When I was born in 1933, my parents were living in the neighborhood of Queens in New York City called Sunnyside. At the age of two, I was sent to the Sunnyside Progressive School, which was then what we used to call a “red diaper operation.” I have been told, although I confess I do not myself remember it, that when I was a year or two old I was on occasion pushed around in a baby carriage with another little boy named Philip Green. Thirty-seven years later, when I left Columbia and moved to the University of Massachusetts, my wife and I bought a home in Northampton near Smith College and I discovered that Phil was a professor of government at Smith. We reconnected then. Phil has been all of his life an active, productive, engaged democratic socialist – for a while, a member of the board of Dissent Magazine.
Phil has an active blog on which he posts a great deal of
political commentary. I have not been in touch with him in years and it was
only recently that it occurred to me that since I am now 88 he must be also!
Strange how these things work out.
Phil's post today was, I thought, particularly apt, and expressed many things that have been in my mind as well but which I have not
been writing about. Here it is for your edification and enjoyment.
52 comments:
This is terrific....
I am a long-time subscriber to The Nation, who is saddened and angered by the Van den Heuvel [Stephen Cohen] line on Russia and Putin.
This piece from Mr Green is a happy corrective.
Thanks.
I have a feeling, perhaps not justified by any actual evidence, that parts of the Left still see Russia as a leftist state, and therefore have a quite perverse sympathy for it. Then again, I once heard a far-right co-worker claim that the Nazis were leftists, based on "socialist" in their official title.
Not a new confusion. I recall a video of Pete Seeger recounting, with regret, that before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union the left was as isolationist as the right.
Would the majority of the populations of the states that joined NATO, supposedly provoking Putzik, express regret and claim to have been coerced by American imperialism? Somehow I doubt it.
I can only say BRAVO ! to the article and add: what he says also applies to many left-wing social democrats here in Germany. Well done!
Passion is in command, it seems. Though as a long-time admirer of Philip Green’s work, I have to admit I’m a bit surprised at his unreflective and unqualified vehemence (see first reference below, published long before things got so heated). On the other hand, I’m not, since it’s become pretty clear that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is sowing division among what remains of social democracy. We’re entering a whole new world where “the left” will be but a fading memory.
************
provoke
prə-vōk′
transitive verb
1. To incite to anger or resentment.
2. To stir to action or feeling.
3. To give rise to; bring about.
*************
First, a lengthy critical, non-liberal, account of post-Cold War Russia; published in 2015, much of it is still of interest:
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii94/articles/perry-anderson-incommensurate-russia
Second, since he has been much commented on in recent days, a critical, non-liberal, look at Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism” (published 2002, but still relevant):
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii16/articles/peter-gowan-a-calculus-of-power
To Anonymous.
Your gloss on "provoke" is misleading in one important respect.
In general, and certainly in the context of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, "provoke" [and also "incite"] have acquired a decidedly normative dimension, implying that the one who provokes or incites somehow, or in part, bears some moral responsibility for the reaction to the provocation or incitement.
That explains why unequivocal critics of the Russian invasion are reluctant to countenance the notion that the West has somehow provoked Russia into a war upon Ukraine by raising the question of the latter's entering NATO or the EU.
I think Philip Green's post is masterful.
The Philip Green post is excellent. This interview with a historian who's writing a multi-volume biography of Stalin is also worth looking at:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin
Bravo! A superb critique of clueless members claiming to be social democrats
An excellent ending:
“I don’t know what impels a legitimate magazine to publish an outright slander. At a moment when it is absolutely contemptible from just about any standpoint you can take. What’s with the alt-Left? WTF!”
WTF indeed!
Excellent article. "First, amidst this rummage sale of declarations, what’s the missing word?"
This hits the nail on its head. Large chunks of the Right are also openly anti-democratic. Also, while Wheeler and Lindbergh were antisemitic mixed bags, Carlson - like Trump - are, at a minimum, Russian assets. I'll allow that Gabbard is likely a useful idiot.
Prof. Leiter has a link to some interesting inside baseball:
https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/13/a-declaration-on-the-russian-world-russkii-mir-teaching/
DZ
I’m not quite sure what to make of your remark, that my gloss—I’m actually quoting a definition which appeared when I did a search on DuckDuckGo—is misleading in an important respect. It may be that some people want to give special emphasis to the notion that “provoke” implies some passing of the blame, but that was not explicit or implicit in the definition I quoted. I also dispute that those who use the word “provoke” cannot also be unequivocal critics of the Russian invasion. Would it be the case that were I to say it behoves us to understand what provoked the US to attack Iraq, I would be guilty of excusing that war crime? (Incidentally, I guess it was 19 years ago today that I along with countless others was demonstrating in San Francisco against that very crime in action.) I guess you’ll get the thrust of my query: is it ever wrong to try to understand why certain terrible things happen, why some people and some political entities do terrible things? And in the course of these explorations we’ll inevitably encounter and have to engage in arguments. So to my mind a lot depends on how we try to conduct these arguments.
Which brings me back to my disappointment with Philip Green’s provocative remarks. What he’s doing, as I read him, is slamming the door on people, many of whom by his own account have been his political allies over the years. What’s the point of disagreeing with them in such a brutal, unqualified fashion as to make it unlikely that he and they will ever cooperate in a comradely fashion ever again? Who is he trying to reach/persuade? It surely cannot be those he's denouncing. In other words, I read him as doing what so many others are now doing. It brings to mind all those families I knew or heard about who became so radically divided over Vietnam (another US war crime in my eyes) that it took them years to recover from it if they ever did. It’s the pervasiveness of this sort of thing at the present moment which makes me despair not just for the future of the Ukrainians but for our own future (if we have one).
I largely agree with professor Green in the instance where those who are criticizing the US are doing so with the intention (in any magnitude) to lessen or relativize the guilt of Putin/Russia. I would even denounce those who say they are not defending Russia and yet give irresponsible tilted arguments (somebody used the term "useful idiot" for this type of person). However when one is analyzing all the events and actions over the last two or three decades prior to the catastrophe, of course we have to discuss the foreign policy decisions of the US. Many historians rightly criticize the very heavy punishments of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany by the Allies, the lack of action, courage, and commitment to the League of Nations by the US (who did not even join LON) and others, against clear abuses by certain nations, as making WW2 more likely and deadlier. Yet, the same historians are clearly not trying to lessen the monstrosity of Hitler and Nazi Germany. As professor Green implied, we have to consider intentions and hence the blame unequivocally goes to Germany.
In other words, discussion on the decisions of the US and its western allies should not lead to a knee-jerk reaction of Russia apologist accusations.
One word more, if I may. The following makes rather the same points as does Philip Green. But the tone is very different--one might say politick.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/a-progressive-response-to-ukraine
I find very striking that every analysis of the situation by former Russian citizens fails to claim that Putzik felt threatened by NATO expansion with invasion. Instead, they seem to say that he feels humiliated by Russian's fall from great-empire status. Thus it would seem, to that camp, that the real resentment is that a new NATO member ceases to be vulnerable to Russian domination or takeover.
Does anybody believe that NATO would ever actually invade Russia, or even threaten to do so? Do you think anybody in Russian intelligence, armed forces or diplomatic corps believes in an actual invasion threat? Surely there are Russian spies high enough in western circles to be able to report that after Napoleon and Hitler nobody in the West will ever think again that an invasion of Russia could possibly succeed. Despite everything, I feel quite sure that the Russian people would fight to repel an invasion just as hard as the Ukrainians are doing.
And if not invasion, what? IRBMs? The answer to that is a treaty. Russia has the enormous advantage of size, so any enemy must reach in far from the border to threaten any center of power.
Russia could have been very successful as a peaceful competitor among the other powers of the world. It has thriving agriculture, natural resources, an educated population and demonstrated expertise in rocketry and software. Climate change will make Siberia a more attractive place to live than it's ever been, and open up the sea route above Russia. With all that, who needed an empire?
It's not as though Putzik said to himself, NATO is getting stronger, I must attack now before they are too strong. Every analysis says he views the West as in decline, not ascent. It seems his judgment was that the West had become weak enough to attack. As the old joke goes, good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.
So no, I don't think America or the West bears any responsibility for this war.
... all these historical comparisons (e.g. in Mearsheimer's 'The Tragedy of Great Power Politics') fail because of one very sad but simple fact: The existence of the atomic bomb.
All historical comparisons with the hegemonic efforts before 1945, Napoleonic wars, the dissolution of the so-called "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation", Prussia and Bismark, the British Empire, WWI, the American Empire, Hitler, Stalin and so on, are absolutely invalid in the face of a threat that could wipe out all humanity. I mean, what does it mean when proven intellectuals claim that Russia feels threatened. Who threatens a state that has 6000 nuclear warheads and the ability to hide them in a country whose landmass covers a third of the globe and whose submarines could dive 100 km off Times Square without anyone noticing?
“How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
“Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
“It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
It is one thing to call out the attitude of some from the Left in the US towards this clear war crime and act of aggression, but it is another thing entirely to dismiss the role of NATO expansion, or the actions of the West, completely as part of the explanation of how the conflict came about - and it is depressing to see that the facile, and demonstrably misguided, claim that NATO exists in order to contain Soviet/Russian aggression is still peddled so often and by so many intelligent people. God forbid anyone points out that the US still has plenty of military bases in NATO countries in Europe and stores hundreds of nuclear weapons there, including in Turkey, very close to the Russian border, and certainly much closer to Russia than any Russian nukes are to the US.
A little known fact about Erich Maria Remarque:
In 1943, the Nazis arrested his youngest sister, Elfriede Scholz [de], who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a trial at the notorious "Volksgerichtshof" (Hitler's extra-constitutional "People's Court"), she was found guilty of "undermining morale" for stating that she considered the war lost. Court President Roland Freisler declared, "Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt—Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen" ("Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach – you, however, will not escape us"). Scholz was beheaded on 16 December 1943. Remarque later said his sister had been involved in anti-Nazi resistance activities.
In exile, Remarque was unaware of his sister Elfriede's fate until after the war. He would dedicate his 1952 novel Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben) to her. The dedication was omitted in the German version of the book, reportedly because he was still seen as a traitor by some Germans.
DJL,
“It is one thing to call out the attitude of some from the Left in the US towards this clear war crime and act of aggression, but it is another thing entirely to dismiss the role of NATO expansion, or the actions of the West, completely as part of the explanation of how the conflict came about - and it is depressing to see that the facile, and demonstrably misguided, claim that NATO exists in order to contain Soviet/Russian aggression is still peddled so often and by so many intelligent people.”
It is utter pseudo-intellectual nonsense like this that angers many of us on the Left who are commenting on this blog. How does the expansion of NATO in any way explain or justify or exonerate “how this conflict came about”? How does it “explain” Russian’s invasion of a sovereign nation, its bombardment of homes, schools, hospitals, and the barbarism with which Russia is inflicting death and destruction? How does the fact that unused and unlaunched intercontinental missiles in countries in Europe “explain” Russia’s barbarism? Pray tell.
DJL
It's worth noting, I think, that this aggression was not against a NATO member (Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia) that shares a common border with Russia, but against a non-NATO member. This invasion itself is pretty good commercial for the benefits of NATO membership. It's very understandable to me why Ukraine wants NATO membership.
CounterPunch has a new discussion with more experts weighing in on the invasion; many, but I don't think all, of the points have been debated on this blog + comments: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/16/the-politics-of-the-russo-ukrainian-war-international-scholars-weigh-in/
David Palmeter: don't think there is any question of Russia attacking a NATO country, lest we end up in WW3. But it is also the case that there was little to no conflict between Russia and Ukraine until it was proposed that NATO should expand all the way to the Russian border (circa 2007-8) - let's get the chain of events right here.
AA, the expansion of Nato IS a factor in the overall conflict, that's hardly been disputed by anyone, but I certainly didn't say it explained the invasion, let alone that it justified or exonerated the war, which I called an act of aggression and a war crime - 'justify' and 'exonerate' are your words, not mine, and I resent the suggestion that I am given an explanation for anyone's barbarism. A truly pathetic comment to make in response to my comment, which you should withdraw and apologise for.
DJL
NATO was already on the Russian border in the Baltics.
David Palmeter: yes, yes, I know, but that's neither here nor there. It is the big land of Ukraine (and Belarus) that matters to Russians (and, by the way, Lithuania's border with Russia is with an semi-exclave, if we need be pedantic).
DJL
I find it hard to believe that Putin felt threatened militarily by Ukraine, in or out of NATO. It wasn't the threat of invasion that he was afraid, I believe, but his belief that Ukraine was historically part of Russia and that it should return to that status. Another candidate for his concern is not NATO but the EU. We Ukraine to join the EU and begin to prosper right on Russia's border, that wouldn't look too good.
DJL,
No, I will neither withdraw nor apologize for my comment. Your comment was a rationalization which sought to place partial blame for Putin's aggression and barbarism on NATO, the U.S. and its European allies. As Prof. Kotkin stated in the interview I referenced in the prior thread, NATO had absolutely nothing to do with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It would have occurred even if NATO did not exist, because Putin is intent on restoring the Russian empire which was dissolved in 1995. which he has referred to as the greatest tragedy in Russian history.
David Palmeter: that's the right way of looking at it - it's not about whether Russia feels threatened or not by Ukraine, but more about spheres of interest, great-power politics, and all that. A sad state of affairs, to be sure...
AA: Prof. Kotkin's take is hardly the last word on the subject, and what Putin said right after that quote is that anyone thinking of bringing back the Soviet Union is stupid. And I didn't offer any rationalization of war, invasion or anything else; I know you are a see-you-next-tuesday in general, but you should really be ashamed of yourself. Anyway, won't be engaging with you any more. Fanculo now.
DJL,
No, it is you who should be ashamed of your sophistry. Fanculo to you, as well.
DJL
Since you won't be engaging with me anymore, this is probably a fruitless post, but I do wonder what it was about my post that lead you to think I was referring in any way to spheres of influence and power great-power politics?
These threads are degenerating into name-calling. I'd suggest a bit of intellectual honesty is in order.
To wit:
Would the invasion have occurred if NATO didn't exist? Very possibly yes, but no one really knows. I lean toward thinking it might have, but a piece of the overall context wd have been different, so hard to say for sure.
Is Putin compos mentis, so to speak, or is he, as a couple of commenters here have suggested, not? No one really knows, except maybe one or two people close to him.
How will the current war end? Again, no one knows; only informed or less-informed guesses and speculation are available.
No single academic or authority is the unerring guide and fount of all wisdom: not Mearsheimer, not Angela Stent, not Michael McFaul, not Max Hastings (whom I heard last night on the radio), not Timothy Snyder, not Peter Cowan, not Mike Davis, not any single person. One wd do well to bear that in mind, I think.
P.s. Not Kotkin either.
Nor me, nor Prof. Wolff, nor LFC, nor Howie, nor aaall, nor David Pameter, nor DJL, nor Anonymous, nor Barney Wolff, nor etc., etc., etc.
It is these uncertainties that Putin is banking on to cause confusion and indecision, while the fate of Urkraine and the Ukrainian people – and the rest of the free woeld - hang in the balance. It is falls on Pres. Biden and his staff to make the best decisions to extricate us from this mess, all caused by Putin (his apologists notwithstanding).
David Palmeter: I didn't say I wasn't going to deal with you anymore, that was aimed at Another Anonymous. I also didn't say that you had brought up those topics; what I said is that a proper understanding of the conflict shouldn't focus on the question of whether Putin is afraid of Ukraine or not, which is non-starter, really, but on issues to do with spheres of influence and great-power politics (more Mearsheimer than Kotkin).
DJL
I thought your remarks were addressed to me because that's how it reads:
DJL wrote:
"AA: Prof. Kotkin's take is hardly the last word on the subject, and what Putin said right after that quote is that anyone thinking of bringing back the Soviet Union is stupid."
I assume AA was writing in haste when he referred to the Russian Empire (instead of the Soviet) as ending in the 1990s but the point is valid. Putin's objection to the Soviet Constitution was in part that it allowed the various republics to leave the USSR (I believe Stalin pushed - with Lenin's approval - the original concept back in the day in order to attract the various nationalities to the Bolsheviks).
Perhaps this shows where his head is at:
"When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, most Russian officials in St. Petersburg’s mayor’s office were quick to replace the portraits of the Communist revolutionary heroes Vladimir Lenin and Sergei Kirov with the portrait of Boris Yeltsin, the new Russian president. Not everyone, however.
The mayor’s personal assistant, young Vladimir Putin, chose for his wall a portrait of Peter the Great: one of Russia’s most important czars, who made Russia into a major European power."
Perhaps we should think of this in terms of some early/mid nineteenth century American notions of Manifest Destiny when Mexico, Central America, and Canada were in some folks' sights. Except on steroids.
While most of us seem to be deracinated cosmopolitans, we should at least be aware that some folks totally buy into notions of peoples and destinies. If the internal structures are such that these folks get power, it will not end well.
Also, from the WSJ:
"MOSCOW—When Vladimir Putin was a young KGB recruit, his intelligence assessment noted a character flaw. Russia’s future president possessed a “lowered sense of danger,” it said, according to his autobiography—meaning that he was prone to take unwarranted risks."
Just a meander but Putin was born in 1952 i.e. and like his cohort in many places, someone at risk for higher blood lead levels. The last sentence describes that well (the IQ effects for someone at - I assume - the high 120s/low 130s would be less relevant). Just wondering.
aaall,
Thank you for the clarification.
DJL wrote, “AA, the expansion of Nato IS a factor in the overall conflict, that's hardly been disputed by anyone … .”
The defense attorney, defending his client charged with having raped Ms. Smith, appealed to they jury: “No one would dispute that Ms. Smith’s wearing skin tight jeans, with a low-cut blouse, revealing her cleavage, was a factor in my client’s irresistible urge to rape her. Please take that factor into consideration during your deliberations.”
In another case, the same defense attorney, defending his client charged with assault and battery of Mr. Smith, Ms. Smith’s husband, appealed to the jury: “No one would dispute that Mr. Smith’s calling the police to come to the defense of his wife, whom my client was allegedly raping, was a factor in his decision to assault and batter Mr. Smith. Please bear this in mind as you deliberate.”
I await DJL’s sophisticated use of the English language as he hurls epithets at me, including a vulgar term used by pornographers to refer to a female’s privates.
Anonymous,
You have brought commentary on this blog to a new low. And yes, I do deny it.
Anonymous’s use if a word regarded by most English speakers as vulgar and inappropriate to be uttered in decent company spurred me to find out what he meant by the “British” meaning of the term.
I discovered the following link, which explains the etymology of the term, which is actually quite informative, although not for those who are offended by scatology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY-5a0vRzYg&t=251s
Another,
I guess you're the "snowflake" now.
The truth of the matter is that all of us are more sensitive than we pretend to be, in spite of our stupid macho upbringing where we learned or rather pretended to learn to be "tough".
So it may surprise you that I solidarize at your outrage at being singled out for insults.
I believe that we could all do better to learn that behinh the "Other" there's a sensitive human being who comes to this forum to engage in dialogue about very complex political and ethical issues and to treat those who disagree with us as such rather than engaging in the 2022 equivalent of red-baiting, Putin-baiting, calling those who search for nuances "Putin apologists" or the equivalent which "my" side might use, "apologist for U.S. imperialist" or whatever.
A bit of mutual respect and tolerance as well as basic acceptance that we're talking to another human being is always wise when one talks politics.
s. wallerstein,
Thank you for your words of support and advice.
Let me say, as acerbic as some of my comments have been towards you and others, to the best of my recollection I never stooped to using obscenities or profanity, unlike DJL and Anonymous.
Regarding whether I have a so-called “feminine” side, I routinely tear-up while watching certain movies, e.g., the end of Viva Zapata, when Zapata, played by Marlon Brando, is assassinated and the death of Maximus at the end of Gladiator; I tear-up listening to Mozart’s clarinet concerto, the Contessa’s aria Dove sono in the Marriage of Figaro, and the Allegro in Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini; and also when reading Housman’s to An Athlete Dying Young or the end of Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode. But when it comes to advocating for the rights of my clients, my training and experience as an attorney have made me tenacious, and I do not suffer what I regard as the specious arguments of my adversaries lightly. This attitude often carries over to my comments on this blog. But I have made an effort, perhaps not ostensible, to tone down my rhetoric.
Another,
I didn't accuse you of using obscenities.
Here's how I see it: Professor Wolff has given us an opportunity to carry on conversations about politics, philosophy and society at a high intellectual level. You only have to glance at twitter and other such social media to see how welcome such a space is.
In addition, I believe that I can categorize all regular commenters here as being on the left and as being highly educated people.
So we can take this opportunity granted by Professor Wolff (who, unlike some bloggers, does not intervene in the comments section) to construct a very rare space of dialogue between different facets of the left or as happens in most social media, we can watch it
degenerate into insults, unthinking slogans and obscenities. It's up to us to construct that space. Not only can we do it, but also we'll have every right to pat ourselves on the back if we do construct it.
s. wallerstein,
OK, I will try harder. It's just that watching the senseless death and destruction which Putin is inflicting on the Ukrainian people has so angered me that I found any allocation of blame on the U.S. and NATO as intolerable.
I don't think that people here are blaming the U.S. and NATO (I've seen that done in some Chilean websites, but not here), but rather are trying to explain how this situation came to pass.
It's like when you study the causes of World War 1 back in European history. It's fairly clear who started the war, but in European history classes you study a long list of misunderstandings, contradictions and conflicts which go back to the beginning of the 20th century, if not longer.
Or to put it simply, you're looking at this as if it were World War 2 with Putin as Hitler, while a bunch of us are looking at this as if it were World War 1 with a long complex chain of events which lead up to it.
Another,
Here's a summary by a Russian political analyst, based in France, about the events leading up to the war, which appears in Leiter's blog. You can see that our own LFC makes some
interesting contributions to the comments sections. I haven't studied the situation as well as the participants in the comments section have, but they are good examples of seeking an explanation of the causes of this war without necessarily believing that every cause is somehow "blameworthy" (whatever that means).
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2022/03/a-russian-political-scientist-on-how-russia-and-putins-motives.html
A. A. Yes, watching all that senseless death and destruction is intolerable. I hope you'll agree that such death and destruction is always senseless and intolerable. I guess some of us are sadly asking many--and I'm not including you since I've obviously got no idea when you've been agitated by other cases-- who are now awakened (for I've rarely seen such an outpouring of agitation) by what is being done in Ukraine, "where have you been all these years?"
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/17/omg-war-is-kind-of-horrible/
best wishes
US, I suggest you go to Swanson's website and check out his latest. I don't know what he's smoking but he forgot one.''
#31. And a pony
aaall, I hope you're not suggesting that one should be selective in condemning the destruction and death caused by war. It seems kind of irrelevant to me what someone may have said elsewhere when they're urging that we shouldn't be selective in that way.
best wishes to you too
Usual Suspect,
Thank you for introducing me to CounterPunch. Although I don't agree with all of the opinions expressed in my brief scan of the articles, they are informative and offer interesting perspectives.
I just finished watching The Adam Project on Netflix. Although time travel is not possible, it offers a creative story about what it might be like if it were possible and provides a clever diversion from the horrible news we are seeing every day.
"I don't think that people here are blaming the U.S. and NATO (I've seen that done in some Chilean websites, but not here), but rather are trying to explain how this situation came to pass."
This.
And it is of course much worse to accuse someone of justifying/explaining/exonerating/rationalising war crimes and atrocities, gratuitously and unjustifiable so, and to double down when called out on this, than it is to be called a bad word, even if truly deserved.
And, by the way, the use of the word 'cunt' in British English is often meant as a term of abuse for a despicable, contemptible or foolish person, though it can often be used a term of endearment as well.
"aaall, I hope you're not suggesting that one should be selective in condemning the destruction and death caused by war."
Of course not but what's the point? This may be of interest:
https://freedomnews.org.uk/2022/03/04/fuck-leftist-westplaining/
that was of interest, aaall. the author's pain and outrage are palpable. at the same time, her pain and outrage cause her to assert, essentially, 'see things exactly my way and say things exactly my way or else shut up and go away' and to utterly denounce them as beyond the pale.
it's actually been pretty evident since the wall came down that east and west european experiences of the cold war years had constructed an even higher, more difficult to tear down intellectual wall than the physical one in berlin. i don't see that the outright, total banishment of a different point of view, more particularly of those who hold those different views, has much merit, whichever side it's coming from. as i may have said before, what's going forward is, i think, another shattering blow, coming from many quarters, to any left political future.
Anonymous,
No one has banished any views, either on this blog or in the media. Some views have undergone severe criticism, but that does not equate to banishment. And the fact that you equate the tow is symptomatic of your inability to accept criticism, as if it were banishment.
Another, I was referring to the piece that I think it was aaall noted. I was not talking about anyone here. The author of that piece certainly wished to banish all those who talked about Ukraine in a different fashion. To quote (using words I myself would never use since I abhor cursing),
"I support this very polite and carefully worded statement, but this is Freedom so let me deliver this message by Razem differently: Fuck.You. Or, at the very least, Shut.The.Fuck.Up."
Why you choose to interpret my comments on what she said in the way that you do is quite beyond me.
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