We have lived through a weekend where, I think to many people's surprise, Kiev did not fall. Instead, Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion appears to be strong. At the same time, there are question marks about what Russia's real intent is, and whether escalation to potentially devastating scale is likely in the foreseeable future.
I did not write blogs over the weekend, because the situation was so fast-moving. I also do not pretend to be an expert on Ukraine. In addition, much that I would have wanted to say on the economy, and the need for the government to react to the new environment in which we are living, had already been said by me, last week. Its reiteration on Twitter seemed more important then another blog post.
That, however, does not mean that I, like I suspect almost everyone else who reads this blog, did not spend the weekend in contemplation. One of the tweets that I wrote said this:
It seems to me that a little apprehension is more than reasonable right now.
Another tweet explored that idea in a different way:
It is staggering that it is quite literally ordinary people, like you and me, who are facing the reality of invasion that challenges absolutely everything about the lives that they have lived, their identity, their freedom, and their futures. Is it surprising that they are reacting so fiercely?
The obvious question that many have asked is how we might have reacted in the same circumstance? Would we be willing to fight? Even (and I ask this as a Quaker), would we be willing to take up arms to defend ourselves against the freedom from fascist oppression, which is what Ukraine is facing?
Perhaps as importantly, do we have a government committed to that fight here in the UK, in whom we could believe?
Which then begs the question, what is that fight?
It is at this point that I can begin to answer the questions. The fight is, in effect, for democracy. That is, if democracy is to be considered meaningful, the fight for everyone to be treated with equal respect within the society in which they live and to be valued as if they are of significance.
This is an idea much bigger than the right to participate in an election, important as that is, and as important as fairness in that electoral process might be, including with regard to inclusivity, and the prospect of fair representation of the outcome.
What might be properly called a liberal democracy does something much more than deliver electoral justice. Its aim is to provide everyone with the chance to flourish without fear of discrimination.
Putin does, of course, fail this test. He is, in effect, a white Christian nationalist. That could be construed as another term for a fascist. It is as readily a description of the populism to be found on the far right in the USA, the UK (where Farage's parties and many in the Tories are now subscribers to this mantra), and in countries such as France, Germany and, of course, in Ukraine, where such a cause appears to have about 2% popularity with the electorate, which is much lower than it has here.
There are variations in this white Christian nationalism in the differing countries where it is followed, but the core theme is that those who might be described as believing themselves to be indigenous people of traditional views think that they are being oppressed, whether by feminists, the LGBTQ+ population, immigrants, those of others faiths, socialists, egalitarians, Jews and others. The followers are predominantly male, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic and anti-egalitarian.
This is what this fight is about. It is about whether the views of a minority who are willing to use force to express their fear are going to be permitted to oppress a majority in society. As far as I can see it, this is as black and white as that.
Is that a cause worth fighting for? If it is not, what is?
But having suggested that is the case where are we in the UK?
We are a long way from electoral justice, and it is getting very much worse, and quickly.
Our rights to protest, which are fundamental to protecting this freedom, are being eroded by the day.
We have a government committed to making sure that those with least resources pay the highest cost, or almost everything, including the consequences of the war in Ukraine.
And this government is committed to corruption on behalf of its crony friends, as we have seen all too obviously during the Covid era, and now in government appointments that are intended to pack official positions with its supporters.
That we still have legal opacity on so many issues is evidence of this. That our libel laws are so oppressive is further indication of its intent. That the media is so biased is indication of a desire to oppress alternative views. That the rule of law is ignored suggests that nothing but power is of significance to this government.
In that case, is this in any way a government fit to stand up to the threats from Putin? I would suggest not.
There are others who would do better. But Labour also refuses electoral reform and denies the right of Scotland to self-determination.
Too many political parties are in awe of the power of wealth. They will deny freedoms to preserve it, it would seem.
We are a long way from anything like being the liberal democracy that we need.
Presuming that Ukraine survives, and the war does not escalate out of control (and those are big assumptions right now) the fact that we have a political system that is not stacked in favour of people, liberal democracy, equality and representative as well as social, economic and tax justice, are issues that we have to face.
I am very worried about the world right now. But those concerns won't go away now, even if the tanks roll out of Ukraine. We too totter on the brink of oppression. Let's not pretend otherwise.
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Not Christian -but pseudo Christian nationalism
I agree, not Christian at all
But how they use the term and religion (which is not the same as the message taught by Jesus of Nazareth)
Could our BBC and MSM please enlighten us on what has been going on here?
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/congress-has-removed-a-ban-on-funding-neo-nazis-from-its-year-end-spending-bill/
Am I to understand that Liz Truss has basically ‘given permission’ for English nationals to go and fight in Ukraine against Russia?
I caught this on R4 this morning when the current defence secretary was interviewed (Ben Wallace) and it is being carried on the Independent’s website:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukraine-russia-war-british-troops-fight-b2024286.html
WTF!!! WTF!!
So, we have a young Muslim woman denied citizenship because she chose to support Islamic State abroad and here is this Tory numpty seemingly advocating/supporting people here wishing to go and fight in Ukraine?!
Does she have any idea how this looks? And how dangerous this could be?
Is it me or do I just get the idea that some of us have a death wish?
Truss needs to go. She should be sacked for this. And we thought it was just Putin who is off his trolley? Where does this stand in international law?
Madness. Insanity. Unforgiveable stupidity. She’s shot her bolt.
It just blurs the lines between morality and immorality for me.
They won’t be happy until we’re all dead it seems. Are the Tories trying to cull us – austerity; then austerity driven Covid and now another bloody war?
Well said, complete double standards, but that’s nothing unusual, The west and by that i mean the US and UK, the rest are just US sycophants, gave Russia a guarantee in 1997 of no NATO expansion into previous soviet republics and then occupy them all except Ukraine.
This situation was brought about by the west backing and pushing Ukrainian Nazi’s since way back in 2004, they poked the Bear and it bit them. This of course is what they wanted, the US and UK don’t care about the Ukrainian people, they are pawns to be played with, just like all previous US regime change operations.
The object as Richard should know is to frighten US so called allies into not having trade with Russia and China and trying to stop the collapse of the US dollar, which in my opinion won’t, if you think 2008 was bad, the next one will be a lot worse and is coming sooner than people think.
There’s a world of difference between fighters joining ISIS and fighters joining helping the Ukraine. ISIS was a cynical fighting machine that committed atrocities across Iraq and Syria. The Ukraine has been attacked for no other reason than Putin is scared democracy on his borders will undermine his authority.
We can argue endlessly about political mistakes in the West causing ISIS to exist and Putin to control Russia, but no amount of argument will justify either ISIS’s behaviour or the invasion by Russia of a peaceful democratic country.
I see no difference between fighters going to Ukraine to help defend the country and the International Brigade that fought in Spain against Franco, or those Americans who came to the UK at the start of WW2 (before the USA entered the war) to fight for the Allies.
For the record, in my opinion, those ISIS supporters held in camps in the middle east should be returned to the UK to face the consequences of any crimes they have committed.
Whether Truss should support fighters heading for Ukraine is another matter, but it is probably the only time I have agreed with anything she has said! No-one can be wrong all the time!
If Carole Cadwaller is correct you underplay the uncomfortable possibility that this government and brexit may have been largely a product of a Kremlin campaign and Kremlin-linked money
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1498056686548013062
If true, it is difficult to believe a government with this number of Russian – funded MP’s is now going to unveil all the hidden property ownership and ill-gotten source of the funds.
The idea that one’s own government may be a Russian Asset is almost impossible to contemplate.
I may be underplaying it
Which is even more worrying
And more
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/behind-the-internets-dark-anti-democracy-movement/516243/
Farage et al lean towards alt-right? Cummings/Tufton St lean towards Nrx (but prepared to use a bit of populism on the way towards that end?) Not forgetting William Rees-Moggs ‘Sovereign Individual’.
https://bristol.ac.uk/sps/events/2022/sovereign-individual-reloaded.html
As for Bozo – narcissistic amoral, go whichever way gets him most attention, and, if possible, adoration, but if not negative attention will do. Now proving to be too much of a loose canon/ego to manage, hence all Cummings’ efforts.
And yet Carole Cadwalladr’s story may not be quite what it seemed? According to the Information Commissioner …
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/01/beware-the-cult-of-cadwalladr/
and regardless of one’s views of either of these journalists …
Is there no depth to which that man will not fall?
You are banned for supporting his views
Richard, I agree with everything you say, but have been disappointed in the past to see you on the Russian propaganda station RT. Could you please commit not to appear on RT again?
I turned down an invitation before this all broke out
I can’t see me doing it again
Danny Blanchflower and I agreed on that and told Alex Salmond
I do not know if that had any influence on his decision
Farage hasnt exactly criticised what is going on, neither did Johnson when Russia invaded The Crimea.
Make of that what you will.
People like us! A new twist to a phrase much besmirched by Thatcher, May et al.; thus are the ironies of history played out.
In line with your Quaker angst re ‘fighting’ and my agonies over what all this may mean – albeit temporarily – for supporters of our abandonment of nuclear weapons, I note that Finnish public opinion over NATO memberhip has completely turned around. Not at all what Putin intended and a change that the Finnish government and NATO would do well to respond to. While one would love to believe that Putin’s current bloody nose in Ukraine would end his revanchist ambitions in Europe, I fear that the evidence of today’s events in Kharkiv – a devastating bombardment coinciding with the start of the ‘peace negotiations’ – shows that his Ukraine adventure has taught him only to be more violent. Finland and Sweden may have only a short window in which to act – and, I’m afraid, it seems that they must take it. And do so, not only for their own protection but also to show any potential Putin supplanters exactly how disastrously his leadership has damaged the position of Russia. Somehow this has got to be brought to a halt.
Let us hope and pray for a successful peace negotiation – but also be sure we are better prepared for its failure.
This is an interesting session at King’s College London with Prof John Mearsheimer , University of Chicago , about the Ukraine situation.
https://youtu.be/Nbj1AR_aAcE
You can tell that the Conservatives are on dodgy ground concerning their Russian funding by the way Caroline Lucas was shouted down by uncontrolled barraking by their back benchers when she raised this in Parliament. Even the Speaker then tried to stop her asking her question.
Agreed
Shocking treatment of Caroline
I’m no longer interested in this NATO or that NATO – what I want my world leaders to do is grow up and work in harmony with each other to address things like the global warming crisis and human dignity for everyone and instead we get this.
What a side show? What a diversion?
And even now, the West talks of the Ukraine being in Europe! Is it? Let’s not fan the flames here please. People are dying out there – the Russian bear is angry enough as it is we don’t need to prod it anymore. Let’s not call it yet otherwise there will be more violence.
As for England………………well, what to say? I’m trying to interpret what you’ve said above. It’s dire isn’t it?
I think somehow we need an outlet for our frustrations sooner or later.
But I think looking at the rugby over the weekend anyone calling themselves progressive needs to pull themselves tighter together like the front row of a scrum.
Set aside petty differences and come together somehow united. And step forward in unison. That’s the only way I think.
Money-power has got our democracy tied up in knots. We must keep dreaming of better and stay positive.
But hopefully some lessons have been learnt viz a viz not letting dodgy states who shoot down airliners and annex other countries on a whim route their money through our financial system and into our economy.
Morality over money please – always. Otherwise you’re just peeing in the wind and as we’ve seen it just comes back at you twice as hard.
Look at Russia and the doping scandals that have been revealed. From what I’ve seen, Russia have basically rendered themselves unsuitable for the Olympic games – in fact – any international form of sports competition because of this. Yet, there they are.
Why? Is it because the advertisers and sponsors have had their way and want to get their products into Russian markets to make money? Highly likely.
And like the greedy short sighted bankers who know they will be bailed, Putin knows that our major weakness is our greed and that some of us will tolerate anything, reduce are standards in a blink of an eye and forget our principles just to make a buck.
Oh, Thatcher and Reagan left their mark alright – they trained some of us well – we’re like Pavlov’s dogs salivating every time we see a bank note.
We need to reform ourselves first and only then can we deal with people like Putin.
After WW2 Ukrainian Resistance turned against The Soviets & continued until the mid 1950’s
Clearly its a different generation fighting but if the Ukranians act like their parents and grandparents generation it might not be a nice situation for the Russians
The Ukrainians continued to fight, as did the Lithuanians and possibly others. In short, Stalin’s Russians were as big a bunch of bastards as the Germans and were hated even more. Ukrainians fought them both and lost millions. Preceded by Stalin’s famine in Ukraine that you won’t hear about from Russia Today or their camp followers in the UK.
But not just Stalin – the Russian state has been treating its surrounding countries with much the same brutality for centuries. No amount of ‘whataboutery’ changes that fact. Having ‘socialist’ in the title USSR did not make them any less imperialist, despite the ill informed pleadings of the far left in the UK. Somehow it has been fine for Poles, Latvians and the rest to be treated that way whilst Western empires are (rightly) roundly condemned.
I see the NATO and City excuses are still being trotted out. No-one forced those countries bordering NATO to join. If it is not blindingly obvious to you now, after the invasion of Ukraine why they wished to join, then it never will be. It reveals a wilful ignorance of history. Or of Putin’s speeches and writings and his explicitly stated desire to re-establish the Soviet empire. Neutral Sweden and Finland’s recent moves say everything. They know just what Putin’s Russia has been up to over recent decades and have had enough of their threats. However you won’t hear about any of that from Murray, Pilger, Russia Today or the comically named StoptheWar (but not if the war involves Putin’s Russia). See also Syria, Skripal, MH17, Georgia, Chechnya etc.
As for the post-1989 transformation of the economies – the same approach was applied to all the countries, from the Baltic States down to Romania, as well as Russia. Only Russia has turned into a brutal authoritarian state run by gangsters lining their own pockets. The old communists rulers morphing into today’s gangster capitalists. And Belarus, Putin’s close mate – funny that. The others have moved on, some less so with the old rulers re-emerging, and others like Estonia that set a good example to the UK. The ones that Putin has been threatening ever since. Which is why they wanted to join NATO and the EU. Instead of which we hear about the terrible EU and NATO and poor, threatened Putin’s Russia
The City has a massive problem with money laundering and tax avoidance but it is not them bombing the crap out of Ukrainian citizens and their people. They are the ‘fences’ in this and the police tend to prosecute those who commit robbery and murder a lot harder than those who handle ill gotten gains. It should not be too hard to work out why. It is a very small consolation that the City and the Conservative party may well get their comeuppance at long last. It is disappointing in the extreme that I have seen little or no recognition here of the suffering of the Ukrainians and the naked brutality of Putin’s Russia, in amongst the political posturing. In less pleasant circles I think it is called ‘virtue signalling’.
As for the continuing parroting of Putin’s accusations of Ukraine being neo-Nazis – name a country that does not have an element of the far Right. Meanwhile Ukraine has elected an astonishingly brave Jewish President and had a Jewish Prime Minister until recently. Whilst this country’s leading Left party has had to deal with extensive anti-semitism in its ranks, leading to a loss of Jewish supporters and members. Its leader shared an image that was nakedly and disgustingly anti-semitic but he seemed incapable of recognising that until called out. In case you missed or ignored it:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/antisemitism-open-your-eyes-jeremy-corbyn-labour
The further Left in this country are on very thin ice indeed throwing such accusations at others. It is entirely possibly to be deeply critical of Israel without sliding into anti-semitism.
Sadly having this kind of apologia and evasion for an appalling conflict that is so clearly Putin’s responsibility, alongside the important financial and economic work that Richard writes about here, devalues and soils that work. People who come to read and learn about that may well go away, associating it with the generic anti-capitalist, anti-Western, Putin apologists that they see on the far Left. And some of those apologists bizarrely on the far Right. Its becoming a reason to divert people to look elsewhere for information and education. It has been encouraging to see Paul Mason, whose left wing economic credentials are pretty clear, come out so clearly against Putin’s brutality. He has retained a sense of right and wrong, and recognition of what humanity and democracy mean that a section of the Left have lost. (Along with the Far Right who make no pretence of respecting humanity and democracy). I’m sorry to find them here, even amongst people I had thought better of.
“The obvious question that many have asked is how we might have reacted in the same circumstance? Would we be willing to fight? Even (and I ask this as a Quaker), would we be willing to take up arms to defend ourselves against the freedom from fascist oppression, which is what Ukraine is facing?”
This is a question that has been discussed by Buddhists and Daoists, both essentially passivist religions, throughout China’s long and violent history.
After a talk by the Dalai Lama on anger on and hatred in which he expounded the Buddhist doctrine that both are unquestionably evil and the consequences of both were always evil and were, moreover, the cause of most the violence in the word, the Irish Philosopher, Owen Flanagan, posed the following problem. (This is from memory the precise details may not be correct):
“Suppose I had found myself next to Adolf Hitler at some time in his career when he had done enough to make it clear that many millions would suffer and die if he kept on living. I think I would have felt intense anger and hatred towards him. I think the anger and hatred would have been so intense that had a loaded gun been available, I would have killed him.”
“Even though my anger and hatred had lead me to kill a man”, he continued, “surely, considering how much suffering had been prevented, the consequences cannot be considered anything other than good.”
After consulting the high Lamas that were present, the Dalai Lama replied: “Even in these circumstances your anger and hatred would be wrong and would have evil consequences. However you should kill Hitler, not out of anger or hatred but out of compassion for his victims.”
Pilgrim slight, I couldn’t have put it better myself ‘peace comes from within’.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with making a bit of profit, but this disgusting worship of Greed and Power needs to be addressed by education not compulsion and that starts with the young at school and a strong family life with support when needed.
Regards to Putin, only the Russian people can get rid of this megalomaniac nutcase and it will start with his oligarchs.
In my humble opinion of course.