Anarchists Against Putin – International Anarchist Mobilization

via Freedom News

Freedom is pleased to present the next Ukraine video dispatch produced for us by film-maker and journalist Alexis Daloumis. Alexis spent last few weeks in Kiyv, and previously you may have heard of him due to his other production, Belkî Sibê: A Journey Through The Syrian War and Rojava Revolution. If you haven’t watched last week’s dispatch, it is here. (zb)
The main piece of my reportage in Poland and Ukraine is about the practical mobilisation of Anarchists, their support for and their participation in the resistance against the Putin Regime’s invasion.
This video takes place in Poland and it’s the first part of that main piece. It explores the response of the anarchist milieu to the war in Ukraine, across the country and internationally. How there was a unanimous opposition to Russian imperialism and how this state of emergency united the movement, despite previous division and conflict, towards a common goal.
The second part, coming soon, will take place in Ukraine.
Alexis Daloumis


There are 39 Comments

Russia just cut off your natural gas. Good luck with that. The bear has you in its jaw. No lights. No manufacturing. NO HEAT

Anarchy does not equal stupidity. Putin just wants an old Russia style imperium. He's the Emperor of the Known Universe but we have no Paul. Time to head for the desert!

But not in Europe. They will just starve ....

> We have no Paul

… you may be lost, Xerxes.
This! Is! Anews!

if you can't realize the power of your enemy, then you will lose for sure. If you can realize it is bigger than you and keep playing that game, you are just a loser... good luck! i prefer the desert too!

I can hardly express how heartening this is to watch. That anarchists in Ukraine are organizing and fighting, that anarchists in Poland and other countries are organizing to send them supplies, is simply terrific. Whatever their political differences, they are overwhelmingly on the side of the Ukrainian people (not the Ukrainian state. They are finding ways to support them and fight the imperialist invaders together with the rest of Ukrainians, is awe-inspiring. It is very different from the nit-picking and superficial hands-off arguments of so many U.S. and other anarchists (as displayed in the other comments here). I look forward to part II.

(1) Lumpy, why do you doubt my sincerity? You do not doubt the "sincerity" of the first few silly remarks? I have been a revolutionary libertarian socialist for decades now and no one has doubted my sincerity.

(2) Why do you call me a "troll? If I post comments on various anarchist news statements, why so do you. Does that make you a troll? My comments are related to the statements, as opposed to ;just using them to attach my own whimseys. So what makes me a "troll," other than you don't like what I write?.

well first of all, yes, i am a notorious troll. but not currently trolling yourself tho! i'm genuinely cringing at your mental gymnastics around things like national identity and realpolitik. others have suggested you're struggling within the labyrinth of classic leftist ideology and i'm inclined to agree with them.

you don't seem to engage much with the criticisms or nuance, you just strawman people who are justifiably wary of national liberation narratives. that's your perogative it seems but if you're spending this much time here, being this stubborn about it, two possibilities -

1. you are being incredibly dense and i'm deeply disappointed wayne ... fer shame!
2. you are insincere, probably not even wayne price and you've discovered a troll goldmine

but if you ARE wayne, thank you for your continued participation in this discussion, it has created new, grumpy neural pathways in my dusty old brain.

Lumpy,

I am indeed Wayne Price. And I say what I mean and mean what I say. In this discussion I am saying what I have been writing and saying for many years (see my essays on national liberation in Anarkismo and in the Anarchist Library). Just applying it to this situation. (Specific articles provided on request.)

Unfortunately, it is difficult for both sides to fully and carefully explain themselves due to the brief nature of these comments. ( I did write a longer essay on the war but got few serious responses.) So if my anonymous critic feels I do not really understand their argument, this is probably true, as is my feeling that they do not understand my logic either. We do the best we can but should not assume that those who disagree with us are "deliberately" being dishonest.

You know, Wayne, your constant deliberate misreading of virtually all the critical comments directed at you and Luke is really obnoxious. Nobody here has insisted on "hands off arguments," and standing up for one's principles -- which you gleefully deny having, something I find quite disturbing for someone who claims to have a highly developed sense of solidarity -- is hardly "nitpicking."

But keep cheerleading for others to fight and die for your lack of principles. smh...

Why do you assume that I am "deliberately misreading" your criticisms of my views? Perhaps I genuinely misunderstand your views? Perhaps you are not explaining yourself clearly? Or perhaps I do understand your views but genuinely and honestly disagree? Are you sure that you have all the answers and are always right?

i have explained myself in rather more detail than i am accustomed to, but to no avail. that you and i disagree about what anarchist philosophy and history mean is abundantly clear. that you are unable to discern that my perspectives are common to many other anarchists throughout history is the misreading. that you are unable to engage in a genuine and honest discussion about the situation in Ukraine and instead rely on false caricatures is the misreading. the reason another commenter calls you a troll is because you have shown yourself to be unable to engage in a good faith discussion with people who disagree with you. deliberate misreadings and bad faith are not the basis for a genuine and honest disagreement.

(1) See my response to Lumpy above.

(2) I know that you believe you are supporting the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion. (This distinguishes you from other posters who reject support of the Ukrainian workers because, after all, Ukraine is a nation.) But, I argue, that you do not support the actual resistance which is going on (in which anarchists must, at present, adapting various ways to the overall dominance of the national state). Instead, you only support a different, all-anarchist, resistance which does not actually exist (at this time). Therefore I argue that you are not really supporting the Ukrainian workers and ordinary people against the Russian invasion.

(3) I do NOT deny that your "perspectives are common to many other anarchists throughout history." (Find a quotation where I write this.) This is projection: it is you who is denying that many anarchists throughout history have held MY view, that is, have supported national self-determination (I have cited a whole bunch and can do so again if necessary).

As of now, NATO's official take on the conflict is that it'll last "for years". Ukraine will keep being the in-between warzone squeezed between NATO and Russia, and in a few months or years it'll most likely be a devastated toxic wasteland where corpses just kept piling chaotically amongst the ruins. If any anarchist in or out of Ukraine believes it's a good idea to fight in that war, they could ask themselves if it was worth being just another corpse...

Believe me. I find it honorable to be dying in battle and that's one of the deaths I'd most prefer... but not over national bullshit and for even more suspicious hardcore capitalist interests laying behind. Soldiers dying or the wrong reasons are what mercs are.

Maybe a better question is how anarchists should interact with a situation where they can't avoid "national bullshit" - the major national bullshit issue is that militaries, and particularly the Russian military, are shelling places they live and killing people in the streets. Certainly it's an open question whether people living outside of a warzone want to be a part of something like that, it's the same question you could ask of people who went to Rojava, but saying don't take part to people who are living in Ukraine or other places near Russia where they're worried about what Russia is doing or might do to them doesn't seem satisfying.

For anarchists and other non-nationalist people in Ukraine, this makes sense to be fighting back, of course. I was referring to these too-vocal Western anarchists who've been posturing as if they had a personal stake in this war. I don't, and that's the case of the vast majority of people anywhere West of Ukraine (or Moldova, at most). Unless the conflict escalates to a nuclear exchange, Russia is unlikley to be a threat to my life, or likely yours.

Food and gas shortages due to Ukraine being completely devastated is likely to affect us all, tho.

Do I care for the civilians getting bombed and murdered in Ukraine? Yes. But what can I do, that governments, big businesses and NGOs aren't doing already? Anarchists aren't the Avengers... We're already struggling with violent, repressive, despotic states *at home*.

well said! and i might add that performative statements of solidarity from afar are odious af.

it's fine to have opinions about the conflict but as soon as you stray in to sanctimony about it, that's what i'm beefing with. it's not about whether we think war is hell for 99% of the people affected by it, that should be obvious. but these smug jackasses who think they're doing so much more by "declaring support" but none of it actually matters in any material sense.

what have most of us actually done to affect anything here? fuck all. get real. you're just bashing away at your keyboard like everybody else. even if you sent some money, even if you write several well researched articles that make a real dent in the attention economy ... GET OVER YOURSELF, you're still just sitting at the computer. you ain't getting shot at.

solidarity with lumpy and his opinions about solidarity from afar!
death to authoritarian regimes!
long live anarchy!
eat drink pray!
inshallah!
namaste!
eh.

Ohh nooOoo, I send ---Get Well Cards from the Anarchist Continuum! I am lifting up the moral of all Ukrainian anarchists to rise up and loot the bombed supermarkets a nd Malls of the nationalists!

" ... GET OVER YOURSELF, you're still just sitting at the computer. you ain't getting shot at."

Was your point here that... we should get over our selves and... go getting shot at, for Ukraaaaaiiine!?

Waiting for confirmation, so I can pack up and leave to the front. For Ukraaaaiiine.

(;-P)

yes anon. the infinite possibilities of your unique self should obviously be reduced to -

1. sitting around in your sweatpants
2. death and glory for the ukraine

CHOOSE AND SUFFER

Most respondents miss the point. Anarchism is an international movement as well as an internationalist movement. Not a movement which turns its back on the issues facing anarchists in other countries, such as Ukraine.

There is a debate going on in the international anarchist movement over Ukraine. Many U.S. and European anarchists, as individuals or in organizations, regard this war as essentially a conflict between U.S. and Russian imperialisms. Therefore they reject all sides (thankfully there are few if any who take the pro-Russian stance of many left state socialists).

But what the above video shows is that most Ukrainian anarchists, and many other Eastern European anarchists, support the Ukrainian people (not the Ukrainian state) against the imperialist Russian invaders. Ukrainian anarchists find all sorts of ways to participate in the struggle, from distributing food to forming military units. How they theorize this approach (if they do) is not explained, but they are standing with the oppressed and exploited of Ukraine against the imperialist invader. I would put it in terms of "national self-determination" as well as "class solidarity" but that's me.

For us in the U.S. to be part of this international discussion is important, not only to provide support for the Ukrainian people but to prepare ourselves for coming crises and conflicts.

No gods, no masters. No states, no nations.

No invasions, no imperialisms, no Russian empire, no NATO imperialism, no U.S. imperialism.
Yes to resistance to all forms of oppression and exploitation.

No states expect underdog states! No cops except communicops! Rubble rubble.

No Ukrainian Capitalist Industrialised International Surrogate Mother Industry!

deliberate misreading: nobody here is turning their backs on the issues facing anarchists in Ukraine; folks here are conflicted about how to express horror at war in general, and at those self-professed anarchists who cheer for one side in an inter-state conflict.

deliberate misreading: nobody here is claiming merely that this war is essentially a conflict between imperialisms and therefore rejecting all sides; folks here are disgusted by the pro-war propaganda originating in the US/NATO being repeated by self-professed anarchists.

deliberate misreading: nobody here has said that Ukrainian and eastern European anarchists should not find ways to resist the Russian invasion, from organizing food supplies or creating militia units; i, for one, have mentioned this consistently.

deliberate misreading: these local anarchists do not explain their organizing by invoking anarchist theory and philosophy and claiming that it all aligns with it, but you have decided that it is an expression of "national self-determination" and "class solidarity" despite the participants never using this language, which makes you a presumptuous person who knows better what others are doing and why -- which is 110% authoritarian; folks here object to your characterization of other people's struggles by imposing your own terms upon them.

anarchists have not been interested in national self-determination since... well, pretty much forever. the key issue for us is the "national" part, as in a state with clear political boundaries and a local ruling class. as you mentioned, anarchists are internationalists; we loathe national boundaries and express our class solidarity across them horizontally. anarchists have also not been interested in a class solidarity that's based on alliances between the owning/ruling class and the working class within a particular nation. that's vertical stalinist popular frontist class solidarity, not anarchist horizontal class solidarity. what you're expressing is, as i mentioned previously, is cold war anti-imperialism, where you automatically take the side of a smaller state or a state-in-the-making against the actions of a larger state. this is one of the positions that helped to splinter your old outfit Love and Rage, in case you don't remember that hideous statement of principles from one of the last issues of the paper.

Sorry, but I did not misread you, deliberately or accidentally. You wrote what I said you wrote.

You do not support the actual war of resistance of the Ukrainian people, the one that is actually being waged. You want a different war which you could then support.

You do not support the Ukrainian anarchists who are willing to ally their militia groups with the existing state in order to fight effectively and build themselves up for future conflicts.

I did not write that Ukrainian anarchists were motivated by "national self-determination " or "working class solidarity." I wrote specifically that they did not state such motivations. I cited these reasons and wrote--as clear as day--"but that's me."

I have demonstrated by quotations and examples that anarchists from Bakunin and Kropotkin onward have often stated their support for national self-determination. You simply deny this. But I never denied that other anarchists have often held your views.

In this case, however, the anarchists of Ukraine and many other Eastern European anarchists, have clearly put themselves on the side of the Ukrainian people (not because of the Ukrainian state but in spite of the Ukrainian state). They are fighting against the Russian invaders. Maybe to you they are "fake anarchists" (as you have accused me of being). To me they are heroes of international anarchism.

Ok Wayne... I'll make it simpler for u.

Nationalism... Internationalism... two very different and DIVERGENT tendencies.

Nooooo. Just as INTERstates connect States, INTERnationalism connects Nationalisms! Cant you see that internationalist anarchists have simply been CONNECTED-Nationalists all along??

Our flag will be a giant flag quilt comprised of all other flags, understand?

Communist Anarchism, fuck yeah!

Wayne bears an uncanny similarity to Vlad Lenin, who said -- “I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of rite plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight for the ruling class.... I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of the social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make it necessary....” -- 1922 .Wow, 100 years ago, and Wayne sayin' the same stuff, like time has stopped, spooky!

Nah, Wayne's more like Trotsky, less severe than Lenin and more armchair general manager type, soft spoken, absorbs blows smugly, hint of bourgeois contact, belligerent.

Not a bad quotation. That's not the problem with Lenin, that he was for "the world-wide war of the social revolution." That is what attracted many libertarian socialists to Leninism for a while. The problem with Lenin (and Leninists such as Trotsky) was that he was for an authoritarian view of what that "world-wide social revolution" would be. He was for a centralized party running a centralized state which managed a centralized economy--on a world scale. A truly monstrous vision. What anarchists have in common with Lenin is solely negative: we are both against the existing capitalist system and its state. But our positive goals are quite different.

Its sorta hilarious how WP is sooo worked up about a nation sooo steeped in Old European values with a very nationalist tribalesque xenophobia for outsiders, wow, like its 2022 and both sides are 70 years behind the post-modern starting block. Oh yeah, haha, WP preaching like a dockside Marxist Union boss ranting to his workers in 1940 in San Francisco. Its like time has stopped still, weird!

"Its sorta hilarious how WP is sooo worked up about a nation sooo steeped in Old European values...." Ha-ha-ha! Why those old-fashioned Ukrainians actually object to having Russian tanks invade their country, blow up their buildings, kill their people, drive them from their homes, and rape their women. Boy, are they they old-fashioned! They need to get with post-modernism.

Are you so lacking in empathy and simple human decency?

“Are you so lacking in empathy and simple human decency?”

Uh… do you know what website you’re on, Wayne?

believe it or not, comrade, one can have tons of compassion and human decency, without supporting a nation-state. but commies do love their withering states.

Putin probably counted on the US and especially European antiwar movements to hobble and oppose even sending arms much less troops to Ukraine. Yes, this can influence the course of a war. When Reagan sent US troops to Honduras w Nicaragua as a presumed target in 1988, a major mobilization deterred Reagan outright and the invasion was cancelled. As bloody as the overall US aggression against Central America was, a full on invasion in 1982 or 1988 would have been far worse-and we stopped that.

During the W Bush version of the Iraq War, a US general whined in the press that Code Pink's protests were lowering the morale of US troops. Morale and momentum are everything in war, and Iraq was another US defeat.

No doubt Putin thought we would de facto fight for him as we did for Central America and Iraq, but we have publicly refused to do so, instead many of us publicly declaring that Putin is doing what the US did in Vietnam, El Salvador, Iraq, and Afghaniatan. Even Code Pink held an antiwar protest at the Russian Ambassador's house instead of the White House.

Thus, all these "keyboard commandos" came up on the side opposite what Putin expected, potentially lowering Russian troops' morale. The public statements of solidarity are meant to boost morale in Ukraine as well. Certainly sending arms is easier and more will be sent when nobody is getting home demos and sabotage for doing so.

Thus, what we say and do-and what we do NOT say and do-can indeed transalate to higher morale and more arms for any and all forces inside Ukraine resisting Putin. While we are at it, don't forget the Russian heroea of this war-those risking prison and torture to throw sand in Putin's gears. The protesters in Moscow and St Peterburg, the Kremlin molotov thrower, the Belarusian rail saboteurs etc. They too need ro know the world has their backs.

Shortly after J20/2017 in DC,a poster asking for any and all support showed the famous punching of Richard Spencer, plus two more "ghost" figures labeled "medic" and "legal support" punching with the same fist. The poster said "you punch with us!" and that's what material support does. Lesser support has fewer effects but NOT zero as explained above.

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