Looney Tunes

Intellectual dishonesty

As the war stamps bloody feet over Ukraine, I watch from the United States. Two days ago a couple of Ukrainian refugee friends, a mother and teen-aged son, returned to Ukraine from Germany. They were too unhappy and homesick to stay. They are willing to risk their return, even though their city is close to the front lines. It is only a little reassuring to me that the Russians are advancing very slowly, if at all. The immediate danger to my friends is from occasional rockets and missiles.

As you might guess, it’s strange to be back in the US where people are even more disengaged from Ukraine than Europeans are. At least in Europe there are Ukrainian flags flown in solidarity everywhere and Ukrainians are daily heard and seen in the streets or stores. 

In my travels-of-displacement I heard loons, as in birds. They were nesting on a nearby pond. Their calls sound like a crazed laugh. It’s easy to see how “loon” came to mean a reality-challenged person, and, with the word “lunatic,” gave us the term “looney.”

My recent artwork is about loons, the human sort, specifically left-wing Putin supporters. All the left-leaning folks I know solidly support Ukraine, I’ve only encountered looney-leftists on social-media – though they may have been Russian trolls. But, some looney-lefties are accomplished, influential people.

Pink Flawed

Elderly rock musician Roger Waters, on his current tour, is calling Joe Biden a war criminal. Why? Because, said Waters, Biden is “fueling the war in the Ukraine.” Waters was speaking in a CNN interview.

The August 6 interview can be viewed here. There’s an August 7 report on it here by Alex Young.

“That is a huge crime. Why won’t the United States of America encourage [Volodymyr] Zelensky to negotiate, obviating the need for this horrific, horrendous war?”

The war crime is, according to the cofounder of Pink Floyd “…the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border.”

This idea that NATO should not be allowed in a country bordering Russia is a recurring looney-left theme. The concept is known as hegemony: a powerful country has the right to control what happens in neighboring countries. More on this below.

He also stuck up for China’s hegemony, saying “Taiwan is part of China.” He also denied the Chinese are guilty of human rights violations against its Uyghur minority population.

“Bullocks! That’s absolute nonsense! Absolute nonsense!” He said.

Knot so smart

Two of the more well-known looney-leftists are Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Corbyn. Chomsky is an American philosopher, linguist and social critic. Corbyn is a former UK Labour Party head. Each recently spoke in favor of peace in Ukraine. Their reasoning, though upholstered in left-wing rhetoric, brings them to a position aligned with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Chomsky, in a July interview, says the war is a NATO/US plot to weaken and destroy Russia. Putin says exactly the same. 

Chomsky builds his reasoning on an odd framework. He cites Graham E. Fuller, CIA/State Department-retiree. Fuller was author of the memo that inspired President Ronald Reagan to illegally sell arms to Iran to covertly fund the Contra guerrilla movement in Nicaragua. 

Chomsky and Fuller both admit, at least, “Prime responsibility falls on the agents of the criminal aggression, Putin and his circle.”

But, “Secondary condemnation belongs to the U.S. (NATO) in deliberately provoking a war with Russia by implacably pushing its hostile military organization, despite Moscow’s repeated notifications about crossing red lines, right up to the gates of Russia,’’ as Chomsky directly quotes Fuller.

First of all, calling NATO a hostile military organization is a lie. Russia is the hostile one.

Second, the statement is intellectually dishonest. To accept that joining NATO is a provocation is to agree that Russia is entitled to a broad sphere of influence. In other words, a less powerful country neighboring a more powerful one has no right to self-determination - hegemony.

President Joe Biden said, quite rightly, that spheres of influence belong on the dust pile of history. Fuller is scornful of this.

“It would be nice if small countries had just as many rights as large ones.” Fuller says, “But the quest for hegemony by large and even medium powers is the way of the world.”

And philosopher Chomsky high-fives him. “This war did not have to be if Ukrainian neutrality, á la Finland and Austria, had been accepted.” By the way, neutrality was never offered Ukraine in the sense of Austria’s. Ukraine was offered neutrality in the sense that Russia would neutralize the Ukrainian government by putting their severed heads on stakes - hegemony as harsh as it gets.

So, since when have spheres of influence and hegemony become leftist ideals? All the leftists I know have ideals based on human rights. Hegemony is not one of them. This is not intellectualism, which Chomsky is celebrated for. This is abuse.

Peace

Everyone wants peace, but what does that word mean in the minds of those calling for hegemony?

Jeremy Corbyn, in an interview published July 31 on Al Mayadeen, a pro-Russian Beirut-based TV channel said “… putting more and more arms into Ukraine isn't going to bring about [peace]."

"It's only going to prolong and exaggerate this war," he said.

It seems like a principled, pacifist approach, but begs the question. If we stop arming Ukraine, what will stop Russia? How does pacifism mesh with the fact that a ceasefire at this point would abandon millions of people behind the new Iron Curtain, subject to murder, rape, torture, “filtration,” and deportation to isolated regions of Russia? 

On principle, negotiation is the best way, but  negotiation with Russia is a proven waste of time. They’ve broken or twisted every agreement made concerning Ukraine, beginning with The Budapest Memorandum in which they promised to respect Ukrainian borders if Ukraine turned over all nuclear weapons.

How is Ukraine (and it should be Ukraine, not the US or NATO) to negotiate with an enemy that, despite heavy losses, repeatedly brings to the table it’s original, unreasonable demands.

“The Kremlin’s goals remain unchanged – Ukraine’s almost total capitulation –” wrote Steven Pifer in Brookings August 1.

“Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on July 20 said that Russia had broadened its military aims and would seek to seize territory beyond Donbas. He later added that Moscow sought to end the “unacceptable regime” in Kyiv,” says Pifer.

These positions are non-starters. They Russians know this. Obviously, they do not wish to seriously negotiate.

“Do those who urge talks see space for any compromise that would not leave Ukraine in a substantially worse position than before the most recent invasion began in February?” asks Pifer.

Ukrainians know how any kind of compromise would go. Russia would sidestep, then break the agreement and attack again. The only solution is the utter defeat of Russia.

Calling for peace, calling for compromise, without considering those realities is either naive, or in aid of Russia. It may sound idealistic, but it isn’t. It’s cynical. This rhetoric along with charges that the war is a US/NATO plot is calculated to waken left-wing suspicions that wars are secretly arranged by those who profit from them. In some cases, that’s been true. But, arms makers didn’t start the Russian war on Ukraine. Russia started it. 

Why are looney-leftists shilling for Russian authoritarianism, imperialism, war crimes and hegemony – the opposite of supporting human rights, as other leftists do. Is it a knee-jerk response to ally with anyone opposing the US and NATO?

It recalls the behavior of the Old Left, the Communist Party faithful. Such people stopped using their own brains in favor of the party line. Have they somehow failed to notice that the USSR died?

Yet, they continue to use Kremlin talking points and logic. Perhaps because the modern Kremlin uses the same anti-American, anti-western phrases, twisted logic and whataboutisms, similar to the “dog-whistles” the far right uses. In the far-left’s case, they are loon-calls.

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Thanks to Jim Besser for editing!