Is it mass hysteria that causes some "peace activists" to support the invasion of Ukraine?
I attended Gannon College in Erie, PA in pursuit of an electrical engineering degree. During this pursuit, I did take some elective courses. In a first–year English class I was required to read, I believe, seven novels. Also we were to attend screenings of classic films, and one of them was Fred Zinnemann’s HIGH NOON with Gary Cooper playing the sheriff on his wedding day with Grace Kelly as his Quaker wife. These Saturday screenings taught me that there is more to the art form than what is on the screen. The screenplay for this 1952 film was written by Carl Foreman who was blacklisted. This “cowboy” movie was actually an allegory about the House Un-American Activities Committee.
I am bringing this up as the invasion of Ukraine continues in a stupendously brutal fashion. I, a pacifist, have been siding with the people of Ukraine, but others are blaming the United State government for inciting Vladimir Putin and forcing him to invade. I bring up HIGH Noon as the sheriff has to confront four armed killers, and like Ukraine, he is outgunned. His wife who abhors violence tried to persuade him to leave town, but he took an oath to protect his community. At the climax of the film, his Quaker wife picks up a gun and saves her husband’s life.
There is another film from the same era, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which was released in 1956. On the surface this is a sci-fi movie. However, a canny viewer might recognize that the pod people represented those aligned with Joe McCarthy who jumped on his anti-communist bandwagon. McCarthyism destroyed many lives, especially those who espoused left-leaning ideals.
As a long-time protester of U.S. warmongering, I am wondering if the Body Snatchers are back. Friends and colleagues who I have been with in protests, arrests, courtrooms and jails are adamant that the U.S. should not arm Ukraine. Instead, the Ukrainians should surrender and accept an occupation which would lead to Ukraine becoming part of Greater Russia. These are activists who were opposed to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Have the Body Snatchers gained some kind of mind control over their thought process?
For example, David Swanson, a renowned peace leader, wrote to me and others asking if there was interest on the Universal Day of Peace, September 21, to hold a demonstration at the Swedish embassy in D.C. to protest its request to join NATO. I wrote back that I would rather help organize a demonstration at the Russian embassy to express outrage for the war crimes being committed by Putin’s military and the Wagner Group. David never responded, but there was no demonstration at the Swedish embassy. Since Putin does not invade NATO countries, why criticize Sweden?
And while there are significant differences today, especially between peace advocates and the anti-US war community, fascism is on the march in many countries including the USA, climate chaos will only get worse because War is not Green, and there are grave consequences in the developing world as food prices have skyrocketed. Russia’s invasion is a violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Ukraine agreed to turn over its nuclear arsenal in return for guarantees of its territorial integrity. I would have thought we all would have condemned this fascist invasion
But no, I have been told that Putin’s forces were in
Ukraine to save lives. However, the invasion cannot be legitimately supported
as it is an act of aggression,
and a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter. The amount of suffering
by noncombatants is enormous. Yet many have ignored the fact that Putin has a
long record of terrorizing other countries and putting down peaceful protests
in the Russian Federation.
Comments justifying
the invasion
One Veteran for Peace resorted to
psycho-babble to claim that I and another Baltimore peace activist “hated
Russia because we were Polish American.” In fact, I have condemned the
Polish government because it is fascist, and supported Gorbachev because he was
sincere in calling for nuclear disarmaent. Also he opened up the Russian
archives to confrm what most historians knew that Soviet forces assassinated
some 22,000 Poles during the World War II occupation. Note that Putin refused
to attend Gorbachev’s funeral.
The first step in justifying the invasion is to claim that the
U.S. organized a coup in 2013-14 to oust Ukrainian President Yanukovych. Yet
no one has provided any details about US involvement in the uprising to oust a
corrupt president. Stephen Zunes, a Professor of Politics
and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, has debunked the idea that a
coup took place. Unfortunately, those who justify the invasion obtain a lot of
information from disinformation sites, and claim that the Western mass media
refuses to tell the truth. It is ironic that there is no free press or
human rights organizations allowed in fascist Russia. In fact Nobel Peace
Prize winner Dmitry Muratov has had his media outlet Novaya Gazeta shut down.
Another argument to justify the destruction of Ukraine was that the Maidan protesters were not killed by the Berkut security forces but by a renegade Nazi brigade in the Ukraine Army. Zunes also refutes this claim. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who won by a landslide, is Jewish and an ethnic Russian. Making claims that the Ukrainian government is controlled by Nazis committing genocide against Russian-speakers is laughable. Running as an outsider opposed to the two major corrupt political blocs, Zelenskyy was elected by a landslide in 2019.
With no tongue in his cheek, an activist sent this to
me: “One camp is calling for steps which could stop a nuclear war impacting the
whole planet. The other camp is calling for Russian troops to be removed from
occupied Ukraine which on the face of things is not necessarily anti-war
or pro-peace. The use of nuclear weapons by Russia or the US will impact more
than Ukraine and Russia but potentially the whole planet. The military
occupation of Ukraine by Russia will not impact the whole planet.”
I am not exactly clear what was meant by this wordy comment. But I do know that I have been an anti-nuke activist for decades, marched in New York City on June 12, 1982, have organized a Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration for four decades, been involved with the Plowshares movement since the 1980s, worked on getting Baltimore’s City Council to pass legislation to make Baltimore a Nuclear Free Zone and to pass a Back from the Brink resolution, and now is involved in promoting the Treaty for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
It seems the argument, which is
illogical, is we must sacrifice Ukraine in order to prevent a nuclear war. We know that Putin has threatened to
use a nuclear weapon, but this seems to be an idle threat. Try to come up
with a scenario where Putin would launch a nuclear weapon in occupied Ukraine
that would not endanger his troops or release radioactivity into Russia or
Belarus. And climate chaos which is ongoing and is exacerbated by the
invasion is more of a threat than a nuclear conflict.
I asked
two of my critics to condemn the killing of 298 people on a Malaysian airliner
by Russian forces on July 17, 2014. The response was that the shoot down
was actually done by Ukrainian forces. Again you can find anything to justify
your point of view from disinformation sites.
Kagiso, Max
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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