We mentioned it already in “Libertarianism is a universalism” (and other parts of our series about libertarianism and foreign policy), but the agency denial fallacy seems widespread among both Kremlintarians and others, thus deserving further analysis.
Hayekian respect for others should be a given for libertarians
First of all, we should emphasize that libertarians are the most guilty of it, as they should be the first to know better:
… the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him
– Friedrich Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”
The agency denial approach denies both of Hayek’s points: that the local people know better (through agency denial, they are not even consulted) and that the decisions should be left to them (the agency denialist is willing to decide in their stead, “for their own good”, in a paternalism that again should be alien to any libertarian).
An example of the former:
I have respected and looked up to some of these authors for a long time. I corresponded with several of them. You’d think they’d consider me an asset. I’m Ukrainian and have lived in Ukraine for two years [ ten now ]. I know the people, the culture and the historical context. My libertarian credentials are easily verified. I’ve written for the Mises Institute since 2010, the Daily Anarchist since 2011. I’ve spoken at the Property and Freedom Society and elsewhere. Appealing to them was like speaking to a brick wall. I was either ignored or lectured and scorned for my “blindness.”
– Roman Skaskiw, “Putin’s Libertarians”
An example of the latter:
Noam Chomsky is totally wrong. Our government request heavy weapons. Our civil society leaders request heavy weapons. I personally request heavy weapons. Sorry, we don’t want to die and want to be able to defend ourself. Maybe it’s a surprise for some western intellectuals
Libertarians should be the first to know this. Others should understand this too, but libertarians should be the ones teaching them, not the first guilty of ignoring it.
Isolationism is implicitly a form of racism
There’s more. Libertarianism is the only true Humanism: libertarianism is the only philosophy which takes seriously the identity of rights of all agents. Libertarianism is the only true non-collectivism, and, as such, should never fall into collectivist group-thinking traps such as hypostatization (Mises) or racism:
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
Yet racism is all over the agency denial trope. It’s implicit in every single one of the statements of its proponents: racism, nationalism, collectivism, polylogism (Mises again!), the anti-libertarian idea that borders or citizenships matter, that somehow something that is bad for “us” is good enough for “them”, that somehow “we” should care more about “our” government and “our” countrymen. Again, an extremely unbecoming attitude for libertarians: libertarians should be the first to denounce the arbitrariness of borders and citizenships; stopping one’s (anti-)political concerns at the end of one’s “own” state’s territory is utterly absurd for a libertarian. This is what Rothbard’s French translator, utterly appalled by his “foreign policy” views, described as “the fallacy of borders”:
The fallacy of borders means to believe that the laws of politics are different once the border has been crossed: Whereas he knows better than anyone that if you do not care about politics, that will not prevent politics from dealing with you, the Rothbardian isolationist believes that, on the other side of the border, things change, and there are no aggressors among foreigners:
“if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone”
Anthropology could suffice to dispel this illusion by refuting its racist underlying assumption that non-Westerners have no power of agency and can only react to the initiatives of the West – who, in the anti-white version of this kind of racism, could be the only ones who ever commit aggression.
– François Guillaumat, “Rothbard’s foreign policy errors” (emphasis added)
Even more importantly, according to Said, the “East” was (is) constantly portrayed as an invariably passive subject, unable and unworthy of being an active subject in its own way. Western colonial and post-colonial stereotypes see it as a sleeping, passive entity, subject to the action of a West believed to be the one and only entity worth of the dignity of an active subject.
– Fabio Belafatti, “Orientalism reanimated: colonial thinking in Western analysts’ comments on Ukraine”
Leftists should be careful not to talk to Libyans about Libya, or if they do, to hold their hands over their ears. Because Libyans keep giving the wrong answers concerning Qaddafi’s glorious anti-imperialist dictatorship.
Among the worst of leftist idiots are those who warn that if there’s any military action to stop Assad killing Syrians, ‘Syria will become another Libya’. Syria under Assad is incomparably worse than Libya in post-dictator chaos.
In order to keep their ‘proxy war’ and western ‘regime change’ stories going, they have to totally erase the agency of many millions of Arabs. This is because they are racists, these people so convinced of their radical progressivism.
Many of them are just as racist to Ukrainians. Ukrainians who are giving tens of thousands of lives and dedicating all their time and energy to fighting off genocidal invasion. Then leftists decide Ukrainians are the passive/stupid victims of a proxy war.
American exceptionalism upside down is still American exceptionalism
- Pretend that you are not infantilizing every other nation except the US: only the US can make actual choices for which it is responsible — everyone else, including Russia, is forced to do what they do. The only thing that moves in the universe is the US, the rest is a reaction
- Pretend that #5 does not mean you are deeply US-centric.
– Arturas Rozenas, “Six tips to academics who want to do original takes on how US/NATO/West is responsible for Russia invading Ukraine”
Indeed:
it’s a mischaracterization of the world to suggest millions upon millions are brutalized by the US war machine. It denies the agency of pretty much any entity on the world other than the US, to which it assigns almost supernatural power.
What’s more, [Chomsky’s] perception of America’s role has developed from a provincial Americentrism to a sort of theology, where the U.S. occupies the place of God, albeit a malign one, the only mover and shaker. Understandably, such a perspective raises questions about the autonomy of other actors […]
– Yassin al-Haj Saleh, “Chomsky Is No Friend of the Syrian Revolution”
He is writing about Chomsky, but this applies equally to Raimondo or anyone else at ProWarDotCom:
We American libertarians know who and what is the main danger to peace and freedom in this world
– Justin Raimondo, “Ron Paul Is Right About Crimea”, March 26, 2014 (Ron Paul’s endorsement of the Russian invasion through fake referendum was, of course, denounced by European libertarians who know better than him, which caused hysterical, vulgar and condescending reactions from American pseudo-libertarians. Of course.)
… where Chomsky himself, of course, is also close to occupying the place of a living God:
Professor Noam Chomsky, believed to be the greatest living intellectual of our time.
The same Justin Raimondo, who was Editorial Director of “antiwar.com”, condescendingly scolding a Russian libertarian for daring to oppose the Russian occupation of Crimea:
You can go pick up your check from Uncle Sam now. I’m sure you need it.
The very existence of an international libertarian movement seems alien to them. Atlas Network, Students for Liberty, Liberty International, all those great libertarian organizations, they just can’t understand their purpose:
A form of libertarian universalism is behind the creation of international organizations like the Atlas Network, just as it is behind the impulse to argue for western “tolerance” and constitutionalism before the nascent Iraqi National Assembly.
Unbelievable as it seems, for Jeff Deist, president of the “Mises Institute” (poor Lviv-born Ludwig, what have they done with his name), this is a bad thing.
Apparently everything happening in the world must be orchestrated by the CIA – an American agency –, even if it’s half a million Ukrainians protesting in the streets for months against a corrupt government. Right.
Notice how agency denialists are desperately sticking to the “CIA coup” narrative eight years and two free elections later, because, well, for them between Russians, Ukrainians and Americans, the only ones with agency are the Americans, so an American action is the only possible explanation to anything. So if half a million Ukrainians go to the street in Euromaidan protests, well surely the only explanation is they were lured there by Victoria Nuland’s American cookies (poor girl must have been up baking all night to bake half a million cookies) and then did her bidding like good little obedient puppies (they can’t be humans with agency, obviously):
It is a sad moment when “leftists” decide that massive popular street protests against reactionary capitalist rulers are a bad thing; they thereby reject everything they have claimed to stand for throughout their lives. Unless they think that people have no agency (and no rights to agency) and that these kinds of numbers can all be manipulated [by] the CIA, Victoria Nuland, Hunter Biden etc. Were all these hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, and every member of parliament, personally bribed? …
‘Coup’ … is simply a term used for ‘popular uprising’ when it is one disapproved of by this sub-set of western lefties who assume they know what’s best for other peoples …
– Michael Karadjis, “Ukraine myths used to justify Putin’s terror”
Agency is even denied... to libertarians. By ipso facto fake libertarians:
Foreign Libertarian parties are likely CIA operations.
Because, of course! How else could us dumb non-Americans be libertarians?
Obviously, Russians can’t have agency either. Neither those who are libertarian and oppose Putin, nor those who decide, of their own free will, a murderous invasion: for the Kremlintarian Mao Tse Tung Institute, if an invasion happens, it must be because the poor Russian bear was trapped by evil USA:
Likewise, NATO expansion gets criticized through the same agency denial logic; isn’t it fascinating, how, for American Kremlintarians, NATO “expansion” is a purely american act of will? It’s like none of us poor devils in the rest of the world have any agency, at all. The Russians don’t have agency, they get “provoked” into senseless wars, no matter how counter-productive and self-destructive, like a mindless “bear” being poked. And the citizens of the 30 NATO members (and prospective members like Ukraine) don’t either – if the US decides they shall be part of NATO, that’s it, they get swallowed by it!
NATO kept creeping, sometimes jogging, in an eastward direction
NATO is “jogging” like an entity (nevermind the 85% of Hungarians who approved joining!), as if it had agency, as if the so-called expansion were not simply the legitimate outcome of voluntary, legitimate and entirely justified choices, as if NATO were not, precisely, the libertarian solution to the question of how small states can efficiently defend themselves against larger ones:
This leads us to the second point: NATO did not expand into “Eastern Europe.” Czechia, Poland, and Hungary in 1999 and the Baltic countries among others in 2004 actively sought membership in the alliance. This is not just semantics. For the historical reasons mentioned above, the West has been a desired political direction associated with prosperity, democracy, and freedom—despite the limitations of Western liberal capitalist democracies and the implementation of that model in Eastern Europe. Being at the receiving end of Russian imperialism, many Eastern Europeans looked forward to membership in NATO as a means of securing their sovereignty. NATO, in other words, would not have “expanded” into Eastern Europe if the Eastern European nations had not wanted it and actively pursued it.
As 2020 Pew Research Center data show, Eastern European members generally see NATO favorably. Fifty-three percent of Czechs have a positive opinion about NATO, as do 77 percent of Lithuanians. NATO’s most enthusiastic supporters are Poles, with 88 percent supporting the alliance. Fifty-three percent of Ukrainians view NATO favorably, compared to 23 who view it negatively. …
In the westsplaining framework, the concerns of Russia are recognized but those of Eastern Europe are not. This, again, mirrors the Russian line that “Ukraine’s current regime lacks any sovereignty,” which of course also operates within a framework inherited from the bipolar world of the Cold War. Eastern Europe is something that can be explained but isn’t worth engaging with.
– Jan Smoleński, Jan Dutkiewicz, “The American Pundits Who Can’t Resist “Westsplaining” Ukraine”
There is no such thing as “our own government”
A related fallacy is assuming that someone necessarily has more control on their “own” government than others, in particular, an obsession with what the US government should have done, should do, or should not do. Writing as if one somehow had a very selective magic wand that would allow them to change the course of action of “their” government, instantly, on a specific point, but on no other, and of no other government. This gives rise to such pathetic titles as “Joe Biden, What the Hell?”.
Variation: a selective time machine that would allow to travel in time to change the actions of one government, but of no other. In such Kremlintarian writings, there is no mention whatsoever of what the Russian government could have done differently (e.g., not invade their neighbors), or indeed can do at anytime:
For all those saying it’s wrong for the West to supply Ukraine with heavy arms, let me remind you these simple words:
If Russia stops fighting, there’ll be no more war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there’ll be no more Ukraine.
The “your own government” fallacy leads straight to anti-libertarian nationalism, such as Hoppe’s endorsement of the alt-right, arguably a logical next step after his famous yet erroneous rejection of free immigration:
Let it be America First!, England First!, Germany First!, Italy First!, and so on, i.e., each country trading with one another and no one interfering in anyone else’s domestic affairs.
Note that the most vitriolic part of his awful speech is directed towards Students for Liberty, who dare organize libertarian conferences around the world and/or with participants from around the world (horresco referens!), something completely alien to the perverted view of “self-determination” as equal to nationalist, nihilistic polylogism.
It leads to the “Charbonnier est maître chez lui” (allegedly said by Goebbels1) principle of omnipotent governments doing whatever they want with “their” populations – and indeed, Kremlintarians would have been perfectly fine with letting Hitler do just that, indeed invade and exterminate the whole world, as long as “their” own hamlet were exterminated last.
“Anti-imperialism” of idiots and “westplaining” are wrong
Aspects of this agency denial have been described as “anti-imperialism” of idiots and “westplaining”.
How many would consider their own elected government legitimate if it began carrying out mass rape campaigns against dissidents? It’s only the complete dehumanization of Syrians that makes such a position even possible. It’s a racism that sees Syrians as incapable of achieving, let alone deserving, anything better than one of the most brutal dictatorships of our time. […]
Syrians are not seen as possessing the sophistication to hold a diverse range of views. Civil society activists (including many amazing women), citizen journalists, humanitarian workers are irrelevant. The entire opposition is reduced to its most authoritarian elements or seen as mere conduits for foreign interests. […]
Everything that happens is viewed through the prism of what it means for westerners – only white men have the power to make history. […]
In this vein, leading western anti-war organizations hold conferences on Syria without inviting any Syrian speakers.
– Leila Al-Shami, “The ‘anti-imperialism’ of idiots”, April 14, 2018
Replace Syrians with “Ukrainians” or “Belarusians”, and the description of the American-centric anti-imperialism would still be hundred percent accurate. Idiots indeed.
It was Jeremy Corbyn flying to New York City to attend forums discussing “the real path to peace in Ukraine” without a single Ukrainian among the panel to talk about their country’s future.
– Rodrigo Aguilera, “A breakup letter to the Left”, January 17, 2023
During the Q&A session of the event, I stood up to express my disagreement with the speakers’ position. I started with an important disclaimer, saying that I am from Russia.
I expressed my belief that everything they said was bullshit and that it seemed to me they were not well-informed about the situation in Russia or Ukraine. I suggested that their sources of information were limited and that they were not interested in the opinions of real people. …
After this, Yanis Varoufakis called me a fascist, and they turned off my microphone. My wife (the only Ukrainian citizen in the hall) and I were forcibly removed from the event without being allowed to say another word.
– Artem Temirov, Russian and Ukrainian activists silenced at Greek MeRA 25 party event
Ever since the beginning of the Russian invasion against Ukraine, we have seen statements by anarchists, communists and leftists not from Ukraine, on how Ukrainian anarchists, communists and leftists should not defend themselves against attack of Putin
– Antti Rautiainen, “Misconceptions about imperialism, and anarchist collective traumas”
Skrze symetrizaci je konflikt prezentován jako střet dvou rovnocenných, supermocných partnerů, nejčastěji jako střet Rusko vs. NATO, případně Rusko vs. USA, méně častěji pak Rusko vs. EU. V takovém pohledu je třeba za vším hledat nějakou velkou hru supervelmocí, střet impérií o sféry vlivu na globální šachovnici a Ukrajinu redukovat na loutku, kterou ovládá vyšší moc. Je to pohled vlastní nejen řadě politických organizací, ale i prominentních západních intelektuálů a politiků – od Jeremyho Corbyna po Noama Chomskeho. Takový postoj, který přiznává historické aktérství jen impériím a supervelmocím, je na západě tak častý a opakovaný, že dostal svůj název – někdy se mu říká imperiální narcismus, jindy západní exceptionalismus, nejčastěji však westplaining. Westplaining byl již mnohokrát kritizován – většinou různými autory z CEE regionu (viz např. text Zosie Brom). Hlavním nebezpečím westplainingu je připisování schopnosti konat výlučně západu a USA, což vede v kritizování války k sebestřednému antiimperialismu, který přehlíží působení nezápadních aktérů, jejich potřeb a postojů. Britsko-syrská autorka a aktivistka Leila Al-Shami přišla v trochu jiné souvislosti s termínem antiimperialismus idiotů, aby zkritizovala pozici těch, kteří vidí jen roli USA, ale přehlíží kroky Ruska, Iránu či Asada v Sýrii. …
A právě hlasům z Ukrajiny je dnes třeba přednostně naslouchat, být s nimi plně solidární a brát jejich slova vážně. Jak k tomu podotýká český novinář Ondřej Bělíček: “Ve všech těch geopolitických debatách o NATO a Rusku bychom neměli zapomínat na Ukrajince a jejich právo vybrat si svou budoucnost. Jejich země byla po desetiletí hřištěm geopolitických ambicí soupeřících imperiálních bloků. Měli bychom podporovat jejich boj na obranu vlastní nezávislosti.”
Aby bylo jasno, neříkáme naslouchat ukrajinským oligarchům. Neříkáme ani naslouchat ultranacionalistům typu Pravý sektor, jejichž vliv na Ukrajině je, ku prospěchu Putina, značně přeháněn a nedá se např. srovnávat s vlivem parlamentních stran typu AfD v Německu, Jednotné Rusko v Rusku či politiků typu Orbána v Maďarsku či Le Pen ve Francii. V tomto ohledu plně souhlasíme s autonomními antifašisty z Ukrajiny, kteří říkají “Několik tisíc nácků s minimální podporou voličů v zemi se 40 milióny obyvatel nepředstavují ani hrozbu, ani důvod k invazi… Ano, na Ukrajině jsou náckové, tak jako jsou v jiných zemích. Ne, nepotřebujeme pomoc Putina či jiných autoritářů, abychom si s nimi poradili. Poradíme si s nimi sami.”
Říkáme naslouchat primárně hlasům obyčejných lidí a organizovaných aktivistů, kteří se prakticky, tiše, bez fanfár médií zapojili do ozbrojené obrany Ukrajiny i sítí vzájemné pomoci, jdou zdola, proti autoritám, antifašisticky a v duchu odhodlaných ukrajinských anarchistů jakými byl Nestor Machno.
Through symmetrisation, the conflict is presented as a clash between two equal, superpower partners, most often as Russia vs Nato, or Russia vs the US, and less often, Russia vs the EU. In this view, one has to look for some great game of superpowers behind everything, a clash of empires over spheres of influence on the global chessboard, and reduce Ukraine to a puppet controlled by a higher power. This is a view shared not only by many political organisations, but also by prominent Western intellectuals and politicians – from Jeremy Corbyn to Noam Chomsky to Yanis Varoufakis. This attitude, which ascribes historical agency only to empires and superpowers, is so common and recurrent in the West that it has been given a name – sometimes it is called imperial narcissism, sometimes western exceptionalism, but most often westsplaining. Westsplaining has been criticised many times – mostly by various authors from the CEE region (see, for example, Zosia Brom’s text). The main danger of westsplaining is the attribution of the ability to act exclusively to the West and the US, which leads to a self-centred anti-imperialism in the critique of war that overlooks the agency of non-Western actors, their needs and attitudes. In a slightly different context, British-Syrian author and activist Leila Al-Shami came up with the term “anti-imperialism of idiots” to criticise the position of those who see only the role of the US but overlook the actions of Russia, Iran or Assad in Syria. …
And it is to the voices from Ukraine that today we need to listen as a priority, to be in full solidarity with them and to take their words seriously. As the Czech journalist Ondřej Bělíček points out, “In all these geopolitical debates about Nato and Russia, we should not forget the Ukrainians and their right to choose their future. For decades, their country has been the playground of the geopolitical ambitions of rival imperial blocs. We should support their struggle to defend their independence.”
To be clear, we are not suggesting to listen to the Ukrainian oligarchs. Nor are we suggesting to listen to ultra-nationalists like Right Sector, whose influence in Ukraine, to Putin’s benefit, is greatly exaggerated and cannot be compared, for example, with the influence of parliamentary parties like the AfD in Germany, United Russia in Russia or politicians like Orban in Hungary or Le Pen in France. In this respect, we fully agree with the autonomous anti-fascists from Ukraine who say “Several thousands Nazis, with minimal electoral support in a country of 40 million, are neither a threat nor a reason to invade… Yes, there are Nazis in Ukraine, same as in other countries. No, we don‘t need the help of Putin or other authoritarians to deal with them. We‘ll do it on our own.“
We suggest that you listen primarily to the voices of ordinary people and organised activists who have practically, quietly, without media fanfare, joined the armed defense of Ukraine and mutual aid networks, going from below, against the authorities, anti-fascist and in the spirit of committed Ukrainian anarchists like Nestor Makhno.
– “Všichni jsme Ukrajinci: antifašistický vzkaz ze stínů střední a východní Evropy” [ “An anti-fascist message from the shadows of Central and Eastern Europe” ] (emphasis added)
You, the Westerners, will never get it. Partially because most of yous have a completely different experience of history, and it is that of living your life in a dominating country. Partially because you can’t be arsed to listen, and you never were. It is just simply inconvenient for you to give an idea that won’t fit to your already established view of the World a thought, and let’s face it, deep down most of you think that your ideas and your concepts are better, and more legit. Western exceptionalism is a worm in your brain, a worm you pretend to escape, only to parade your yankee, Queen of England ignorance around. You are better and more legit. You have better insights. You are used to being listened to. You not gonna use Google translate, because how come things are not in English, the terror! …
Your lack of knowledge on the issues of Russia and the rest of the world formerly behind the Iron Curtain is, frankly, astonishing, surprising and the lack of curiosity – shameful. In London and the wider UK, you got comrades coming from all these countries that joined the EU since 2004 and apparently you have never bothered to even attempt to understand what we are about. We were good for some things, mainly, in the leftist reflection of the mainstream trope of a “Polish builder” or “Lithuanian cleaner” (good, hard-working, simple people), we were good for more hands-on stuff. But never good enough for actually having opinions: apparently even about the stuff we grew up with. The unique version of Orientalism that you hold towards us, seeing as either simpletons, or racist, primitive, but honourable – you know exactly what we mean, admit it. …
in your heads, NATO and other Western organisations are always on the wrong side, and always perpetrators of everything bad in this world. You could, ofc, google it, but who would bother if you have such intellectual figures as Noam Chomsky with his disgraceful, relativising stances to tell you what to think.
– Zosia Brom, “Fuck leftist westplaining”
It’s really to the point now that if someone has anti-imperialist in their bio I assume they support the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Same with anti-war. Nothing good comes from people who call themselves that.
The astonishing condescendence of “anti-imperialist” Westerners towards Ukrainians:
Non, rien. Juste la gauche décoloniale et anti-impérialiste qui explique aux “aborigènes” comment il faut (poliment) parler à l’ancienne puissance coloniale à propos de leur résistance à un empire.
No nothing. Just the decolonial and anti-imperialist left explaining to the “aborigines” how to (politely) talk to the former colonial power about their resistance to an empire.
– Marianna Perebenesiuk, commenting on Putinist-communist Jean-Luc Mélenchon saying:
Je pense que les Ukrainiens ne devraient pas nous parler comme ça
I think Ukrainians shouldn’t talk to us like that
Isn’t it fascinating how so-called American anti-imperialists will claim that NATO/the US is exploiting simple Ukrainians without caring about what they actually want, and then IMMEDIATELY shut up any Ukrainian who dares to disagree with them in the replies?
I just LOVE prominent western leftists who talk about “proxy wars” and “Ukrainians being denied agency by the bad, bad West” and then proceed to silence and gaslight every single Ukrainian who tells them about the horrific damage inflicted by Russia.
Rejecting dehumanization and the zoo mindset
Even more insulting than westplaining and, of course, utterly antinomic to methodological individualism is the recurring use of dubious animal analogies:
What sort of culpability do I have in mind? It’s on the order of setting a trap and loading it with bait in order to lure a target. Russia had to choose to step into it, but those who set the trap did not have to do what they did. Hence, they contributed to a terrible situation.
– Sheldon Richman, “Shades of Gray in the Russia-Ukraine War”, April 18, 2022
Kremlintarian logic!
the national-national-security establishment simply went into the Middle East and began poking hornets’ nest
– Jacob G. Hornberger, “Terminate NATO”
If you are hiking in the woods and come across a wild animal, you should always give it a way to escape. Once cornered, the animal will attack you. The same advice applies when dealing with a dangerous country. Never corner it. Unfortunately that is exactly what this administration has been doing with Russia.
– Thomas Gale Moore, “Cornering the Russian Bear”, September 17, 2008
As we see, the US state has revived the prospect of nuclear armageddon, as it keeps poking the Russian bear, hoping for a showdown.
– George Ford Smith, “Let’s Boycott Them!”
Seriously? These are merely a few examples, but the Russian Bear (variant: the Chinese Panda) analogies pushed to absurd lengths are all over the Kremlintarian cesspools… (Also, nevermind the insanity of claiming the largest state on earth, by far, with the largest nuclear arsenal, is somehow “cornered” by anything… Again, why are Russia’s whims so preposterously sacrosanct for them?)
There’s this pernicious assumption in the West about both Russia and China that they can’t help but react aggressively, and this is normal and to be expected, and it’s on others to placate them. It’s a strange form of orientalism as @KuldkeppMart put it… and if you dig a bit further down it reveals a deeply colonial mindset (yes even among anti-colonialists) that the West makes all the choices while others just mechanistically react
– Seva Gunitsky (emphasis added)
Thinking about countries as organisms is not just non-libertarian, it is in fact part and parcel of national socialist theory. Notice how “buffer zones” simply replaced Lebensraum... Russia being such a tiny and defenseless country and all. (Notice, again, that only Russia should be allowed buffer zones in that Russocentric view, no one is ever considering the concerns of say Poles or Slovaks to not have a Russia-aligned Ukraine or Belarus right on their doorstep, or indeed the right of Finns for a buffer zone between them and Russia...)
Or indeed, as (even) Dworkin noted:
Once we personify the society so as to make the social choice an individual choice, there is no longer anything to be considered under the aspect of justice. An individual cares about the distribution of benefits or experiences over the days of his life. But he does not care under the aspect of justice.
– Ronald M. Dworkin, “Is Wealth a Value?”, The Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2., March 1980, pp. 191-226
If a “country” is an animal, an entity, then its constituent parts have no more rights than cells. Justice becomes irrelevant. Who cares about the opinion of a bear’s left paw?
How does any sort of political dissent within a “foreign” country exist in this worldview? It does not. Kremlintarians refuse to consider that Russians could be opposed to Russian Imperialism, could be, in fact, some of its best critics, such as the Russian Libertarian Party:
The Donbas and Crimea, of course, must be unanimously pro-Russia. Never mind that the last time a real referendum was held, a majority approved joining Ukraine. Never mind that Russia brutally represses any attempt at secession, and were they to change their mind again, well, tough luck (or indeed, were there a secession-from-the-secession right from the start). Never mind that no matter how strong a majority would favor Russia, there would always be a minority, with individual rights, who would not approve being rounded up in concentration camps and deported to the other side of Asia, when not kidnapped and used as cannon fodder.
Never mind that the whole “secession” was started by Russian agents, in other words, what any honest person would call an aggression and an invasion, not a secession. Never mind that the Russian invaders are not welcomed with flowers there:
Pundits on Russian state TV begrudgingly acknowledge that Russian-speakers in Ukraine they supposedly came to “liberate” are actually fighting against invading Russian troops.
Of course the Russian leadership doesn’t care one bit about the inhabitants of Donbas and the casualties of the war it caused, Russian or not. Only the Kremlintarian useful idiots choose to believe that:
The idea that Putin had to invade Ukraine to protect Russians from Ukrainian nazis is absolute garbage. It was purely a land grab. There are many places where Russians are genuinely oppressed, like Turkmenistan. Putin doesn’t care about them one bit.
– Mikhail Svetov, 2018
Never mind that if Putin really wanted to help Russians in the Donbas, instead of ruining Russia in order to destroy their cities, he could have helped them at a much cheaper cost in any other way.
Ukraine, conversely is to be treated as one nazi batallion. Nevermind that a batallion is only a few hundred people, that it’s not even nazi, that Ukrainian far-right is not even in parliament, that Ukraine has far less far-right problems than other countries, including Russia. Nope, one nazi entity. Because the Bear says so and it’s convenient to believe it. Whatever happens in the wild abroad is none of our business anyway, right?
In this racist worldview, and let’s bring the animal analogy full circle, foreign cultures are to be treated like animals in a zoo. They pose no real threat to “us”. They have a homogeneous, simple, collective identity. And their cultures are to be preserved under glass; if they are living under communist oppression or abject poverty, well it must be their culture, how quaint. Let’s save us from this threat, but surely the Russians, Cubans, North Koreans etc. can stay communist. So we can travel there and visit, enjoy the sights of “an alternative”. As long as there is no (immediate? but surely these savages could never be a real threat!) threat to the US, the rest of the world can remain as a zoo, so that spoiled gringos can visit it when they get bored of their first world problems:
The visitors don’t bother to ask the Mayan women why many of them don’t wear traditional clothing, but my friend does. The women tell him that they don’t wear their handmade clothes because they have become too expensive. Now, what does it mean for handmade clothes to become too expensive? It means that the labor of a Mayan woman has become more valuable. Instead of spending hours and hours at a hand loom making a shirt to wear, she can spend that time making the same shirt to sell to a lady in France and use the proceeds to buy three outfits—and eyeglasses, or a radio, or medicine against dengue fever. Or women can make something else and still be able to buy more of the things they value.
They’re not being robbed. They’re becoming wealthier. And from their perspective, that’s not a bad thing. But from the perspective of what my friend calls the anti-globalization “poverty tourists,” who like to take pictures of colorful poor people, it’s a big disappointment.
– Tom G. Palmer, “Globalization Is Grrrreat!”
Cuba is not a zoo where you pay an admission ticket and you go in and you get to watch people living in cages to see how they are suffering
– Marco Rubio Rips U.S.-Cuba Travel: “Cuba Is Not a Zoo” (of course, zoo visitors are treated differently than the caged victims)
Libertarianism is not for a multipolar world where half of mankind is kept in prisons and poverty as some sort of zoo, so that privileged Westerners can see “something different”, an “alternative” to the capitalist opulence or “American hegemony”, whenever they get slightly bored. Indeed, if you agree with KGB agent Putin that the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe, do not expect any more respect than him.
No Amnesty for Amnesty International
In my experience, those who suffered under tyrannies are the first to morally distinguish between democracies that have blots on the system and totalitarian regimes where the blot is the system, and Amnesty International activists born and raised in democracies are the last.
The perfect example of agency denial has been provided recently by none other than Amnesty International: they published an awful report about Ukraine… without and against its local Ukrainian branch:
Сьогодні на англомовному сайті Amnesty International вийшов матеріал, у якому критикувалися дії Збройних Сил України. Його створили на основі даних, які зібрали іноземні дослідники та дослідниці Департаменту реагування на кризи глобального офісу нашої організації.
Український офіс не був долучений до підготовки чи написання тексту публікації. І, на превеликий жаль, уже на початковому етапі розробки цієї доповіді ми зайшли у глухий кут, де аргументи нашої команди щодо неприпустимості і неповноти такого матеріалу не були враховані.
Зі свого боку представники і представниці українського офісу зробили все, що могли, аби цей матеріал не було оприлюднено. Коли на наші неодноразові заперечення ми отримали у відповідь безкомпромісне «ні», ми також зробили все, що могли, аби мінімізувати поширення матеріалу. Ми просили в авторів та авторок надіслати нам завчасно всі версії матеріалу (на жаль, цього не відбулось), ми переконали їх попросити офіційний коментар від Міністерства оборони України, але при цьому вони, на жаль, не надали достатньо часу на отримання відповіді і опублікували це дослідження без їхнього коментаря. Ми також категорично відмовилися публікувати цей прес-реліз на нашому сайті чи перекладати його на українську, через його, на нашу думку, односторонність. Нам дуже прикро, що навіть після всіх можливих аргументів «проти» нас усе одно не почули.
Кожна людина з українського офісу Amnesty знає, що саме рф відповідальна за злочини агресії проти України. Більше того, значна частина нашої команди – це люди, які особисто вимушені були рятувати себе і близьких від війни з росією, лишаючи все позаду. Дехто з нас уже двічі стали переселенцями чи біженцями.
Із 24 лютого ми з українськими колегами без упину працювали над тим, щоби всі воєнні злочини були верифіковані та зафіксовані для міжнародної спільноти. Ми випустили понад два десятки матеріалів про злочини, вчинені російською федерацією на території України. Багато матеріалів мали міжнародний резонанс і будуть неодноразово використані в міжнародних інституціях у процесі відновлення справедливості.
Але ви маєте рацію, бюрократія, нерозуміння локального контексту, негнучка система роботи, ігнорування думки української команди та позиції правозахисної спільноти в Україні, – усе це завадило нам зупинити сьогоднішній реліз іще на стадії ідеї, як би це мало бути. Тим не менш, із усіма згаданими явищами ми боролися до останнього. І будемо продовжувати боротися надалі в різних формах і на різних позиціях, чого б це нам не вартувало.
Я та команда українського офісу віримо у права людини, ми віримо в перемогу України, ми віримо в те, що всі винні у воєнних злочинах повинні бути притягнуті до відповідальності.
Today, the English-language website of Amnesty International published a material criticizing the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It was created on the basis of data collected by foreign researchers of the Crisis Response Department of the global office of our organization.
The Ukrainian office was not involved in the preparation or writing of the text of the publication. And, unfortunately, already at the initial stage of developing this report, we reached a dead end, where the arguments of our team regarding the inadmissibility and incompleteness of such material were not taken into account.
For their part, representatives of the Ukrainian office did everything they could to prevent this material from being made public. When our repeated objections were answered with a firm no, we also did everything we could to minimize the distribution of the material. We asked the authors to send us all versions of the material in advance (unfortunately, this did not happen), we convinced them to ask for an official comment from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, but at the same time, unfortunately, they did not give us enough time to receive an answer and published it research without their comment. We also categorically refused to publish this press release on our website or to translate it into Ukrainian, due to its, in our opinion, one-sidedness. We are very sorry that even after all possible arguments “against” we were still not heard.
Every person from the Ukrainian office of Amnesty knows that Russia is responsible for crimes of aggression against Ukraine. Moreover, a significant part of our team is people who were personally forced to save themselves and their loved ones from the war with Russia, leaving everything behind. Some of us have already become displaced persons or refugees twice.
Since February 24, my Ukrainian colleagues and I have been working non-stop to ensure that all war crimes are verified and recorded for the international community. We have released more than two dozen materials about crimes committed by the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine. Many materials had an international resonance and will be repeatedly used in international institutions in the process of restoring justice.
But you are right, bureaucracy, misunderstanding of the local context, inflexible work system, ignoring the opinion of the Ukrainian team and the position of the human rights community in Ukraine - all this prevented us from stopping today’s release at the idea stage, as it should be. Nevertheless, we fought all the mentioned phenomena to the last. And we will continue to fight in the future in different forms and in different positions, no matter what it costs us.
I and the team of the Ukrainian office believe in human rights, we believe in the victory of Ukraine, we believe that all those guilty of war crimes should be brought to justice.
– Команда Amnesty International в Україні, August 4, 2022
She resigned the next day:
Я звільняюсь з Amnesty International в Україні. Це – ще одна втрата, яку мені принесла війна. Улюблена робота, 7 років життя, плани на мабутнє, а останні 5 місяців – ще і рятівний круг у вигляді правозахисної роботи на благо рідної країни під час війни. Все розбилося об стіну бюрократії та глухого мовного бар’єру. Справа не в англійській, а в тому, що якщо ти не живеш у країні, в яку вдерлися окупанти та рвуть її на шматки, тобі, напевно, не зрозуміти, що ж тут такого – засудити армію захисників. І немає слів у жодній мові, які здатні це донести до того, хто не відчув цього болю.
I am resigning from Amnesty International in Ukraine. This is another loss that the war brought me. Favorite work, 7 years of life, plans for the future, and the last 5 months - a lifeline in the form of human rights work for the benefit of the native country during the war. Everything crashed against the wall of bureaucracy and a deaf language barrier. It’s not about English, it’s about the fact that if you don’t live in a country invaded by invaders and are tearing it to pieces, you probably don’t understand what it’s like to condemn an army of defenders. And there are no words in any language that can convey this to someone who has not felt this pain.
– Oksana Pokalchuk - Head of Amnesty International Ukraine, August 5, 2022
The same Amnesty International we mentioned in part 3 of our series for their antisemitism, in a previous report, which, oh surprise, was also done against the locals’ opinion:
In February, Amnesty published yet another report on Israel, this one claiming that it is an apartheid state. Typically, it was riddled with errors, both of fact and law. And who led the opposition to it? As in Ukraine, Amnesty’s own staff. Amnesty Israel’s executive director Molly Malekar described the Israel report as a “punch in the gut”, while its CEO Yariv Mohar said he was “shocked and angry” when he heard about its conclusions.
In other words, the central command of a hard left NGO produced propaganda that owes more to ideology than fact, only to be criticised by its own people on the ground - who understand the reality.
– Stephen Pollard, “Amnesty is now utterly morally bankrupt” (Archive)
Taking both sides seriously
Mere weeks before Ukraine’s parliament adopted an act declaring the country’s independence, Bush declined to support the country’s right to self-determination, warning instead of “suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.” … he privileged a carefully managed Soviet decline over the wishes of Ukrainians, who would go on to overwhelming vote for independence in a referendum at the end of the year…. Bush’s speech in Kyiv was an ignominious start to the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship that could have easily been avoided. Bush could have stuck to platitudes about the promotion of peace, democracy, and self-determination and omitted the patronizing warning about civil conflict. …
By freeing itself from its Russocentrism, Washington will also be better able to engage with and listen to its partners in Eastern and northern Europe, which have greater proximity to and more clarity on national security threats from Russia. Their knowledge and expertise will be critical to Ukraine’s victory over Russia, future Ukrainian reconstruction, the prosecution of war crimes, prosperity in Eastern Europe, and eventually, the establishment of thriving democracies across Eurasia.
Beneath the United States’ misplaced aspirations for a positive relationship with Russia lies immense hubris. Americans tend to believe they can accomplish anything, but perpetually discount the agency of their interlocutors.
– Alexander Vindman: “Stop Tiptoeing Around Russia: It Is Time to End Washington’s Decades of Deference to Moscow”, August 8, 2022 (emphasis added)
Respect for agency means taking both sides seriously.
Ukrainians, for example, have been tearing down statues of Lenin, presumably because they did not appreciate all that much his genocide against them.
The Russian invaders, conversely have been building fresh statues of Lenin in conquered cities.
They love Stalin, too, who also starved to death millions of Ukrainians. Why should it be so hard to understand that the Ukrainians cannot accept being invaded by Lenin and Stalin fans?
Libertarians, again, should appreciate demonstrated preference.
Take both opinions, both actions seriously, and draw moral and practical conclusions from it. For instance, when a Russian embassy openly wishes humiliating deaths on those who resist them, or when Russian pundits openly threaten Italy and Poland after Putin admitted territorial expansion as his real goal.
This brings us to a second major shortcoming of Mearsheimer: the lack of basic empathy. And I don’t mean the emotional empathy with Ukrainians, God forbid. I mean the cognitive empathy with Putin. You must empathise with Putin to get what he’s doing and why Mearsheimer refuses to analyse what we know of Putin’s worldview. Look how he casually dismisses Putin comparing himself with Peter I. Meanwhile, this is the key to understanding Putin’s motivation. He doesn’t see himself as a conqueror. Not at all. He thinks he is a REconqueror… Invasion of Ukraine is not some random, capricious move of Putin. Plenty of politicians had been talking of what Putin did for decades. They had been using the same arguments which Putin would use later. Ignoring this fact reflects total disinterest in Russian public imagination
Agency denialists listen to neither side – only to their own preconceptions. While Russians pundits openly claim they aim “to squeeze out the democratization” in both Syria and Ukraine, agency denialists don’t listen and instead stick to their own narrative of the good Russian bear fighting an undemocratic Ukrainian “coup”.
Likewise, claiming “both sides are wrong” (implied: “I’m better than everyone”!) or “both sides are right” (or, the Kremlintarian variant: both governments are equally bad, why should it matter which one wins! so just let the aggressor win: nihilism, as always, in practice means rule by the worst brute force) is simply intellectual cowardice, again implying a dehumanizing identity between right and wrong actions and moral irrelevance of other actors’ claims and actions.
Westerners born in places at a safe distance from conflicts and dictatorships have the luxury of that easy posture; too bad for Ukrainians or Syrians who don’t and have to deal with imperfect choices in the real world:
Staying in the position of ultra-privilege, being carefully sheltered from the real world consequences of their actions, @amnesty dares to preach to those who face existential risks daily and indeed risk losing everything, should they miscalculate only once
How about, then, reading some opinions of good authors born in/having lived in Ukraine, Russia, and neighboring countries?
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Михаил Светов / Mikhail Svetov: “An appeal to western libertarians about the war in Ukraine”
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Екатерина Юнг / Cathy Young: “Russia’s Global Anti-Libertarian Crusade”
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Вера Алексеевна Кичанова / Vera Kichanova: “My family are from Russia and Ukraine, here’s what I think about this war”
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Roman Skaskiw, “Putin’s Libertarians”
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Agnieszka Płonka, “Do not say ’Russia’, say ’the gang’”
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Александр Семёнович Виндман/Alexander Vindman: “Stop Tiptoeing Around Russia: It Is Time to End Washington’s Decades of Deference to Moscow”, August 8, 2022
We will not shut up. Not anymore. For too long, the Ukrainian perspectives were silenced by Russia and pro-Russian sentiments around the globe. Like many other nations colonized by Russia, Ukraine had to shut up and, at best, politely debate whatever Russians had to say.
This colonial legacy has stayed long after 1991. Ukrainians were consistently denied agency: their pro-EU and pro-NATO choices were explained through conspiracies about the “US and NATO aggressive expansion.” Discussions about Ukraine often happened without Ukrainians themselves but with well-established carriers of the Russian colonial views on Ukraine.
All of this must remain in the past. We will not shut up and listen to another round of Russian imperial bullshit, casual tone-deaf Westsplaining, or another Russian state-sponsored gaslighting campaign.
As the genocide against our people continues, we will remain unapologetically Ukrainian – and we will make sure our voices are loud and clear from now on.
– Stas and Maria, Ukrainians, “9 things people still don’t get about Ukraine”
Anatoliy Dubovik (A.D.): … I was born in Kazan (Russia) and have been living for over 30 years in Ukraine, in the city of Dnipro (formerly Dnepropetrovsk, formerly Ekaterinoslav). This is the eastern part of Ukraine.
Sergiy Shevchenko (S.Sh.): … I was born and lived for most of my life in Donetsk, the centre of Donbas. …
Russia’s geopolitical goal is not at all to stop Western imperialism, but to make Russia an empire again, more powerful, aggressive and inhuman than the conventional “West”. The Russian state, having suppressed freedom and independence at home, cannot bring any freedom and independence to other countries.
The pro-Russian “Left” does not see this. To use the analogy of George Orwell’s novel 1984, such “leftists” side with the Big Brother of Eurasia against the Big Brother of Oceania.
Such “leftists” are idiots. …
We recall that Ukraine was not the first victim of modern Russian imperialism. There were Russian invasions of Georgia and Moldova in the 1990s. There was a colonial war in the Caucasus that continued until the 2000s. Russian tanks re-entered Georgia in 2008. Russia has been intervening in Syria since the early 2010s. Russian troops were used to suppress the uprising in Kazakhstan in January 2022. The war in Ukraine is simply a new scale of violence by Moscow, which has not happened in Europe for a long time, but not something fundamentally new to Moscow’s policy of murder, destruction and occupation.
Why are they negotiating Ukraine’s future without Ukraine? Why do they continue to try to cut secret deals with the Kremlin? And why won’t they support Ukrainian victory publicly and fully, not only in words but in deeds?
– Гарри Каспаров (Garry Kasparov), “A History of Betrayal: Biden’s Team Keeps Negotiating About Ukraine Without Ukraine”
In conclusion, from us non-Americans:
- We’re humans, too. (Individuals, responsible for our actions, good or bad)
- We have agency, too. (We make our own decisions, good or bad.)
- We all have the exact same individual rights as you. (You can’t just use us as “buffer zones” and “appeasement” or zoos.)
- What happens to us is relevant for you (If someone is a threat to us, don’t naively or arrogantly assume they cannot threaten you right after.)
- And, specifically for kremlintarians, from the libertarians among us: We’re libertarian, unlike you.