The myth of the Anglo-American left is crumbling here in Eastern Europe, and this is a good thing. I have never really understood this admiration felt towards American kids from campuses, or ageing hippies posing as “the left wing” of the Democratic Party.
The empire creates its own enemies, molding them however it sees fit. The American empire has thus conceived a left that is not so dumb, but not so smart either, and cannot see anything beyond the US. In consequence, the US must be responsible for creating any and all the evil in the world. Paradoxically, this is indeed a crypto-imperialist approach: “we” are the only actors who matter, and all the others are just bemused pawns, some kind of CIA puppets, and so on. This implies that any sort of rebellion against another imperial power must be a “conspiracy of American design.” This is an odd form of nationalism, masked under the guise of anti-nationalism or anti-imperialism. But it is a form of nationalism nevertheless, and a sense of superiority, when you say that only “ours” are a moving force in the world.
On the one hand the reality is very complicated (because there exist many different actors in the world), but really simple on the other – we must oppose every imperialism, whenever it manifests itself in practice. Right now, Russian imperialism is manifesting itself as the invasion of Ukraine. As long as this imperialism was only theoretical, we could ramble on the subject, but as soon as it has materialized in the form of blood and bombs, no leftist should doubt if they ought to deplore it.
All this unless, of course, one belongs to the western elites (and the elite is where many loud-mouthed western leftists come from). In that case, everything that the people of Ukraine may think is irrelevant. The important things are faction fights within the Democratic Party or other internal conflicts in the Western countries. Bernie Sanders vs Joe Biden. This is what counts, not some savage people from the East and their opinions.
For a long time, I have been criticizing the fact that certain Polish leftists have been more eagerly devouring content from Anglo-American instagrammers, or articles from outlets such as Jacobin and the like, than they have been engaging in building their own theory and praxis. It is one of the symptoms of this country’s semi-peripherality.
Naturally, having witnessed this approach ourselves, we should never make a similar mistake – for example, ignore the fact that in different regions it might be the US or France (the latter throwing its weight around Africa in various ways), or China who poses the same kind of threat as Russia does in our region. We must not allow ourselves to get dragged into this dichotomous logic of saying that “imperialists on our team” are “relatively better” than the others.
Every imperialism should be fought against, and its atrocious doings should be exposed. It is just as scandalous when the US establishes a right-wing dictatorship in Southern America as it is when Russia tries to do the same in Ukraine, seeing it as its “nearby colony”.
Without dismantling the dichotomous way of thinking, we will not move forward. For me and the movement that I am close to, this is obvious. A lot of people ideologically close to me are now resisting – in many cases actively in Ukraine and Russia – this Russian imperialism. And they have been doing that for years, not days. Russian prisons are full of people like me. And I have been writing about it for a long time.
Therefore, I do not face any dilemmas, and when the war broke out, not for a minute have I hesitated on what should be done and who the aggressor was. This is simple, even though the world itself is complicated.
Xavier Woliński
translation: Agate Drozd