk has been and remains focused on HTS’s Islamism, Turkey’s long hand, or US interests, and never the crimes of the regime or those of its international allies (Russia, Iran, Hezbollah). Of course they also ignore the Syrian people’s right to a little bit of that freedom that we feel is being threatened here in Spain. Palestinians are never prevented from defending themselves against their executioner on the grounds that a free Palestine might become another Arab dictatorship or fall into the hands of jihadists. Yet Syrians are told they are not allowed to overthrow their own executioner on the grounds that Assad’s replacement might be worse (worse for whom?). Palestinians are victims and we rightly and passionately demand they be recognised as subjects. Syrians are just pawns of the US or sub-pawns of the US’s Islamist pawns (just like Ukrainians who defend their land against Russia are “Nazis”). In short, in Palestine the focus is always on humanity; in Syria (and Ukraine) the focus is always on context. Continue reading at https://links.org.au/syria-geopolitics-and-left -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#34399): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/34399 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/110435548/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
