(This presentation was
made at the eighth biennial International Herbert Marcuse Society conference ‘Critical
Theory in Dark Times: The Prospects for Liberation in the Shadow of the Radical
Right’ held at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) from October
10–12 2019. It was one of four presentations at a panel entitled ‘Syria, the
Eros Effect, and Pseudo-Anti-Imperialism’. All four presentations can be found
at https://transnationalsolidarity.net/syria-the-eros-effect-and-pseudo-anti-imperialism/
)
As Javier pointed out, many leftists failed to support the Syrian revolution and some even backed Assad’s brutal counter-revolution. Unfortunately, the Syrian case is not the first instance where self-professed socialists have supported despotic regimes and imperialist powers; in fact, sections of the left have an inglorious history of doing just this, and it is instructive to look back on this history in order to understand why the Syrian revolutionaries have received so little solidarity from the international left.
A revolution can be defined as a mass uprising to overthrow an oppressive regime, in which the majority of actors seek to replace it with a regime that is, at the very least, less oppressive, and ideally with a society in which there is no oppression. According to this definition, anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation and independence from foreign rule can be seen as revolutionary uprisings, along with struggles against feudal regimes and authoritarian states. By their nature, such uprisings are dominated by the demand for freedom and by expressions of solidarity between different sections of the oppressed population.
However, all revolutions face opposition. First, and most obviously, the old regime fights back with all the resources at its disposal, including, in some cases, imperialist allies. But often the uprising includes actors who are fighting against the old oppressive state, but with the goal of installing their own oppressive regime. In some cases there is the possibility of a compromise, as when the new ruling class – for example the bourgeoisie – allows working people to establish a democratic republic, which Marx and Engels saw as the first step in a proletarian revolution. In other cases, as in the case of Al Qaeda and ISIS, there are new would-be rulers who are as oppressive as the old regime, and working people are forced into a multi-pronged battle against more than one enemy. In such circumstances, it is essential for socialists worldwide to stand in solidarity with the working people who are fighting for liberation from oppression, but unfortunately there are cases where a section of socialists sides with the oppressors. This is what has happened in Syria, but it has happened before.
The Russian revolutionaries of 1917 confronted a brutal counter-revolution by the old regime. They managed to defeat this counter-revolution at huge cost to themselves, but the internal enemy proved to be more powerful. Bolshevik leaders including Lenin and Trotsky created the preconditions for this counter-revolution by clamping down on dissent within the party as well as in the Soviets, the institutions of mass democracy thrown up by the revolution. The massacre of the Kronstadt revolutionaries is one of the best-known instances of their authoritarian policies. Even the demand for a Constituent Assembly to inaugurate a democratic republic – a key demand for over a century, which the Bolsheviks too had fought for – was subverted. When they found that less than a quarter of the elected representatives to the Assembly were Bolsheviks, the Assembly was dissolved and a peaceful demonstration in support of it was fired on. As Lenin was to realise later, such policies provided space for the most authoritarian elements in the party to seize power and rebuild the Russian empire in the guise of the Soviet Union. But by then it was too late. Incapacitated by a series of strokes, he was unable to reverse what was happening.
Once Stalin took over the state, freedom was wiped out as dissidents were executed or exiled to gulags, former colonies were dominated and ruled by Russia again with genocidal assaults on the populations of Ukraine and the Muslim nations, and solidarity was turned on its head when neighbours were encouraged to inform on neighbours, friends on friends, and family members on other family members. But even after Stalin’s alliance with Hitler from August 1939 to June 1941, his supporters continued to support him, using the extensive rewriting of history and distortion of the truth employed by the regime. Nor were they the only ones: a large periphery of ‘fellow-travellers’ who identified as socialists saw the Stalinist state as an anti-imperialist one, no matter that it was once again oppressing former tsarist colonies and exploiting the East European countries that came under its domination after World War II. This is the origin of pseudo-anti-imperialism: opposition to ‘the West’ in general and support for enemies of ‘the West’, no matter how authoritarian and imperialistic they might be.
Iran is another example. In 1979 there was a genuine democratic revolution in which the vast majority of the population rose up against the Shah’s repressive regime and succeeded in overthrowing it. But in the aftermath of the revolution, Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomeini staged a theocratic counter-revolution that crushed all opposition, culminating in a huge massacre in June 1981. The Moscow-linked Tudeh Party, completely taken in by Khomeini’s anti-imperialist rhetoric, supported him until he turned on them in 1983 and slaughtered them. The regime was a far-right one that exterminated dissidents using torture, mutilation, rape, incarceration and executions, including public hanging and stoning to death. Like Stalin, Khomeini ensured that his critics were pursued around the world and assassinated. Women, workers, students and ethno-religious minorities saw their rights negated.
Iran’s Islamic constitution openly proclaimed that they would export their revolution by military means, and this started with the formation of Lebanese Hezbollah, which has since then retained its links to the Iranian regime. The attempt to annexe Iraq started during the Iran-Iraq war, which should have ended in June 1982 when Saddam Hussein offered a ceasefire, but continued for six more years because Khomeini decided to invade Iraq. His death in 1989 made very little difference to the regime’s denial of human rights and democracy, or its regional imperialist ambitions. Paradoxically, the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 and overthrow of Saddam Hussein created space for the Islamic Republic of Iran to move in and entrench itself in Iraq. And of course it has played a major role in propping up the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, entrenching itself in Syria at the same time. One would have thought that no socialist could support such an extreme right-wing regime engaged in crushing working people in its own country and abroad, yet pseudo-anti-imperialists in organisations like the Stop the War coalition of Britain have ruled out any criticisms of the Iranian theocracy on the pretext that it opposes the US and Israel.
Another shocking example is provided by Bosnia. From 1992 onward, a genocidal Serb nationalism, assisted by an equally fascistic Croat nationalism, was engaged in wiping out all traces of the existence of Bosnian Muslims – mosques, libraries, museums, manuscript collections, graveyards, birth records, work records and the people themselves, who were rounded up and put into concentration camps where they were subjected to starvation, torture, rape and mass killings. The neo-fascist character of the Serb nationalists was underscored by the manner in which they treated Serb dissidents, meting out torture and death to them in the same way. And yet a section of the left, including the editors of LM (formerly Living Marxism) and Noam Chomsky’s co-author Edward Herman, sided with Serb-supremacist Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serbs carrying out the genocide like Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. By contrast, journalists like Roy Gutman, Holocaust survivors Simon Wiesenthal and Elie Wiesel, and leader of the Warsaw ghetto resistance Marek Edelmann saw the resemblence between Serb nationalist and Nazi policies, identified with the victims, and pushed a reluctant Clinton administration and NATO to take action to put an end to the slaughter.
There is much to criticise in the Western intervention, but the genocide it halted was incomparably worse. The reason why sections of the left refused to condemn the actions of the Serb nationalists seems to be that they were supported by Russian nationalists on the basis of a shared Orthodox-Slavic identity, and they were therefore deemed to be ‘anti-imperialist’.
Incredibly, pseudo-anti-imperialist support for Russia and its allies has persisted even after Putin came to power, although he makes no pretence of being a Marxist and openly castigates Lenin for advocating the right of Russia’s colonies to self-determination. Most disturbingly, it ignores the fact that Putin has created an ultra-authoritarian state that kills journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, opposition politicians like Boris Nemtsov and human rights defenders like Natalya Estemirova, annexes territory in neighbouring countries and imposes repressive colonial rule there, and has supported far right groups and parties throughout the world, especially in Europe, in pursuit of his goal of rebuilding Russia as an imperial power.
It is this allegiance to Putin that accounts for the fact that these neo-Stalinists, as I call them, converge with neo-fascists in their support for Assad. As Lara pointed out, people and parties that admire Assad or have visited him include former KKK leader David Duke, the white supremacists demonstrating at Charlottesville, British National Party leader Nick Griffin, Greek fascists of Golden Dawn, the French National Front, and the Belgian Vlaams Belang. All of them are neo-fascists who see their own politics reflected in Assad’s ruthless totalitarian regime. Yet at the same time you find people who are seen to be on the left, figures like Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk and Max Blumenthal, supporting Assad by spreading his propaganda. You find the same convergence between the extreme right and people seen to be on the left like John Pilger supporting Putin’s imperialist annexation of Crimea and oppression of the Crimean Tartars, who had already suffered so grievously under Stalin. Instead of expressing solidarity with the people fighting for freedom and dignity, they support the forces of cruelty and death.
In the case of pseudo-anti-imperialists, hatred of the US establishment and its allies far outweighs love for the victims of oppression or solidarity with their struggle. A striking example of this is provided by the way in which they protest vigorously against Israeli attacks on Palestinians, but have never condemned the equally brutal treatment of Palestinians by the Assad regime and its allies: imprisonment, rape, torture, extrajudicial executions, bombing, starvation sieges, and the destruction of Yarmouk refugee camp, described by Palestinian activist Budour Hassan as the capital of the Palestinian diaspora. This exposes these people as caring less about supporting the Palestinian liberation struggle than about opposing the US and Israel. The campaign of vilification against the so-called White Helmets, Syrian rescue workers who have saved thousands of lives and lost hundreds of their own in the wake of bombings and poison gas attacks, demonstrates vividly just how inhuman pseudo-anti-imperialism can be. This is the very opposite of genuine solidarity or socialist internationalism.
Genuine solidarity entails, in the first place, imagination in order to feel empathy for the victims of oppression, who may be different from oneself, and identification with their struggle for democracy. Secondly, it entails some form of solidarity action, even if it appears to be of little use. In the case of Syria, solidarity begins with listening to Syrian democracy activists and socialist feminists like Lara, and amplifying their voices in whatever way we can. If they suggest ways in which we can support their struggle, we need to take these suggestions seriously. Expressing solidarity with them also entails exposing and combating the Assadists and Putinists vilifying the revolutionaries in every possible way. Terry has been involved in just such a solidarity campaign, and will tell us all about it!
ReferencesMost of the references used in this presentation can be found in my book, Indefensible: Democracy, Counter-Revolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism (Haymarket Books, 2018). These are the references which are not included there:
Hassan, Budour, 2018. ‘A late obituary for the capital of the Palestinian diaspora,’ OpenDemocracy, 22 June. https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/budour-hassan/yarmouk-late-obituary-for-capital-of-palestinian-diaspora
Middle East Monitor, 2018. ‘Report: 3894 Palestinians killed in Syria since 2011,’ 22 October. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181022-report-3894-palestinians-killed-in-syria-since-2011/
Middle East Monitor, 2018. ‘More than 560 Palestinians tortured to death in Syria prisons,’ 19 December. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181219-more-than-560-palestinians-tortured-to-death-in-syria-prisons/
Tawil, Bassam, 2019. ‘Syria: Thousands of Palestinian women raped, tortured, killed in Syrian prisons,’ Women’s UN Report Network, 4 April. https://wunrn.com/2019/04/syria-thousands-of-palestinian-women-raped-tortured-killed-in-syrian-prisons/