Some organizations to support the Ukrainians are (1) The Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America, https://ucca.org/, but also (2) see the following link: How to help Ukraine: 15 verified charities working to help Ukrainians amid invasion (today.com) (Disclaimer: Do your own research and I am not funded by these organizations myself. I have no financial or fiduciary responsibility to these firms or any reader of this article).
I. Intro:
Support for or against the Ukraine War is diverse. It’s not a simple case of “Ukrainian Nazis” versus “Russian National Bolshevik…Nazis”. There are anti-war sides within both nations, with some Russians fleeing the United States to get away from the drafts, but there is also anti-war sentiment within nations that fall under each of the combatant nation’s hegemonic sphere of influence, i.e., you may have anti-war sentiment in the land-locked Steppe (-stan) nations more aligned – either willingly or out of fear – to Russia because they may be more vulnerable to inflationary pressure and high commodity prices such as on oil or grain, just as you have anti-war voices within the developed West such England or Canada. But, there’s also pro-war sides on both, yet these pro-war sides might be coming from hard ethno-nationalism, whereas others are coming from a general sense of national pride (patriotism for the idea of the state, not necessary fully dependent upon one’s blood or ancestry). Yet, there is also a mix of both, i.e., those who support fighting for whichever side yet wanting some sort of truce to come sooner than later. Then you have those who are indifferent to the conflict since it seems so far away.
In our world of social media from YouTube video essayists, to known actors or unknown actors on platforms like Twitter or Meta (Facebook), it is hard to get a clear picture. Technology and the general state of evolution in which we live is best defined en masse as the “postmodern epoch”, and this epoch is not political, but rather a landscape where it is hard distinguish real from fake, i.e., the Jean Baudrillard concept of the Simulacra and Simulation, i.e., when hyperreality produced from the state-subsidized capitalist, technological, and pop culture machine becomes indistinguishable from the physical world, where culture may or may not mutate into spliced anachronisms of style, symbols (semiotics), and iconography.
Yet, so as not to get too lost in discussions of postmodernity, many thinkers argued that postmodernity was dead and should stay dead, but as we’re seeing now, it is not dead, but rather we live in a world that physically allows us to experience it. This is not the 1960s through 1980s where most postmodernity was understood through literature, fiction, science fiction, and film, as a fun “thought experiment” or transgressive look into human nature, but we now have the actual tools they could only dream of, e.g., deep fakes, social media, avatars, the metaverse, Virtual Reality companions, cybercrime, “techno-terrorism” and espionage, etc. The worlds of William Gibson, Thomas Pynchon, Orson Scott Card, Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis, Robert Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick, seem real, palpable., and the effects of this lingering postmodernity – which is not innately bad since it is essentially a tool or lens to analyze society if done with caution and for the right purposes, i.e., analyzing systems of oppression to establish humanist reform – is that it is affecting…warfare. The modern battlefield where tactics are executed, to the think tanks and closed door “FOUO” “Top Secret” meetings where strategy is formulated, the modern world must factor in topics like memetic warfare, co-opted YouTubers whose main “patrons” are foreign governments, etc.
Hence, everything is fuzzy. And, a little depressing. It is easy to just want to watch streaming apps, watch porn, get drunk, and go through the motions of work as we penny pinch our wallets to pay our bills. It is easy to see Ukraine as a waste of time, but Ukraine represents in part the sustainment of the American Way of Life, while also the freedom of Ukraine. Think of it like concept of the universe expanding. There needs to be some sort of expansion to maintain relevancy, because the worse option, i.e., contraction, is terrifying, i.e., it’s better to have never-ending expansion, than a violent Big Crunch (i.e., just think about the fall of the British Empire). Complaining about returning to the old days and how younger generations are “soft” aren’t productive, because they did not set this train of events in motion.
II. The Factions:
Regarding the Ukraine War based my personal observations the below camps exist:
(1) The Dove “Down with the Man” Anti-NATO Left which encompasses figures such as Max Blumenthal, Andrew Mate, Jackson Hinkle, Katie Halper, Matt Taibbi [who is of Russian descent], Jimmy Dore – who often seems more comfortable with Tucker Carlson – similarly as Tulsi Gabbard, etc. This camp is often influenced by Noam Chomsky with Manufacturing Consent, Michael Parenti with To Kill a Nation, John Perkins with Confessions of an Economic Hitman, etc. Yet, as far as individuals there are a range of ideologies spanning from Marxist-Leninist Communists (i.e., called Tankies), other variants of Communists that may not entirely agree with Marxist ideology (think Rosa Luxemburg), Anarcho-Socialists – some may even say “Libertarian Socialists”, Democratic Socialists, Social Democrats, Centre-Left Liberals (i.e., traditional American Democrats or British Liberal Democrats), etc., with all claiming to some degree – at least in the USA to be “Progressive”.
Yet, conservatives on the right wing, indifferent to providing any nuance to the Left, often lumps everyone as “progressives” while insinuating all progressives are communists., and to be fair, the Left does this often to the right-wing labeling all people as “Fascists”, yet, I would argue that Right Wing politics typically is more “lockstep” cohesive, often because as far as the West it represents the “colonial and/or imperial class”, i.e., the right-leaning predominately white majority (e.g., the Republican Party as far as policy and aesthetics derives it mythology from American settlers, i.e., Manifest Destiny, White Zionism, “Home on the Range”, etc., while British conservatives are nostalgic for the British “Queen Jubilee” Imperium of Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian England). For example, the American “Redneck”, South African Boer, Australian “Bogan”, Canadian “prairie homesteader”, etc., are all essentially the same thing, i.e., the white racial buffer class to the white colonial elite.
This Dovish Left side of the house has merit traditionally speaking, such as calling out the Bush Administration with the Global War on Terrorism, the Patriot Act, FISA Court warrants, and has supported freedom for Julian Assange (some say he’s a Russian asset), Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden – with Snowden having fled to Russia.
But there is also a “counterculture” aspect with intersections that can easily bleed into conspiracy theory, e.g., the “con-spiritualist” scene, i.e., green and healthy living mixed with Ancient Alien or Antediluvian theories, Gaia Theory, Wiccan or Heathen thought, and the anti-vaccine theories such as those Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who instantly invokes conspiracies about the assassinations of his father and his uncle, JFK, which typically leads to theories about the mafia, CIA, Allen Dulles, etc.).
The utopian ideals of the “hippie Left” though honorable and good intentioned does not have a coherent foreign policy and often in its utopianism, often lacking constant effort and work by its adherents (protesting, yes, but with the boring, consistent, and dirty work such as volunteering, the results are iffy).
This dilemma often sets the Left up to be blamed for society’s ills, e.g., how Fox News is blaming homelessness caused by narcoterrorism from Mexican Cartels and Chinese Chemicals on anti-fascists who protested police during the BLM protests, or how conservatives blame crime rates on the Left despite police officers still collecting paychecks and pensions (and, with no actual federal level police reform bill passed).
“Peace, man…” or being a know-it-all on America’s follies is not a coherent foreign policy, considering many of the countries this Leftist side stands up for as they decry American Imperialism are often funding hostile activities towards Americans, and might have cultures that are not open to progressivism. This side of the house has a tendency to blanketly blame the CIA and USA for all the ills of the world (they are no saints), yet, the Left needs to understand that many friends and foes respect realpolitik, strength through force, etc.
This “far out” conspiracy culture, which is fun to engage in from time to time, seems to have been co-opted by America’s enemies, and merged with the right-wing to undermine America (a flanking strategy of left and right).
To finish up on the “Dove Left”, notably about the “Tankies” I spoke about above, they have this idea that Russia is still this romanticized worker’s republic of the Soviets. I would rather deal with the Soviets than Putin’s Right-Wing Russia where his neoliberal reforms have resulted in rampant corruption and wealth disparity.
Instagram for example has very interesting pages about life in the Soviet Union, brutalist architectural pages, pages dedicated to Soviet cosmonauts, etc. Yet, the Tankies are the byproduct of being disenchanted with the avarice of boom-and-bust cycle capitalism and billionaires like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, etc., with this mood having spilled over from the 2008 Financial Crash and the decade long recession thereafter.
Socialism is popular now, and I don’t mind that in theory at all, because it offers a good analysis about how our system works and how to improve it. Socialism is popular largely because the US educational system bent on creating capitalists didn’t fully explain the true and complex history of it, but rather demonized it fully. Conservatives for example use to call centrists Democrats, as being Communists, which is ridiculous, so, well, you get what you ask for.
Yet, regarding Ukraine, some Tankies side with Russia out of some foregone nostalgia, where most were not even alive when the USSR was around. I’m almost 40 years old (born an Army brat) and I barely remember the Cold War as it came to an end in the late 1980s. The problem with American Tankies is they are relying on a foreign source to define their ideology instead of looking internally to previous American Left Wing movements, i.e., it is OK to be a Communist if that is your persuasion but it is OK to also be patriotic because one would think that adhering to such a drastic ideology would hopefully be for…love on one’s county, and not merely the destruction it because its “imperialist”, and the CIA is “boogeyman, bad”.
I, as a black man have every reason to be angry at the US but America is in my blood and I’d rather define it and improve it rather than tear it down.
Even if one thinks that nation-states are bad, as if they are some sort of internationalist Trotskyite, then at least focus on your backyard before thinking about saving the world in full.
The next group with opinions about Ukraine is…
(2) The predominately white demographic, fear based Pro-Russia camp that is also anti-NATO, anti-CIA. This is a surprising shift because they use to be about both but now with their “racial replacement fear” they are against it because they see NATO as a reason for refugees, etc. These types of Right Wingers are a mix of conspiracy culture ranging from the Great Replacement, allegedly via plans such as Kalegri Plan to replace white Europeans by “flooding” the Northern hemisphere with people from the Southern Hemisphere – which is a theory embroiled in white privilege thinking considering the West and USA needed immigration to keep growing and immigrants do the jobs that the elevated the white “native populations” from poverty and since these “nativists” won’t downsize to lower wage job, for fear of losing the fancier things in life. But, now suddenly, they wish to reject those fancier things (allegedly), returning to some sort of “Indo-European, cough – Aryan” culture (German paganism, etc.) or medieval monarchism after spending decades gloating about their fancier things/superior civilization at the expense of other cultures. This is to say the least, hypocritical.
Sure, rampant or emergency based refugee crises or immigration isn’t ideal or comfortable, and certain cultures may have issues such as Sharia Islam in relation to Western secularism. However, instead of hate, there needs to be bridges. If one’s idea is better, supposedly, then sell that idea. I am a firm believer in the Melting Pot theory as opposed to multiculturalism.
Further, there is the Great Reset Theory which is from people interpreting thinkers like Alvin Toffler with his book The Third Wave, the book The Fourth Industrial Revolution by the World Economic Forum founder, etc., where people believe a the New World Order is using “shock doctrine” (the topic of a book by the same name by Naomi Klein), “manufactured austerity”, “merging genders”, “transhumanism”, and biological warfare – such as the Coronavirus 19 – to “terraform” the world into a one-world, integrated, genetically modified, and borderless system ruled by a powerful elite using digital currency, but by which all of it threatens white supremacy, i.e., very similar to old theories such as ZOG, i.e., Zionist Occupied Government, which is an outgrowth of the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The one currency concept is ironic since most Pro-crypto thought comes from these Jeffersonian, libertarian, Ron Paul, I hate government types, but the truth is most crypto has already been mined by the rich or anti-American nation states.
The World Economic Forum, as well as Davos, have become the poster children of what people see as a sort of Eyes Wide Shut amoral class of technocrats who are undemocratically designing the world in their own liking. Is there truth here? Yes! But, to what degree is debatable and such a large cabal requires way too much coordination. The only such coordination can only be possible with Elon Musk types.
The criticisms of this camp, same as that of the No.1 with the Dove Left are not entirely unfounded because there are problems with the existing technocratic world order where the common man or woman better understands topics such as World Bank, Bank of International Settlements, or World Trade Organization corruption, International Monetary Fund predatory lending, regime change, and the fact the rich seem to get richer after each catastrophe, etc.
The sad truth is that there ARE actual conspiracies that people see but little seems to get done about it, and if so, the punishments are often lite. For example, think of the relationship of NXIVM via Sara Bronfman whose husband, Swiss based wheeler, and dealer, Basit Igtet lead peace talks in the wake of the Libyan Revolution that toppled Gaddafi. There’s no denying a link between the two people, even though the events themselves were separate.
If anything, both No. 1 and No. 2., are responding to a sense of helplessness in the face of a very real machine, and America’s shameful history, ranging from giving amnesty to Nazis in World War II to the truths behind real experiments such as MK Ultra has led many to go off the deep end, trapped in nihilistic malaise. Movements such as Qanon exploited this fact, manipulating No. 2’s animus that centers around white exceptionalism while also being conservative on the surface as means of preserving their pleasure seeking and hedonism that goes on behind closed doors. I am no Freudian, but his emphasis on sex as the root of all things seems to explain these Alt-Right minions, because their affinity for movements like the Men’s Right movement is the result of feeling sexually repressed or unlucky, especially with boys raised on Instagram and with free pornography, where studies have shown social media beauty standards has also had negative effects on young girls.
Yet, this Qanon movement seems to have been highly manufactured by an international cabal of American conservatives, Russians, and possibly even Israeli Zionists, who blended everything from Millennialism and eschatology, Manifest Destiny, Zionism, Cold War Anti-Communism, the 1980s Satanic Panic, Nietzsche & nihilism (the need for struggle, the concept of eternal recurrence, etc.), Soldier of Fortune “Timothy McVeigh” type militia culture, racism (every Right Wing group involved at Charlottesville), homophobia, transphobia, sexism, Western exceptionalism, antisemitism, paganism, esoteric and occult thought (i.e., memes as form of tarot or alchemical spell to influence people), Alex Jones (serving as one of many “circuit board operators” of this movement), American and British Puritanism, Catholic “Deus Vult” fascism (ranging from the talking points of figures such as Michael J. Matt, all the way to the Pepe The Frog cynicism of Alt-Right/Neo Nazi figures like Nick Fuentes and the Goyim Defense League), Eastern Orthodox Christianity (such as the musings of Jay Dyer who is an avowed monarchist that rejects democracy, but also Jonathan Pageau), conspiracy theory, “Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition” callings, etc.
Qanon was essentially a “thought bomb” or informational warfare where some element might rub off on a person’s subconscious making them pay attention to the messaging. It appealed to older generations who didn’t have the best grasp of emergent technology, while also catering to younger naïve people who weren’t around for previous events to fully understand their contexts.
Most regular everyday people don’t see what the Right Wing is doing because they’ve fled off the traditional platforms and onto websites like Rockfin, Telegram, Gab, Rumble, etc.
For example, KKK leader David Duke had an apartment in Moscow and met with Russian Eurasianist theorist Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin later was a guest on InfoWars, same as Jay Dyer who with his wife Jamie Hanshaw were featured on 2.19.2023 (with Dyer contributing to InfoWars multiple times and he too interviewed Aleksandr Dugin. Jay Dyer was on Warski Live (a podcast) with Lauren Southern, who also interviewed Dugin in Russia, but later became a contributor to SkyNews Australia, under the Murdoch Media empire, which of course owns Fox News in the USA. Southern was also an associated of Proud Boy’s Founder and ex-Vice founder, Gavin McInnes, with both being Canadian (like other “Intellectual Dark Web” Figures such as Jordan B. Peterson and Stefan Molyneux). Neo Nazis have been known to go to Russia, as well as other Eastern European nations.
[1] (Jay Dyer on InfoWars, Video 1) Jay Dyer Exposes the Deep State’s Predictive Programming Propaganda Secrets (infowars.com), [2] (Jay Dyer on Infowars, Video 2) Emergency Broadcast: Alex Jones & Special Guests Lay Out Past, Present, & Future of the New World Order (infowars.com), [3] (IMDB on Dyer, Warski Live, and Lauren Southern); [4] “Warski Live” Lauren Southern & Weev Video (TV Episode 2018) – IMDb, [5] (Jay Dyer interviewing Aleksandr Dugin) https://youtu.be/HyHWa_6-t1M; [6] Lauren Southern interviews Aleksandr Dugin. Aleksandr Dugin on Millennials, Modernity and Religion – YouTube; [7] Vice Article on MMA culture of Russian Neo Nazis, Neo-Nazi Fight Clubs: How the Far-Right Uses MMA to Spread Hate (vice.com); [8] Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of Russian headquartered hate group, The Base, The Prep-School Past of The Base Founder Rinaldo Nazzaro (nymag.com); [9] Australian Broadcasting Corporation on The Base hate group, The Base Tapes: Inside a neo-Nazi recruitment drive in Australia – ABC News; [10]
To move on…
(3) There is a new demographic that I would call the Pro-War or Realpolitik Left or Liberal, where the common person who falls on this side of the political spectrum supports military action against Russia because they see Russian as representing an anti-progressive and/or anti-democratic threat to the West and the freedoms it enjoys. This is why you often notice Pro-Ukraine Flags in liberal cities or college towns, etc. They see Russia has an anti-democratic dictatorship that oppresses marginalized groups and who meddled in US politics, going as far as empowering the United States own Right-Wing movements which has resulted in influencing domestic terrorism, notably white nationalist domestic terrorism.
For example, Fox News has always been criticized for its hyper-partisan and hyperbolic approach to reporting on the news cycle, but Fox News has also backed pro-Russian sentiments.
This seems hypocritical because pundits including Tucker Carlson himself supported the Middle East Wars but now suddenly becomes a pacifist regarding a “white” country that seems to enjoy oppressing women [wife beating is legal], etc.
The things about this Realpolitik Left or Liberal is that even before the Ukraine War, many were sympathetic to the refugees caused by NATO intervention in Syria and Libya, with some going as far as sponsoring refugees to live in their homes. So, this sides isn’t as “ideological” than that of current conservatives, but rather pragmatic., i.e., they saw the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern and African refugees as a consequence of not only despotic governments but also the West’s inability to engage in diplomacy with said governments, yet, there’s more sympathy for engaging in war with Russia because Russia is seen as an existential threat with a proven track record of hostility towards the West (e.g., poisoning journalists, our traditional Cold War nemesis where Putin can’t let the loss go, creating a parallel foreign policy to that of the USA so they can butt into American diplomatic missions as a means of recapturing their lost glory after the fall of the Berlin Wall).
Next, we have…
(4) The traditional Hawkish, Neoconservative Republican Camp, which due to be taken over by the populism of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, which was in part a reaction to the Neoconservatism of the Bush-Cheney and Clinton Eras, have largely fallen in line with the Pro-Russia Camp. This is where Meaghan McCain, Liz Cheney, Lindsey Graham, Adam Kinzinger, etc., reside at., yet, Kinzinger resisted the January 6th Insurrectionists, same as Cheney, but by doing so, both Kingzinger and Cheney lost their Congressional seats, showing how deeply entrenched MAGA was and still is. Figures like Tucker Carlson threads the line between No. 4 and No. 2., but is slipping more No. 2 because of more vitriolic competition from agencies like OAN and Newsmax.
Then of course we have…
(5) Non-Far Right Ukrainians, and international expatriates living abroad in the US, Canada, etc., simply wanting national autonomy from Russia, who see their relatives being killed as a result of Russian aggression. Most Americans were unaware of the Ukrainian community but the Western “bread basket” provinces have a rich history.
I know a woman who is of Ukrainian descent and is a very nice person, a Democrat, a feminist who is raising two strong daughters who often perform traditional Ukrainian dances to raise funds for charity, etc., but I had to watch her social media as she showed her hometown being raised by Russian troops.
Also, we have…
(6) Far Right Nationalist Ukrainians wanting freedom from Russia, but these types feed into the Anti-NATO Far Right who point to the Azov Battalion, etc., as proof of rampant Nazism in Ukraine. Are there Nazis in Ukraine? Absolutely, but there are Nazis in the United States as we speak (some in our military), such as Atomwaffen which has attempted to blow up power plants, etc.
The irony of the Anti-NATO Right Wing is they are soft or dismissive of Nazis riding the coattails of the Republican Party, but then anti-Nazi because NATO is going after their beloved Vladmir Putin, i.e., daddy.
Yet, having nationalist sentiments isn’t always bad, but it’s bad when nationalism explicitly becomes an exclusionary and supremacist ideology. Being patriotic in a socially acceptable way is not bad. Yet, there is truth to the Ukrainian Nazi accusation but to what is extent is debatable. It is true that going back as far as World War II that the OSS, i.e., the later CIA, did recruit former Nazi collaborating Ukrainians as cadres, i.e., cells, to combat Communist forces in post war Europe. The CIA even admits this on its own website. However, Ukraine, like Finland with Carl Gustaf Mannerheim was in a precarious position in WWII. The Ukrainians nor the Fins didn’t want to be conquered by the Reds (Communists), so they sided with the Nazis (with the Allied Powers not giving much if any military assistance against the Nazis), but there were cases of Ukrainians murdering their Nazi officers, considering the Germans wanted to eventually make the Slavs into literal slaves. A complicated case of the “enemy of my enemy is my friend”. However, real war crimes were committed.
Then, we cannot forget…
(7) Ukrainian based separatist Russians, with their international Russian ex-patriate comrades – many living in the United States, Canada, etc. – who seem themselves similar to “Germans”, where Germans during nationalistic eras of old acted like a “race” (ethnicity in reality) of people fighting for their civilization and felt they needed expansion (lebensraum) to preserve themselves, but this tendency in some modern day Russians – largely fostered by Putin himself – destabilizes now independent nations freed form the ex-Soviet Union, such as Eastern Ukraine, possibly the Baltic States, and as of March 2023 we are seeing “Pan Slavic””Z” protests in the Czech Republic and Moldova asking for the West to the stop the war. [1] An anti-government protest in Czech capital draws thousands | Stars and Stripes, [2] Moldova police arrest members of Russian-backed network over unrest plot | Moldova | The Guardian
Other reading:
Mitchell Research Group 