It’s Mother’s Day, again. That time for showering your mom with cards and flowers, and chocolates and gifts… right? 

Wrong. Or at least, that was NOT the intention of the original holiday, nor the goal for the women who dreamed of it.

Peace. Unity. Solidarity was.

The year was 1870. Just after the Civil War, in the United States. More than half a million people had died.

And one woman decided to stand for peace and an end to war. 

Her name was Julia Ward Howe. She was a well-known author and poet. An abolitionist and an activist. She wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a patriotic song for the Union ahead of the war. 

And in 1870 she wrote her “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world”… Her “Mothers’ Day Proclamation.”

“Arise, then… women of this day!” She wrote.

“Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!

“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

“From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.”

She called on women to unite. To meet. To join hands across cultures and nations and lead the way for an end to war.

She called for a Mother’s Day for Peace.

Around this time an organizer and social activist from West Virginia named Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis was already picking up the cause. She’d started Mother’s Day Work Clubs in several cities to help improve health conditions. During the Civil War, they’d declared neutrality and offered medical aid and assistance to soldiers from both the North and the South.

After the war, she worked to reunite communities destroyed and divided by the fighting. Despite threats of violence, she planned a “Mothers Friendship Day.” In Pruntytown, West Virginia, they brought together soldiers from both sides, the Union and the Confederacy, to help each other heal. They sang songs. They cried.

And when Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis passed in 1905, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, made it her life’s mission to establish a day for mothers in her honor. 

She held the first Mother’s Day ceremonies in May 1908, in Philadelphia and Grafton, West Virginia. She distributed white carnations to those in attendance to symbolize the quote “truth, purity and broad-charity of mother love.”

She campaigned tirelessly for the day to be transformed into a national holiday. She organized. She wrote letters to powerful people.

And… they listened. 

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in May a national holiday — Mother’s Day.

But… It did not go as planned. 

Jarvis saw her holiday coopted by businesses trying to make a buck. How it was being commercialized with the sale of flowers, gifts, and greeting cards.

That was not the idea. And she railed against it. 

She famously said, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.”

She filed lawsuits against companies she said were profiting off of the holiday. 

She protested. And was arrested for obstructing the sale of flowers.

In the 1940s, she organized a petition to rescind the day.

Mother’s Day, she said, had lost its essence. Its meaning. In the name of profit.

It had lost its roots of peace. Love and Unity… 

But it is never too late. 

This Mother’s Day, let’s remember where this holiday came from.

Forgo the presents, and the flowers and the chocolate. 

And instead give your mom a hug and share with her the story of the true meaning of Mother’s Day.

A Mother’s Day for Peace.

An end to war.

An end to violence.

An end to the separation of families.

A call for unity among nations and peoples.

Regardless of the color of their skin, their language,

Or their immigration status.

###

Thanks so much for listening. 

I want to send a special thanks and shout out to the peace organization Code Pink for their excellent article that shined light on this forgotten story of Mother’s Day. The article was written over a decade ago, but nothing has changed. I was inspired to do this episode thanks to it. I’ll add a link in the show notes to that article as well as some other stories with background to this forgotten history.

As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. This is Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 31 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

The Radical History of Mother’s Day: https://www.codepink.org/the_radical_history_of_mother_s_day

“Why Was Mother’s Day Created and Why Did Its Founder Protest Against It?”: https://medium.com/@rgdaksh03122005/why-was-mothers-day-created-and-why-did-its-founder-protest-against-it-81807571a7ee

She invented Mother’s Day — then waged a lifelong campaign against it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/05/11/anna-jarvis-mothers-day-founder

Since 1565, the Philippines has been in the grip of one imperialist power after another. Even after independence, the archipelago remains a kind of functional US colony. Now, territorial conflict in the South China Sea could turn the Philippines into a battleground for US-China war. Josua Mata joins Solidarity Without Exception to discuss the Philippines long history of colonization and resistance.

Production: Ashley Smith
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Ashley Smith:  Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception. I’m Ashley Smith, who, along with Blanca Misse, are co-hosts of this ongoing podcast series. Solidarity Without Exception is sponsored by the Ukraine Solidarity Network and produced by The Real News Network.

Today, we’re joined by Josua Mata to discuss the Philippines, a country caught in the crossfire between the US and China over hegemony in the Asia Pacific. Josua Mata is the General Secretary of the Filipino labor federation SENTRO, which organizes workers across many sectors in the country.

The Philippines has long been a battleground between empires fighting for dominance over the Asia Pacific. The US replaced Spain as the country’s colonial overlord in 1898 through President William McKinley’s Spanish-American War. The US used that war to seize control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, projecting its imperial power over the Americas and Asia. Japan drove out the US during World War II, imposing its own brutal dominance over the country, only to be replaced after its defeat by the United States.

Ever since, Washington has used the Philippines as a base to project its hegemony in Asia. Today, the country is caught between the intensifying conflict between the US and China in the region. The Philippines elite has historically been a willing collaborator with the US.

Washington backed the country’s dynastic families, including the notorious dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, until it was overthrown in the People Power Revolution in 1986. Because the uprising did not have a party of its own to lead a thoroughgoing transformation of society, the liberal elite were able to hijack the revolution. While they did reestablish democracy and kick out the US military bases, they enacted Washington’s neoliberal reforms that have driven the country into debt and devastated the living standards of the working class and peasantry.

They also collaborated with the US in challenging China’s construction of military bases in the South China Sea. China established those bases to project its regional power, control shipping lanes, and secure access to fisheries and drilling rights to the undersea oil and natural gas reserves.

The Philippines challenged Beijing’s encroachment into what it regarded as its sovereign territory, winning a case under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration. China has not recognized or obeyed that decision, stoking what has become a semi-militarized conflict between China and the Philippines.

But amidst spiraling poverty, the masses of the country grew disappointed with the liberal elite, opening the door to the return of authoritarian forces. Far-right populist Rodrigo Duterte won election in 2016. He launched his so-called war on drugs that massacred tens of thousands of people, escalated the government’s brutal repression of the Muslim separatist groups in Mindanao, and tilted the Philippines toward China in the hopes of securing investment as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

After the end of his term in office, Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte, ran as the vice president on the presidential ticket of Marcos’s son, Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. Their joint dynastic ticket won handily, but the pact between the families has fallen apart. Marcos has tilted back to the US and permitted the International Criminal Court to arrest Rodrigo Duterte and place him on trial in The Hague for the mass killing he carried out in his so-called war on drugs. Now Sara Duterte is mobilizing protests against Marcos, thrusting the country towards political conflict between dynastic elites.

Amidst this conflict, the Marcos government is whipping up nationalism against China’s ongoing encroachment on its seas. The Trump administration is pouring fuel on the fire. It dispatched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the Philippines, and elsewhere in Asia, to escalate the US confrontation with China. He promised to back the Philippines, Taiwan, and other countries in the region against Beijing. Thus, the Philippines has become yet another flashpoint between the US and China in their ongoing rivalry.

In this podcast, Josua Mata lays out an alternative approach for working people. He advocates progressive internationalism. He calls for the demilitarization of the region, international solidarity from below against both imperial powers as well as the region’s elite, and the transformation of the contested seas into a commons to be shared by the region and developed in the interests of the people and our planet.

Now, onto the discussion with Josua Mata.

The Philippines has been a battleground of empires, various imperial powers, really, for centuries. And I really couldn’t help but think about that when President Trump in his inaugural address referred to President McKinley and the Spanish American War, which the US used to take over the Philippines and impose a brutal occupation and semi or direct colonial rule of the country for decades. So what is the history of the Philippines’s experience of colonization by different imperialist powers, and how have Filipinos resisted?

Josua Mata:  Well, we normally would start the history of the Philippine labor movement by tracing it all the way to the time that we were struggling against pain. In fact, the working-class hero, Andrés Bonifacio, is considered as a working-class hero, primarily because he was the one who founded the revolutionary organization that fought Spain after 300 years of colonial rule.

And to be honest, that revolution had already won almost all the territories in the country except for Manila, particularly the fort, the walled city of Manila, and some small parts in the provinces. But primarily, the Katipunan, which was what it was called then, was already able to liberate most of the areas from Spanish colonial rule.

However, that was also the time when the American colonial project started, and it started with the coming of Commodore George Dewey and where they staged a mock naval battle in Manila Bay. And then they took over Fort Santiago, pretending to have a firefight with the Spaniards, just to give them the semblance that they are really fighting for their dignity, when, in fact, it’s really a mock bottle.

And then they started fooling the Filipino forces by telling them that they came to the Philippines to help the revolution. Of course, the Philippine Republic was already declared as an independent country then. But then, as soon as George Dewey was able to amass enough reinforcements coming from the US, then they started to have this really brutal fight with the Filipino revolutionaries.

Eventually, of course, we were overtaken by more superior technology and much better trained American soldiers who were fresh from their experiences in practically decimating the Native American Indians in North America. So, a lot of the things that they did here in the Philippines were actually efforts to perfect what they had learned in killing the Native American Indians. And in turn, what they learned from the Philippines are exactly the same things that they brought with them to Vietnam.

So, to answer your question quite clearly, how was the Filipino experience when it came to American imperial control? Well, the simplest answer is that we were the first Vietnam. So Japan came in, and then the Americans, of course, came back with MacArthur’s promise of, “I shall return.” And he did return, but unfortunately, when he did, he was more interested in making sure that the elites that he had befriended when he was still the security advisor of Manuel L. Quezon, that was the first president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, he was more interested in making sure that the elites are able to regain their power, their prestige, and even their economic wealth, to the point that he was so eager to pardon everyone who practically collaborated with the Japanese.

And that is so unlike the practice that he demonstrated. That’s so unlike what he did when he was the proconsul of Japan, where he literally punished everyone who had ties with the military’s Japanese empire –- Except of course, the Japanese leaders who have very strong ties with those who amass so much wealth plundering every country in this part of the world. So, the so-called Yamashita gold, this actually historical reality, and it is suspected that MacArthur readily pardoned many of the Japanese war criminals in exchange for some share of that looted gold. So, those are two very different approaches.

So for example, as soon as they returned to the Philippines, one of the first things that the US government did was to help the elite destroy the armed Huk Rebellion, which is essentially an armed group controlled by the old Communist Party, who were fighting with the peasants who wanted, of course, to have control over the land that they have been historically cultivating. That’s so contrary to what MacArthur did in Japan, where one of the first things he imposed was punishing undergoing agrarian reform in order to dismantle, partly, also to dismantle the Zaibatsus that armed the imperial government of Japan. It’s a contrasting way of dealing with a colonial country, and, obviously, it has to do with the loyalties of MacArthur to the elites in the Philippines.

Ashley Smith:  So, in the wake of World War II, the Philippines eventually achieves a nominal independence, but with serious control by the United States through military bases, through economic domination.

Josua Mata:  That’s right. And that’s one of the biggest problems, the so-called parity rights that Americans imposed on the Philippines, wherein American capitalists would have the same rights as Filipinos in running their business in the country, or even in exploiting our natural resources. And that was one of the nastiest things that made sure that even if we have nominal independence, the country practically continues to serve as a colony, a new colony of the US, if you like.

Ashley Smith:  So, now we’re in a situation where the United States is still the predominant power in Asia, but it faces a rival for its dominance in the form of China. And the Philippines is caught in the middle of this conflict between the US and China. And China in particular has been trying to assert its control of the South China Sea, and with that, islands, fisheries, undersea natural resources, oil, natural gas, and shipping lanes. And the Philippines has been caught in between the US and China. So, what is the character of this conflict between the United States and China, and what impact has it had on the Philippines?

Josua Mata:  Well, clearly this is a fight between two imperial powers, and the Philippines is being caught between them, and that’s not a good place to be. On the one hand, the US, because of its historical ties to the country, and because it has an existing mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, it is dangling this promise that they would come to the aid of the Philippines if it is attacked militarily by a foreign aggressor, in this case, for example, China.

But interestingly, actually, for many presidents in the past, it was so difficult for them to be very categorical about coming to the aid of the Philippines, to the point that you’re not really sure whether the US would actually support the Philippines or not. And with Trump around, many are, obviously, now having a problem because nobody knows if Trump would actually lift a finger to help Filipinos. Why would he, when he’s so preoccupied with ejecting everyone who is not a white American in his own country? Why would he then spend time, energy, and resources and American lives to save Filipinos? So that’s a big question mark.

Now, that is putting the current government in a quandary because it [cast] its lot with American power, and it started having a much more robust, if you like, stance to US intervention and intrusion, if you like, in our part of the world.

Now, that’s problematic for them because now they have been supported by the previous government of the US, the Biden administration, to stand fast, fight back. Now they’re not so sure whether the Americans would really come to their support. And I think that clearly is the problem because, in the first place, why did they decide to side with the US in this conflict and eventually be used as a pawn of one imperial power against another rising imperial power?

Now, having said that, China, on the other hand, is obviously keen on making sure that it can exercise its own manifest destiny in this part of the world. They have been very, very clear, if the US run the Americas throughout history as if it’s its own backyard, they should have the same “right” to do that, which then puts Filipinos, particularly the fishermen who have traditionally been going out to those parts of the South China Sea, which we now call the West Philippine Sea, in order to do their livelihood. And prior to this conflict, it has been said that Filipinos, Taiwanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, even Indonesians were all free to gather resources peacefully and in coexistence when there was no conflict. But then, now that’s not possible because China was asserting its nine-dash line, which is now back to 10-dash line, in a very, very aggressive manner.

But in the meantime, rather than call for sobriety and call for making sure that there’s no potential for any flashpoint that could lead to war, unfortunately, my country, the government, my government opted to bring in and invite more military arrangements, not only with the US, but also with several other countries like Japan, Australia. Now they’re forging another agreement with New Zealand. They’re trying to forge an agreement with Germany as well as India.

And what would that mean? It means that this would only lead to more militarization of that part of the world. And with more naval forces loitering in that area, then you have an ever-increasing possibility of having a flashpoint that could lead eventually to war. So, this is a very, very dangerous moment for all of us.

Ashley Smith:  One thing I wanted to get you to talk a little bit more about was the Philippine elite and how it has vacillated. The Duterte government, which was the predecessor to the current Marcos Jr. government, tilted seemingly towards China, and then Marcos has swung back to the United States pretty decisively. And what explains this vacillation, and also how is it related to the increasingly authoritarian nature of the Filipino government itself and its rule over the country?

Josua Mata:  Well, first of all, to be clear, while we have always called the country a democratic country, we have very, very little experience in actual democracy in this country. Ever since we gained our “independence” from the American empire, our nominal freedom, if you like, we’ve always been ruled by the elites who are much more subservient to the US empire than to anyone else. And the US empire has always been happy to keep them happy, our elites happy, as long as they allow the US bases to continue untouched in this part of the world, for the longest time. That changed somehow when we finally managed to kick out the US bases. But then, the economic ties are still so strong.

So let me put it out first. We don’t have much experience in democracy in this country. That’s the first point. The second point I want to say is that our economy has always been designed to serve the needs of capital, particularly, specifically US capital. And most of our elites have almost always directed their economic transactions to be part of the US global capitalist system.

However, with the rise of China, it gave an opportunity for some parts of the elites in the country to have their own entry to global trade. But that’s a very small part of the elite, but that was given much more space when Duterte came to power. But let’s not forget that Duterte came to power primarily because he was supported by China, not just financially, but also politically. And the reason is — And this is where it gets weird — The reason is because Duterte is the kind of leader that actually fits perfectly well with the kind of politics that we have in this country, which is a highly personalistic kind of politic, where our politics is essentially dominated by personalities, specifically by family dynasties.

For example, in this current Congress, more than 85% of all congressmen are actually part of the political dynasties. Our mayors, about 68% of our mayors, are part of political dynasties. We have a president who is a Marcos, his sister is a senator, his son is a congressman, and he’s got several uncles and nieces and cousins who are congressmen and mayors and local government officials. That’s the kind of political system that we have. And Duterte came into the picture when these political dynasties started asserting themselves once again in our history with a vengeance. It’s like having political dynasties on steroids at that point in time.

But you see, Duterte has had a really bad experience with the US, and because he takes things personally, when he was applying for a visa, he apparently was rejected being given a visa, and that he took that personally. And since then, he has become anti-American and [is] packaging his anti-Americanism as part of a nationalist position in the Philippines. Which is funny, because while he keeps claiming that he is nationalist, the first thing he did was actually, after he declared that he’s no longer with the US empire, he then shifted immediately and told Xi Jinping himself, of China, that now he would depend on China [Smith laughs]. So that’s really incredible. And I told you, that’s where it gets funny, because here’s the personal preference of a president that is essentially affecting the entire country.

But that link goes deeper if you look more closely, because his family is suspected of having very, very deep links with Chinese businessmen, particularly those who are operating in the shadow economy of China, which means the underground economy, specifically the drugs trade. So, there’s that very strong suspicion in this country, that they’ve always been linked to the Chinese triads. And that’s why he had that preference of being with China.

So, you have here the personal interconnection of political clan who is now using, who is now intent on using their power in order to deepen that connection and to favor the economic interest of their family.

But then, we only have one term for presidents in this country, and that was specifically designed to prevent a dictator from ruling us, so that means he only had six years to be a dictator [both laugh]. So there’s a natural limit for dictatorship in this country [both laugh].

So when Marcos won by running a campaign where both the Duterte family and the Marcos family are in close unity, and they call themselves UniTeam, as soon as he won, I don’t think he had any intention of moving away from China. In fact, what we now know is that he had all the intention to keep going, to keep the relationship going with China.

The problem is, he felt insulted after China promised exactly the same things that they promised to Duterte, but they never delivered. So, all the billions of investments that Xi Jinping promised to Duterte, none of it actually materialized. Even the official development programs that they promised, of all the many things that they promised, including massive railway infrastructure, none of that materialized. The only thing that materialized are two bridges that were built by China. So Marcos felt insulted by that, and that’s, from what I heard, that’s one reason why he immediately shifted to the US.

But I also think it’s because the Marcoses have always been close to the US. They’ve been trained. The children of Marcos Sr. were trained in the US. They never graduated, but they can claim that they have actually stepped inside a US university like Princeton, but I’m not so sure what they learned [both laugh]. But the outlook has always been closer to the US as a family more than anything else.

But more importantly, he has also to contend with the fact that the military infrastructure in this country, the military personnel, the ideology, as well as the doctrines that they’re using are all developed using the US influence. So, the military has always been pro-US. So that’s also one reason why it’s not that difficult for Marcos to shift to the US away from China.

So that’s how things are, if you look at why the elites would vacillate between the two countries.

But now, it’s important to talk about, so what do the people really know about this conflict? Because the way it is being presented to the public is that this is a fight for national sovereignty. This is a fight for our own freedoms. But the elites, and even parts of the left, has been failing to explain the fact that one of the things that pushed the Philippine government to file a case [with] the UN was primarily because those who have commercial interests, the Filipino oligarchs who have commercial interests to drill the fossil fuels that are supposedly found in those areas, and they failed to drill because China has been preventing them. That is actually what pushed the country to file an arbitration case.

Now, we all know what happened when the Philippine case was heard, UNCLOS made a decision that favors the Philippines, but now their problem is how could they have it enforced when China doesn’t recognize that decision? And that’s why we are now in this situation, because parts of the elites, parts of the oligarchs, wanted to get their hands in the fossil fuels buried in that part of the world. And yet, they’re mobilizing people’s sentiment to support what is necessarily a nationalist position to defend our territory. And that we find very, very dangerous.

Ashley Smith:  Now, let’s talk a little bit more about the conflicts that are happening in this clash over the islands of the so-called South China Sea. Are we headed towards a conflict between the Philippines backed by the US with China? How close to an actual military conflict? Because it seems like it’s gotten close, and then both have backed off, and then it’s gotten close again. And so we’re feeling like we’re at the edge of a military conflagration.

Josua Mata:  To be honest, I don’t think China wants to start a war. It doesn’t help them. It just won’t help them. And I don’t think the US wants to have a war as well. Not even the Philippines. So nobody wants to have a war. But let’s not forget that’s exactly the attitude of most world powers before World War I. Nobody wanted World War I, but then it was too late when everyone realized that European powers were actually sleepwalking into a World War, so that’s exactly what we have right now.

I don’t think anyone wants to have a war, but the fact that you’re increasing militarization in that area, where China has built its artificial islands and then put up naval bases and air facilities for their air forces, and then the Philippines started arming itself as if we have all the money to do it when we can’t even feed our people properly. Now, we’re even looking at the possibility of buying submarines.

So I really don’t understand what’s the plan here, because do we intend to arm ourselves to the teeth, thinking that we can actually frighten the Chinese away? Where is the end game if you try to militarize? And now you’re inviting everyone, all your allies to have military arrangements with you.

So all this militarization is the problem, and unfortunately there’s no pushback that I can see, nor do I hear it, even among the progressive elements of the society. It’s as if everyone just accepted that there’s no other solution to the problem but to try to arm ourselves and come up with more military arrangements so that we can all push China out of those islands, and that’s very, very dangerous.

Ashley Smith:  So, what impact has this increasing military budget, this sleepwalking dynamic into a military conflagration, what impact has that had on the domestic politics of the Philippines? What impact has it had on working people, both at the ideological level, what people are thinking, and also on the economy of the country and the experience of working-class life?

Josua Mata:  Well, let’s start with economy, which is the simplest thing to explain because we’re not a rich country, despite the way many of our economic mismanagers would try to brag that we are almost at the middle income level. We are still a poor country. We still have many people who don’t even have access to electricity or access to sanitation. So we still need resources in order to develop the economy so that we can provide [the] material needs of our people. Now you have to funnel a huge chunk of that money to military expenditures in order to modernize, supposedly, our military forces.

And so, what’s the concrete impact? This year, in 2025, the government just signed, the president just signed a budget, a trillion peso budget. Now it’s like ₱5 trillion pesos, if I’m not mistaken, and there’s zero budget or zero subsidy for Field Health. Field Health, that’s the universal health system in this country. Zero subsidy, so that they can now use it in order to put more money and more resources into militarization.

But more importantly, because this is an election period, then politicians would want to have a capacity to dip their hands into the coffers so that they can actually buy their way back to power. So that’s the economic impact. We have to shift a lot of our resources, much needed resources, away from social expenditure into military expenditure.

Ideologically, for me, the bigger problem is that there’s a stark increase or there’s a tendency to encourage nationalist thinking, which, again, is very dangerous because, for me, it means that you put a premium on your own country, and therefore, it prepares everyone to fight anyone else outside of the country. And that, obviously, is the foundation for war. That’s the psychological preparation for war, if you like.

And who would suffer first and foremost in a war? It’s the working class, specifically the women and the children who are all unarmed, the civilians. And whose interests would this war be waged for? Well, obviously, this is what the oligarchs and the powers that be are not explaining, it’s actually in the interest of the oligarchs who wanted to drill fossil fuel in that part of the world.

So that really is what the government is not explaining to the working class. And that is what we in SENTRO are really explaining to the workers. And we are trying to tell everyone that militarization is not the only solution. In fact, militarization is the worst solution that you can ever think of, if it is called a solution in the first place.

I don’t think we are in a situation where we only need to choose between Beijing or Washington. These are false choices. These are imperialist powers who wanted to have the upper hand in the global competition for resources, for markets, et cetera. And both of them will not do anything good for the Filipino people. But then, the elites are forcing the Filipino people to take sides, and these binary choices that they’re presenting are all false choices.

I think the more appropriate response should come from an international response, particularly from the labor movement, where the first question that all workers should ask is, what is it that we can do to make sure that there is no war?

Ashley Smith:  One of the things that is clear in the US China rivalry, in particular, is that every corner of the earth is affecting every other corner of the earth. You can’t separate any region of the world geopolitically. They’re all interrelated. And in particular, the impact of what happens in Europe has an impact on what happens in Asia.

So right now, Trump is trying to foist a pro-Russian imperialist deal on Ukraine, which basically forces Ukraine to give up 20% of its territory, no security guarantees, which means there’s likelihood for more war. But Trump has pushed for that deal. And many in Asia have thought if Ukraine falls, Taiwan’s next, and then there’s lots of other countries that are in the path. Because what it’s affirmed is an annexationist imperialism by these great powers, the United States under Trump, Putin’s Russia, and Xi Jinping’s China.

On the other hand, people have also said that Trump is trying to strike a deal over Ukraine to redeploy forces of the United States to Asia for a sharper confrontation with China.

So, like you said earlier, it’s a little bit hard to figure out what Trump is really up to. What’s the plan behind this deal in Europe and what’s its impact going to be on China.

So what’s your take on what is going on there in Europe and what impact it’s going to have on Asia?

Josua Mata:  Well, to be honest, as I said, many are now wondering, could the country actually rely on the US? Because the country, as I said, it’s locked with the US, but now with Trump and his extremely volatile positioning and highly unpredictable way of conducting foreign policy, nobody actually knows what would happen. So that’s what people are wondering about in this part of the world. I think that’s a natural result of the strategy when you start casting your lot with the US. So, now you’re in that dilemma precisely because you did what you did.

Now, having said that, I think Trump’s positioning in Ukraine right now, whether it pans out or not, already sends a very strong message to everyone else that you cannot rely on the US, you cannot rely on Trump. That’s also the reason why I think the Philippine government, particularly the president, is starting to figure out how to recalculate things.

And this is where his statement about, remember we have Typhon missiles here that were deployed by the US. Now, I’m not so sure if we have nuclear weapons here, nuclear warheads here. Hopefully not because that’s unconstitutional. But we both know that the US, it’s not the first time. If ever the US deploys a nuclear weapon in a country with constitutional bans against nuclear weapons, it’s not the first time. They did it with Japan, right? Without the Japanese government actually knowing about it. So I wouldn’t be surprised.

But having said that, now Marcos is saying, oh, I’d be happy to return the Typhon missiles, provided that China, you will stop harassing us and you will respect our rights, et cetera. So to me, that’s a signal that he’s trying to recalibrate his own positioning, knowing fully well that he can no longer rely fully on what the US will do. So that’s one impact, at least that I can see.

But the worrisome thing for me is that it also tells us that weak countries have no say in solving the problems of this world, even if these problems are the ones that are faced by these weak countries. I cannot imagine how Ukrainian people right now feel. Their future is being decided by two superpowers without them having any voice at all.

And that’s, I think, also the message to everyone in this part of the world. Whether Trump would launch a much more militarist front, whether Trump would be much more militaristic in dealing with China when it comes to the West or the South China Sea or Taiwan or not, the fact is, it is very clear that he will make the decision without thinking of consulting, whether the Taiwanese people or the Filipino people who would be affected by his decision, and that that’s just not good for anyone.

Ashley Smith:  So now, let’s turn to what progressive forces in the Philippines and what the left and the trade union movement can do. You’re one of the leaders of one of the key unions in the Philippines. So, how should the labor movement, oppressed people, workers more broadly, the peasant movement in the Philippines, position themselves in this sharpening rivalry, this instability, the unreliability of the United States? What are the traps that should be avoided, and what are the solutions that the working class movement in the Philippines should put forward?

Josua Mata:  That’s one of the questions that we have been trying to grapple with for many, many years now, since this whole thing started. And we’re still developing our ideas, but one thing is very clear for us at the onset: We can never respond to these problems coming from narrow, nationalistic thinking. That, for us, is a disaster.

Which, unfortunately, is what the elites are peddling in order to gather more support for their position. And, unfortunately, many in the left in the Philippines, many in the progressive movement, including the left in the Philippines, who are also so steep into nationalist thinking even in their own ideological moorings, because of their own steep nationalist thinking, they are finding it very difficult to step away from that. But that’s the biggest trap, if you like, if you get into this nationalist thinking that we should wave the flag and defend those islands as our own. That’s just going to lead to war.

Now, that was very clear for us from the very start. It was also very clear to us that the key issue here is the fossil fuels that are supposedly buried down there. But we’re in the midst of a climate crisis, and this is a real climate crisis. So, are we saying that we’re going to wage a war and kill each other only to dig up those fossil fuels so that we can burn the planet even more? That’s just absurd. So, people should also sit back and think very clearly, is that the way you want to make use of these resources?

Now, obviously we would have to burn some fossil fuels if you want to lift people from poverty, of course. But then, if that’s the case, shouldn’t we be thinking along the lines of how do we do this in a way where we can minimize the impact on climate? And isn’t it better to think about these resources as something that all of us in this part of the world can use, and not just the Filipinos?

I’m a socialist. As a socialist, I’ve always been raised with the thinking that resources are things that we should be sharing with everyone, no matter what your nationality is. The second thing that we thought of immediately, is that why can’t we think of these islands as regional commons, where everyone who’s had any claim on it, let’s just all sit down and let’s all agree on how we can make sure that we can make use of these resources in an equitable way?

And then, finally, clearly, the solution to prevent the intensification or to prevent any potential military conflict, I think the solution is simply to call for a complete demilitarization of that area. And this is where we don’t have any support, even among the progressive groups in this country. Again, it’s because I think of this one-track thinking, that the only solution or the only response that you can present to a bully like China is to present a military solution. That, again, would only lead to disaster.

So these are some of the key things that we’re trying to develop at this point in time. But the problem here is that we still have yet to develop a broader constituency for this thinking, because there are very, very few people who would subscribe to this idea in a situation where nationalist thinking, nationalist solutions are so powerful, even among the left in this country.

Ashley Smith:  A couple of final questions I wanted to ask you. First about this moment, because this moment that we’re living through has both these interstate conflicts and interimperial conflicts, but it also has been 15 years of explosive struggle from below: pro-democracy movements, national liberation movements, revolutionary uprisings, especially in the Middle East. And a lot of them have not broken through and rebuilt the society in a progressive way — Yet.

And one question, because of the Philippines’s history of intense pro-democracy struggles, explosive pro-democracy struggles, in particular the People Power movement that toppled the brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos’s father, Ferdinand Marcos, what lessons do you think the left in the Philippines, and more broadly and globally, should people draw from the experience of these struggles, and in particular in the Philippines, from the People Power movement?

Josua Mata:  It’s a perfect question to end this discussion, and I’d like to remind you that, in a few days’ time, we will actually celebrate or commemorate the EDSA Revolution. And then this current government, the Marcos government, is trying its darndest best to make sure that people actually forget it [laughs]. So, I think that our first job is to make sure that people don’t forget. That’s the first job. And as we have often heard, the battle, the fight against authoritarianism, dictatorship, is actually a fight against forgetting. It’s a fight to make sure that our memory is not left behind or it’s not forgotten. It’s a fight for memory. It’s a fight for historical memory.

And that is the first thing that I think we lost as a progressive movement, as part of the left in the Philippines. And so that’s one lesson. Many people no longer have the idea that the Marcos dictatorship was a really dark moment in our history. Most people may have heard of that and they have probably read of that in our textbooks, but they have no clue on what it actually means. To the point that workers, 61% of voters even voted for Marcos during the last election.

Now, that really is frustrating because most of these voters are working-class people, and they have forgotten that when the father declared martial law, the first ones that he arrested were not the politicians — It was the trade union leaders. The first thing that he tried to destroy was not just the democratic systems that we have, but the labor movement that can potentially be an opposition to his martial law. So, the battle for memory, I think, is something that we need to keep fighting for.

The second lesson that we can learn from the People Power, the failed People Power Revolution in this country, is that it is always important to make sure that there is an organized mass, an organized force that can provide the backbone, if you like, for the continuous push for social transformation. What we had in the EDSA Revolution was a political moment, a moment where we had the potential to transform society by ushering a thoroughgoing social reform, a social transformation, if you like.

The problem is People Power Revolution was largely led by people who were unorganized. And the only organized forces that you can imagine, that you can see during that period where the military and the politicians, the elite politicians, they were the only ones who had the machinery, the organization to make sure that the gains of the revolution could be pushed towards their agenda. Because the dominant left at that point in time made a mistake of ignoring People Power Revolution because they have this sectarian belief, this Stalinist belief that the only way to wage a revolution in the Philippines is only through armed struggle, nothing more.

So that effectively sidelined the Communist Party, which then led to… That was the historical error that led to them being sidelined. Maybe I should say it this way. My political upbringing was when I joined the EDSA Revolution. I was still a student then, and I was a working student. And I distinctly remember when there was a call for people to come to EDSA. And at that time, many of us didn’t realize what was happening. Many of us didn’t know until much, much later that EDSA was actually started when a coup d’etat, a military coup d’etat of General Ramos and the secretary of defense minister at that time, minister of defense at that time, Enrile, they were planning a coup d’etat against Marcos because he knew he was dying and they were afraid that it’s the wife, Imelda, now together with General Ver, who would take over. Nobody knew that at that point in time.

And that plot, that coup plot, which they wanted to launch in 1984, was postponed to 1985 because the Americans managed to convince Marcos to hold snap elections. So they postponed it, but then they wanted to do it again, they were discovered by the Marcoses, and that forced Fidel Ramos and Enrile to come out in public, have a press conference and declare that they’re no longer supporting Marcos.

The funny thing is, a funny footnote, actually, is that Imelda and General Ver could have nipped that [inaudible] in the bud had one of the aides actually had the gall to disturb them during a party they were having [Smith laughs]. No, it’s true, this is true. I think it’s a wedding party. They were having a wedding party and nobody wanted to disturb them. And then by the time they found out about it, it was too late [both laugh]. Enrile and General Ramos were already able to start mobilizing support for them for their rebellion, if you like.

But people heeded the call of Cardinal Sin, who supported Marcos for a long time but then eventually turned away from him. These are people who are like me at that point in time, who were not organized. And we were there out in the streets. We didn’t sleep, we didn’t take a bath. You don’t eat much, except when there’s food, except that you can always rely on someone giving you food in the streets when we were manning the barricades.

And then when we heard that finally Marcos had left, everybody was so jubilant, everybody was crying, dancing, laughing, and then the first thing that we thought of, we should sleep. So we all went home, we slept, not knowing that the elites were up constructing the new system, so by the time that we woke up, welcome back, we woke up to a government that’s once again run by the oligarchs [laughs]. That is the biggest lesson. You don’t wage a revolution, and then on the verge of your victory, you go to sleep [both laugh].

Which means it only brings us back to what many of us who are practitioners of professional revolutionaries, if you like, it only brings us back to the point that we always know that nothing beats people being organized, knowing fully well not just what they are against but what they really want. Because if we don’t have that organization with a very clear vision and strategy on how do we want to transform society, then someone else will step in and hijack what we have started.

Ashley Smith:  Exactly. So this podcast is entitled Solidarity Without Exception. So I wanted to ask you about what you think about the popular struggle in the Philippines and its relation to similar ones in Palestine and Ukraine. Because so often, progressives fall into a trap of selective solidarity, siding with some popular struggles but not other popular struggles because of the camp that those struggles happen in, either a Russian or Chinese camp, or an American camp, and people don’t have universal solidarity with progressive struggles from below. So, in the context that we’re in of rising interimperial antagonism, increasing national oppression, and, with that, growing popular struggle of various kinds from below, how do we build a new internationalism that practices solidarity without exceptions? And what are the openings for that kind of internationalism today?

Josua Mata:  I think the problem in the Philippines, for us in the labor movement, is not the kind of problems that you’re facing that you just mentioned. Our problem is that there’s not much solidarity among the Filipino working class and the labor movement, simply because people are so tied up with their day-to-day struggles.

But don’t get me wrong, when I started the labor movement three decades ago, one of my first international works was actually supporting Burma — It wasn’t called Myanmar then — So I was supporting the Free Burma Coalition, not as an individual, but as part of the labor movement. I was then working as an education officer of the hotel unions, and I was very, very proud that we were providing spaces for the Burmese, the exiled Burmese leaders. Whenever they come to the Philippines, we actually host them so that they can meet quietly in one of the hotels that we organize. So, it’s so easy for us to be very, very involved in that kind of solidarity.

But then, looking back, one wonders, so, why are many trade union leaders then were very supportive of the struggle for Burma, but then when we asked them to look at the situation of the Muslims in Mindanao who were also waging their own war for their freedom, and who were, for the longest time, were being treated as if they are our own Palestine, then why is it that it’s so difficult for them to support that?

And that was really a nagging question that led my organization to actually have a program to combat the prejudice that many Catholics, if you like, Christians, if you like, against Muslims. Because in the first place, that fight for freedom of the moral people was never a religious fight. It was a completely secular fight for the freedom of people who have never agreed to be part of the country.

So, we realized that it’s not easy for people to readily provide solidarity to them because they have been fooled into thinking that this is a religious war. So within our organization we had to launch a massive education campaign to address the prejudice and make sure that, at the minimum, the labor movement should at least be able to ensure that its membership is a constituency for peace. So, that’s the lesson we draw [from] that.

But the problem for us now is that it’s so difficult for us to get the people to support, for example, the struggle of the people in Ukraine or even in Palestine. We hold rallies, we hold activities, we hold actions, but it’s this small community of activists and believers and not the general public. That is the challenge that we have right now. And I attribute that to the fact that people are so burdened with day-to-day living that’s just difficult for them to… The bandwidth for solidarity, if you like, is so limited. And that is a challenge that we have to figure out, now, how do we address that?

So yes, having said that, I completely believe that real solidarity is the solution to the problems that we’re facing, even in the West Philippine Sea or the South China Sea. The starting point in our efforts to develop [a] working-class narrative to the so-called China question has always been to understand the workers of China. We firmly believe that there’s no way we can build solidarity with the Chinese working class unless people understand that they, like us, are workers who are suffering not just the atrocious behavior of capitalists, but they’re also suffering from [the] dictatorship of the Communist Party of China.

Unless Filipino workers start thinking along those lines, the elites would always have the power to sway them, to wave the flag and wage a war against the Chinese people. And that’s going to be a war that will decimate the working class only to profit the oligarchs.

Ashley Smith:  Thanks to Josua Mata for that revealing discussion of the Philippines, its working-class struggle against the country’s dynastic rulers, the necessity of the country’s left opposing the US and China’s militarism in the Asia Pacific, and advocating for regional demilitarization.

To hear about upcoming episodes of Solidarity Without Exception, sign up for The Real News Network newsletter. Don’t miss an episode.

Puerto Rico first became a US colony in 1898—and remains so well into the 21st century. Today, that colonial relationship is structured through PROMESA, an unelected board that controls the island’s budget and has unleashed a vicious cycle of debt and privatization that has mired Puerto Ricans in poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment. Rafael Bernabe joins Solidarity Without Exception to discuss PROMESA’s role in perpetuating colonialism in Puerto Rico, and the longer history of the island’s oppression under US rule.

Rafael Bernabe is a Puerto Rican activist, sociologist and historian. He was one of four island-wide representatives of the Movimiento Victoria Cuidadana (MVC) who won office in the 2020 elections. He is the author of Walt Whitman and His Caribbean and co-author of Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History since 1898 with César J. Ayala.

Production: Blanca Missé
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Blanca Misse:

Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception, a podcast series about working people’s struggles for national self-determination in the 21st century, and what connects them and us. This podcast is produced by the Real News Network, in partnership with the Ukraine Solidarity Network, and I am Blanca Misse.

We’re releasing our third episode on Puerto Rico in the midst of a new offensive of the Trump administration towards Central and Latin American countries. This new Trump regime is threatening to resurrect the old Monroe Doctrine that the US invoked in the late 19th century to establish its dominance in all the American continent. Marco Rubio, for example, went to Panama last month to demand from its government that it cuts all ties from China and fully recommits to the US.

Trump has also imposed tariffs on Mexico, and threatened new sanctions on Venezuela. We know that other bullying maneuvers are to come. In fact, Project 2025, the blueprint of this new administration, wants to ensure total US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, which will mean further subordination of independent countries, and also of US territories fighting for self-determination, such as Puerto Rico.

It was precisely in the times of the Monroe Doctrine, let’s remember that, that the US invaded Cuba and Puerto Rico to gain control of the resources and the people of those islands. This means that the support here in the US for anti-imperialist liberation movements in Mexico, Central Latin America, and the Caribbean, is more important today than ever.

Today, we are honored to have Rafael Bernabe in our podcast, a very well-known Puerto Rican historian and politician. He was an elected member of the Puerto Rico Senate, representing the Citizens Victory Movement between 2021 and 2025. Of course, he has been a longtime advocate for the right of self-determination of Puerto Rico with an anti-capitalist perspective.

He is going to explain to us briefly the history of US colonial domination of the island, and the new neo-colonial forms of oppression and plunder that still persist today, and more importantly, how the Puerto Rican people and their allies have been actively resisting them and still continue to fight today.

We will hear the case of reparations, and also how the struggle for national liberation in Puerto Rico connects to other liberation struggles in the world, such as the ones of the Ukrainian, Syrian, and Palestinian people. I’m very glad to have today Rafael with us.

Hi, Rafael. Thank you for coming to the podcast to discuss with us the situation in Puerto Rico and the fight of Puerto Rican people for self-determination. I would like to start speaking a little bit about the situation with the PROMESA plan, which is this plan that the US Congress enacted on Puerto Rico to address the fiscal crisis, establishing a financial oversight and management board, and therefore, also many several austerity measures to reduce the debt.

I would like you to explain to us how do you see the PROMESA plan undermining the living conditions of the population in Puerto Rico, and its right to self-determination, and also on which grounds this plan has been opposed by working people.

Rafael Bernabe:

I’m very happy to be here with you discussing these very interesting points. What’s happening in Puerto Rico, I should point out, is not only of interest to the people who are in Puerto Rico, but it’s also, I think, important for people in the United States and in other places, because the policies that are being carried out in Puerto Rico are, in many ways, similar, or in some cases, are an anticipation of what other people may be confronting in the near future.

PROMESA, as you mentioned, is a piece of legislation adopted by the US Congress in 2016. In Spanish, PROMESA means Promise, but the term stands for Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, and it’s a piece of legislation, a law approved by the US Congress, which did several things. The most important one is that it created a board, which in Puerto Rico, we call the Control Board. Officially, it’s called the Oversight Board. This board is made up of seven people appointed by Congress and the President of the United States.

This board is authorized to control basically everything related to the finances of the government of Puerto Rico. For example, in order for the government of Puerto Rico to approve its annual budget, it has to go through the board, and the board can determine that the way that the Puerto Rico legislature has assigned the funds is not acceptable. They can rearrange that.

For example, they can say, “You have given too much money to the University of Puerto Rico, and you have to reduce that,” or, “You have given too much money to programs to promote working class rights or organization, and so on, and you have to alter that.” You have this board, which basically, it’s a very, needless to say, it’s a very undemocratic arrangement. You have seven people who have not been elected by anybody, and these seven people have the right to determine basically the shape of the budget of the government of Puerto Rico.

Now, you may ask yourself, why did they create this board? What is the reason? What is the cause for approving PROMESA and creating the board? The PROMESA arises out of the reality of Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Puerto Rico has even to this day, a very grave debt crisis. That debt crisis is, in turn, finds its origin in Puerto Rico’s economic crisis. To put it very rapidly, after 2006, almost 20 years now, the Puerto Rican economy basically stopped growing. It stopped expanding.

At one point, around 200,000 jobs were disappeared. This is around 20% of the jobs that existed in 2006 disappeared. The economy in terms of GDP fell by 15%, more or less. For the first time in Puerto Rico’s history, the population of Puerto Rico fell from 2010 to 2020. Thousands of people left Puerto Rico. They had to migrate because they couldn’t find employment in Puerto Rico. There was a very deep economic crisis in Puerto Rico after 2006.

As the economic crisis worsened logically and naturally, the revenues of the government of Puerto Rico also fell. Instead of reconsidering its economic policies, and its tax policies, and so on, the government of Puerto Rico, as its revenue fell, basically borrowed an increasing amount of money. Of course, needless to say, the economy is not growing, and the revenues of the government are falling, and they are borrowing an increasing amount of money.

A point was going to be reached in which the government would not be able to service the debt. That happened in 2015. In 2015, the government of Puerto Rico had to admit publicly that they were not going to be able to service the debt of Puerto Rico. At that moment, the economic crisis became also a debt crisis.

At that moment, there were several options. Puerto Rico could have and should have initiated the process of auditing this debt to determine which part of it was illegitimate, which part of it was illegal, which part of it was unsustainable, meaning that it could not be paid without imposing on the Puerto Rican people an unacceptable sacrifice in terms of its needs, but that’s not what happened.

What happened was that Congress approved PROMESA, created the board, and the objective of PROMESA is to impose on Puerto Rico as a harsh, an austerity program as possible in order to provide, to generate funds to pay as much as possible to the bondholders, to the people who hold Puerto Rico’s debt. The objective of the board is basically to squeeze Puerto Rico’s budget so that Puerto Rico spends less on education or health than the University of Puerto Rico, environmental protection, family services, social services, and so on, to squeeze the spending of the Puerto Rican government as much as possible to generate as much as possible funds to pay the bondholders.

Needless to say, the board, the people who adopted PROMESA know quite well that Puerto Rico’s debt is not going to be paid in full. Puerto Rico’s debt at the point of the debt crisis exploded, was $72 billion. Everyone knows this is not going to be paid in full, but they want as much as possible, to pay as much as possible to the bondholders. The board had two missions, one to renegotiate Puerto Rico’s debt, which they have been doing piece by piece, and to impose austerity policies which would enable Puerto Rico to pay that debt at the cost, as I said, of many things that the Puerto Rican people need.

To give you a very concrete example, I work in the University of Puerto Rico, and the University of Puerto Rico, there’s a law in Puerto Rico which says that the University of Puerto Rico has a right to 9.6% of the revenue of the government of Puerto Rico is supposed to go to the University of Puerto Rico. That’s what the law says. At present, this would mean about a billion dollars. The University of Puerto Rico should have a budget of about a billion dollars.

Right now, the University of Puerto Rico is receiving around $500 million as a budget. It’s half of what it should be receiving and half of what it received in the past. The austerity policies have been applied very harshly on the University of Puerto Rico. It’s what’s one example. The same thing has happened in other sectors. As I said, the situation of Puerto Rico begins with an economic, very deep economic crisis.

You can go further back to the limits of Puerto Rico’s colonial economy. Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States that implies certain facts about Puerto Rico’s situation.

Blanca Misse:

Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of this colonial domination? It seems this is not new, right? You made a first history in 2006 to explain the PROMESA plan, but it seems that this is a neo-colonial relation that has been going on for quite a while here.

Maybe several people in the US are not aware of this relation and need to be educated about it. Can you tell us a little bit more, as concisely as you can be, what is this history of colonial domination with some key examples?

Rafael Bernabe:

Yeah, as I said, to very rapidly remind you of what we’re doing here, the creation of PROMESA and the policies of the board are related to the fact that we had a very grave debt crisis, which exploded in 2015. Now, that debt crisis finds its roots in the economic crisis, but Puerto Rico’s economy goes further back. They have to do with Puerto Rico’s colonial situation. It seems politically controlled by the United States.

Perhaps for persons who are not familiar with the situation in Puerto Rico, the fastest way to explain it is that in some ways, we have a situation which is similar to the states of the United States. We have what you would call a state legislature, a state governor, which we elect and so on, with the difference that we don’t have any representation in Congress, or the election of the President of the US, nor do people who live in Puerto Rico and corporations who operate in Puerto Rico pay federal taxes.

There are some important differences that I would explain why they are so insignificant. Anyway, Puerto Rico has been a colony of the US since 1898. Of course, that means, as I said, political subordination to the United States. There are many aspects that are fundamental to the life of Puerto Ricans and to any country which are not under the control of the Puerto Rican people, that is the legislature of Puerto Rico, for example, cannot adopt any measures regarding foreign trade, or regarding migration policies, or regulating communications, and many, many, many other things.

Many fundamental things are in the hands of the US government, the federal government, and they take the decisions, and they apply them to the people in Puerto Rico, and that’s that. It’s a colonial relationship. The colonial relationship is not only a political relationship. When people think about colonialism, normally, they think basically about the political aspect, the political subordination of one country to another. In Puerto Rico, it’s that, but it is also a reality of economic subordination.

Ever since the early 20th century, for 120 years now, the economy of Puerto Rico has been basically controlled, the most important productive sectors of the economy of Puerto Rico has been controlled, owned by large US corporations. In one epoch, it was the sugar industry. After World War II, it was flag manufacturing. Today, it’s high tech factories, and pharmaceutical operations, and so on. Regardless of which sector of the economy we’re talking about, at different stages of Puerto Rico’s history, it has been controlled by US corporations.

That has meant that Puerto Rico’s economy has always been over-specialized. It specializes in one thing. We specialized in sugar, and then we specialized in certain manufacturing processes like manufacturing shoes, and garments, and so on. Then that was abandoned for, as I said, the pharmaceutical industries, and electronic devices, and so on and so forth. It has always been a very specialized economy, which makes it very vulnerable to changes in the market of that product in which we are specialized.

If there’s a crisis in the sugar industry, then the whole Puerto Rico economy goes into crisis, or if there’s a crisis in the pharmaceutical industry, then the whole Puerto Rico economy gets into trouble. The other aspect of that is the fact that a considerable portion of the wealth that is produced in Puerto Rico leaves the island and abandons the island, because these corporations take their profits out of Puerto Rico, they invest them somewhere else. They don’t invest them in Puerto Rico.

The fact that right now, the estimates that most economists make is that around 30% of Puerto Rico’s gross domestic product leaves the island in the form of profits and dividends and so on of corporations operating in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico’s GDP is a little bit more than a hundred billion, and they calculate that around 30 or $35 billion leave the island, as I mentioned. Evidently, if these resources are not reinvested in Puerto Rico, that means that they don’t have employment in Puerto Rico.

The level of unemployment in Puerto Rico has always been very high. All of these problems were there before 2006. The economic crisis, which began in 2006, made things even worse than they were in the past. Of course, the junta or the board, which was put in place in 2017, made it even worse by imposing the austerity policies that I mentioned.

Blanca Misse:

Thank you. You’re telling us that there is this shadow government, this junta that is appointed, that is depriving Puerto Rico from real financial and economic autonomy, but that this PROMESA plan is also coming in the history of economic underdevelopment of Puerto Rico, of this specialization.

Rafael Bernabe:

Sure.

Blanca Misse:

If we were to think, what are the conditions for Puerto Rico to achieve real, full economic and social development, what kind of struggle is needed today to ensure the right of self-determination of Puerto Rican people? What kind of social movements we should be supporting, both in the island and in the US, to really go till the end of the desire of Puerto Rican people to be fully independent?

Rafael Bernabe:

Well, I think, as I said, there are several levels at which we have to work. We have to make sure that Puerto Rico is able to liberate itself from the present colonial condition. That begins with eliminating the political subordination to the United States. We should struggle for the Puerto Rican people to have a process of self-determination, in which they decide how they want to live, how they want to organize themselves.

In Puerto Rico, historically, there have been three positions regarding that issue. There are people who support Puerto Rico becoming a state of the United States. There are people who support Puerto Rico becoming some sort of associated independent, but associated state with the United States. There are those people who defend independence for Puerto Rico. Now, those of us who support independence, of course, will defend that option as the one that is in the best interests of the Puerto Rican people.

We have to recognize that there are other people in Puerto Rico, many of them who support other options. What we need, and what I think the American people, the people in the United States, need to defend is a process of self-determination for Puerto Rico, that for the first time in 120 years, the Puerto Rican people are allowed to determine what relationship they want to have with the United States, whether they want to be independent, or state, or free, or associated with the United States.

They can have that process in order to determine what their future should be. I won’t go into now into how the support for either option [inaudible 00:18:45] or falling in the recent past, but the most challenging aspect of reconstructing Puerto Rico is reconstructing Puerto Rico’s economy. I think for that, we need to develop a plan of economic reconstruction in Puerto Rico.

This is not going to be reorganizing Puerto Rico’s economy, from my perspective, will not be the result of the, what should I call it, the free and spontaneous movement of the market, or the initiative of US corporations, or even Puerto Rican private corporations. We need a integrated plan for the development of the economy of Puerto Rico, which also requires a radical expansion of the public sector, of the economy of Puerto Rico.

That is, the government has to take a very active role in devising a road, a path towards Puerto Rico’s more integrated economic development. That has to include a larger production in Puerto Rico of many goods that we need and we could produce in Puerto Rico. A very significant example is agricultural goods and food products, which used to be a basically agricultural country, at present, imports about 85% of its food. Only 15% of what we consume is produced in Puerto Rico. That could increase radically.

Everybody who studies the problem recognizes that. We need to also develop other sectors of the economy, which in Puerto Rico, already has a certain base, but which we have to turn into enterprises or activities which benefit Puerto Rico. One of the main things that we have to address is the fact that, as I said, we have corporations operating in Puerto Rico, which extract from Puerto Rico gigantic amounts of profit. As I said, the estimate is about $35 billion a year.

To give you an example, the budget of the government of Puerto Rico is around $10 billion. The amount of profits and dividends that leave the island is about three times the budget of the government of Puerto Rico. While the government of Puerto Rico has no money for many of the things that it needs to do to satisfy the needs of the Puerto Rican people, you have this massive amount of money leaving the island.

Needless to say, we have to address that issue, and we have to make sure that a more significant portion of the wealth and the profits generated in Puerto Rico are reinvested in Puerto Rico. I also think, as in the case of oppressed peoples in other contexts, the Puerto Rican people deserve what I guess in the United States, you would call reparations or compensation for the impact of colonial rule over the past 120 years.

Many of the problems that Puerto Rico is confronting, for example, are due to decisions taken, policies adopted by the US government. They cannot simply say, “Well, Puerto Rico is going to be independent now, and we don’t care any more about Puerto Rico.” No, you’re accountable for what some of the things done in Puerto Rico.

Therefore, it’s fair a task of progressive people in the United States to argue that the US government should provide significant funds for financing the reconstruction of Puerto Rico’s economy. $10 billion, for example, a year, which would be tremendously significant for Puerto Rico, is a drop in the bucket of the budget of the US government. In order to do justice to Puerto Rico, that’s another demand.

I think in summary, people in the United States should be defending self-determination for Puerto Rico, political self-determination, and also for the US government to provide the necessary means for the economic reconstruction of Puerto Rico, which is not that different from what progressive movements in the US, which is that they call on the US, they propose taxes on Wall Street, and taxes on large corporations, taxes on the richer sectors, so that the social services that the working people need can be financed.

Well, it’s more or less the same thing. We need to address the needs of the Puerto Rican people in a similar fashion.

Blanca Misse:

Thank you. In this alliance for a struggle of self-determination, both political self-determination, the fact that in the US, working people need to uphold and defend the right of Puerto Ricans to decide their future without any interference from the US, and also a policy of reparations for the legacy of colonial rule.

I have a question for you that has to do with how do you see this fight for self-determination of Puerto Ricans connected to other fights of liberation in the US, but also in the region, in the Caribbean region, and what alliances have Puerto Ricans forged with other key working class and popular movements to advance their struggle for liberation? Which ones should we forge?

Rafael Bernabe:

Yeah. Well, Puerto Rico, as you know, is a Latin American nation. Logically, all of Latin America in one way or another has been confronted with the power and the interference of the United States over many decades. There are anti-imperialist, self-determination movements of many sorts. All of Latin America right now, as you know, Trump, for example, is threatening Mexico, is threatening Panama and so on. There have been very strong anti-imperialist movements in Latin America.

The Puerto Rico independence movement historically has had close connections with different currents of the Latin American anti-imperialist currents. One of the ones with which Puerto Rico has had the closest connection in terms of the, I’m talking about the independence movement, is the Cuban struggle. Cuba and Puerto Rico have very similar histories. While the rest of Latin America became independent in the 1820s, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the only two territories that remained under Spanish control.

They both fought together. They collaborated in the struggle against Spanish colonialism during the 19th century, and then they were both invaded by the United States in 1898. They both remained in the case of Cuba until 1959, very much under the influence of the United States after 1898. The Puerto Rico independence movement has a long tradition of contact with the Cuban anti-imperialist movement.

There have also been significant connections with progressive forces in the United States at different points, if only because millions of Puerto Rico, as a result of US colonial rule, have moved to the United States. These Puerto Ricans in the United States, many of them have become correctly and logically involved in US labor struggles historically, and more recently, environmental struggles, women’s struggles, and so on and so forth.

They have created links between the struggle for Puerto Rico self-determination and social struggles in the United States. Perhaps one of the most admirable chapters I can mention too, that are very admirable, in the 1930s, there was a very progressive congressman, his name was Vito Marcantonio.

He was a congressman for his representative district in New York, which included the Puerto Rican barrio, the major Puerto Rican neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. He was the most progressive congressman at the time. He was very close to the communist party, that had some problems because of that. Overall, he was a very admirable figure, and he defended Puerto Rico’s self-determination and the rights of Puerto Ricans very, very sternly in the US Congress.

He presented legislation, which I think is a model of what we should defend. He presented legislation, I think it was in 1936, which was to grant Puerto Rico independence, and to grant Puerto Rico reparations for the impact of US colonialism, and to grant Puerto Rico independence on their favorable conditions for Puerto Rico to develop economically. For example, allowing Puerto Ricans to enter, people from Puerto Rico to enter the United States freely, move back and forth freely between the United States and Puerto Rico, and as I said, providing reparations.

I think it’s a model. It’s a beautiful example of solidarity, of progressive forces in the United States with the self-determination of Puerto Rico by a man who was also involved in all the important labor struggles and anti-racist struggles at the time in the US. The other example is more recent. It was the struggle that some of you may have heard about, the struggle to expel, to stop the US Navy occupation of the island of Vieques.

When we talk about Puerto Rico, normally we think about one island, but it’s really three islands. Culebra and Vieques are the other two islands. Vieques, Culebra as well, but Vieques for a longer time, were occupied, largely occupied by the US Navy and used as a fighting range with terrible consequences for the inhabitants and for nature, for the ecology of that region. In the early 21st century, in year 2000, 2003, between those dates, there was a massive movement in Puerto Rico to stop the Navy operations in Vieques.

There was a massive support in the United States. There was tremendous support by progressive forces in the United States in support, in solidarity with that struggle in Puerto Rico, to the point that the struggle was successful, the Navy was forced to abandon Vieques. As I said, the independence movement historically has created links with different forces outside Puerto Rico, some of them with Latin American countries, some of them with progressive forces within the United States, some of them beyond the United States and Latin America.

These two regions logically are the most important ones. I should add that the independence movement is not monolithic in the independence movement. In Puerto Rico, you could basically say that there are three big currents. There is the liberal current, or the social democratic current. It’s the more moderate one. It seeks independence for Puerto Rico with some significant social reforms. It abides by the perspective that this should be by all means, a peaceful process, a process through the elections, through the legal channels, and so on.

The most important representative of that force in Puerto Rico today is the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño, the Puerto Rico Independence Party, which in the recent times has grown very significantly. The second current, which is much diminished at present, but it has important significance historically, is the nationalist current, best exemplified by the Partido Nacionalista, the Nationalist Party, and its leader who died in the 1960s, Pedro Vizucampos, a very important figure in Puerto Rican history.

The nationalist party, as the name indicates, was a nationalist party, supported independence, had a fairly progressive view of labor issues, and so on. On some areas, it was rather conservative. For example, on questions related to the family, and religion, and women’s rights, and so on, it was sort of traditionalist, but it was open, in favor, and engaged in armed struggle against the US rule. It was willing, and it did take up arms against US colonialism, most saliently in 1950. They attempted an insurrection against the US.

The third tendency is the socialist tendency. The socialist tendency, which at different points, has been embodied in different organizations. In the 1940s, there was a significant communist party that had a significant role in the labor movement. It was later on basically repressed in the McCarthyite period. Then in the 1960s, there were several important groups inspired by and large by the Cuban Revolution.

The most important one was the Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño, Puerto Rican socialist party, also became a significant force in the labor movement, in the environmental movement, and so on, and up to the present, in which there are several socialist organizations who exist in Puerto Rico and very active in different struggles. Over the years, we have these three tendencies. These tendencies, going back to your question, have had different, not necessarily contradictory, but different links outside Puerto Rico.

For example, the more liberal social democratic current has links with the socialist international, or with parties who are linked to the socialist internationals, and so on. The nationalist movement has links with similar forces outside Puerto Rico. The socialist movement has links with socialist forces outside Puerto Rico. There are many, many, what should I say, many connections between the Puerto Rican independent struggle and many forces outside Puerto Rico, which have been forged by different currents at different points.

I do think that at present, both the Puerto Rican progressive forces and US progressive forces have to make a conscious effort to connect. It seems to me that many times, I criticize both. The Puerto Rican left, the Puerto Rican independence movement, many times, I think is not active enough in trying to link up with progressive forces in the United States.

They should seek connection with the US labor movement, with the US LGBT movement, with the US environmental movement, with the US movement in defense of migrants rights, to make sure that all of those movements, when they elaborate their program, when they elaborate their demands, when they go before the state government, or Congress, or anywhere, they include among their many demands, a demand for self-determination for Puerto Rico and for reparations for Puerto Rico.

In the same fashion that I think the Puerto Rican progressive forces must be very active in seeking that connection, I think progressive forces in the United States, progressive persons in the United States, should seek that the movements in which they are involved in the US pick up the demand for Puerto Rico self-determination. If a person is in a union in the United States, in the labor movement, or is in an environmental coalition, or a Native people’s coalition, or anti-racist coalition, or whatever, that among their program, that they should include the element of solidarity with the problem of Puerto Rico that would allow for that.

Blanca Misse:

Thank you, Rafael, because you’re being very eloquent to show these connections that are historical, but that need to be developed today between the movement for independence and self-determination in Puerto Rico, and many other movements in the US, such as the labor movement, the women’s movement, the Native American movement, the Black Liberation Movement, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, I want us now to go even bigger and wider in our internationalist reach, and I want to ask you a question about if you see, or how you see the connection of the struggle of the Puerto Rican people for self-determination to other liberation struggles sometimes farther away in the world. I’m thinking of Ukraine, I’m thinking of Syria, I’m thinking of Palestine. The reason I ask you this question is because today, sometimes we have folks who, for example, only support the right of self-determination of one people.

For example, many adamant supporters of the right of self-determination in Ukraine do not want to support the right of self-determination of Palestinians, or vice versa. We have some folks who in the US, support the right of self-determination of Palestine, but do not want to support, and maybe Puerto Rico too, but they don’t want to support the right of self-determination for Ukraine, because the US has been supporting Zelenskyy, and therefore, they say, “This is not a struggle we can get involved in.”

I’m very curious to get your take about how do you see this connection between these different liberation struggles worldwide?

Rafael Bernabe:

Well, I’m going to give you my take, and then I will give you a little comment on what the position of other people in the Puerto Rican left is. It’s not necessarily mine. My take is that as consistent opponents of oppression, any kind of oppression, we need to fight against all forms of oppression, and we need to fight against all, we need to support all the peoples of the world who are struggling against some form of national oppression or imperialist aggression, without exceptions.

My perspective is that there is more than one imperialism in the world. There is American imperialism. We have to fight US imperialism. I spent my whole life fighting against US imperialism in Puerto Rico. There’s NATO imperialism, and obviously, we need to fight against NATO imperialism. I also think that there is a Russian imperialism. Capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union, as we all know. It is a capitalist state. It’s an authoritarian capitalist state. Its leadership seeks to create its own sphere or zone of influence in its near abroad.

This is very evident and is very evident in the case of the Ukraine. Putin, when he announced the invasion of the Ukraine, the most recent invasion of the Ukraine, he very openly said that Ukraine does not exist as an independent nation. This was an invention of Lenin who was crazy, because he defended this crazy idea of the right of nations to self-determination. Putin himself very clearly said, “My intent is to crush this nation as an independent state, and I am doing this in violation of what this crazy guy, Lenin, called the right of nations to self-determination.”

Now, I defend the right of nations to self-determination, and that means that we have, for me, that means that we have to support the right of the Puerto Rican people to self-determination against US imperialism, and the fight for the Palestinian people for self-determination against the Zionist state, and the right of the Ukrainian people for self-determination against Russian aggression. I think that is the only consistent position for an anti-imperialist.

We have to be against all imperialisms, not only US imperialism, all imperialisms, and we have to be for the right of all peoples to self-determination, not only some people. I agree with, I can grant the government, it’s a neoliberal government, this is not our government. We don’t support Zelenskyy, we don’t like Zelenskyy, but from the government of the Ukraine, it’s a task for the Ukrainian people. It cannot be used to justify the invasion of the Ukraine.

This is a very long tradition, a very long-standing perspective in the sector of the left and the socialist left that I belong to. I’ll give you a historical example. In the 1930s, Japan invaded China, and all of the left in the world was on the side of China. All of the left supported China against Japanese imperialism. At that time, China was ruled by Chiang Kai-shek and by the Kuomintang, which were a terribly reactionary party, totally anti-communist, repressive of the labor movement, incredibly corrupt, and who had the support of the western imperialist powers who wanted to weaken Japan.

The left supported China, despite the government of Chiang Kai-shek. In the same fashion, we need to support the Ukraine against the Russian intervention, despite the government of Zelenskyy. If we can replace the government of Zelenskyy with something better, fine, that will be wonderful. Even if we can’t do that now, we cannot simply say, “Well, Ukraine has a bad government, therefore we are not going to denounce Russian intervention.” The same thing, I can give you many examples.

When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, which was an empire, had an emperor, nothing democratic about its economic or social struggle, all the anti-imperialist left for most of it was on the side of Ethiopia. They didn’t say, “Oh, well, hey, Selassie is a repressive emperor, therefore we can’t support Ethiopia.” No, we were on the side of Ethiopia, resisting Italian imperialism. To me, that’s the perspective. We oppose all imperialisms, we support the struggle for self-determination of all peoples.

As you say, unfortunately, in the left, there are many who do not adopt this, what I think is a consistent internationalist logic. They adopt what some people call, I think it’s correct, a campist logic, in which they divide the world in two parts. There’s US imperialism and there’s NATO imperialism. That furthermore leads to the conclusion that any force, any movement, any government that is somehow finds itself in contradiction or in tension with the United States is, as a result of that fact, a progressive force.

You have a terrible sanguinary, brutal dictatorship of Assad in Syria. Since it had, at different stages, conflict with the United States, there were people who considered themselves progressive, who thought that Assad was a progressive force. The same thing, some people have argued regarding Iran. Iran has contradictions with the US, therefore, the Iranian regime is a progressive force, or Putin. Putin has contradictions with the United States, therefore Putin is a progressive force.

Now, not everybody goes to the extent, but there are many variations of it. It’s a very flawed logic. Sometimes it operates in terms of silences more than statements. For example, as you say, people will be very vocal against Zionism, in support of the Palestinian people, very vocal in support of other struggles, but then they will say nothing about the Ukraine, simply ignore that reality. Not that they don’t say, “I support Putin,” but their silence, in a way, it’s a complicit silence because they avoid taking a stand on that issue.

I think that it’s a wrong position, and I think it doesn’t help us build an international anti-imperialist, progressive forces. There are progressive people in Ukraine who, as I would, if I see a Russian intervention, they want their nation to be free. They don’t want to leave. Maybe they don’t like Zelenskyy, but they don’t want their country to be invaded by Putin. They are for resisting the Russian invasion. The left doesn’t say anything.

If we want the people in the Ukraine to, [inaudible 00:43:12] their present allies, NATO, and the United States, and so on, if we want the people in the Ukraine to move towards an anti-imperialist position against those imperialist powers, we have to begin by saying, “We support you. We are with you in the struggle against Russian imperialism, but we warn you, NATO is not a good ally. United States is also imperialist. You have to fight against Russia, and we will support you, but we also need to address the fact that there’s also US imperialism.”

If we talk to the people in the Ukraine, “We don’t like your allies, we don’t like your government, so we are not going to support your struggle,” they are not going to pay any attention to our perspectives, to our ideas, whether they are socialists and imperialists. These people are not willing to support our struggle. Why should we listen to them?

I think an internationalist left, the only position that is consistent is to fight the people of the Sahara who are fighting against Moroccan oppression, the people of Puerto Rico who are fighting against US imperialists, the people of Palestine who are fighting against Zionism, the people of Kanaky, people in the Pacific who are fighting against French imperialism, the Ukrainian people who are fighting against Russian imperialism, and so on.

All of these struggles, we have to see as part of the struggles that we need to support against all imperialisms. There are many aspects to this, but the left got used to the idea after the disappearance of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, that there was only one imperialism, because for a few decades, two decades, basically, it was the US, [inaudible 00:44:50] imperialism around, and we are all against that. Now, we are in a situation which I think is increasingly similar to the situation that existed in the epoch of Lenin, ironically.

We are going to a previous period in which there were several imperialisms fighting over control. Trump just said yesterday, I think, that he wants the mineral resources of the Ukraine in exchange for supporting it. The United States and NATO evidently want to control this region, and Russia also wants to control that region. We support neither. We support the self-determination of peoples. I mentioned the struggle of the Kurdish people, which is another major national liberation struggle, in their case, oppressed by several states.

The national question and the need to support national liberation against different imperialist powers or different local powers, as in the case of Turkey, I think it’s a task for all revolutionaries and all progressive people. We should avoid, as you mentioned, the logic of selective solidarity. I support some struggles that I don’t support other struggles. Sometimes I think it’s pathetic. I follow many people in the internet and so on.

All of a sudden, when Assad fell recently, you could hear all of a sudden, many people that I appreciate, but it’s, I think, very objectionable, all of a sudden, they were very worried about democratic rights and civil rights in Syria. These new forces took power. All of a sudden, there was this concern about human rights in Syria, and so on and so forth, as if the government of Assad had not been a government which violated human rights.

Since it was a government that was somehow thought to be in somehow in contradiction with the United States, then we don’t denounce the crimes of these governments. I think it’s a wrong perspective. It’s inconsistent, and it doesn’t help us build, as I said, an international movement. We need the Puerto Rican people, if I were to speak from my country, Puerto Rico is a small country, has 3 million people. There is no way that Puerto Rico is going to be able to reconstruct itself in any significant way if reactionary forces, neoliberal forces, repressive forces prevail around the world.

We cannot have a free, and independent, and flourishing Puerto Rico in a world of fascism and semi-fascism. We need to build an international movement in order to confront all of these repressive forces. The only way we can build an international movement is by supporting all struggles against all imperialism. We cannot leave out the Ukrainians, or we cannot leave out anybody because they are fighting against an imperialism which is not US imperialism.

Blanca Misse:

That was our episode of Solidarity Without Exception on Puerto Rico, with our guest, Rafael Bernabe, who reminded us of the importance of being a consistent internationalist in supporting all the struggles for freedom of working people everywhere in the world. For our next episode, we’ll move to another part of the globe, the Philippines.

My co-host, Ashley Smith, will interview Joshua Mata, a political activist and trend union leader there. Stay tuned for more episodes of Solidarity Without Exception, and especially sign up for our newsletter of The Real News Network at TheRealNews.com.

Editor’s note: This episode was recorded on March 4, 2025.

In Syria, Assad is gone, but the country’s challenges remain. Over a decade of civil war and foreign intervention has devastated the country’s economy and politics, but a fragile optimism still exists. Joseph Daher and Ramah Kudaimi join this second episode of Solidarity Without Exception for a discussion on Syria’s long journey from the 2011 revolution to today, and what solidarity with the Syrian people should have looked like then, and could look like now.

Pre-Production: Ashley Smith
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Music Credits: 
Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |
https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

Ashley Smith:  Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception. I’m Ashley Smith, who, along with Blanca Missé, are co-hosts of this ongoing podcast series.

Today, we’re joined by Joseph Daher and Ramah Kudaimi to discuss the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

Joseph is a Swiss Syrian socialist, professor, and author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God; Syria After the Uprisings; and Palestine and Marxism. He recently returned from a visit to Syria only to find out that he has been fired from his university post for organizing in solidarity with Palestine.

Ramah is a Syrian American activist and the campaign director for the Crescendo Project at the Action Center on Race and the Economy Institute. Ramah was previously the deputy director at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, where she led and supported BDS campaigns in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.

In this episode, we’ll discuss Syria’s revolutionary process, which began in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, when people revolted against the autocratic governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In Syria, people rose up against Assad’s regime in a mass revolutionary struggle for democracy and equality. In response, Assad launched a counter-revolutionary war on his people to defend his rule. There is no doubt that he would have fallen without the military support of Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Together, they jailed, killed, bombed, and terrorized the country’s people, driving millions into exile and internal displacement.

Nevertheless, Assad lost control over whole sections of the country. Rebels led by the Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham that dominated the military resistance seized control over some sections of Syria, while Kurdish-led forces in the Syrian defense forces declared a liberated zone in Rojava.

The US intervened in Syria against ISIS when the group took over whole swaths of the country. Washington did back some Syrian rebels, including the Kurds, but restricted them to fighting ISIS, not the regime. In fact, the US wanted to preserve the regime as a bulwark of stability in the region, at best, hoping for a more pliant ruler to replace Assad. With that not in the cards, states throughout the region and world began to normalize relationships with Assad.

But the regime’s days were numbered. It had little to no domestic support, and its foreign backers became weakened and preoccupied. Israel bombed Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah as part of their expansion of its genocidal war on Palestine. Meanwhile, Russia got bogged down in its own imperialist war on Ukraine. Without support from these regional and imperialist powers, the regime began to teeter and was finally toppled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, and local popular militias.

This has opened a new day in Syria, one that offers hope to rekindle the dreams of the original popular uprising, but also dangers posed by the Islamic fundamentalist forces now in power and the schemes of regional powers like Turkey and Israel.

These two possible trajectories have been on display after this episode was recorded. On the one hand, the country’s new Islamic fundamentalist regime deployed its security forces in Latakia against holdout supporters of Assad in the mainly Alawite community. That encouraged sectarian attacks against the Alawite community that killed hundreds of people and drove many more from their homes in the worst sectarian violence since the fall of the regime. On the other hand, the new regime reached an accord with the Kurdish-led Syrian defense forces, which controls about 30% of the country. They agreed to unite their forces, declare a ceasefire, recognize Kurds as an indigenous community entitled to citizenship and constitutional rights, and oppose attempts to sow sectarian strife between Syria’s different ethnic and religious communities.

This accord is an enormous step forward for the Syrian people and a devastating setback to both Turkey and Israel’s attempt to divide the country. Thus, the future of Syria hangs in the balance between hope and horror, between an inclusive, democratic, and egalitarian future, and another of sectarian division, violence, and social decomposition. What the masses of the country’s people do will determine whether the original hope of the revolution encapsulated in its slogan, “The Syrian People Are One”, will be fulfilled.

Now, on to the discussion with Joseph and Ramah, who provide crucial context for understanding the country’s ongoing struggle for liberation, democracy, and equality.

So obviously the biggest news out of Syria is the toppling of Assad’s regime. And I think everybody around the world, and obviously the overwhelming majority of Syrians, were overjoyed about the overthrow and end of his horrific rule in power. So just to give us some background on the nature of his regime, and also about the impact of the regime on the country’s people, and how people responded to the fall of his regime. Maybe we could start with Joseph, because I know you were just in Syria, so you can give us an on-the-ground sense of that.

Joseph Daher:  To tell you honestly, since the 8th of December, it’s been kind of a dream following the fall of the Assad dynasty, a family that ruled Syria for 54 years. And obviously, there are a lot of challenges for the future of Syria. But as I’ve been saying, the ability only to speak about these challenges is a big way forward. For the vast majority of the Syrian population, the ability to organize, the ability to organize conferences. For example, when I was in Syria, I was able to visit Damascus, Suwayda, Aleppo, and just the ability to go back to Syria. For a lot of people, it was not a [inaudible] of possibility. I never thought I would be able to go back. I was saying there was this Syrian women political movement doing their first press conference. There have been a lot of local popular organizations — We’ll come back to this — So there’s a lot of dynamism.

But this is not to deny as well the huge challenges for a country that suffered 13 years of war, massive destruction. 90% of the population live under the poverty line. Still, the influence of foreign forces. And obviously the new actor in power that is far from being democratic — And I know we’ll come back to this — Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.

Now, coming back to the nature of the — And it’s very nice to be able to say this — To the former regime, the Assad regime, it was, again, Hafez al-Assad built a new patrimonial state which was authoritarian, liberalizing the economy slowly. And there was an acceleration after Bashar al-Assad, but he put the basis, if we want, or the pillars of authoritarianism, despotism. And for the first time in decades, Syrians were able, for example, to celebrate or to commemorate the massacre of Hama that killed tens of thousands of people openly in ’82. So there was a complete oppression and criminalization of all forms of opposition.

Bashar al-Assad completed, if you want, the patrimonialism of this regime, the centers of power concentrated within a small group, and this was only deepened with the war. And this is one of the reasons why, actually, the Assad regime fell as a house of cards, that no one wanted to defend a regime in which oppression was the rule, exploitation was the rule, and 90% lived under the poverty line. Soldiers did not fight. There were no major confrontations in the fall of the Assad regime. And this regime was completely dependent on foreign powers, Russia and Iran, so that, when they were weakened, therefore, the regime vanished.

Ramah Kudaimi:  Yeah, it’s wonderful to be in convo with both of you and really happy, Joseph, you got to go to Syria. I’m still trying to figure out when to go myself. But yeah, that beautiful joy that people had, that continues to be had, is something just so awe-inspiring. And the shift of even how I’m able to have conversations with my family there. Immediately, the shift happened. It was very shocking that people are immediately like, yeah, let’s openly talk about everything now, after decades of being afraid to say much about anything over WhatsApp or other ways we have been staying in contact.

So that stuff really was deep in so many people across the country, and we saw that fear break. We saw that fear break early on in the revolution. And then what we’ve been seeing, I think, these last two months is that continuous joy and bringing us back to those early days of the revolution when people were just happy to be out in the street making demands.

And I think some of what Joseph talked about in terms of like, oh yeah, people are having political conversations, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is really a big deal in Syria. I think that’s something I would want to remind people [of]. When we’re talking about authoritarianism, we’re really talking about a brutal, violent dictatorship, that there was no opposition whatsoever, not like in other countries in the region where there was a controlled opposition. Here that wasn’t even accepted, that there was a controlled opposition. It was just complete fealty to the regime, and specifically to the Assad family themselves.

I think that’s another thing we need to remind ourselves of, what the regime was like. It was really out for themselves for decades. The disappearances and the torture that we saw during the last almost 15 years of revolution were happening decades beforehand. All those pictures and videos of people being released from the prisons, it wasn’t only people who were released just from the start of the revolution, we’re talking about people who spent decades of their lives there. So that context is also important to understand why there is so much optimism and joy in this moment, even though we don’t know what’s going to necessarily happen next.

Ashley Smith:  Right. I think one thing we’ve got to do is start with the most recent wave of revolt, because you both have just talked about [how] this has been a decades-long struggle for the liberation of the Syrian people from this regime. But the most recent wave of revolt really began back in 2011 as part of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings. What precipitated the uprising in 2011 in Syria? Who participated in it? How was it organized? What were people demanding?

Ramah Kudaimi:  So much has happened since the end of 2010, 2011 that people forget what sparked all of this and we get bogged down into, well, the US versus Russia, Saudi versus Iran, all the geopolitics. And what happened was this moment in time where people across the region were inspired to make a simple demand, that people want the fall of the regime. And that demand we saw go from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Bahrain to Yemen to Syria and beyond, to Iraq, there were protests early on, et cetera.

And so I think that’s such an important context that we need to really delve into, and how important that moment was, particularly because it came almost a decade after the start of the global war on terror and the US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and really a moment in time that was very dark for the region. We were having the Palestinian Second Intifada at the time as well.

And so this was a moment where people were like, no, actually, we can make our own demands of these regions. We aren’t just being played by this geopolitical power versus this other one and whatever regime is wanting to do.

And so, particularly in Syria, it started the famous protests of youth in Daraa, who saw what was happening across the region and decided to paint these freedom slogans on the walls of their city, and they were immediately arrested and tortured. The army person who was in charge of their torture actually just recently got captured, thankfully. So we can talk more about the need for accountability. But their torture then sparked more protests by folks in Daraa and were eventually met with even tanks and further violence, which then brought out protests against cities across the country. And there’s how this revolution sparked.

So there’s that sparking of it. And obviously there’s things like the economic situation was not that good at the time: There was a drought happening, there was high unemployment. Bashar al-Assad had really opened up the country in terms of neoliberal policies, which meant slashing of subsidies and rising expenses. And none of that was necessarily new. But that with the moment of protests happening across the region with, again, if we think by February, March, 2011 when things started picking up in Syria, by that time Ben Ali had already fled in Tunisia, Mubarak had stepped down in Egypt, so that was two huge processes that brought down regimes that had been in power for decades. Of course people are going to then be like, why can’t this happen to us too?

Joseph Daher:  I think what Ramah explained is key. And the images also of seeing people protest in Tunis and especially in Tahrir Square, I think the fall of Mubarak was a key turning point. Without forgetting, obviously, what happened in Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya.

And I think the roots, while every country has its own specificities, has to be found in, obviously, the absence of democracy, but also the particular, if you want, capitalist dynamics in the region, where you have, for the past decades, a form of blocked economic development focused on sectors of economy with short-term profits such as luxurious real estate, financial services, trade, while productive sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and manufacturing industry, were very much diminished or undermined through the neoliberal policies. And obviously this increased also as well the level of corruption.

So contrary to what a lot of academics and the US discourse, more neoliberalism or economic liberalism did not bring democracy out [inaudible]. It brought quite the opposite, a form of upgrading authoritarianism, what we witnessed throughout the uprising.

So yes, there were specificities in each country, but again, I think they all had similar characteristics when it came to absence of democracy, absence of social justice, blocked economic development, and a willingness of the popular classes to basically participate in the future of the country, to decide their own future.

Now, when it came to the Syrian uprising, what was interesting was the form of organization. Very rapidly, we had local coordination committees at the level of neighborhoods, cities, region, starting to organize, protests, forms of civilian resistance. But the local coordination committees had democratic aspirations, I would even say some socioeconomic aspirations as well, talking about the issue of social justice and inequalities. Because if you look at the geography of the uprising in Syria, it’s very much the poor neighborhoods of the big cities, rural areas, midtowns that suffered mostly from the neoliberal policies, the austerity measures that Ramah mentioned.

And afterwards, as the uprising continued, also the regime withdrew from certain areas. And this is important to say that we had forms of double power, meaning that you had a key challenge to the center of power and people self-organizing through local councils. And obviously we shouldn’t romanticize all experiences. Some of them were not completely democratic, the role of armed opposition forces was also problematic. But there were attempts in large areas of Syria to self-organize, to manage their own life.

And afterwards, unfortunately, we had militarization that was imposed on the Syrian population. There were harsh debates among Syrian protest movements on the issue of militarization. We forget now, but there were harsh debates, [there were] not easy solutions. And very often at the beginning it was civilians taking up arms to defend their own neighborhoods. And this is how the Free Syrian Army developed afterwards, unfortunately, the level of violence was so heavy, so high on the protesters. Also the level of foreign intervention increased massively.

So we had a popular uprising that turned into foreign interventions from all sides. First of all, on the side of the regime, Hezbollah of Lebanon, Iran, very early on, even mid to end of 2011, and afterwards, Russia, 2015. On the other side, the so-called Friends of Syria, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar played also a very reactionary role by supporting the most, I think, reactionary sectors of the Syrian opposition. While most of these actors, in the first six months of the uprising, were trying to reach a deal with the Syrian regime at the time, we forget this, and they were quite big economic investors in Syria prior to 2011, for all of them were close allies. We forget that Erdogan and Bashar al-Assad used to spend their vacations together prior to 2011.

So all this made that, until recently, the roots, if you want, of the organization of the Syrian popular uprising suffered massively. First of all, because of the repression, the deadly repression of the Syrian regime, its attempts to sectarianize from the beginning, eliminate every kind of democratic opposition, and the rise of reactionary Islamic fundamentalist forces, the rise of foreign interventions, and militarization. And there were only a few pockets I would see a continuous, I would say, roots of the popular uprising.

But the key dominating aspect, unfortunately, since 2015, was the military aspect, in which it’s very hard for democratics and progressives to express and organize.

Ashley Smith:  So let’s talk now about how Assad was able to withstand this revolutionary uprising. What enabled the regime to survive one of the most mass popular uprisings of any of them that happened in the Middle East back in 2011 with the most democratic self-organization? What kind of regional and international powers intervened to help save the regime? And what was the impact of the counterrevolution on the country? Maybe we can start with you, Ramah, on this.

Ramah Kudaimi:  It’s interesting because I think, for people who are into conspiracy theories, a lot of times it’s like, well, this was a conspiracy against the Assad regime. And the reality is I think many people will tell you no, actually the global conspiracy was against the revolution itself. So we have the obvious actors that came in to support the Assad regime, which Joseph talked about, in terms of Iran, Hezbollah, Russia. And we have to understand too, it wasn’t just the official armies of these folks, but Iran, for example, backed a lot of militias, whether it’s militias from Iraq or militias of people that they sent from refugee camps like Afghan, Pakistanis, refugees in Iran that they would send to fight on their behalf in Syria, which is absolutely ridiculous that they would be able to get away with this.

And the fact that they did it with such ruthlessness. We’re talking the bombing of hospitals was just a normal thing. Something we obviously spent the last year watching Israel do in Gaza, Assad normalized it to such an extent across Syria. The use of chemical weapons, the torture, the imprisonment, the siege, all tactics to destroy the uprising and all, again, supported by various international powers — And even, frankly, by the so-called Friends of Syria at one point and another, where there could have been more, potentially, ways to hold Assad back that different regimes refused to do, did not want to do. Because at the end it became, I think, very clear, especially by 2013, 2014, that the preservation of the regime was much more important than the people actually succeeding in their revolution.

And then we saw that, as Joseph was talking about, as folks took up more arms and it became more of an armed resistance against the regime, sometimes that’s just going to be the reality of what’s going to happen when you have activists who are imprisoned, killed, or forced to flee, when you had geopolitics becoming the dominant discourse. So that was what became the issue in Syria versus, again, what do the everyday people want?

And that’s such an important part of the conversation we need to have in terms of how we move forward. And the future of Syria is to always remember who actually had the Syrian people’s future and their goals in mind. It was no one other than the Syrian people. It was obviously not those who came in support of the Assad regime. It was not the United States, who was supposedly against the regime. It was not any of the various Friends of Syria that came together. It was not the United Nations and other international bodies. Let’s be very clear. So I think that’s a very important part of the conversation as we talk now and then in the future.

Joseph Daher:  Well, I totally agree with Ramah. I’ll just add very few things. As I mentioned before, in the summer of 2012, half of Syria was outside the control of the regime. This is where you had extension, increase in the assistance given by Iran, Hezbollah, and the militias supported by Iran. In 2015, Russia intervened. And it was from this period they were able to reconquer territories. First of all, Eastern Aleppo in 2016, after the Damascus countryside, Daraa.

But even with this, it wasn’t enough. And militarily, the regime needed Iran and Russia, but also politically and economically. And this is how they accumulated a huge debt, especially to Iran, the $30, $50 billion. I think this is something that should be taken more by, especially the authorities, but the Syrian democrats, is that we have an odious debt, so we don’t need to pay it to the Iranians. And the fact that this debt was made consciously against the interests of the Syrian people, and Iran was participating in the massacres and keeping this regime in place.

Plus, and it’s important also, as Ramah was saying, that everyone was against the fall of this regime, basically. There was a normalization that was started [in] 2018. The US and Russia were having deals, how do they share Syria? It was clear that Israel, from the beginning and for the past decades, saw as a threat the fall of this regime. And the day after the fall of this regime, the best proof of this is that they bombed massively Syrian state capacities, armed capacities, and extended the occupation of Syria the day after the fall of the guardian of the border with Israel.

So we had a normalization period, et cetera. And the fall of the regime came from an initiative, from an armed group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, but even there was a green light given by Turkey. Turkey also entered the normalization process with the Syrian regime. So none of them wanting it. But because this regime was so weak and dependent on foreign actors, Iran and Russia most especially, and when they were weakened, again, as I said, because it had no popular support, it vanished. So here we see, really, the key issues of foreign actors within the Syrian revolution process. And throughout the past five years, I would say, whether the so-called Friends of Syria or Russia and Iran on the side really wanted to reimpose a form of authoritarian stability in the region, which included Assad.

Ashley Smith:  So let’s talk a little bit about how the US got involved, because both of you just touched on this. And it seems to me that the real turning point for significant intervention was after the rise of ISIS, which took over whole sections of Syria and Iraq. And the US then started intervening quite intensively. So what were its aims in doing so? What was the US really up to in Syria?

Joseph Daher:  Well, and again, I think it’s important, especially now that it’s been more than a decade, and also speaking [about] this in Syria with people that are a generation, 20 years old, and asking them how they joined the revolution, et cetera. And I think we have to have [a] similar kind of discussion outside, how the Arab uprisings or the uprisings in the region started and it wasn’t a conspiracy or et cetera.

And in the case of Syria, again, looking at the role of the US, I will always remember Hillary Clinton from, I think, the first few weeks of the uprising saying, you know, Bashar Assad is a reformist, he’s not like his father. It was two or three years before Obama reopened the embassy in Damascus. There was willingness to cooperate. And the Syrian regime of Assad, father and son, had a long history of cooperation with US imperialism. I think it’s important to remind everyone.

And it was clear from the beginning, they said, we will not have any Libyan scenario in Syria. They were not interested in any kind of destruction of the Syrian regime. Rather, they were seeking maybe to replace the head with another head that would be more submissive to their own political interests. But because of the nature of the Syrian regime, this was very difficult to do, the patrimonial nature, concentration of centers of power. But they definitely didn’t want the uprising to see a full completion of the ancien regime, they were more in a controlled transition. This was the main aim of the US.

And with the rise of ISIS, this challenged also the interests in the region, and especially in Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, with the leadership of Barazan as a key ally. And they saw ISIS as creating, when it established its so-called Islamic Emirate from Mosul to Raqqa, as a threat to the regional order. And this is when they intervened. They did not intervene in a manner to serve the interest of the Syrian population, but to serve their own political interests.

And therefore there was never any real intervention against the Syrian regime. There was one offensive made by Trump in the first presidency following the massacre, the chemical massacre of Khan Shaykhun, the city up north. But even then, the attack they did was really symbolic, and they had actually told the Syrians and Russians that they would attack this particular military base area. So it was very clear for the US they always wanted a very clear control transition that does not create more chaos to the region, especially to Israel, Jordan, which is a key ally of the US as well. So here, I believe the main role of the US, it was never to challenge, actually, the Syrian regime.

Ramah Kudaimi:  The only other thing I’d add is just the context of, again, this continuing global war on terror and the excuse that that has given various presidents since 2001 to go in and go after “the terrorists”. So I think, obviously, Obama declared that the war on terror was over in 2013. That obviously was not true because a year later he’s going into Iraq and Syria against ISIS. Biden claimed, well, I withdrew the troops from Afghanistan in 2021. That hasn’t stopped, necessarily, various drone strikes, especially in parts of Africa particularly. And then, obviously, what we’ve seen again with Israel and Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023.

And I think that’s just part of the conversation as well in terms of when the US and their allies truly intervened, it was to, again, fight who they were considering as terrorists. And it was to ensure these — We agree these are reactionary forces — Were destroyed. But it also happened around a time where the Assad regime was being very weakened, and what did that mean in terms of, in this moment of time, where you chose to intervene was not against Assad but against ISIS.

Ashley Smith:  Right. So let’s turn a little bit to the questions about the later stages in the run-up to the toppling of the regime because one of the key powers in the region that started to intervene that we really haven’t talked that much about is Turkey. And Turkey played an increasing role, largely in opposition to the rise of a Kurdish revolutionary process within Syria, including establishing a regional autonomous area, Rojava. So why did Turkey increasingly intervene and become a player in Syria despite the deals that Joseph talked about the Erdogan regime making with Assad?

Joseph Daher:  Again, it’s important to remind everyone that Erdogan and Bashar Assad were great foes. There were commercial free trade agreements between both countries that now they want to also revive that would be catastrophic in economic terms for Syrian national production, especially manufacturing industry and agriculture.

So in the first six months of the uprising, Turkey pushed for a deal between the Syrian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood that was refused, and they cut relations completely. And this is where the Turkish state started supporting sectors of the opposition, especially in the beginning, Muslim Brotherhood welcoming a lot of Syrians.

And throughout the years, as the Syrian regime with the help of its foreign allies, Turkey saw it was unable, basically, at this period, to overthrow the regime, turned more and more to concentrate on trying to put an end to what it perceives as a continuation of its national threat or national security threat, the Kurdish issue. And especially the fallout of the peace negotiation.

So therefore, from there on, this concentrated more and more on the Northeast, which is controlled by the autonomous administration of the Northeast, which is dominated by the PYD, a sister organization of PKK. So Turkey saw it as a continuation of its basically national security threat around the Kurdish issue. And this is how we understand the increasing intervention of Turkey in Syria.

Also, it was to preserve its influence through the support of what is called its proxy, Syrian National Army, which is composed of tens of thousands of soldiers paid by Turkey, that serve their interests.

And also, lastly, there was the issue of the Syrian refugees that became an internal factor of instability for the AKP and rising racism against Syrian refugees. So they wanted to also push them back to Syria. So I think these are the key, until recently, until the fall of the regime.

Ramah Kudaimi:  Turkey, like every other regional player, has its interests, and those interests changed throughout the last 10, 12 years. And I think that’s an important, again, part of the conversation of what it means for those of us outside of the region, what solidarity looks like, to be thinking about these things. It’s not just always a clearly like, here’s the formula of what it means to be a leftist, because I think that’s what a lot of times we’re looking for, instead of being like, things are going to shift very dramatically, we have seen, and we need to be always on top of these shifts and understand when there are moments that, yeah, there came a time when Turkey was very supportive of the revolution and was providing a lot to refugees, what does that mean? And then they flip, obviously, because they have their own concerns in relationship to their power and the Kurdish question, as Joseph was talking about. And now this flip-flop back of, oh, can we… Now the people we like are in power.

Ashley Smith:  So if you think about where we stand over the last year, before the last year, before the Israeli genocidal war, Assad is in power, he’s normalizing relations with all these regional powers, but the country is not entirely controlled by Assad. There’s the Kurdish region, autonomous region, there’s sections of the country controlled by HTS, and the regime only has a narrow base. So what changed in the region, and who are the forces that toppled the regime?

Joseph Daher:  First of all, it’s important to remember that the Assad regime had a couple of changes to seek or to be able to guarantee, in a way, the survival of its regime by entering a form of transitional phase that was very symbolic. Because before its fall, the resolution 2254, UN resolution, was seen by the regime in Russia… Basically, the demands were being constantly undermined since 2012 as the regime was normalizing. But the regime never sought, first of all, to restructure its own institutions, to seek, even to guarantee some of the interests of actors they were normalizing with.

This is one thing also, and despite the fact that Russia and Iran were saying to some extent, not harshly, to the Syrian regime, try to give a bit to guarantee a bit. But more importantly, first of all, you have the weakening of Russia following its imperialist war against Ukraine. It was not able to be able again to intervene as it was before. Iran and Hezbollah were definitely weakened by the sequence of events that followed the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. Israel was more and more, and with the total support of the US, because this genocide has been ongoing mainly because of US support, and obviously European, but mainly US, especially military and economically. So it weakened Hezbollah massively in the war of Lebanon and Iran in Syria.

And you had even other areas outside the control of the region such as Suwayda and, partially, Daraa in the South. And these two actors, actually, military actors from these regions when HTS, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham — And again no one was seeing that they were top of the regime.

First of all, I think even them, their main objective was to have a better position in future negotiations by taking the countryside of Aleppo, possibly Aleppo, but not the whole. But when they were continuing the attack, it was actually armed groups from the South that entered first Damascus. And you had also part of a popular dynamics protest that is important to remember.

First, and after, let Ramah, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, we have to acknowledge that it went through major ideological political evolution from starting as a branch of Daesh in 2012, Jabhat al-Nusra, then falling out with Daesh, joining Al-Qaeda, falling out with Al-Qaeda. And basically because of the material reality they’re living in, they had to, in the Northwest, basically rule an area.

So they’re not anymore a transnational jihadist organization. They’re very pragmatist, and they’ve been very pragmatist for a while. It’s not new. Does that mean they’re a democratic organization? No, far from it. They want to consolidate now their power and authoritarianism, neoliberalism, et cetera. We can come back to this later. The Syrian National Army, as I said, is acting as a main proxy of Turkey, really. And this is a key asset for Turkey. And Turkey today is the most important regional actor within Syria.

Ramah Kudaimi:  I’ll also say that I think we can’t forget that, even though it was under this banner of HTS, this offensive started right after the end of November through Dec. 8 when Assad fled. We have to remember Idlib, as a region, housed Syrians from across the country. Idlib was where everyone would escape to when there was a deal made, when Assad would lay siege on an area, and then the UN would intervene. And in order to end the siege, the deal would be that these folks would hop on what became known, these green buses that everyone saw these images of, and then take the fighters and their families to Idlib.

And I think that’s an important part of the conversation. A lot of these fighters that were part of this offensive were fighters who were returning to their homes, reuniting with their families. And so when they went to Halab, when they went to Hama, when they went to Homs, it was people returning to their homes. And I say that because I think that is a very different narrative than, oh, these HTS reactionaries brought down this “secular regime”, which I think is something that certain parts of the internet is trying to push, this narrative, which is just not true.

I think it’s important to have these facts in place as we talk about what the future of Syria is, and also to inspire us when we talk about… So many struggles across the globe are about returning to the homeland. We’re witnessing an opening now of people returning to their homelands.

Ashley Smith:  I think that really captures the dual dynamic of the toppling of the regime, that it had this very mass popular element to it of people within the country feeling liberated and HTS trying to consolidate its rule.

I want to ask about now the post-revolutionary situation and the trajectory of things in Syria. So what is HTS trying to do in consolidating its transitional government? And how are the popular forces, the popular classes, responding to that? And how does this connect to the original goals of the revolution in 2011?

Ramah Kudaimi:  It seems like every day something new comes up, which is exciting, it is really exciting that it’s like, oh wow, things are not set in stone? I think people continue to be optimistic. I know I actually surprise myself when I’m like, oh, this is interesting. That pragmatism that Joseph was talking about is really coming through a lot in ways that, at times, I found unexpected. And my hope of hopes is that that continues even though we know, again, it’s not like some leftist socialist project is being born in Syria at this moment in time, let’s be real. That is not what is being born at this moment. But that does not also mean that the opening isn’t there for the future of that.

And I think that’s the biggest thing, to me, to keep in mind. These openings are so important because, again, under these decades-long, under the Assad regime, those openings were not absolutely there. So even if the folks who are in power now, these folks who are former HTS fighters, who are reactionary in many of their politics, et cetera, that is not necessarily the ideal actor that the majority of Syrians would be like, yes, this is who we want to take over.

And yet, under what we’ve been seeing these last two months is there continues to be openings for these conversations and these discussions and people being out and having these things very publicly, again, back to the early days of the revolution, these demands being made.

I do think there’s three things that really are important for us to continue to push on for those original goals of the revolution: One, how do we get accountability for all the war crimes? So obviously, first and foremost, Assad and his cronies. And we’re seeing some people have been getting arrested. I think there was an official demand made of Russia to hand over Assad recently. So what does that mean? But the reality is when you have 10, 12 years of war, all kinds of actors have committed war crimes, whether it is HTS, whether it is SDF, so many of these rebel groups.

And what does accountability mean? Not accountability like everyone needs to be punished, but what is the process in order to get us to a point when we can actually rebuild this country, recognizing all the different pain and suffering all sectors of society went [through]?

The other one, I think there’s been a lot of demands and protests by the families of the disappeared. And I think that’s one thing that actually has disappointed a lot of people is that, well, Sharaa now officially being the president of Syria has yet, to my understanding, to meet any of the families of the disappeared. That’s been something that, I think, across the board, has been a disappointment [for] many folks.

And then, I think there is this question of there’s a terrible economic situation in place, and also the political situation. There’s this question of what do you tackle first? Do you go all-in to try to fix the economy because that’s what people need to survive? But does that then mean that the political situation of the basics of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech and how [that can] get subsumed into this economic solution? And I think those are the discussions that need to continue, and hopefully there continues to be space for that as we see various people take their positions in power now.

Joseph Daher:  I think I will start where Ramah finished: the issue of the space to organize. And again, I think this is a principle for leftists. We see what the country, society, what is the space to organize for workers, for popular classes? And it’s undeniable that, since the fall of the regime, this space has increased massively. And this is, again, a victory for anyone thinking and gaining interest for the popular classes, working classes. Moreover, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is still unable, because of the lack of human capacities and military capacities, to completely and fully dominate the country, which is a chance again for the Syrian popular classes.

Does that mean it’s transformed automatically in the future democratic social society? No, it’s a race now. It’s basically a race between the ability of the Syrian popular classes, working classes to organize democratically, socially, et cetera.

And on the other side, a clear, I think, willingness that has been proven for me since day one nearly, or the day after the fall of the regime, that HTS is seeking to consolidate its power. The first transitional government they established was from one color, all the same ministers from Idlib, establishment of a new army only with their members. Now they want to integrate people from the Syrian National Army — And some of them are true criminals, Abu Amsha and others that are known assassins — Establishment of new security services by the right hand of Julani, Ahmad al-Sharaa, designation in various professional associations and trade unions of new leadership. For example, the Lawyers Association and the members opposed it and demanded free elections. So there’s a clear attempt.

And also on other levels, they have no legitimacy, for the moment, to decide on the future of the economic trajectory of the country. They already made various statements regarding this and a clear neoliberal path: privatization of state assets, ports, airports, transport networks, et cetera, and wanting to put an end to various forms of subsidies: bread obviously, electricity, et cetera.

Now, I think what Ramah was saying is one of the key issues. I will just add regarding transitional justice, it would be key also to struggle against sectarian tensions, I believe so. Without transitional justice, it will be very hard, as well as ethnic divisions within the country. And we’ve seen in the past few days and weeks militia campaigns by HTS in rural areas of Homs that have killed dozens of people. We’re seeing rising tension. This full transitional justice, I think, can be also tackled, but I think democratic and social rights will have to go together.

I’m very afraid that if there’s no economic improvement — Because again, 90% of the population live under the poverty line — Massive destruction. For a large section of the Syrians, obviously they’re happy because the regime is stopped, but their socioeconomic situation has not changed. So they still have to deal on a daily basis how they’re going to be able to live. And if we’re not able to improve their condition, they will not. It’s not because they’re unwilling, but they will not be able to participate in democratic debates or issues of citizenship, et cetera. There’s a fear that we transform this issue in elitist discussions, issues of citizenship, if we’re not able to bring them with socioeconomic issues.

And here, I believe the role of trade unions, professional associations, should be key, asking for free elections within it, starting to be active in its workplace, et cetera. So again, there are a lot of challenges. But as I started, the discussion, the ability to think about these challenges, to live them, is already a victory.

Ashley Smith:  I want to end with one final question, which is really the theme of the entire podcast that we’re doing, which is called Solidarity Without Exception, with all democratic uprisings throughout the world. And one of the things that’s striking in a discussion about Syria is how much of the progressive left didn’t extend solidarity to the Syrian revolution, but did extend solidarity to the Palestinian liberation struggle. And really the question is, why did that happen? And how should we think about solidarity globally, with the Ukrainian struggle for self-determination, with the Syrian struggle for the transformation of their society, with the struggle for Palestinian liberation, and their relationship between one another?

Ramah Kudaimi:  I think I’ll start with saying that it also wasn’t necessarily a given that the left would be so in support of Palestinian liberation. I think that took decades of struggle as well. I think we all have been part of that struggle, and I think that’s just, unfortunately, being a leftist doesn’t mean that automatically you have the right politics. This is struggle that we’re having and organizing and needing to do. The importance of political education and organizing is important.

And yes, of course it makes sense why, particularly in the West, leftists would be very clear about their solidarity with the Palestinian people since it is the Western countries, particularly the United States, arming the genocide for decades now.

But I think what continues to be so infuriating is why that somehow is seen as requiring then Western leftists to, say, shill for Putin or shill for the Assad regime when they were still in power. And also having to realize that imperialism, Islamophobia, the war on terror, these are not just Western projects at this point. These are projects of China, these are projects of Russia, these are projects of the regional powers across the globe. And it’s so important that we, again, as I was saying earlier, it’s not just like, here are the three leftist positions. No. We have principles as leftists, and then we understand how we look at a situation based on our principles and our values, and then decide this is what it means to be in solidarity with the oppressed people.

And I think we’ve seen, similar to how liberals spent 2024 telling us we have to throw Palestinians under the bus in order to ensure that the greater fight against the right wing prevails — I.e. we have to support the Democrats in order for Trump to be defeated — I think leftists have had that position towards Syrians for years now in terms of the greater fight is an anti-imperialist fight. Assad somehow falls in that, and so that is why the Syrian people need to be sacrificed. And what we’ve learned is allowing genocide and massive war crimes to continue actually just leads to fascism and right-wing politics, whether it’s in Syria or US support for Israel.

And I think we have to really push ourselves as leftists this idea that whataboutism is not a politic. Calling out liberal hypocrisy is not politics. We are losing as leftists, to be very real. And seeing, like it hasn’t even been two weeks of Trump, and I’m like, we are in trouble. And one of the reasons we are in trouble is because a large part, again, of the left has failed at understanding what our project should be and putting out a vision of what our project is that is not in and of itself a hypocritical vision, just like what liberals have done with conservatives and the right wing.

I think in this moment, I think there’s a lot that we can, again, be inspired by the Syrian people. And for us it’s like, what can we do at this moment? We still have an opportunity to change the way we interact with the Syrian revolution. And so things like demanding the lifting of sanctions [are] going to be very important. So how are we pushing that the sanctions get lifted? And how are we doing more grassroots support and donating as the grassroots left across the globe so that these institutions in Syria who are trying to rebuild are not only dependent on the neoliberal capitalist world system that we are, obviously.

And then the misinformation and the disinformation, the propaganda, we need to continue to watch for it and continue to trust the people of Syria. We’ve seen Syrians over and over again uprise when they need it, whether it’s from the regime. Syrians who were living under HTS in Idlib had no problem going out and making demands of HTS.

So I think that’s a reality we can’t just succumb to of just like, well, now this reactionary force is in power, then that’s it, it’s all over. No. Trust the people. And again, because for those of us in the US, the arms embargo demand around Israel continues to be top, not only, obviously, for Palestinian liberation, but we saw what Israel did immediately after the fall of the regime: go in, take more land, destroy all the planes and all these things that they somehow did not do while Assad was in power, and now, all of a sudden, take out all the military assets of the state. So I think that continues to be another important demand, and why we cannot separate our solidarity with Palestine from the solidarity of everyone else in the region.

Joseph Daher:  It’s great, Ramah, because I always want to start where she finishes. It’s amazing.

No, regarding the direct demand based Ramah in the US, you in the US, me in Europe, is we can see direct links between the solidarity campaigns with Palestine and Syria. First of all, oppose Western imperialism and especially regarding sanctions. I was opposed against the general sectoral sanctions on Syria prior to the fall of the regime based on the fact that these sanctions were hitting massively the same population and impoverishing them partially. And I’m opposed also today because it’s definitely a political card used by Western imperialists, especially the US, to pressure any kind of government. Today it’s HTS, hopefully tomorrow it’s not anymore. Maybe a bit afterwards. But it’s a card of pressure, and this is unacceptable. [It] goes against the interest of Syrian population, just as the genocide was allowed and permitted and supported by Western imperialism, just as the war in Lebanon, and expansion, occupation, and destruction of [the] Syrian state [inaudible] and military capacities by Israel. So all of this, we can see the common demands regarding Israel as genocide, continuous occupation, et cetera.

And I think more broadly, our work is also because the significance of campism is also the inability to project a political alternative built on socialism from below. The ability of the people to change radically a political situation, a political framework from mass participation from below.

This idea came back at the beginning of the uprisings in the MENA region after Tunis, Egypt. It was lost partially because of the counter revolutions. And I think it’s also something that, throughout the world, this ability to change from below a political framework has been lost partially. We have to rebuild this issue of socialism from below, internationalism that runs against a view by campism that because change from below is not possible, we will basically put our politics in geopolitical dynamics, and we hope that the enemy of my enemy is partially kind of my friend. So basically Russia, China as opposed to the US, therefore maybe we could find an opportunity to improve our own situation, regardless of the fact that these regimes are authoritarian, neoliberal, patriarchal, et cetera.

And it’s putting also false hopes in these kinds of… It’s wrong hopes, wrong strategy, completely, to believe that these regimes — That have very good relations, by the way, with Israel — That they not challenge the capitalist system, they just want a bigger part in it.

And similarly with the so-called Axis of Resistance. How can we trust regimes or political parties that oppose their own popular classes, that repress them, that participate in a system of oppression?

So again, I think the key issue is bringing back this issue of socialism from below, internationalism, and that basically our destinies are connected. The liberation of Palestine is connected to the liberation of the popular classes of the Middle East and North Africa, and of the support, the international support, internationalist support of leftist popular classes against the complicity of their own state in a genocide and an apartheid state. And this is what we have to work with, to believe, once again, that our destinies are linked regardless of the borders and knowing the different situation. But really, it’s through internationalism, socialism from below that we believe that we can liberate Palestine and the further region internationally.

Ashley Smith:  Thanks to both Joseph and Ramah for that eye-opening discussion of Syria’s revolutionary process. Clearly, a new day has dawned in Syria, one that offers hope for a truly democratic transition, but also challenges posed by Islamic fundamentalists in power as well as regional and imperialist powers.

Stay tuned for our next episode on Solidarity Without Exception, hosted by Blanca Missé, where she will discuss Puerto Rico’s ongoing struggle for national self-determination and its class struggle against the island’s elite, with state senator and activist Rafael Bernabe. To hear about upcoming episodes, sign up on The Real News Network newsletter.

Three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, roughly 20% of the Ukrainian territory remains occupied by Russian troops. Before the invasion, there were 41 million people living in Ukraine; today, the UN Refugee Agency estimates that 3.7 million people still in Ukraine have been displaced from their homes, while almost 7 million refugees had to flee abroad. The war has severely damaged the Ukrainian economy and the living conditions for people in Ukraine.

Like everywhere else in the world, there is a class divide in Ukraine, and the impact of the war has not been equally felt: while the average Ukrainian was forced to migrate, lose wages, and fight on the front, the wealthy were able to escape conscription and put their money abroad. While economic elites reportedly took $35 billion out of the country since the start of the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky not only refused to expropriate and nationalize their assets but, instead, chose to impose harsh anti-labor measures on workers and unions and make further cuts to social services using the national emergency laws. 

The fight to ensure Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination is not just about removing all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory and allowing the Ukrainian people to decide their own fate without fears of coups and invasions. It also has to do with stopping and reversing the encroachment of Western corporate and US imperial interests that seek to further exploit the country. However, prospects for this are growing darker by the day as President Donald Trump’s new administration engages in bilateral negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and without Zelensky, to end the war, all while suggesting that the US take ownership of 50% of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. 

Solidarity with working people in Ukraine and their fight against Russia’s invasion never meant support for the Zelensky government, the US government, NATO, or the designs of rival imperial powers, but lack of international solidarity has left Ukrainians in an impossible situation.   

This is Solidarity without Exception, a new podcast series brought to you by The Real News Network, in partnership with the Ukraine Solidarity Network, hosted by Blanca Missé and Ashley Smith. In Episode One of this series, released on the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we analyze the current state of the war and the last three years from an internationalist, working-class perspective. Cohost Blanca Missé speaks with Denys Bondar, a native of Ukraine, professor of Physics at Tulane University, and one of the coordinators of the Ukraine Solidarity Network in the US; and Hanna Perekhoda, a researcher at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, a founder of the Switzerland-based Committee of Solidarity with the Ukrainian People and Russian Opponents of the War, and an ethnic Ukrainian who grew up in the Russian-speaking the city of Donetsk in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. 

Pre-Production: Maximillian Alvarez, Blanca Missé, Ashley Smith, Kayla Rivara
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Music Credits: 
Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk | https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Blanca Missé:

Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception, a podcast series about working people’s struggles for national self-determination in the 21st century and what connects them and us. This podcast is produced by the Real News Network in partnership with the Ukrainian Solidarity Network. And I am Blanca Missé. We are releasing this episode on the third year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. Today, roughly 20% of the Ukrainian territory remains occupied by Russian troops. Before the invasion, there were 41 million people living in Ukraine, but today the UN Refugee Agency estimates that 3.7 million people in Ukraine still remain displaced from their homes. While almost 7 million refugees had to flee abroad, official counts of the total number of Russian fighters killed or wounded in action oscillate between 550,000 and 800,000. And on the Ukrainian side, president Zelensky confirmed the more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and some 380,000 wounded.

But independent Ukrainian war correspondent Yuri Bov said in December, 2024 that his army sources estimated some 70,000 dead and 35,000 missing. This war has severely damaged the Ukrainian economy and the living conditions for people in Ukraine. We all know that the country’s GDP fell almost 30% the year of the invasion, and since then, the IV economic schools calculate that the country has lost a total of $1.5 trillion. And we need to be very clear here, like everywhere else in the world, there is a class divide in Ukraine and the impact of the war has not been equally felt. While the average Ukrainian was forced to migrate, lose wages, fight on the front, and sometimes die, the wealthy were able to escape conscription and put their money abroad. It is calculated that the economic elites took 35 billion out of the country since the start of the war, and all of that was happening while President Zelensky refused to appropriate those who were betraying their country, nationalize their assets under workers’ control, and instead choose to impose harsh anti-labor measures on unions and workers and further cuts to social services using the National Marshall Emergency Laws.

As we’ll discuss in this episode, the fight to ensure Ukrainians people’s right to self-determination is not just about removing all Russian troops from the Ukrainian territory and allowing the Ukrainian people to decide their own fate without fears of coups and invasions. It also has to do with stopping and reversing the encroachment of Western corporate interest that seek to further exploit the country. This encroachment began more than a decade ago with US investors buying Ukrainian land and is advancing quickly with all the reconstruction loans that increase the country’s debt, and of course, come with strings attached. More privatization of state-owned companies, opening of the country to foreign investment and the very well-known austerity antisocial measures. The Ukraine debt has increased 60% between 2022 and November of last year. And in particular, its debt with the European Union has been multiplied more than eight times. More recently though, the Trump administration suggested that Ukraine should give the United States 50% ownership of the country’s rare earth minerals.

He has even asked for 500 billion worth of Ukraine’s rare Earths minerals. And this is because Ukraine has large lithium and titanium reserves in the eastern part of the country, precisely the part that Putin has occupied and wants to annex it, which is also rich in coal, gas and other metals. Since we recorded this episode, Trump made another bold move. He initiated bilateral negotiations with Putin to end the war and normalized diplomatic relations with the Russian government without the Ukrainians and also ditching the European leaders. In this context, we are going to discuss what it means today to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and how we do so without falling into the traps of rival imperial powers starting with the US, but also the European Union. And for this the best is to give a voice to our Ukrainian comrades of struggle. Today we discuss all these issues with Denys Bondar, a native of Ukraine, a professor of physics in Tulane University, and one of the coordinators of the Ukraine Solidarity Network in the us, and a supporter of the socialist group, so Niru social movement, and also with Hanna Perekhoda, an ethnic Ukrainian who grew up in Russia speaking city of esque in the Donbass region in the east of Ukraine.

Hanna is a researcher of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and a founder of the Swiss-based committee of solidarity with the Ukrainian people with the Russian occupants of the war. She’s also a member of social rule. Welcome both to our podcast and let’s get started. When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, 2022, most of the anti-war activists in the Western Europe and the US were kind of caught by surprise. I was caught by my surprise myself. I thought Putin is not really going to do this. I had a sense that folks in Ukraine were not so stunned by this invasion. Can you tell us why you were kind of expecting this invasion and what was your reaction to this very brutal military aggression? Denys, you want to get started?

Denys Bondar:

First of all, I have no questions. I have no problem with people, ordinary working people’s reactions. I mean, they are ordinary people. They have plenty of things to be worried about. And in fact, I have to say since I live in New Orleans, and I was in New Orleans at this time, which is a very special kind of happy place in the United States, very famous for tourism. And literally on every second house you could see Ukrainian flag on the first month of invasion. So clearly it was kind of amazing actually. And usually people here do not worry about foreign policy just by the very nature of this land. And so people had an ordinary working, people had absolutely knee-jerk reaction that one has to help thanks all over the border or innocent people. That’s not good. So I have far more questions to so-called experts, and I think one of the main misconception is it actually was articulated by Timothy Snyder, a famous historian from Yale University, that the way the education works, so all ex-Soviet space, former Soviet space is basically dominated by Russian studies and all the spaces being in general, east Europe, caucuses, et cetera, it’s all studied through the lens of Russian imperial point of view, whether it’s Soviet studies or Russian studies, it doesn’t matter.

And this has cultivated generations of experts and diplomats with this point of view. And of course it revealed itself immediately in the first days of war. And second is that of course cold war thinking is not gone in expert circles, it’s also extremely moderate the situation for the assessment of what’s happening with the level of the threat and the nature of dynamics. By looking at this through this point of view, of course all the eastern Europe in particularly Ukraine, is sort of this borderlands which are supposed to be buffer zone between two geopolitical blocks and totally denying agency to actually people of Ukraine and totally denying their historical and present experience.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you very much. Can we then now go into what are the reasons that led putting to invade Ukraine? I don’t know, Hanna, do you have any thoughts on that? How do you explain this invasion?

Hanna Perekhoda:

This is a question that needs the whole discussion in itself. And as you said, there are multiple reasons and in such limited amount of time we cannot really touch all these reasons, but the least we can say maybe is that to understand the immediate motivations, we must understand the power dynamics inside Russia, between the state economic actors, the society for the past 25 years that Putin is in power. But what we can say at least is that Putin, when he came to power, had a strategy of restoring the previous Soviet imperial zone of influence through a deal with Western political elites. So he expected the west to let him establish an exclusive control over post Soviet space in exchange for he will give them cheap fossil fuels and some individual preferences of various kind. And European leaders at that time were very happy with this deal.

But there was a factor that Putin did not took into account. It is the agency, precisely the agency that Denise was mentioning of the population of this so-called zone of influence. Of course, Russia could easily corrupt the post-Soviet president of Ukraine and other countries, but the citizens of these countries like Ukraine voiced their dissatisfaction, radical dissatisfaction with autocratic ineffective leaders that were supported by Russia. And when the control of Putin and his friends over Russia itself were threatened, even inside Russia, he just went nuts. And for him, every possible means was now justified in order to stop the erosion of his power and the spreading of popular unrests including so he used repressions, annexations, wars, et cetera. So I think this is something that we need to understand. The principle roots of this war are inside the internal dynamics of the Russian state and the power relations.

But another dimension that is crucial but mostly overlooked, I will try to really synthesize it quickly, is that to concur, Ukraine is explicitly presented by Putin as motivated by the necessity to restore the unity of a Russian nation national body that is being supposedly torn apart by the enemies. So Ukraine is imagined as a part of a Russian national body, and this kind of ideology is very charged with strong emotions. And as a consequence, it is clearly leaving a very small space, less space for compromise, for diplomacy, et cetera, because Putin is motivated by ideology and he invest his ideology of nationalism with a sense of self, very strong one I think. And this is something that western reading is struggling really to grasp. And the last important point is this national denta, the assimilation, the conquest in assimilation of Ukraine is not presented as a purpose in itself. It is presented explicitly as a means to achieve something else, something bigger. The ultimate purpose, and he make it clear, is that once we assimilate Ukraine, we can have a future imperial expansion because he’s convinced that the only reason why Russia is still not the greatest power on earth is mainly because Ukraine is not part of it. This is silly, has nothing to do with reality, but narratives, they have their own logic and their own power.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Hannah, because I hear you saying that most of the western media explanations that have to do with NATO are missing all of these factors that have to do with the internal loss of legitimacy or opposition that putting was facing. And of course, as you’re reminding us this desire for putting to a reestablish an imperial state by going back to this great Russia imperial imagination, I wonder if Denis has something to add on the multiple causes of the war and how he’s been explaining to working people in the US what is behind this invasion?

Denys Bondar:

So I just further would like to evidence what Hannah said, in particular the internal Russian reason for the war. Putinism as a system has been in deep crisis since 2018. If you track the Putin’s approval ratings, absolute numbers don’t actually tell you much, but the dynamics of these approval ratings actually tell you a lot about the legitimacy. And you can see 2018, these approval ratings jumped up because of the pension protest took place and there was pension reform 2018. Then immediately next year 2019, there were protests in Moscow 2020 protests in be Russia for fair election. Then there was a series of regional protests followed in Cabarrus cry. There were 2021 next year Navalny protests. You can see every year there’s a major, major protests are happening in Russia and plus Belarus of course, that you can see that the Putin’s regime is in very deep crisis legitimacy crisis.

And this kind of frequency of the protests that have not been mainly mostly covered in the west, smaller protests, regional protests show you that the regime needed to boost up its approval rating. And only in post February, 2022 after the full scale invasion of Ukraine, you can see his disapproval rating finally collapsing back to nearly zero. So the internal dynamics was absolutely essential to restored the legitimacy of Putin regime because we can, again, if you look back to the entire history of Putinism starting from two thousands, from 1999 when he was appointed in that his disapproval when he had a crisis of legitimacy, which should reflect itself as a increase of disapproval rating, it was fixed by actually some imperialistic adventure, whether it was in Shia or in Georgia or in Ukraine by next Crimea interfering in Donbass before that. And one important reason I would like to emphasize is that basically Putin clearly counted on the European elites, in particular the EM embedment of the Putin oligarchy and the Putin regime with the European elites, especially with a conservative and far right ban, I think is hard to underestimate. And we know also some of the far right parties have been actually taking loans from Russian banks. So clearly the Putin regime expecting complicity of European, of European elites kind of basically he expected that they would behave the same way as they did during the first war, which was the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Dan. So something both of you have said that I think it’s quite important to emphasize is like reading this war through just a competition between two blocks, the NATO block and Russia block tends to erase the agency of the Ukrainian people themselves and also unfortunately buy into the narrative that the Ukrainian nation does not exist and these assimilationist pressures that Russia has on Ukraine. And my question to you now is what does it mean for working people in the West and in particular in the US to stand in solidarity with Ukrainian people? What kinds of support are needed to ensure the right of self-determination of Ukrainians and the support of their agencies so they are not erased in this sometimes reductionist geopolitical narratives of the war? Can you tell us a little bit about that

Denys Bondar:

First? So you’re asking very touchy question in this difficult times as we know that the both military and humanitarian aid from the United States is suspended currently to Ukraine, and these are the most two important things. So Ukraine first and foremost needs the military aid and also humanitarian aid to fulfill basic social needs of its citizen. And I would like to sort of remind listeners that in nineties when Ukraine became independent, it undergone massive disarmament program which included both disarmament of unconventional weapons, which led to actually partially destruction destruction of military equipment as well as transferred back to Russia as well as disarmament nuclear disarmament. So at that time, Ukraine had a third largest nuclear arsenal in the world and it was surrender under the, it was actually transferred again back to Russia under the promise of security, security assurances and territorial in respect of territorial integrity from both United States, Russia, as well as the United Kingdom. And so in a way, all the eight is not only morally justified but also legally should be in these terms. And in order for Ukraines to realize the right of self-determination is of course they have to be able to protect their homes, right? Their land, their homes from the invaders, Russian invaders. So this is why first and foremost, military assistance, military aid is absolutely essential.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you so much Dennis. Hannah, do you have anything to add? I know you are based in Switzerland, I know you’re also being very actively engaged in solidarity with the Ukrainian people during the war, and I imagine you also been having this kind of conversations of organizing support for the right of self determination of Ukrainian. So what would you say or what have you been proposing and organizing in Switzerland and in Europe?

Hanna Perekhoda:

Well, from the practical point of view, you can for example build links with the forces of social transformation in Ukraine, actually Ukrainian civic society, civic organizations, trade unions, but also feminists also with be Russian and Russian progressive anti-war organizations. You can raise money for their initiatives. You can participate in some international campaigns that exist, for example, for the conation of Ukraine’s foreign depth for increasing help confiscating the assets of Putin’s oligos and using them for the reconstruction of Ukraine. But let’s be honest, for the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians, the help that matters is the military help. And this is the condition number one for the Ukraine survival as a society and the survival of its individual members. But from my perspective, I would like to make it a little bit another take on this question, that the help that American in general western societies can offer to Ukraine’s not just in the military or economic sphere.

It is the primary help that you can do for Ukrainians is by resolving your own crisis of internal legitimacy. Because what is clear in the United States is that worsening inequalities participates in rising sense of injustice and the perception also among the ordinary people that elites are completely out of touch with day-to-day realities, it undermines the illegitimacy. And you saw the results that a society that feels abandoned or ignored is very unlikely to support international commitments even if they respond to some principles such as defense of rights or sovereignty, et cetera. And this feeling of being abandoned and the frustration is used by irresponsible politicians to instrumentalize discontent to feed the idea that the governments, the previous governments were actually sacrificing national interests for some distant causes and such as support of Ukraine. And now the isolationist politics will solve the problem. Now it’s America first. A society that could respond to the struggles of other societies against injustice, against aggression is a society based on solidarity. So the action for social equality is not just an internal priority for the United States Society, but also it is essential a condition number one for the Ukrainian survival, at least in my opinion.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Hannah. I really like your point, this idea of not competition, but of who deserves more at home or abroad, but an expansive understanding of solidarity, solidarity without exception, solidarity without borders, like fighting for the rights and the needs of working people here in the US as something that connects directly with fighting for the needs of working people in Ukraine or in Palestine or in Syria or in anywhere else in the world where there is oppression and war and genocide. And I know you’ve been very active in New Orleans in providing material aid, and if you can tell us a little bit about the value of having this worker to worker solidarity campaigns working with the unions, I think that would be really useful to explain how we can connect with Ukrainian working people today.

Denys Bondar:

Yes, our network, Ukrainian Solidarity Network US is currently running campaign on fundraising for generators for the trade union members of miners, workers union, as well as the railway workers union. And these generators go to the members of the trade union that have three or more children or actually or have disabled family members. So they really cannot afford to buy ones. And it’s a truly working class solidarity because these are members of the independent union they have which have been active in fighting neoliberal reforms and resisting neoliberal agenda and fighting for the rights of working people all across industries and such a solidarity is actually absolutely fundamental because they feel that we on the west as a working class, people absolutely understand their needs, not just these generic geopolitical things like, oh, military aid is important, but to understand that individual members of societies matter and individual member of societies who are willing to fight to fight for the more just future are even more matter even more.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you. And this makes me think that what I hear you both saying is that part of the work we have to do here in United States, but also in Europe, Western Europe, to support the struggle for liberation of Ukrainians aside of the questions of material aid, military aid is to amplify the voices of Ukrainians who are fighting for social justice, fighting for union rights, fighting for the progressive causes in Ukraine, and show that there are forces there that are fighting for an independent Ukraine that are not necessary tied to their government. Now, I would like to go to one of the tricky questions that emerges every time we are organizing solidarity campaigns for Ukrainian particular for the left in Western imperialist countries that has rightly so, a very clear concern and position of opposition to western imperialism, to the military actions and expansions of their government starting with the us, which is this question of weapons. Because once and once again, we have run into many social justice activists, folks who really want to support Ukraine and they want to support Ukraine diplomatically, they want to send food, they want to send medicine, but they become really hesitant about giving critical support or not obstructing military aid because they see that military aid is necessarily going to strengthen NATO and the US war machine. And I would like you to tell me how do you resolve this contradiction?

Hanna Perekhoda:

Well, many things to say of course, and I would not pretend that the question is easy or something. So yes, of course the US is pursuing its own interest and this interest, you can see that they could align sometimes with progressive struggles in some parts of the world, like in Eastern Europe, while in the other parts of the world, like in Middle East, it’s the extreme opposite. But the question is why should an ordinary person follow or mirror the logic of the state’s interests? Because in different parts of the world, ordinary people are struggling against the external invasion, against the internal oppression. And of course, because they are facing different and partly competing enemies, they would need to use the tools of self-defense that are produced by these competing imperialist forces. It’s obvious, it’s not like they have a lot of choice. And when you face a fascist state that denies you right to exist, Ukrainians are facing, your priority is freedom and survival.

And for that you need weapons wherever they come from. And this is of course the perspective of Ukrainians, but I also, I understand what it means when you focus also on your own perspective. But what is crucial to understand is to look beyond and to have a little bit a long-term vision because a lack of substantial support of the victims only encourages aggressors, and not just one aggressor in particular, but all the aggressors and if you abandon the victims of the aggression in the family. But if you abandon the victim of a military aggression, also you give a green light to those in the position of power that now they’re free to do whatever they want. They’re free to solve their problems of legitimacy through wars, genocides, and the impunity given to those who advocate this law the strongest on the international stage, inevitably fuels the rise of the same ideas, the same forces that defend the same principles at home and also vice versa. So of course I understand all the reticence when it comes to the US imperialism, et cetera, but I think we need to see what not defending the victims of aggression means for all of us in the long-term perspective.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Hannah. Dennis, what are your thoughts on these? Very tricky question. How do you address this in the multiple conversations you have about raising support for Ukraine, specifically being here in the us?

Denys Bondar:

So in fact, this question is very straightforward. No military aid, no Ukraine, so there is no debate. This is absolutely essential component of defending Ukraine. No amount of pillows would have saved mariupol, right? Air defense system would’ve saved mariupol, better artillery would’ve saved mariupol. Again, no amount of pillows or blankets would have saved several hundreds victims in the massacre of bucha, right? Only Ukrainian army could have saved them and so on. And so the list goes on with all the cities that are wiped out in the east of Ukraine. Only military aid can save that, and it still is still important. And just to emphasize this point, that anate about general, I’m sorry to say geopolitical context, but it never that it’s very important. So Ukraine has a railway connection to Europe. So in principle, an infinite amount of weapon can be delivered to Ukraine, right?

Because it’s very logistics, it’s very simple, very straightforward. And for example, compared to Taiwan where it’s of course it’s an island and should anything horrible happen by horrible I mean potential invasion from mainland China, then of course the supplies have to be done over the maritime domain, which is much more difficult logistically, and by showing, so in the case of Ukraine, in a way it’s a cannery in the mine. If collectively speaking, the western societies are not, Western elites are not able to provide sufficient military aid to country which is willing to fight for its freedom, independence, and logistically easy to deliver at this point also, the military is trained to use this equipment.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Dennis. I was reflecting also on what Hannah was saying, that it has been in history something very common that those fighting for liberation use the weapons of the competitors of the powers that oppressed them. And I was thinking even the way the United States won its independence from Britain, it got military aid from France, and Haiti was using military aid and making alliances with the Spanish imperial powers to fight the French and so on and so forth. And even entire Latin America relied on financing and weapons from Britain to fight the Spanish empire. So that has been one of the ways, I mean, maybe the way the oppressed have been able to fight for the liberation is trying to get the weapons from where they can get them from and then use them in a smart way for their own liberation. This discussion reminds me also of a very important statement.

They came out last summer that is called the people’s piece, not an imperial piece that I think was endorsed by many networks of solidarity with Ukraine by social niru, and in particular by the Ukraine solidarity network in the US where we were making very clear that an effective support of Ukraine does not require necessarily a new wave of armaments. We can just send the existing arsenals and huge arsenals that exist in the US to Ukraine, and we can have a social reappropriation of the arms industry or working people could decide who produced weapons and for whom. And I think this question of just thinking aiding Ukraine with food and medicine, but not thinking of the military component is a little bit like Dennis has said, pie in the sky, right? It’s not realist politics. Without military aid, there is no struggle for self-determination. Now, do you see some potential dangers of only relying on western aid or some strings that would come attached with these aid? Do you think the Ukrainian people need to have some kind of alerts of the way these military aid is being sent?

Denys Bondar:

We can see the strings attached, like clearly limitations on the usage of weapons that is supplied and the scheduling of the deliveries of the weapons, how different systems were delivered. Actually pretty much always too late and then too little quantities.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Dennis and Hannah, do you have any thoughts about that?

Hanna Perekhoda:

Yeah, I dunno much about the military aid, but when it comes to the other kind of help, well, Western countries tie aid firstly to political reforms. The European Union is linking it to the political reforms like anti-corruption efforts, judicial institutional reforms, and I had say rather useful string attached, it’s not necessarily bad in the Ukrainian context, but the financial aid loans, reconstruction funds often come with economic conditions tied to neoliberal policies. So privatization of state assets to supposedly attract foreign investment, which inevitably also leads to the loss of control over the strategic sectors. It must be said that it is, the war has proven that, for example, such spheres like transport cannot be privatized. If it is privatized, it is dysfunctional in the conditions of war and of self-defense. This is if the Ukrainian railways were in a private ship, they would not be able to evacuate millions and millions of people.

So in this sense, I think it must be clear that the strategic sectors must not be subject to privatization, but it is clear for us, not clear for the Ukrainian government. Also UK Ukraine is in the same manner asked to cut public spending or to limit some subsidies and economic policies in general kind of prioritize investor interests over public interests. So this is the first point. Also, of course, the dependence on this kind of loans create a cycle of debt. Ukraine is hugely indebted in the sense, and maybe the last point that the Western aid, of course the huge risk, it could be used as a tool in negotiations for leveraging negotiations and potentially it could restrain Ukraine’s freedom to make decisions about its own policies, domestic and foreign one.

Blanca Missé:

Yeah, Hannah, I mean you were going into the next question I wanted to ask you because I think you touched on the key thing here that because of the war, of course, the debt internal and external debt of Ukraine has a boom. I was reading this morning an article by Eric Tusan who has been working very much on the question of abolition of external debt and following very closely the situation of Ukraine that since the beginning of the war, the debt has increased by 60%, that today Ukraine has won hundred 60 billion of debt. And many of these grants and loans come with different conditionalities as they’re called. We’re very familiar with them. Now, as you mentioned, privatization of state companies cuts to social programs, deregulation of the liberal law. So it seems that Ukraine is kind of trapped on the one hand, the Russian invasion, which is trying to oppress and also exploit further exploit Ukraine and its resources. And on the other hand, this western imperialist powers that are also trying to take advantage of Ukraine by signing these loans and these agreements for reconstruction and financing that, as you said, could put in danger or are putting in danger, is possibility of being fully independent in the future. So one question I have is, do you see any struggles already happening or position is already happening in Ukraine against these neoliberal plans, and what has been the role of the landscape administration in all of that? I don’t know. Dennis, if you want to start.

Denys Bondar:

So Blanca, I would like to step a little bit back and revisit the premises of the question by asking question. You sort of imply intentionality of the western elites and also Ukrainian elites of this about commitment to neoliberal form. But I think situation is much more worse. I think we are all new liberals. There is nothing but neoliberal agenda. There’s no alternative in the world. And this is where every society here in the United States, in Europe, in Ukraine, this working people suffer from the same problems from this total GMO of neoliberal ideology. And this the summation of social safety nets is a problem everywhere. So that’s where absolute solidarity can be built, right? This is the same problem that you listed. You could have put any name of any country in the west and it’ll still be the case. So the first and foremost, to get rid of ourself from this kind of spiraling down motion, we need to start thinking collectively thinking about alternatives as far as I’m aware specifically talking about Ukraine again, which is similar to the US unions are at the forefront of the fight for just society. Even though right now Ukraine is a martial law and all the politics is basically kind of suspended and protests are not allowed. They still do happen, actually they still do happen about reforms, labor reforms about mobilization, the way mobilization is done, and again, these are specific cases to Ukraine, but most of the problems that you mentioned are actually unique, absolutely universal to all the countries.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Dennis. Hannah, what is your take on the opposition of new liberal reforms in Ukraine and also this connection that DE is making?

Hanna Perekhoda:

I mean it’s this question really deserves better experts than us. I think it is the central one. Also, I need to ize, I mean, I agree with what you said Blanca with your analyst, but I also want to say that we must not enter into a little bit simplistic analysis to interpret what happens through the prism. There is an almighty west imposed in neoliberal conditions on poor Ukrainians. As said in this, it is worse than that because the most radical and crazy funds of neoliberalism are the Ukrainians Ukrainian political and economical elites themselves. I think they are on the top of this pyramid in terms of neoliberal, imaginary and fanaticism. And in comparison with them the requirements, for example of the European unions in regard to Ukraine that for example, Eric to he says that yes, these are neoliberal requirements, but they seem rather humanistic in comparison of what the Ukrainian government does itself.

In fact, the European commission pressures the Ukrainian government to threaten the social dialogue and to not to crush the unions and this kind of thing. But I think, well, the Ukrainian government, it is not very smart to say in the least because it is trying. What is actually doing is trying to win a war of such a magnitude while sustaining the fantasy of a neoliberal economy and the neoliberal economy. It is based on deeply individualist, social imaginary on deregulated economic system. And it is evident that is simply not suited to the demands of defense because the defense requires solidarity at all levels of society and they promote reforms like the regulation of labor law, et cetera. And these reforms, of course, they weaken the workers and obviously destroys the very little trust that the workers still had in the state because there is a trust, the state is kind of fulfilling, tries to fulfill its duty of the defense of the society, but it is eroding very quickly. It’s legitimacy. And Ukraine’s existence depends on the collective effort, on the resilience of its citizens, a collectively resilience. But the government itself is weakening actively the very foundation of this society and it’s a horrible situation.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Hannah, because I really also want to thank you both for reframing my question because what I hear you say, one is we’re all under neoliberal assault for the past 40 years. So this is kind of the common basis for international solidarity regardless that you live in the US in Ukraine and Palestine, in France, in Syria and Sudan is the same policies that attack workers’ rights, social rights, democratic rights. So there’s nothing exceptional. But I also heard you say that in particular in Ukraine, the economic elites have a very high capitalist predation and have been attacking social rights even more or more eager to do so that to pay on privatizations and accumulation of money more than the European Union would like them to do. So that’s also something very important that there is an internal class struggle that I’m assuming began before the war and is exacerbated by the war.

But I think what you said, Hannah, and I would like to know if you could develop a little bit more, I think you kind of getting to one of the crux problems here is that these policies, these neoliberal policies are today an obstacle to win the war in Ukraine because they weakened national economic independence, they weakened the production of goods, they weakened the working people who are the ones who are fighting in the forefront and making sure the economy can resist the Russian imperialist aggression. So what would be alternative social and economic policies that would help the Ukrainians win the war? I understand you’re very critical of the Zel landscape administration.

Hanna Perekhoda:

Yes. So I think the very crucial thing now is the redistribution, the fair redistribution of resources inside of Ukraine, the revision of taxation. Also, the take on the reform is complex and it implies a lot of things. Also, the fight of corruption is a very important point in order to dismantle this oligarchic predatory system. But the investment needs to be made a huge investment in a public sector and also in defense. And to restore the legitimacy of the government and the trust of the working people, the people who are now in the trenches, they want to be sure that their families don’t starve and their families get what they deserve from the state. And they are respected, their work and their families are respected. And it’s not the case now because as I said, they try to pretend that neoliberal state could function during the times of war, and it is clearly not the case.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Hannah. Dennis, do you have any thoughts about this question?

Denys Bondar:

As far as alternative goes? Actually everything depends what’s going to happen in the battlefield. All sectors of societies are represented in the battlefield. Future political leaders are obviously there will be former soldiers or commanders, and now we have progressive members of progressive forces there. And there are different groups. L-G-B-T-Q groups are also represented in the armed forces. And all these groups will have their say once the political process is open, if there’s a ceasefire and there is a martial law is canceled so that elections can begin, can restart only then we will see. Honestly, that’s the only way to see, in my opinion, some change. Because at the moment, people of Ukraine have many problems with the zelensky government, yet they’re not willing to challenge it openly through protests because they understand that the country needs to become not internally paralyzed internal politics because that’s the only thing that basically Russian occupier want to see. Right? Internal destabilization to the point where the state is not able to provide the basic defense needs. So is I would like to again reiterate that we, everything is right now decided on the battlefield, including the future.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Deni. So I have a more broad or abstract question to you that has to do with what does it mean today for you to be an anti-imperialist and to stand for international solidarity? What are the principles you think we should be upholding?

Hanna Perekhoda:

Yes, I just wanted to say a few words to complete, maybe to react to what Denise was saying before answering. I think I also would like to repeat that there is an idea that circulates in the western media and among some people about the reelections of zelensky, blah, blah, blah. I think Ukrainians are very clear, most of them on the fact that objectively it is unrealistic to hold democratic elections in times where the cities are bombed. Dial one sort of the country is under occupation, 10 million of people are displaced. Million is I think around a million is of people is in the trenches. But of course we need the return of politics and the conditions where the political economic struggles are possible when the elections could take place, but not just elections, of course, all kinds of struggles. And for this, we need the end of the war, but we need functioning democratic institutions.

And for this, the condition number one is just peace. Just peace that could be accepted by the majority of the Ukrainian society because nothing will strengthen the populists, the extreme rights more than the military occupation and all the systematic injustice oppression that accompanies it. And I think if Ukraine is forced to make peace under the Russian conditions, it is more likely that we will not have the opportunity to actually make politics, us and our organizations. It is more likely than in this circumstances, radical groups which capitalize on frustration on the feelings of injustice will gain thread. And you have multiple examples in the world of such dynamics, very sad examples. And Ukraine, I think it must not become one of them and we must not repeat the same mistakes. And as for the more broad question, also a lot of things to say, but if we consider the current context, which is very, for me personally, very difficult, discouraging, and kind of emotionally, I’m really feeling bad for what is happening in the world and particularly in the United States. And with the return of Donald Trump, I think it should be clear now that the rising of reactionary militaristic states like Russia, like Israel directly fuels the rise of fascist forces in the United States and other countries and vice versa. These are the communicating vessels. And these forces are actually working very actively in order to dismantle all possible international structures that limit their ambitions, their ambitions of wars, of pollution, of exploitation. And I think the fight in Ukraine is in this sense, linked directly with the global struggles against this destructive trends.

Blanca Missé:

Thank you, Hanna, Denys. What it means to you to be an anti-imperialist today, and which connections do you see between the struggle of the Ukrainian people and other struggles abroad?

Denys Bondar:

So it’s very simple. It’s basically trusting people, right? Trusting ordinary people, working people everywhere, respecting their voices, respecting their opinions, and trying to sympathize with them on their own terms, trying to put yourself in other shoes. And I think these principles have been foundational principles since 19th century emergence of the progressive thoughts, and they remain activists today. And unfortunately, it’s painful to see many people whom I would call comrades on other issues, not basically remembering these basic fundamental tenants.

Blanca Missé:

Can you give examples of comrades who have not been remembering the tenants and some of the struggles about supporting this liberation movement or not this movement? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Denys Bondar:

Yeah, so it’s very particular in the western left, especially in the US and actually some of the European left, which are mainly from major countries like uk, Germany. You can clearly see how the starting point of discussion is always this geopolitical and cold war thinking that we have started our conversation with, even though these people should know better, right? They’re activists, they’re engaged with Palestinians, with the Georgians, et cetera, et cetera. They know other people, they know how it is to be oppressed and not able to apply the same principles to Ukrainians. Sorry to Georgians. I wanted to say also just I cannot fathom how they can live with this self-evident contradictions, how they can reconcile two different worldviews as applied to Ukraine and East Europe and Ukraine and Coco regions and everybody else.

Blanca Missé:

Yeah, I’m glad that you mentioned Georgia because of course there is also an analogy between the aggressions Russian aggressions to Georgia and interference in Georgia, national affairs from Russia and the situation of Ukraine. But you also mentioned Palestine, and I do remember that in the Ukraine social solidarity network in the us, and we had a point of taking a position of solidarity with Palestine, that was our first episode of solidarity, without exception whether to Ukrainian guests. It is clear that for the Ukrainian people to achieve a durable peace, it is them who have to be at the table of negotiations as they have been the ones fighting on the front, and it is their own country and livelihood that is at stake. Stay tuned for our next episode hosted by Ashley Smith, where we’ll turn into the recent events in Syria with a fall of Bashar Assad, and the challenges posed today to the Syrian people to lead a truly democratic transition free from any foreign interference.

As we cross the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia has launched its largest drone attack in Ukraine to date, and Israeli tanks are rolling into the Occupied West Bank for the first time in decades. US President Donald Trump has issued repeated threats to “take over” and “own” Gaza, “buy” Greenland, and “absorb” Canada as the “51st state.” Even the fiction of the US-enforced “rules-based international order” has collapsed, and a new, terrifying world disorder—one that more closely resembles the geopolitical periods preceding World Wars I and II—is emerging. 

This new era is characterized by heightening inter-imperial conflicts between great powers like the US, Russia, and China, and emerging regional powers, the rise of far-right and authoritarian governments around the globe, and the accelerated drive of those governments to annex and take over other countries, deny their populations the right to self-determination, and plunder their resources. But this tectonic shift in 21st-century geopolitics has, in turn, provoked growing struggles for self-determination and national liberation. From Palestine to Puerto Rico, from Ukraine to Xinjiang, how can working-class people in the United States and beyond fight for a different future and an alternative world order founded not on imperial conquest, war, and capitalist domination, but on solidarity without exception among all poor, working-class, and oppressed peoples who yearn to live freely and peacefully? 

This is Solidarity without Exception, a new podcast series brought to you by The Real News Network, in partnership with the Ukraine Solidarity Network, hosted by Blanca Missé and Ashley Smith. In the inaugural episode of this series, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez joins Missé and Smith to dissect how the world order has changed in the three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and how the simultaneous unfolding of the war in Ukraine and Israel’s US-backed genocidal war on Palestine has revealed both the centrality of anti-occupation struggles for self-determination in the 21st century, and the need for global working-class solidarity with all oppressed peoples waging those struggles.

Pre-Production: Maximillian Alvarez, Blanca Missé, Kayla Rivara, Ashley Smith
Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Music Credits: 
Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk | https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

[CLIP BEGINS]

Rafael Bernabe:  My support for the Ukrainian people to self-determination doesn’t mean that I necessarily support the policies or even support the government of Zelenskyy. What it means is that it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide what government they have — Not for Putin to decide that or anybody else but the Ukrainian people. That’s what self-determination means. They decide what kind of government they want to have, which is what we are also fighting for in Puerto Rico, which is what we are also fighting for in Palestine and everywhere else.

[CLIP ENDS]

[THEME MUSIC]

Maximillian Alvarez:  This is Solidarity Without Exception, a new podcast series brought to you by The Real News Network in partnership with the Ukraine Solidarity Network. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and I’m sending my love and solidarity to you, to all poor and oppressed people around the world, and to all who yearn and fight to live freely.

Blanca Missé:  And I’m Blanca Missé. I teach at San Francisco State University. I’m with the Ukraine Solidarity Network and the Labor for Palestine National Network, and I also organize with Workers’ Voice. I’m really excited to start this podcast because we see the old world order crumbling, and we need to figure out how to put forward principle politics to defend working people’s rights and struggles in the US and all over the world. And we want to share with you all the discussions we’ve been having with Ukraine activists, Palestine solidarity activists, immigrant rights activists, and labor folks in the US.

Ashley Smith:  I’m Ashley Smith. I’m a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Network and also a member of the Tempest Collective. I think this podcast is incredibly significant, especially with Donald Trump’s assumption of power in Washington DC, because I think it’s accelerating the development of what we could call a new world disorder; of a stagnant world economy; heightening interimperial conflicts, especially between the US, China, and Russia; and a rise of far-right governments and authoritarian governments all around the world, which is accelerating an annexationist drive to take over countries, deny them the right of self-determination, which is provoking struggles for self-determination and national liberation in response.

So the questions that we want to address in this podcast is how do we oppose all imperialisms from the US to Russia to China, but most importantly in the US, how we oppose US imperialism without extending support to its rival imperialisms? How do we build solidarity with all oppressed peoples and nations fighting for self-determination, from Puerto Rico to Ukraine to Xinjiang? That is, how do we build solidarity without exception, not only with struggles of national liberation, but also struggles of working-class people and oppressed people from below throughout the world.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Reporter 1:  Good evening, and we’re coming on the air at this hour with breaking news. After the US warned all day of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, that it was imminent, Vladimir Putin has just addressed the Russian people moments ago, announcing what Putin called the start of a military special operation, in his words, to demilitarize Ukraine.

Reporter 2:  The Russian president says A military operation is now underway in Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine has declared a state of emergency.

Reporter 3:  The full-scale invasion that intelligence officials had been warning about for weeks is now underway, and there are reports of explosions and attacks at several major Ukrainian cities.

Reporter 4:  Ukraine’s president has been calling on civilians to fight, appealing for help while this assault is unfolding across Ukraine. Global leaders are responding with stronger sanctions.

[CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  February of 2022 was an intense time in the world, and there was a lot going on in the world before Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February. Here at The Real News in January through February of 2022, we were covering stories like the electoral victory of Chile’s leftist President Gabriel Borich and the Canada “trucker convoy”. We were covering this incredible story of Mexican autoworkers at a GM plant in Silao, using the provisions of the renegotiated NAFTA to wage this heroic effort to vote out their old, corrupt union and vote in a new, independent union. And I was interviewing folks involved in that struggle from Mexico.

The Starbucks union wave was really kicking into high gear at that point. I was interviewing workers at stores here in Baltimore and around the United States. And I had just conducted what would become my first of many, many interviews with railroad workers here in the United States — And that was after I learned that a US district court judge had blocked 17,000 railroad workers at BNSF railway from striking on Feb. 1.

So that’s where I was and where we were as a news network leading into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. But when that invasion happened, there was this real chilling sense of history, that something was changing, something irrevocable had been broken, and that things were never going to be what they were on Feb. 23, 2022.

Ashley Smith:  I guess I was shocked but not at all surprised, because, I think, if you go back now three years, it was really clear that the world was changing rapidly. And I did a lot of on-the-ground organizing through all the years Trump was in power. And then we were a year into the Biden administration. And what really struck me is this massive wave of struggle that swept through the United States under Trump, lots of it was co-opted, neutralized, and taken over by the Democratic Party, and the movements collapsed around us.

In particular, Black Lives Matter really went from one of the biggest social uprisings in US history to dissipating before our eyes. The Democratic Party successfully co-opted that big, enormous wave of struggles behind a project that I saw as hardcore imperialist in its very nature, a project to rebuild US capitalism and rally Washington’s allies for a great power confrontation, in particular with China and Russia.

And during that time, I was writing a book about all of this with several co-authors called China and Global Capitalism that was an attempt to explain this developing period in history that we were living through. And we were writing that book right when China and Russia struck their friendship without limits agreement. And that showed from the other side of the interimperial rivalries that another camp was forming in opposition to the US.

So then when Russia invaded Ukraine soon after that friendship pact, I really wasn’t surprised by it at all. And really because the war had been going on since 2014, the actual beginning of the war wasn’t three years ago in 2022, it was back in 2014 when Russia took over the sections of Donbas and the Crimea and had been trying to figure out how to annex the rest of the country.

And Putin was doing this for clear reasons that had to do, in part, with response to NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, but more importantly, I think, in response to the democratic uprising within Russia itself, the pro-democracy movement, the attempt to address the class and social inequalities inside Russia itself. And so Putin turned to increasing authoritarianism at home and an explicit imperialist project abroad to reclaim not the Soviet Union’s project, but the great czarist project of the 19th century. It’s not an accident that his big heroes are czars of that period.

And I totally agree, Max, I think the Russian invasion of Ukraine ushered in an epochal shift in world politics that has shaped everything in every corner of our globe all the way through till today. That is a new epic of annexation imperialism which is coming from Russia, from China, from the US, smaller regional powers. And in response to that, it’s triggering a new epic of struggles for national liberation and self-determination, which are going to be at the heart of all international political discussions.

Blanca Missé:  When I tried to rewind to February, 2022, many of us here were, I mean at least I was coming out of a big fight against austerity measures in my university after COVID. The preunfolding of what we’re seeing a little bit with this massive attack to the Department of Education, to public universities, there’s been a long time coming of a restructuring of social services and an attack on free speech, academic freedom.

So I have to say I was shocked and stunned by the February invasion. I agree with Ashley that the war technically had started in 2014. But I’m from Europe, I’m Catalan, and I’m in conversation with my family in Barcelona, friends in France, in Italy, in Portugal, and for all of us Europeans from the old world to see tanks back invading territory and trench building and alarms for bombs and people going into the refuges, it sounded like a real situation, like we’re back to the 20th century wars, which a lot of the US propaganda in Hollywood is telling us that the wars are going to be driven by drones and precision weapons, and there you have all this huge human capital and life being murdered, slaughtered at the front.

That was a huge shock to me, and I started rethinking what is happening. Many of the first explanations were Putin has gone crazy. This guy is out of control. And this explanation of one person just being crazy in power, it does not hold long enough to explain this war. And you see, it’s pretty clear that since Putin arrived to power, he radically transformed the Russian state. He turned the Russian state into an imperial state. He concentrated all of the power, all of the industries, he squashed all of the opposition, and he needed to preserve this area of influence to sell its gas, its oil, to extract resources, to submit all of these areas of Belarus, the Baltic states, Ukraine, with huge debt deals. And any attempts to contest that, like it was in Maidan in Ukraine, or even the beginning of the opposition in Russia, prompted him to invade Ukraine.

When you start understanding more the geopolitical, social, economic history of this part of the world, then the invasion makes total sense. I thought there was a beginning and an after because this war kept going on and on, and many of us thought this is going to just be two, three months and they’re going to negotiate. And we’re in year three of this war. And this was compounded also with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, which was restarted last year after the October events.

And so I do agree fully with Ashley that the way I was processing this, first I joined the Ukraine Solidarity Network. It was crucial for many of us active to have conversations with Ukrainians and with Russians who were also educating us and exchanging with us their views about what’s happening in the world. So we were trying to form a collective, internationalist viewpoint so we could process things across countries.

And also I started reading a lot of history, maybe because I’m a nerd, and I realized that our world right now is not anymore this “stable” US hegemonic world. As Ashley was saying, it looks more and more like the pre-World War II world with rising empires competing with each other and trying to steal land and colonies — At the time they were colonies, today they’re not, they’re supposedly independent countries — But they’re trying to annex them to put them under their thumb for control of their resources, of their markets, of their populations.

So I am still processing the war, and the war is getting more and more complicated because it is enmeshed in this world mess. How could you explain that we have North Korean troops fighting today on the Russian front? We need to be able to unpack all of this mess and be able to explain it clearly to working people so we can find a sense of direction, a sense of understanding of our history, and a sense of agency. And I think the goal of our podcast and also doing this reflection is how we can win back agency in this country to stand up for our rights.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that’s beautifully and powerfully put, and it is very much the soul of this podcast series. That really is our goal here, is to help you all navigate what has become such an unnavigable, or seemingly unnavigable, terrain, where you have these competing allegiances and things pulling at your heartstrings, when we want to lead with a basic humanitarian principle of defending life, defending people’s right to national sovereignty.

I wanted to take us back down to February of 2022 and what people were seeing and what was making sense and what wasn’t at that time. For most people — And the national polling really bore this out at the time — The question of who the bad guys were here, who the good guys were, and what the evil deeds were seemed pretty apparent on its face: Russia violating the national sovereignty of Ukraine, Russian troops entering Ukrainian territory, opening fire on Ukrainians, and committing the basic war crime of invading another country. And again, on its face, this is what people were seeing, this is what was being reported, and the question of who deserved our solidarity and why was seemingly pretty clear cut.

But as you guys already alluded to, there was an immediate discourse battle unfolding here where a lot of complicating factors were being introduced, whether they be the role of NATO expansionism and the US involvement in the 2014 coup, where you guys pointed out this war really started in 2014. The US had a lot of direct involvement in that. There were facts circulating about the far right neo-Nazis. Putin himself was claiming that this was a campaign of de-Nazification in Ukraine.

And so all of these interceding points start coming into the basic vision of your average person who’s seeing a sovereign country being invaded by its powerful neighbor. And these interceding factors served, at best, to complicate the official US narrative about the war. But at worst, they served to justify what Russia was doing. And I think somewhere in the middle, for many, the point was to essentially justify a lack of solidarity with Ukraine and a basic conviction that this was not our problem.

Ashley Smith:  I think the surface, gut-level response of most people to seeing a country invaded was of solidarity with the victims of such an invasion. And I think it’s very important to affirm that gut instinct of solidarity because that provides a guiding light for people through the points of confusion about the origins of the war, the nature of Ukraine, the politics of Ukraine, and the nature of its struggle for self-determination.

And a few things about that. There is no doubt that NATO expansion set the stage for this, in part. But as I said earlier, the motivations of Putin were laid out numerous times in speeches that he gave over and over and over again that said this war was about proclaiming and reclaiming a Russian empire, and that entailed the eradication of an entire national state and national people: the Ukrainian people.

Now, those Ukrainian people rose up in resistance, legitimately so — Not just the government but the vast majority of the people — All the way back in 2014 and then again in 2022. And one of the things that’s very important to say about the so-called coup in 2014 was that it wasn’t a coup, that this was a national popular uprising of the vast majority of people against a government that was essentially aligning itself with Russia, and therefore threatened the people in Ukraine with an authoritarian regime that they fundamentally rejected.

And when the government attempted to crush the protests in opposition and brutalize the population, it transformed into a national popular uprising that drove the government from power. Which to Russia felt like a threat because what it showed is the agency of people to fight for their rights against an authoritarian regime, which, back in Russia, was ominous for Putin. So Putin had the ambition from the very beginning to set an example for the Russian people that if you rise up against the dictates and program and project of Putin’s regime, it will be crushed in blood.

And the more you read about Ukraine, the more clear it becomes that this is a genuine progressive struggle for national liberation. Now, that doesn’t mean that there are not lots of complexities within Ukraine, but frankly, there’s lots of complexities in every single nation state around the world.

And sometimes when I heard people talk about the right in Ukraine, I was like, oh my God, we live in the United States where we had Donald Trump, so it was a bit rich to hear people pick points about the politics of Ukraine. And the more you read about the actual politics inside the country, the more marginal, actually, the right is in the society. That doesn’t mean it’s not a threat, but it’s the Ukrainian people’s fight to deal with their own right wing, which is our responsibility here in the United States to deal with our own right wing.

And the final thing I’ll say about this is you don’t have to have perfect victims to grant solidarity to people. And I think this is a very important point that Mohammed El-Kurd makes in his new book, Perfect Victims, about the Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation, because they don’t have to be perfect victims to have solidarity extended to them, nor should Ukrainians. We should be in solidarity with Ukraine’s struggle and Palestine’s struggle for self-determination, with all the complexities of their societies recognized, and understanding that only Ukrainians and Palestinians can deal with those problems, and it shouldn’t mean that we deny them our solidarity.

Blanca Missé:  When you see a country being invaded, you have your gut reaction to say, I side with them. And I think in the United States we have several added complexities. I think we have maybe different guts or different ways of feeling that are compounded because, on the one hand, most of the folks who maybe are indifferent or are questioning whether we should support Ukraine, they don’t deny that what is happening to Ukrainian people is horrible.

The hesitations come from the fact that, in the United States, we have such a long history of our US government leading wars at home and abroad. So then suddenly when they see a bad actor doing a bad thing, but they see the US government taking the side of the victim, they’re saying, maybe there is something fishy here. And that is an understandable conflict.

And then because one logic would be the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and that’s something we’re trying to unpack here. The enemy of your enemy doesn’t have to be your friend. It can also be another enemy that is going to come after you.

And so this very mechanical gut reaction when you have these two competing things, I think — And that was a case for all the racialized populations in the United States, that they were feeling maybe less identified with the plea of the Ukrainian people, not because they’re not human, but because they were suddenly surprised and, actually, angry that their own government, who has been oppressing their communities and their own people at home, suddenly wanted to drop everything and find money that supposedly we don’t have; we don’t have money for schools, we don’t have money for social services, we don’t have money for healthcare, and then send all of this money to Ukrainians. So that didn’t help.

And so this is why it’s so important, and it has been so important for our Ukraine Solidarity Network work to do everything from a standpoint of independence from the US government, independence from the Trump and Biden administrations, because we’re not here about backing any government or state. We’re here about building working-class solidarity from below, direct worker-to-worker, people-to-people connections.

And the other thing I want to add here, when there was this reaction of not a problem, most of the time working people in the US — And this is particularly white people — It’s not their problem what happens in the world, right? It is their problem when it comes to their pockets. But there is a socialization about we around the world, we are the ones who deserve all the wealth, and we can extract the wealth of the rest of the world and make all these cheap products abroad for slavery wages, and plunder the resources of the world so we can have a way of living. [This] makes it that we don’t care about what happens in the rest of the world because in everyday life we have to care about what happens to the working class in the world. We could not sleep for the nightmares that we would have about what our standards of living and our consumption conditions require.

So there is also something, there’s two perverse ways in which the US capitalist system and the US state has socialized us and desensitized us not to care. One is because we are US-centric, born and raised to be US-centric and not care about the rest of the world and not spend money abroad when there are needs at home. And the other thing is that we also have a lot of folks who have been so much damaged, tortured, aggressed, harmed, hurt by the US empire, that their first gut reaction is to be against any cause the US government supports.

And we have to deal with all of this mess, of all of this. And it’s important to call it gut reactions and say how we start unpacking, validating the way people think, of course, but then start showing them the way other people are feeling and thinking, and trying to put these two things together so we can build internationalism and solidarity for below.

It is difficult work, but this is why we’re doing this podcast, because we think this work must be done, and it can be done together if we have productive conversations across the different sectors of our class internationally.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Another condition that your average working person in America is in, living in the heart of empire, being subject to a capitalist dominated society and an imperial war machine installed in our government. People, over ,get really, really tired of getting jerked around and lied to and feeling duped. And the better angels of their nature are being exploited by the people in power to justify doing awful things. And I think that that’s where also you get this malaise that so many of us feel.

One of the, I think, other factors to consider is that, for your average person, the decision about what to think about this was also broken into two choices: Is my duty here to do something to stop this, or is it to have the right position on it? And I think that that’s actually symptomatic of the broad powerlessness that we are raised to feel in this country when we sense that we have so little influence over the power structure that we are finding out has had a hand in NATO expansion, that has had a hand in creating the crisis that we’re watching unfold on our televisions, our impulse is just throw our hands up and say, I don’t want to associate myself with this crap. And in that position, you can gravitate towards the one thing you do have, which is the righteousness of your own perspective.

And so when you’re in that mode, you latch onto these reasons to not care, to not give your heart so willingly to a cause like we did after 9/11, like we did in Vietnam, like we did in Desert Storm. People remember what it felt like to learn how wrong we were in those days gone by, and we don’t want to make that same mistake again.

And so when we hear that there are far-right Nazis in parts of Ukraine, that’s enough of an excuse to write off an entire population. When we hear that, once again, the US has had a strong hand over years and decades in creating the crisis that is unfolding now, we throw up our hands and say it’s the US’s fault. We don’t want to deal with it.

So I think that that reaction from a lot of folks is more symptomatic of our learned powerlessness in a craven, imperialist society that is constantly looking for our emotional validation of its imperial exploits and people refusing to give it, but doing so by writing off an entire population that needs our solidarity.

Ashley Smith:  I think what you’re saying, Max, is really important because there’s a healthy knee-jerk suspicion of the US government that is the legacy of the absolutely criminal history of US imperialism, all the way back to the 19th century, from the Spanish-American war to today, in which they lie, cheat, and steal to make profit through plunder of other countries and military dominance and manipulation of debt and gunboat diplomacy and fake alibis for wars, et cetera. So there’s a good knee-jerk suspicion of the US government, and I think that’s particularly concentrated, rightly so, among progressives.

But then it can lead to the kinds of problems that you’re describing, of not thinking our lives are bound up with people in Ukraine, and that the Ukrainian people don’t deserve our solidarity and support.

And I always come back to Martin Luther King’s famous statement as part of his opposition to the Vietnam War when he said that a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And I think we have to internalize that because I think we need a healthy knee-jerk anti-imperialism towards the US government, but also towards other governments and imperial powers throughout the world.

In this case in particular Russia, because I think Russia set a precedent that is now spreading, that is that you can have an imperialist war to annex and eradicate an entire country that first started in Europe, the first ground war in Europe since World War II. Now you’re seeing that spread with Israel and its using a logic of colonial annexation that’s eerily familiar from what Russia said about Ukraine. Because if you put what Netanyahu says right next to what Putin says about each country they’re annexing and colonizing, they’re eerily similar. And if you look at what Trump is now saying about Gaza, the ethnic cleansing and seizure of Gaza — Not only Gaza but Greenland, Panama, and if God can believe it, Canada as the 51st state.

So there’s a whole logic of a territorial imperialism and annexation that Russia’s war initiated globally, and it’s why our interests as working people and progressives here in the United States are bound up with Ukrainian people’s struggle for self-determination. Because if they lose in their struggle, that sets a precedent for powers to go after other subject peoples and nations all around the world.

And what’s most eerie right now is that Trump is rewarding Russia’s aggression and saying, sure, you can have 20% of Ukraine. That’s fine. We’ll sit down and make a deal over the heads and without the involvement of Ukraine’s government, let alone its people. That is eerie. That’s what Netanyahu and Trump are doing about Palestine. Who knows what’s going to happen between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump about Taiwan. Who knows what’s going to happen in Latin America and Panama and Greenland. We’re entering a very ominous phase, and it began, really, with the invasion of Ukraine. That’s why, whether we like it or not, our lives and destinies are bound up with the struggle of the Ukrainian people.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Exactly. And to even look backwards at the Biden administration’s handling of this, again, I think what you’re describing with Trump still puts your average American in a similar position because we had just clearly stated evidence that, under the Biden administration, that while we may, from our gut impulse, want to support Ukrainians fighting against this imperialist aggression, defending their national sovereignty, their lives, their communities, and that was the official line that we were hearing from Washington, DC, throughout the media. But then you also get these media clips from then Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who, in April 2022, told reporters:

[CLIP BEGINS]

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin:  We want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory. We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.

[CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  So right there you have, in the center of those two statements, you have your average working person trying to square that contradiction: Is this about supporting Ukrainians fight for their lives or is this about putting them in the firing line as cannon fodder so that our enemy Russia weakens itself slaughtering the people that we are in solidarity with? What is your average person supposed to do in that situation? What are they supposed to think?

And so you have those contradictions swirling around in general, but you also have other contradictions that clash, I think, are the deeply held principles of people who might describe themselves as on the left or having more leftist and progressive principles that they try to live by that are in seeming conflict in a situation like this and our clear-cut principal opposition to Nazis anywhere. So yes, of course if there are and where there are Nazis in Russia, Ukraine, anywhere, fuck them. But they are not the entire population, just like the Nazis who are literally marching on the street right now in the United States of America do not represent the entirety of the US population.

But you also had, for instance, within Ukraine, necessary critiques of the Zelenskyy government, of the wartime policies that have squashed labor rights, that have sold off more resources and terrain within Ukraine to other countries and private firms that are looking to take advantage of this situation. And so again, if you are, say, someone more on the left than not and you support unions and workers’ rights, and you are seeing them be violated in Ukraine by its own government, you have this difficult question to untangle. And I actually thought that in this great interview that Bill Fletcher did for us at The Real News in September of 2023 where he spoke with Olesia Briazgunova, the international secretary of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, she actually puts this into great perspective. Let’s play that clip.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  I’d like you to explain to US workers who might say something like this: The Zelenskyy government is neoliberal, it’s reactionary. Yes, I don’t agree with the Russian aggression, but I don’t agree with the Zelenskyy government. I don’t think we should give any support to anybody. What would you say to someone that raises that?

Olesia Briazgunova:  I want to emphasize that there are two different issues: Issues of war, genocidal war that includes massive killings of people, mass graves, torture, killing of children, deportation of children, people who are activists, human rights and labor activists under the threat of captivity in the occupied territories. So it’s two different issues. Yes, we need the support in this direction of fighting for decent work and labor standards. We need your solidarity. But to fight for workers’ rights, we need to survive. We need to survive and ensure that workers’ right to life is ensured. And then, of course, we will fight for better working conditions and decent work. And maybe in peaceful time, it would be more easy to promote our agenda within the social dialogue.

[CLIP ENDS]

Blanca Missé:  The US government, the Biden administration has been weaponizing the principle solidarity American people felt for Ukraine, to actually use it against Putin, the Russian state, and weakening it. But it is even more perverse than that because all of these aid packages that were presented in Congress, which supposedly is money that we are sending to support Ukraine, if you look at the fine print, a third of each of these packages was just to restock the US military with more advanced weapons, giving huge contracts to the major war corporations. Another third was to boost NATO, to boost the CIA, to boost international surveillance. Only a third of what remained was to send material aid to Ukraine, which mostly what they send are the old weapons that are not really useful so much in combat today. Not the most advanced ones, not the airplanes, the ones they need to discard.

So they have been using the Ukraine war in two ways. One is, as you were saying, Max, to use the lives of Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken the Russian economy. They have also weaponized the war to impose sanctions on Russia to make it more difficult for Russia to upgrade its industry, its military production. But they also have been lying to American working-class people, telling them that this is about Ukraine [when] this is about boosting their own war machine.

And we have to be honest, we have to explain what’s happening. That does not mean we do not stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian working class. That does not mean we oppose material aid. But we need to explain the aims of this material aid. We need to explain the strings that come attached while we are on the material military side of the Ukrainians, and we fully agree that they need airplanes, weapons, tanks, anything they need to protect the sovereignty of the territory.

As Denys Bondar said in Episode 1, you cannot fight an invasion with pillows. You need weapons. That’s absolutely true. I think the perversity of the US imperial agenda went a step further, and we’ll talk about it later today when we talk about what happened once we combined what’s happening in Ukraine, what is happening with Palestine. Because the last aid package for Ukraine that was proposed by Biden was proposing the same package with aid for Israel and for the militarization of the border to further criminalize and repress immigrants in the United States. So the cruelty, the cynicism, the twisted mindset of the US empire that is supposedly here to support Ukraine, but is, in fact, using this war and the Ukrainian people and the working-class folks in the US to further its imperial aims, it’s absolutely disgusting and outrageous, and we need to be able to denounce it while we build solidarity for Ukraine.

And one of these things you were saying, Max, about this split between being a commentator of what’s happening versus being actively involved, we see that in a lot of the movements here, and I think it has to do with the fact that working people in the US feel really politically disempowered. I think the biggest manifestation of that is in what is supposed to be the most democratic country in the world, the political life is dominated, since the Civil War, by two huge parties which are controlled by money and by major corporate America, and working people don’t have an outlet. There is not a worker’s party. There’s no independent political parties. You go anywhere in the world, you run for elections, you have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 parties. You have coalition governments. Here in the US, folks have kind of accepted that they have to be ruled by one of the two evils.

And when you have interiorized that there is no good that could come from politics, that you have no political agency, that we cannot be in charge of running our country, but we have to defer to one of the two evils, it is logic that the mentality of the lesser of two evils gets applied to read the rest of the struggles, always speaking the less of the two evils.

And I think that’s important to remind ourselves that when we’re doing all of this work to stand in solidarity without exceptions, the first duty we have in the US is to stand in solidarity with ourselves, with working people in the US, to start challenging this imposed hegemony of the bipartisan system in our country so we can finally begin to articulate, one day, independent working-class politics for working people in the US too, not only for the struggles of the oppressed abroad.

I think these things are connected. Our incapacity, most of the time, in the US to read and understand the complexities and the class struggle dynamics of the wars and the conflicts and the national liberation movements and the democratic movements abroad is linked to our conditions here in the US and our political life in the US, which is really poor, and is made poor by the US state to make sure that we do not have a rich political life of debate or struggle of experience with the system so we can eventually liberate ourselves one day.

Ashley Smith:  We should never underestimate the cynicism of the US government, whichever party is in power. I always think of the great quote from the American socialist John Reed who said, Uncle Sam never gives you something for nothing. He comes with a sack of hay in one hand and a whip in the other, and the price will be paid in blood, sweat, and tears by the oppressed.

I think we should keep that in mind always when we talk about the US government because the quote you read from the general, Austin, explains very clearly what the US is about, which is totally different than what the Ukraine Solidarity Network and movement is about. The US wants to use Ukraine for its own purposes to weaken Russia and to impose its agenda on Ukraine, which is not in the interest of the Ukrainian people. Because one of the things, to add to what Blanca said about the aid packages, they all came with debt attached to them, and the price of neoliberal restructuring and privatization of the Ukrainian people’s government, social services, and economy, and opening it to the plunder of multinationals, including US multinationals, which Donald Trump drew the logical conclusion by saying that he wants to buy half the country’s minerals — Or not even buy it, just get it through plunder.

So I think there’s the cynicism of what the US is up to we need to be clear-eyed about. Because as we oppose Russian imperialism and its annexationist drive in Ukraine, we should have absolutely no illusions of what the US government is about in Ukraine or anywhere on the planet. They don’t respect the sovereignty of Ukraine, whether under Biden or Trump. They’re after their own interests, not the interests of the Ukrainian people. And they have supported Zelenskyy, who is a neoliberal, who wants privatization, restructuring, and has agreed to all these debt deals for his own corporate backers’ interests.

And that’s why our solidarity is always with working people, with oppressed people in Ukraine and everywhere on the earth, because they have a different project than the capitalist governments and corporate rulers and far-right governments that rule over them, and that’s about liberation. And so our project is collective liberation from below with no illusions in any imperial power or in any existing government anywhere on the planet.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that you both really importantly hit upon one of the common causes of our intellectual incapacity to see the world for what it is and see what’s right in front of our eyes. We reduce entire populations to the figureheads in their state houses and the official policies reported in the media, and we lose all ability to see things like class, to see the different power structures in a given society that don’t mean that because Zelenskyy said X every Ukrainian believes it and is undeserving of our solidarity. This top-down enforced hypocrisy has been so viciously on display from the time that Russia invaded Ukraine till now, and even before.

And before we head into the break, I wanted to play this clip from then President Biden, which was from April of 2022, that really makes the point here.

[CLIPS BEGIN]

President Joe Biden:  I called it genocide because it becomes clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian. And the evidence is mounting. It’s different than it was last week, the more evidence is coming out of literally the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine. And we’re going to only learn more and more about the devastation. And we’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me.

Reporter 5:  Good evening, and thank you for joining us. At dawn local time, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented and large-scale surprise attack targeting dozens of locations in Israel. Right now, Israeli authorities say at least 200 people in Israel have been killed. The Gaza Health Ministry says 232 Palestinians are dead.

Reporter 6:  The death toll across Israel and Gaza has topped 1,300 as the bloody conflict stretches into its third day. Israel today announced a total blockade on Gaza, including food, water, electricity, and fuel. Over 800 people have been killed in Israel, over 500 in Gaza. Thousands more have been injured on both sides of the separation barrier. Hamas says it’s taken over a hundred hostages, including civilians and Israeli army officers. The Israeli prime minister has told Gazans to leave, though it’s unclear where they’d be able to go, vowing to all but decimate the besieged territory.

[CLIPS END]

Maximillian Alvarez:  Now, we’ve already mentioned earlier in this discussion Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, particularly on the besieged open-air prison of Gaza, which really rose to new heights after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. We are going to discuss that in more depth in the second part of this episode, and it’s going to be baked into everything that we’re discussing over the course of this series, which itself will end on the anniversary of Oct. 7 with an episode concluding this series focused on Gaza-Palestine.

Right now, in this episode and in this series, we’re trying to walk ourselves and our listeners from the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, all the way up to present day. And in that vein, I think in the period between Feb. 24, 2022, and before Oct. 7, 2023, we were already seeing, and many were calling out, the apparent double standards and the political and humanitarian inconsistencies that would really come to a head when both of these wars were playing out simultaneously in front of the global public.

And from the jump, these double standards were blisteringly, almost shockingly apparent in the way that many mainstream news outlets were covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Of course, there was the infamous example when Charlie D’Agata of CBS News really said the quiet part out loud in the early days of the invasion:

[CLIP BEGINS]

Charlie D’Agata:  But this isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully, too — City where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.

[CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  And that was by no means an exception. This was a pervasive, racist double standard that was so taken for granted that the people expressing it apparently felt no reserve or shame in just saying these “quiet parts” out loud. Like Daniel Hannan, as well, of The Telegraph, who wrote at the time, “They — ” Meaning Ukrainians — “seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. […] War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone.”

Now, of course, these double standards were being called out immediately. And in fact, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association released a blistering response to this pervasive coverage that we were seeing at the time. And that statement reads, in part, “AMEJA condemns and categorically rejects orientalist and racist implications that any population or country is ‘uncivilized’ or bears economic factors that make it worthy of conflict. This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected. 

“Newsrooms must not make comparisons that weigh the significance or imply justification of one conflict over another — Civilian casualties and displacement in other countries are equally as abhorrent as they are in Ukraine.”

This double standard was pervasive not just in mainstream media, but it was even leaking into social media and the discourse that we were having at the time of the Russian invasion before the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and Israel’s genocidal, scorched earth response.

You even had viral videos of a young Palestinian, of the famous Ahed Tamimi, who was arrested at age 16 in an altercation with an IDF soldier. That took place in 2017, she was actually in prison for eight months in Israel after that. But you saw a viral video, which was viewed more than 12 million times on TikTok alone, of Tamimi confronting this IDF soldier, but people were showing it as a Ukrainian girl standing up to Russian troops. And that also highlighted not just the racist double standard in the mainstream media, but the media illiteracy of users of social media who couldn’t even understand the double standard that they were embodying in holding up a Palestinian woman as an example of a Ukrainian standing up to Russians.

But it wasn’t just the media, of course. The racist double standards that were really coming to the fore after Russia’s invasion and before Oct. 7 were also made grimly apparent in the treatment of Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian refugees who were fleeing the war.

Just to give you a few examples, in March of 2022, we republished this piece by Adam Bychawski, which was titled “’19th-century Racism’ at Ukrainian Border” and reads, and I quote, “Indian students in Ukraine who spent days stranded at the Polish border have told of ‘19th-century racism’ as they watched Ukrainians’ pets allowed to cross before they were. ‘It all comes back to black and white’ said medical student Muhammad, speaking from a hostel in Lviv on Tuesday. ‘They are Europeans and we are just Indians.’ Muhammad, originally from New Delhi, said he and hundreds of other foreign students had been denied access to the Polish border and forced to return to the city, 40 miles away, a few days earlier.”

There was also this example from another piece that we published at The Real News in March of 2022 by the great Molly Shah who wrote about Yemeni students who were fleeing Ukraine. And she writes, “The journey out of Ukraine for both Ahmed and [Mohammed Talat] Al-Bukari was incredibly difficult. They faced racist discrimination at many points during the journey, something that Jarhum — ” Who works with the group Yemenis and Ukraine — “says is a common thread running through most of the stories from Yemenis she worked with. ‘The discrimination on the border was… crazy,’ she said. ‘They prioritized women and children and Ukrainians over all other nationalities.’

“After a 26-hour bus ride from Kharkiv to Lviv, followed by a six-hour bus ride to the border, Ahmed was shocked when he was told he would not be allowed to cross. ‘They asked us if there were Ukrainians in the bus and there were no Ukrainians, [so] they forced us back seven kilometers to the gas station where non-Ukrainians congregate,’ he said, describing the Kafka-esque series of steps he went through before finally being permitted to cross the Polish border. ‘We waited in line for 18 hours, no sleep and no bathroom.'”

And of course, it wasn’t just people trying to enter Poland and nearby countries to Ukraine. NPR reported from here in the States in July of 2022 “Thousands of Afghans that were promised US visas remain on the run from the Taliban. The Biden administration, however, quickly cleared red tape for Ukrainians after Russia invaded Ukraine.” Highlighting again the horrific, racist, and hypocritical actions of our government to selectively sympathize with white Ukrainian refugees while leaving the Afghans that the US had already promised visas to, leaving them out in the cold while seizing on the political opportunity to welcome Ukrainians, thus again pitting people’s natural solidarity for one over the other.

Blanca Missé:  I want to say something about this double standard because double standard in the media, it’s a nice way to put it. I want to go back to what I mentioned about the second aid package for Ukraine that was conditioning aid to Ukraine to aid to Israel and aid to the border. Because, in fact, it’s not just a double standard like, oh, we give money to these, but we don’t give money to them. It is even more perverse and cruel. It is if you want to save the Ukrainian people, you need to sacrifice Palestinian lives and immigrant lives. It’s the lives of those ones in exchange for the lives of these ones. And that is, in a nutshell, the core of imperialism, the core of the politics of any imperial state that is not only putting populations in competition but is asking those who are in need, if you want my help, it needs to come at the expense and sacrifice of these other parts of the population.

And so it’s not only the divide and conquer, it’s as if we need to become each other’s the transactional tool to legitimize the genocide of another people to prevent the genocide of one people. This is also the logic of austerity. This is a zero-sum game. There is not [enough] for everybody.

And what we’re trying to say all over and over is that, yes, we can save everyone. Yes, we need to stop all of the wars. Yes, we need to stop all of the genocides. But the system makes it impossible for us to do that because to stop all of the wars, all of the genocides, and have resources for everybody, will require that we working people take control of the system so we can dismantle it, so we can be in the driving seat.

And so in order to even prevent this question from being raised, the framing is a framing of double standard, but even worse, one in exchange of the other. It’s either this, either that. And I think that’s exactly the logic that we are trying to fight back against so we can put forward a true logic of solidarity without exceptions.

Ashley Smith:  I just wanted to add to what Blanca was saying about the hypocrisy of the United States and Joe Biden, the idea that, at the same time he’s posturing as in favor of a rules-based order that he’s defending, in the case of Ukraine, he’s enforcing, collaborating in a joint genocidal war against Palestine. And what I think that blows up is the idea that we have anything that could be called a rules-based international order. If you really think about it, the US rules-based international order had Vietnam, had the countless invasions of independent countries by the United States: Panama, Haiti — Many times in Haiti — The war on terror, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. And what the US has done in Palestine in particular is such an obscenity and has really delegitimized anything that could be called a rules-based international order.

And imperialists and autocrats all around the world are taking advantage of that and display a similar kind of hypocrisy and double standard. So if you think about Russia posturing as against what is being done in Palestine while it does the same thing in Ukraine, all the powers of the world have these systematic examples of hypocrisy.

And I think the worst is around the question of migration. The racism of the border regime cannot be overstated. It’s impossible to overstate. You look at what the US is doing on the US-Mexico border and the selective treatment of Ukrainians versus the treatment of people from all over the world, especially from Global South countries and, in particular, racialized countries. The racist double standards are there for all to see. The European Union does the same thing. If you look at what the European Union does in the Mediterranean, it’s guilty of mass murder of North African refugees fleeing for sanctuary.

One of the things that struck me most powerfully is when I did an interview with Guerline Jozef, who’s a leader of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, and she looked at the double standard that the US applied between Ukrainians and Haitians on the US-Mexico border, and she said very simply, of course Ukrainians should be let in, but so should Haitians. We should be treated with the same standards of respect and dignity of every other human being. And the conclusion of that is the border regime should be smashed. We should have open borders and the free movement of people until we can really challenge what is a fact, is the free movement of capital at the expense of workers of the world.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that’s beautifully put, Ashley, and beautifully put by Guerline. Again, the response to seeing this racist double standard by which white Ukrainians are welcomed into the country while Haitian migrants, Latino migrants, migrants who are not white Ukrainians are treated horrifically and counted as lesser than human. The response is not to then say Ukrainians should be treated that way too, it’s that we should all be treated to the same universal standard of humanity. That should be the conclusion, but so often we are pushed and prodded and encouraged to feel the opposite.

And I think, honestly, that is the way that the United States and Israel, at the top echelons of their imperial governments, were expecting people to react after the Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza that has been going on ever since. They were probably, I think, expecting that Americans especially would feel the same way towards Palestinians and Israelis as we’ve always been taught to feel. But that, of course, is not how things went.

And so I want to ask by way of getting us up to Oct. 7 and up to present day, how you guys feel the unfolding of the war in Ukraine, the unfolding and public display of these racist double standards, how do you think all of that set the stage for how people were going to perceive what was to happen in Palestine, in Israel in October of 2023?

Blanca Missé:  In the particular case of Palestine and Israel, the US state had been funding the state of Israel since its inception, and socializing among the US population the fact that we are identified with Israeli people, they’re a legitimate people too, in a state, they are a nationality there, and they’re one of us. They’re the only democracy in the Middle East. We keep hearing this and this. There’s coded language: They’re the only white people like us in the Middle East.

So we are already predisposed by all of these layers of ideology, of discourse, of double standards to immediately extend our solidarity with any Israeli victims and deny humanity and solidarity to Palestinian victims and survivors. The very fact that we are already, even before the Oct. 7 attacks and what happened, we have been supporting the war machine, the occupation, the apartheid regime, and the genocide, the ongoing, slow genocide that Israel has conducted on Palestinian people without ever having any qualms or any major public debate in the US.

When the US was supporting the war in Vietnam, there was a big discussion in the US started by the anti-war movement about who the US should privilege and support. But this discussion has never really happened at the mass level in the United States. There has been a Palestinian solidarity movement that has been reinvigorated since the Second Intifada with the radicalization of youth around the creation of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, the tremendous success of the BDS campaigns. So there has been a beginning of an incipient resistance among specifically younger people who have been questioning these double standards.

But we cannot see that the majority of the US population has been seeing this as a double standard. They have rather considered that almost an Israeli is closer even to them than a Ukrainian. And I think that was the framework that was already in place, that people were, again, having these gut reactions to what happened on Oct. 7.

Ashley Smith:  I think that there have been two responses to Israel’s genocidal war. There’s been the establishment response: bipartisan lockstep support for the eradication of the Palestinian people. This is a genocidal war, it’s a joint genocidal war by the US corporate military imperial establishment and Israel’s state, and there has been no debate about it across the political spectrum at the top, or only a handful of people dissenting.

Down below, I think we’ve seen a sea change within the US population towards Palestine, and I think it’s the expression of 15 years of radicalization that people have undergone at the base of society in opposition to all the problems: Occupy, Black Lives Matter, The [Red State Revolt], solidarity with Standing Rock, another wave of Black Lives Matter, and all the Palestine solidarity that kept flashing up through that period from the Second Intifada on and the BDS movement, all of this converged.

And, I think, in particular, Black Lives Matter and the growing consciousness among a new layer of Black radicals about the Black Palestine solidarity that has gotten organized, intellectual expression, people like Angela Davis writing books, drawing attention to it.

So there were the preconditions among a new generation that has been born of the radicalization since the great financial crisis of 2008. That was the preconditions for the explosion of solidarity with Palestine.

The other thing is the deep cynicism about the US government and what it does in the world born of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The deep suspicion among working-class people too, because the number of people that came back maimed, wounded, permanently impacted, and their families permanently impacted by the tens of thousands of soldiers deployed to that war meant there was a bedrock of suspicion.

And so people could see the hypocrisy. Not in the majority, as Blanca rightly says, but a surprising, much larger minority including of Democratic Party voters under a Democratic Party administration that was for a ceasefire. So I think there were preconditions that were built up from below that challenged the establishment’s commitment to this genocidal war, and it gives you tremendous hope.

The thing that’s striking is that there was very little crossover in terms of mass popular consciousness of sympathy with Palestine and sympathy with Ukraine because people saw the manipulation that the US was doing in the case of Ukraine and were suspicious of it in the case of Palestine. They saw the manipulation and fundamentally opposed it. And I think what we’re trying to do in this podcast is get people to see across that division and see the common bounds of solidarity between all oppressed, occupied, and terrorized populations, from Ukraine to Palestine.

So really I think the Palestine radicalization is one of the things that has torn the cover off of US imperialism and torn the cover off of the so-called democracy in the United States. Look at what has happened to Palestine solidarity activists on campuses, in cities, and communities across the country. We are being criminalized because of the threat this movement poses to the US government’s sponsorship of the genocide and its use of Israel as its local cop to police the Middle East to make sure that the US controls the spigot of the world’s largest reserves of oil in the world.

So I see the Palestine solidarity movement as one of the tremendous hopes for anti-imperialism in the world, but not without challenges politically that we need to overcome, in particular on overcoming any selective solidarity within the movement, and instead winning a method of solidarity without exception.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s talk about that a little more by way of bringing us around the final turn here, and talk about how the need for this podcast series itself really came roaring out of the contradictions that we were feeling, seeing, hearing, experiencing in the moment that we’ve been in over the past two years, when Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and Russia’s imperialist invasion and war on Ukraine have been occurring simultaneously on the same timeline in the world that we inhabit. Because this is, again, made complicated for your average person who may be seeing and hearing on the news quotes like this from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaking to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Copenhagen on Oct. 9 of 2023:

[CLIP BEGINS]

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy:  These days, our attention is focused on the Middle East. No one can ever forget what the terrorists did in Israel, thousands of missiles against peaceful cities, shooting people in cars on the roads, men, women, children. No one was spared, streets covered in blood. Israelis themselves, Israeli journalists who were here in Ukraine, who were in Bucha, now seeing that they saw the same evil where Russia came. The same evil. And the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine. The intentions declared are different, but the essence is the same. You see it, you see the same blood on the streets, you see the same civilian cars shot up. You see the same bodies of people who have been tortured.

[CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  Now, of course, there’s a political reality here where Ukraine is dependent on US support to maintain its war effort to stop the Russian invasion. And so by default, if not by ideology, the Ukrainian government is going to have to jump on whatever side it thinks that the United States is going to be on in this Israel-Palestine “conflict” so that it doesn’t mess up its one lifeline to keep fighting its fight against the Russians. And so we want to name, there are multiple reasons why Zelenskyy would make this claim.

But for your average person who’s hearing that claim, again, it forces your soul into this sort of your car stalling out and you don’t know where to go because you have the president of Ukraine effectively trying to square this circle and compare the plight of Ukrainians fighting against the Russian invasion with the plight of Israelis who are, in Zelenskyy’s own terms, the ones who are being victimized by this terrorist invasion coming from Gaza, coming from Palestine.

And perhaps in years past that may have been an easier sell, but it wasn’t this time. That was not a line that, in fact, like you guys were saying, a lot of regular people were not buying this comparison.

Ashley Smith:  I think the shortest thing to say about Zelenskyy’s statement is he has it precisely upside down and backwards because the analogy is between Ukraine and Palestine, not between Ukraine and Israel. The analogy on the other side is Russia and Israel. Those are the annexation aggressors in this circumstance. Russia on its own invading and annexing and occupying Ukraine, and in the case of Palestine, the US and Israel invading in a genocidal war against the Palestinian people. So the analogy and the solidarity is the exact opposite of what Zelenskyy said.

It’s important for us in the Ukraine Solidarity Movement to say that because Zelenskyy did a disservice to international anti-imperialism by making it that upside down and backward analogy. If he had said the right thing, then there would’ve been more sympathy with Ukraine’s plight from the insurgent movement from below. And that points to the importance that our solidarity is not with Zelenskyy’s government, but with the people in Ukraine.

And that said, I think there are a couple of things that we have to do to explain where Zelenskyy’s position comes from. First of all, he’s Jewish, and that’s important for all this stuff about Ukraine being a Nazi country. It’s got an elected Jewish leader of the government, so there’s a predisposition to identify with Israel and Zionism. There’s also the fact of a large migrant population, settler community of Ukrainians in Israel, one of a large population there.

That said, Ukraine traditionally has respected the sovereignty in the UN of Palestine and has advocated, whatever you think of it, a two-state solution for Palestine. That’s been the official position of Ukraine — Which I disagree with. I think we should have a secular democratic state from the river to the sea with equal rights for all and the right of Palestinians to return.

I think the most important thing, though, is what the Ukrainian left did in response to this, which was to issue a statement of solidarity and opposition to the genocidal war conducted by Israel. And Commons Journal produced that, distributed, large numbers of Ukrainian intellectuals, trade unionists, and activists, and leftists signed onto that, and they did webinars to try and articulate a different position that gets the bonds of solidarity correct between Ukrainians and Palestinians against the aggressors that they face.

But that just shows that politics is not simple. You’ve got to work at it, and you’ve got to orient people and win arguments. And there’s a live debate in Ukraine about all this that has gotten better over time as the war in Gaza has exposed itself to the Ukrainian population. More people in Ukraine are more sympathetic with Palestine than at the start of the war when Zelenskyy made this upside down and backward statement.

Blanca Missé:  Actually in the US, our Ukraine Solidarity Network put out a statement in solidarity with Palestine. And actually, we didn’t put only one statement, I think we [put out] three or four statements. And the importance of that is that as we saw the use of this country rising against the genocide, taking tremendous risks in the campuses, including on my campus, the only condition for us to link up the struggles is to assert from the beginning solidarity with without exceptions.

And the first question the Palestinian movement is going to ask is, OK, I will support your fight against Russian invasion, but will you support my fight for Palestinian liberation? Will you support our demand to end all USAID to Israel now? If you want aid for Ukraine, will you support the demand to end all USAID to Israel now? Because in the same way your people are dying under the bombs of Putin, our people are dying under the bombs of Netanyahu. But the crime is that the bombs of Netanyahu, they’re paid for by the United States, they’re fabricated, they’re built in the United States, many in the state of California where I work and live.

So to be able to, as Ashley says, in many ways, move away from these very top-down, simplistic, opportunistic narratives, to rebuild a more complex, but in the end, also connecting what we were saying with a universal and simple feeling of solidarity. There is a lot of unpacking to do, but most of the unpacking we need to do is to destroy and undo the compartmentalization of struggles that has been put in our heads and reconnect with some fundamental feeling and sense of solidarity, of compassion, of being together and say, I see you struggle. You see my struggle. We might not speak the same language, we might not have the same appearance, but we do understand that we’re going through each other.

What Zelenskyy said and did, it’s tremendously opportunistic, but he’s not the first leader to do that. It might seem as a shock to us, but during the Japanese invasion of China during World War II, there were also opportunistic sectors of the petty bourgeois elite, the Black elite here who were rooting for Japan because they wanted to be against the US. But rooting for Japan meant sacrificing the national liberation movement of the Chinese, and we had a huge Chinese immigration community in the US. So that position was also separating the Black movement from the Asian movement.

Or even worse, during World War II, the Egyptian elites were trying to figure out whether they will support the Nazis or they will support the British because they were calculating who might win the war. But those were opportunistic self-interest positions of these national leaders, elites, economic elites who, like our imperialist governments, they don’t believe in solidarity without exceptions. Nobody from below could in their right mind say, fine, let’s side with the Nazis. Fine, let’s side with Putin’s invasion. Fine, let’s side with Israel’s genocide. That will not be a defensible position ever. But these elites are training us to be calculating.

And again, I go back to this thing: can we save our lives at the expense of these others? Is this a trade we’re willing to make? And this calculating mindset is the number one mortal enemy of the struggles of solidarity. And that’s the point we’re trying to make over and over in our movements. And that’s also the main reason behind this podcast. Instead of calculating, let’s start thinking and let’s start feeling what we have in common to fight for a common liberation.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and as you both said, in so many ways, the need for that message, the need for this series and the need for folks to hear the voices they’re going to hear, the discussions they’re going to hear over the course of this podcast series really emerged out of not only the conflict between people’s solidarity with Ukrainians that was not being equally applied to Palestinians after Oct. 7, but also in the other direction within the growing movement of folks who were in solidarity with Gaza, with Palestinians, was not equally applied back to Ukrainians. And so that itself presented a clear case for why we needed to talk about this and figure out why.

But on that note, I think one thing that we’ve mentioned here that maybe we don’t have time to go into in as much depth on this episode, but has clearly been a major factor over the past two years in public opinion shifting on Israel and really shifting towards solidarity with Palestinians. A lot of that we saw happen in real time.

We saw mainstream Western journalists who were all stationed in Israel while all the Palestinian journalists were being slaughtered in Gaza, and journalists were not being let into Gaza. And so you had this Iron Dome attempt to maintain the long hegemonic narrative of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, as the United States’s permanent ally, as Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims in general as less than human, the terrorist aggressors who hate us and hate democracy because of who they are. You saw that line be enforced and reinforced in the ways that the media was covering the Oct. 7 attacks, the lies that were spread all the way from our White House down the Hasbara propaganda that was being unthinkingly regurgitated through Western outlets, through the mouths of Western diplomats and politicians.

But it didn’t hold, it didn’t have the command over the public mind that it would have in years past. And a big part of that was because regular people were seeing the counter evidence on their phones over social media. They were seeing the livestreamed genocide unfolding in Gaza, on TikTok, on Twitter, on Facebook, you name it.

But there really were insurgent realities, insurgent narratives, like breaking apart that US-Israel media-enforced consensus over the past two years. And when people in this country, people I know, people I grew up with, people like myself who, for years, for our entire lives, never questioned that line about Israel, about its rightness, about its right to defend itself, all that stuff. Here in the United States, you had so many members of the population finally be ready to ask about the other side, to learn about the other side in a way that we’ve never been before.

And when we were ready to finally see that other side, to finally admit that perhaps we did not know the whole situation, people had a wealth of literature, of interviews, of coverage of BDS and Palestine solidarity movements to learn from when they were finally ready to take advantage of them. I don’t think that folks had that when it came to Ukraine as readily available to us if and when we started asking similar questions.

But all of that is to say that in the two years since both Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza and Russia’s continued war in Ukraine have been occurring simultaneously, in as much as the openings that have presented the opportunity for people to feel more solidarity with their fellow workers and human beings in Palestine, what does that look like for Ukraine? What does that look like for Haiti? What does that look like for other parts of the world where the story’s not going to be the same?

And in fact, there was, I think, a really important point made by Daria Savrova in a panel, a Haymarket panel on Ukrainians who were in solidarity with Palestinians, asserting that we do not need equivalence for solidarity. We don’t need the situation in Ukraine to be exactly like the one in Palestine to feel that solidarity.

Ashley Smith:  Yeah, I think, Max, you’re entirely right. There doesn’t need to be an equivalent experience of exploited and oppressed people to have the basis of solidarity. I think that point that Daria made is really important because if you look at what Russia has done in Ukraine, it’s horrific, like the mass murder in Bucha, the destruction of an entire city of Mariupol, the bombing of hospitals, the bombing of schools, that’s horrific. It’s not on the scale of what Israel has done in Palestine. And a lot of other wars and other experiences of countries under national oppression and experiencing exploitation aren’t identical, but you don’t need to have the identical experience to identify with people undergoing exploitation and oppression.

And in fact, that’s the hope of humanity, is that those of us down below among the working-class majority, the oppressed majority of the world, we have a basis for solidarity and common struggle and common identification. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this catastrophic moment in global capitalism that we’re living in, in which the scale of the crises and the problems and the wars from Ukraine to Palestine to Congo to Sudan to you name it. We are in an existential moment, and we have to have the hope and the trust in the workers of the world, the majority of the world’s population, that we can forge bonds of solidarity that can challenge all the governments that stand above and enforce this order. In particular, the big powers, the Europeans, the US, China, Russia that stand atop this mess. But that’s the hope of humanity is the bonds of solidarity which don’t require equivalence and identical experience.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and as we’ve already said in this episode, the need for that robust sense of solidarity, that durable sense of solidarity, the ability to know what we’re fighting for in a world that is spinning increasingly out of control is more necessary now than ever because we are living in that existential moment, as you said, Ashley, where it is a new and terrifying era in which the violability of national sovereignty is fully back on the table — And that’s not to say that it was off the table before. The US has been violating countries’ national sovereignty since our settler ancestors came here and genocided the Natives who were here, to say nothing of the wars in Iraq, the wars in Vietnam, the coups in Latin America, all across the world. We’re not negating that.

But we are saying that we are definitively in a new geopolitical era in which even the fiction of the US-enforced international rules-based order has fully collapsed. We are living in a time where Donald Trump can say that he wants to absorb Canada as the 51st state, that he wants to take over Greenland from Denmark, that he wants to turn Gaza into a real estate development, that he wants to retake the Panama Canal. Again, it is not just the United States that is making these kinds of proclamations, it is a world breaking apart under multiple competing imperialisms. This is the reality of what we call living in a multipolar world.

But for that reason, the question of what national sovereignty, what the right to it and the right to defend ourselves and our lands really means in a time like this. I wanted to ask if you guys could say a little more about what listeners who are living through this monstrous moment that we all are living through, what they’re going to get out of this series and why it’s important.

Blanca Missé:  We are in a new world order that is still evolving and reconfiguring itself. It’s not like we know the shape it’s going to have, but we know there’s a huge geopolitical crisis. And I think in the midst of this turmoil, we need to be able to resist against all the regressive politics, the wars, the genocides, our own government, the US government, is going to carry out at home and abroad, and at the same time oppose all the regressive politics, wars, genocides that rival powers like China and Russia are going to carry out. And not only China and Russia — We also have the rise of regional powers that are collaborating with them and also oppressing people abroad.

And so when we talk about solidarity without exceptions, first, we need to have an understanding of what brings us together and how to articulate this solidarity. And more importantly here in the US, we need to also provide avenues for working people in the US to stand in solidarity with other struggles without relying on their government, without siding with their government. Obviously refusing to side with sponsoring wars, genocides, sanctions, tariff wars, but also being suspicious of some supposed aid packages and good aims they might have abroad. And the only way to do that is by developing a mutual understanding from below of what solidarity means.

And this is why we’re going to be bringing guests who are international guests, some of them are US-based, who are knowledgeable about the struggles of liberation, who have been active in the struggles of liberation, and also have been thinking through the complexities of developing solidarity without exceptions. And we’re all going to be learning together how, in the midst of this turmoil, how to collectively rethink from below what international solidarity is with a working-class perspective.

Ashley Smith:  I want to go back to the moment that we’re in, because I think Trump has ushered us into a whole new phase of geopolitics, that he’s declared an American-first imperialism, a kind of unilateral annexationist, frankly, colonial imperialism that we haven’t heard articulated from the White House in a long, long time. And it’s not isolationist, it’s certainly not pacifist. It’s essentially saying might makes right — The US is going to use its hard power all around the world to get its way in an authoritarian fashion at home and a brutal, unilateral imperialist fashion abroad.

Max went through the list that Trump ticked off. He does want to annex Panama, Greenland, make Canada the 51st state, take over Gaza. These are not just idle threats. He’s really trying to implement them as policies. And this kind of authoritarianism is growing in every country all around the world, particularly in the historic great powers and the new powers. We are really headed for a global clusterfuck of interimperialist antagonisms unlike we’ve seen except in the run-up to World War I and World War II. More annexation, more war, more conflict, more militarism, increased military budgets all around the world. That’s going to produce increasing authoritarianism at home against our rights as working-class people and oppressed people like we’re seeing under Donald Trump, and more aggression abroad like we’re seeing under Trump. But not only Trump, all the other powers are doing the same kinds of things.

And what we’re going to be exploring is how we can bind together through a politics of solidarity, the national liberation struggles, the struggles for self-determination of oppressed peoples, and the struggles of working-class people politically throughout the world. So we’ll be exploring all these themes.

In the first round of episodes we’ll be talking about Ukraine, which we’ve been discussing today in detail, but we’ll do it with special guests from Ukraine about Ukraine’s struggle. We’ll also be then following up with Puerto Rico and then with Syria, with people who’ve actually just come back from the Syrian people’s victorious toppling of the Assad regime. But these episodes are going to be a part of many unfolding over the next year that are going to explore the politics of solidarity and solidarity without exception, which I think has to be the bedrock, the first principle of our collective liberation globally.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell yeah. Well, I cannot wait to listen to them. And Ashley and Blanca, it is such an honor and a privilege to be producing this series with y’all. For everyone listening, you can find new episodes of Solidarity Without Exception right here on The Real News Network podcast feed. Get it anywhere you get your podcasts. Keep an eye out for those new episodes that Ashley mentioned, which will be coming out every two weeks from now.

And then we’re going to take a little break, and then we’re going to bring you a new batch of episodes. But again, this series is going to be continuing over the course of this year. Please let us know what you think of it. Please share it with everyone that you know, and please support the work that we’re doing here at The Real News Network so we can keep bringing you more important coverage, conversations, and series just like this. Ashley, Blanca, solidarity to you.

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