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Don’t believe everything you read on facebook

How you can make sure that the information you are sharing is actually true.


07/03/2022

Glued to your phone checking on news from Ukraine? Hoards of websites and social accounts are publishing information and photos – even ones that normally have nothing to do with news or politics. Getting involved by reposting articles seems like it’s better than sitting around doing nothing, but it can also lead to circulating misinformation. Early on in the invasion of Ukraine, there was a widely shared photo that turned out to be of Israel bombing Gaza, not of Russia bombing Ukraine.

Really emotional content is more likely to be shared, so often false or misleading information comes along with emotionally triggering photos or text. Some can clearly be harmless, shared only for clicks or likes, but there are often more harmful fakes that crop up during crises. The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, constantly deals with fake accounts that receive donations and then disappear with the money. This scam was especially rampant during the mass protests following the death of George Floyd.

Considering the fact that Russia has launched a propaganda campaign online alongside the one on the ground, it’s important to be wary of what we’re sharing and whose voices we’re amplifying. Photos, videos, and accounts from individuals on the ground can be vital to getting coverage that isn’t available from, or ignored by, mainstream media outlets. Students at the border fleeing Ukraine from India, Pakistan, and African countries shared videos of being blocked from crossing the Polish border while white Ukrainians were let through. The number of people sharing their photos, videos and experiences were enough that the issue is now being more widely covered.

Often the scope of misinformation campaigns isn’t clear until after the fact, as with Russian interference in the Trump-Clinton election in the United States, which prompted Germany to develop a sort of task force of fact-checkers for their elections. Twitter is especially rife with the spread of fake news, because it is easy to build a Twitter bot that can run 24/7 and post faster than any human. Recently, an army of Chinese bots, along with influencers, tried to paint the winter Olympics as a wonderland to bolster confidence in the controversial games (by the way, someone has figured out how to bypass the paywall in that article).

So, check and double check before you share! Here’s how:

  • Photos shared by news organizations are usually from agencies, who will have reporters on the ground.
  • If you can’t trace a photo back to the original source, there’s a good chance it’s fake. You can use TinEye to reverse search images and find out where they come from.
  • During conflict, old conflict footage will often make the rounds again, posted by sites or accounts trying to get clicks. Check the page for an earlier post with the same photo or video.
  • There are multiple tools to check if a Twitter user is a bot – here’s an add-on for your Twitter feed.
  • If you land on a webpage you don’t know, click around. If the links are broken, link back to the website itself, or if there is no about page, it could be fake.
  • Check if there is an organization behind a donation link or a petition. Or if it’s an individual, see if they are supported by an organization. Too many individual helpers on the scene can cause chaos – it’s better to go with experienced organizers.
  • Beware of information from news organizations where the source is other news organizations. If there is no source for the information, it probably isn’t confirmed.
  • “According to experts”, “getting reports of”, “seeking confirmation for” means that there is no source for the information.
  • Death tolls are very hard to calculate and confirm in the midst of conflict.
  • For big headlines, always compare multiple sources.
  • If something feels funny or doesn’t look right, it probably deserves investigation. You can keep an eye out for the type of clothing people are wearing and the buildings or nature that’s surrounding them – check to see if it matches the news that is going along with the photos or videos.

Radio Berlin International #6 – Ukrainian socialists, Danièle Obono and International Women’s Day

In this episode, Ukrainian socialists talk about the war and how we can help. A radical French MP will tell us about the coming elections. And we hear from the protests on International Womens’ Day (March 8th).

Originally broadcast on 6th March, 2022. In this episode, we hear from Ukrainian socialists about the war and what progressives can do to help the situation. A radical French MP will tell us about the elections coming up there and how her party is fighting racism and austerity. And the organisers of one of the protests coming up on International Womens’ Day will be here to say why we should all be taking to the streets on Tuesday.

This episode’s guests are:

  • Taras Salamaniuk & Bohdan Diedushkin – Initiative Host Ukrainians (host.ukrainians@gmail.com)
  • Silvia Habekost – An Care Denken

This episode’s playlist is:

  • Andrey Vinogradov – Psalm About Two Brothers
  • Yuriy Yosyfovych – A Bullet Flew
  • A Tribe Called Quest – We the People
  • HK et les Saltimbanks – On lâche rien
  • Tracy Chapman – Talkin’ Bout a Revolution
  • Vivir Quintana – Canción Sin Miedo (Versión El Palomar)

This episode is presented by Julie Niederhauser. The producer is Tom Wills.

Please tell us what you think of the show by emailing radio@theleftberlin.com. Don’t forget to include your name and where you’re listening from, and we’ll read out as many messages as possible on the air.

Don’t miss our next show live on reboot.fm 88.4 MHz in Berlin, 90.7 MHz in Potsdam and online at http://reboot.fm at 7pm on Sunday 20 March.

You can hear previous episodes of Radio Berlin International here.

A young man leaves Kramatorsk…

When our rulers declare war, it is working people of all sides who suffer. Memories of a Ukrainian conscript


06/03/2022

In November 2014 as war raged in eastern Ukraine, I met and interviewed a young refugee who had fled his home in eastern Ukraine. This became a blog piece. I copy it here – I hope it helps illustrate divisions and the carnival of reaction that erupted in Ukraine as a result of imperialist rivalry – and the impact it had on one ordinary young man.

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I met Volodya [not his real name] in early November. He is a young man of 23 who wants  a career in design. He is not exceptional in any way, and by that I don’t mean to be disparaging. I simply mean he could be a young man from anywhere, with the hopes, joys, sorrows and desire for fun that any young man might have. Except he is not from anywhere.

Volodya is from Kramatorsk, a mechanical engineering and industrial centre of over 160,000 in eastern Ukraine. Or to be more precise, it did have a population of 160,000. Since April, some 40 percent of its inhabitants have left. They now number amongst the million displaced from Donetsk and Luhansk, the two eastern regions of Ukraine known as the Donbass. They are ordinary people who a few months ago would have had no reason to flee their homes.

Volodya left Kramatorsk in 2011 for Kiev but in May of this year he decided to return. His home city and its neighbour, Sloviansk – 10 miles away, were seized by armed pro-Russian separatists on 12 April. Kiev’s response was to send army units and volunteer militias to the east. In very quick order, Ukraine was tearing apart. Volodya began to worry about his family and elderly grandparents, now at the eye of the storm.

On 1 May Kiev announced the re-introduction of conscription. Faced with the prospect of being forced to fight, and possibly to kill Ukrainians in his own town and region, Volodya decided to leave. He left Kiev, thinking it would all blow over in a few weeks. It did not blow over, and after a few weeks Volodya would be very far from home.

From April through July, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk became key flashpoints in the battle between pro-Russian separatists and forces from Kiev. Sloviansk suffered most casualties and damage. At first, the conflict existed in something of a virtual reality. Relatively small groups of separatists controlled administration buildings, mayors’ offices and police departments.

There was little active involvement by the population and for Volodya and his family, daily life often continued with a semblance of normality.

People ran errands and strolled through the town’s attractive woodland park, the Yubileynyy, just coming to leaf in the spring sunshine. But these proved to be interludes; war soon came knocking on the door. Businesses closed and workers were laid off; energy supplies became increasingly disrupted; workers still ‘employed’ went unpaid; Volodya’s grandparents’ pension payments ceased. Buildings were hit by shellfire, no-one was sure from whom. Night after night, Volodya and his family lay in their beds, as gunfire and shelling from Sloviansk shook the night air and lit the horizon.

Volodya and most townspeople kept away from the centre, nervous of their new ‘leaders’. They had good reason. The separatists were led by far-right, great Russian chauvinists, neo-Stalinists, outright fascists or sheer adventurers and crooks. Igor Girkin, or ‘Strelkov’, who led the takeover of Sloviansk, was a prime exemplar. He had served in two Chechen wars; in the Serb ethnic cleansing of Bosnia; he had helped organise proxy Russian forces in Transnistria (a pro-Russian breakaway in Moldova) and finally played his part in the annexation of Crimea. In May he was appointed ‘Defence Minister’ of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’. His fantasy was to restore a Russian empire of the Slavs. He thought his time had come.

A few locals did join the rebellion but the separatists in east Ukraine were not greeted with flowers and the cheering crowds as in Crimea the previous March. Yet neither did the population turn out to oppose them. As Kiev forces indiscriminately shelled towns, and civilians, hatred for the government in Kiev became the dominant sentiment.

The decision by Kiev to launch its ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ against the east, supported by far-right and fascist volunteers, sealed local antipathy. This was tit for bloody tat. ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ was the name the former President Yanukovich used for the deadly assault launched against protestors in the Maidan. The massacre of 43 pro-Russian protestors in Odessa by far-right nationalists led by the Nazi Right Sector, and the killing of civilians in Mariupol by Ukrainian army units, finally polarised the views of many of those hitherto reluctant to take sides.

When probed, Volodya was reluctant to comment on the politics and actions of Kiev. He shrugged his shoulders and with anger in his voice, said simply, “They should never have sent the army.”

Kramatorsk was the site of one of the most televised confrontations between civilians and Ukrainian soldiers during the entire conflict. Three days after Kiev launched its “Anti-Terrorist Operation”, a column of six armoured vehicles rolled up to the outskirts of Kramatorsk. Contrary to their expectations, they were surrounded by local people, enraged that the army was being sent against them. As soldiers were berated by unarmed men and women, one elderly local turned to shout at the camera: “Do I look like a terrorist? I’ve been planting onions!”

The soldiers, some merely conscripts, looked miserable and demoralised. One insisted they would not shoot. Eventually, they abandoned their vehicles, which were then seized by pro-Russian separatists and paraded through Sloviansk in triumph, spinning in their tracks. It was an episode that in a way captured precisely the dynamics of the conflict.

Volodya was by no means alone in his decision to avoid fighting. It was the young men who were often the first to leave. The separatists had great difficulty in galvanising more than passive support. Girkin complained bitterly of the ‘cowardice’ of eastern Ukrainians, for refusing to sign up, particularly the youth: “Where are the young people… Maybe in the gangs that are currently robbing, looting and wreaking havoc in the province?” I don’t know if Volodya watched Girkin’s performance.

If the separatists had difficulty in recruiting volunteers, this was no less true of the Ukrainian military. Even the most compliant of potential conscripts may have thought twice about the draft. The army was hopelessly under-equipped. Ukraine’s ruling class had been more afraid of their own population than external foes. The number of interior troops and police per head of population in Ukraine was twice the world average.

But the military did not just suffer from lack of expenditure. Military procurement was a prime target for corruption. Over-inflated sums were paid for sub-standard equipment, or for military ‘purchases’ that were simply never delivered. Senior officers sold off as much as they could get away with. As for the conscripts, the salary of a conscripted soldier is a mere $185; the median monthly salary in Ukraine, the lowest in the region, is about $260.

Soldiers had to rely on charity organisations for flak jackets and sleeping bags. Families that can afford it buy their sons winter gear, decent uniforms, body armour or even gun sights; alternatively, in time-honoured fashion they can pay a bribe for a medical exemption or removal from the draft list. (The going rate is about seven times the average monthly salary).

Faced with a decrepit military, and the reluctance of many conscripts to risk their lives, small groups of armed separatists achieved early victories. Kiev tried to tap ‘patriotic’ loyalties and asked ordinary Ukrainians to donate their savings to the defence budget. $2 million was raised from citizens texting 565 on their mobile phones but this was hardly going to turn the tide.

On 16 June, Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, announced the formation of 30 volunteer battalions. Some of these were ideological, far-right volunteer units such as the Azov battalion, led by the Nazi – Andriy Biletsky – and backed by far-right Radical Party leader, Oleh Lyashko. Others were private armies raised and funded by Ukraine’s oligarchs.

Ihor Kolomoisky, Ukraine’s third richest oligarch and governor of Dnipropetrovsk poured an estimated $50 million into ‘volunteer’ militia forces. These were often little more than mercenaries. Privates in Kolomoisky’s Dnipro battalion are paid 1,000 dollars a month; officers between 3,000 – 5,000 dollars.

However, many of the separatist volunteers are not particularly ideological either. A close relative of a friend in St Petersburg joined up via a volunteer call line. He was unemployed, his personal life was falling apart and he was promised up to $500 a month. He is now in hospital in Donetsk, as his leg was shot away after a battle for Donetsk airport.

The pro-Kiev private armies and volunteer militias helped turn the tide. Igor Girkin was forced out of Slovyansk, first to Volodya’s home town of Kramatorsk, then back to Donetsk. Kramatorsk returned to Ukrainian government control. The separatists had over-reached themselves. Putin’s aim was to destabilise Ukraine not occupy it and he limited the support flowing from Russia.

By late August, it seemed the separatists might be routed. Putin now released sufficient troop detachments and weaponry to halt the Ukrainian army and its volunteer battalions, which were thrown into partial retreat. President Poroshenko turned to Nato but like Putin the US and EU sought maximum advantage from Ukraine’s internal divisions; they did not intend to risk all-out conflict. Poroshenko was refused the arms he needed. At this point a tenuous ceasefire was reached.

Whatever the military outcome, lasting divisions and hatreds have been sown. Over 4,000, mainly civilians, have been killed. The politicians in Washington, Brussels, Moscow and Kiev will use these divisions to their own best advantage with scant regard for ordinary Ukrainians, east or west.

As for Volodya?

He refuses to comment on politics. When asked about the future, he stares at the table, “Ukraine has no future. It’s all gone to hell.” He just wants peace and to become a successful designer. His dream is to go to Canada.

Volodya now ushers guests to their entertainments at a Red Sea hotel resort, popular with Russian tourists. He had a contact in the tourist industry. The resort needed a Russian speaker who would accept the scrapings to be made from tips. Tippers are few however – the consequence of another ‘War on Terror’.

Volodya’s story and the circumstances that drove him to seek another life is in a sense unexceptional. This is no first-hand account of fighting, death, kidnapping or atrocity. He is just an ordinary young man forced to flee his home for fear he will be forced to fight in a civil war.

Volodya steadfastly refuses to take anyone’s side. However, in a very important sense, I am certainly on his.

Rob Ferguson visited Ukraine in 2015 during the height of the conflict in the east of Ukraine. He also spent a year in Russia during the first war on Chechnya in the mid 1990s

How can we build an effective anti-war movement?

On 27th February hundreds and thousands demonstrated in Berlin against war, but with contradictory demands. How can this movement win?


05/03/2022

After looking at some discussions among anti-imperialists, I argue that the movement requires an anti-imperialist pole if it is to move forward.

Just how large was the anti-war demonstration on 27th February? The organisers counted 500,000 people. This would make it as large as the great demonstration against the Iraq war in 2003. But that was a national demo – buses came in from Stuttgart, 400 miles away. Last week’s demo was just for Berliners.

Other reports are more conservative, estimating more than a hundred thousand. This is more comparable to the unteilbar demonstration for refugees in 2018. Either way this was a massive mobilisation, which is even more impressive as the coronavirus pandemic continues, and many people are not prepared to take to the streets.

The fact that a massive anti-war movement has emerged, almost spontaneously, shows that millions want to stop Putin’s aggressive warmongering and that this movement is extremely heterogeneous.

Judging from the many home-made placards, there seem to have been at least four groups of people:

(1) people opposing all imperialisms;

(2) people calling for Western intervention;

(3) people solely against Putin (often calling him a Nazi);

(4) people who just want the war to stop.

Group (4) seems to be the largest by far, and group (3) has some support. Groups (1) and (2) are fairly marginal at the moment, but this can change quickly.

Arming the Ukrainian resistance?

Some placards at the demo thanked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for increasing the war budget by €100 billion and sending weapons to Ukraine. This budget increase is unprecedented and commits Germany to spend 2% of the GDP on “defence” (ie the military).

Some people opposing the invasion seem to believe that the Bundeswehr and NATO are benign forces which have the interests of ordinary Ukrainians at heart. It is almost as if the invasion of Iraq and the destabilisation of countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Chile were a mistaken lapse of judgement by this “defensive alliance”.

But isn’t Putin the aggressor this time? Hillary Clinton recently made a comparison of the current crisis with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s: “It didn’t end well for the Russians … but the fact is that a very motivated, and then funded, and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.”

True, writes Ali Abunimah in the Electronic Intifada, but “what Clinton did not mention is that it didn’t end well for the people of Afghanistan either. They have suffered more than 40 years of war, including the 20-year US invasion and occupation. Now the people there are just being left to starve.”

As Wolfgang Streeck argued in the New Left Review: “One thing EU-Europeans, especially those of the Green kind, are currently learning is that if you allow the US to protect you, geopolitics trumps all other politics, and that geopolitics is defined by Washington alone. This is how an empire works.”

German or NATO weapons are not sent without conditions, and any arming of Ukrainian rebels will be inevitably accompanied by an attempt by NATO to gain military and geopolitical influence in the region.

Is Putin a Nazi / madman?

Several placards on the demo compared Putin with Hitler. Similar arguments can be heard in wider society. People as diverse as Ireland’s deputy premier Leo Varadkar and Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks have called Putin a “new Hitler“. Time magazine posted a front cover of Putin with a Hitler moustache.

Try putting “new Hitler“ into a search engine. Apart from Putin, you’ll find results for Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Egypts 1950s president Gamal Abdul Nasser, Muammar Gadaffi, Saddam Hussein, a coach of the Independence Community College football team, and many more.

“New Hitler“ has become shorthand for “anyone who US imperialists are currently targetting. The comparison insinuates that Putin is about to carry out an industrial Holocaust and that his invasion of Ukraine is categorically worse than Saudi Arabia’s similar attacks on Yemen or Israel’s on Palestine.

Others depict Putin as a madman. The Guardian reported Putin’s “bizarre speech“ as being “not rational”. As Jonathan Cook noted sardonically “How convenient for western leaders that every time another country defies the West’s projection of power, the western media can agree on one thing: that the foreign government in question is led by a madman, a psychopath or a megalomaniac.”

Cook goes on: “The subtext … is that something must be done to stop the ‘madman’. And because he is irrational and a megalomaniac, such action must never be framed in terms of concessions or compromise – that would be appeasement, after all. If every enemy is a new Hitler, no western leader will risk a comparison with Neville Chamberlain.”

Arguments within the anti-imperialist movement

As a new movement emerges, there will inevitably be differences of opinion between people who do not share exactly the same analysis of the situation. We discovered this recently, when the  Berlin LINKE Internationals statement against war, (of which, for the sake of transparency, I was one of the many authors). In this sense, I would like to comment on some discussions that are currently troubling our movement.

Peace through Sanctions?

The biggest discussion the LINKE Internationals had was whether we should demand sanctions against Russia. In the end, we could not reach a consensus. Our discussion was probably different to anything else you’d hear on the German left: “BDS calls for sanctions”, went the argument, “so why shouldn’t we call for sanctions of Ukraine?”

One difference is that BDS is a call from Palestinian civil society. In this case, the call for sanctions is coming largely from the West. This is dangerous, as sanctions have tended to be used to enforce imperial power. On the last Spaßbremse podcast, Dominik Leusder called sanctions “a weapon of war – they are often perceived as alternatives to war where in fact they are acts of war themselves.The Geneva International Centre for Justice estimates thataround 1,500,000 Iraqis, primarily children, died as a direct consequence of the imposed sanctions” on Iraq.

Moreover, who will be hit by sanctions? As Leusder explains in Jacobin: “the decline in the ruble’s purchasing power mainly hits Russia’s citizens, who can buy fewer domestic and imported goods with their rubles.” The Left Voice website reports a “economic sanctions increase wealth disparities and further impoverish working-class and poor people”.

Grace Blakeley argues in Tribune that in 2014 sanctions “did have a significant impact on the Russian economy at the time.” And yet, as Yaak Pabst remarks: “Rather than rising up against their president Putin, in 2018 Russia’s people voted Putin back in with a record result.” The effect of the sanctions was rather to bind people with their ruler against a perceived attack from outside.

At the moment, many Russians are rising up against Putin. Thousands of brave people have been arrested. Sanctions could effectively demobilise this inspiring movement.

No Fly Zones

Another idea which is gaining some traction is the imposition of no fly zones. But, as John Molyneux asked on facebook: “Who will enforce the ‘No fly zone’? Obviously NATO or the US. And what happens when they shoot down the first Russian plane or planes? Clearly this is a recipe for all -out war with all its consequences.”

The most recent edition of the Corner Späti podcast read out a letter from a Leftist in Ukraine warning that “measures like opening a no-fly zone would even result in a direct confrontation between Russian and NATO, which as everyone knows, would be a nuclear one.”

Bans of Russian products

Another suggestion is to ban Russian products. This has so far included a university dropping a course on Dostoevsky, an orchestra refusing to play Tchaikovsky, the ban of both Russian and Ukrainian athletes from the Paralympics, Netflix halting an adaptation of Anna Karenina, and the cancellation of a Russian ballet by a UK company with no links to the Russian state.

This is reminiscent of the heat of the Iraq war. When France did not wholeheartedly support the offensive, US-Americans started to rename “French fries“ “freedom fries“. Blaming everything Russian cuts us off from the opposition developing inside Russia.

Opposition to war in Germany

Some significant German organisations and individuals have criticized the massive increase in the military budget. Former trade union leader, now Green MP, Frank Bsirske spoke out against the “armament consensus. JUSOS (SPD youth) leader Jessica Rosenthal opposes “a recovery package for the arms industry.”

The trade union federation, the DGB, issued a statement “Stop war immediately! Ceasefire Now!”, They stated:the sustained increase of the arms budget to fulfil NATO’s goal of 2% is viewed critically by the DGB and the trade unions which comprise the DGB. The urgently necessary investment for the future in social-ecological transformation and in the performance of our welfare state must remain guaranteed.”

The DGB statement is far from perfect, but it can be a basis for organising opposition to Germany’s war drive at the point of production.

An open letter from young activists states“We find the special funds of 100 billion Euros for armament to be the wrong decision – in won’t help people in Ukraine! Even worse: if we plan that more than 2% of the budget should flow each year into the German army, we will soon be living in the third largest military state!”

The German government is using words of peace to endorse its pro-war position, and, until last week, the German anti-war movement was old and largely moribund. The new movement is still finding its feet and striving towards some political clarity. Anyone on the Left should be part of this discussion. The movement must be broad but without an anti-imperialist pole, the movement may fall in behind calls for war against its better judgement.

Let us unite to oppose Putin’s aggression, but not allow ourselves to be pawns for those who want to use our desire for a peaceful world to wage their own wars.

What can we do?

The Ukrainian Leftist cited above asks “citizens of rich western countries to call for the construction of humanitarian corridors in Ukraine to save civilian lives. A negotiated compromise to end the war would be the best solution, but unfortunately this currently seems very unlikely to succeed.”

Networks are developing to help Ukrainian refugees, often organised by Eastern Europeans inside Germany. The least that we can do is to support and promote them, and to raise the call that Western countries accept all refugees, especially the BIPoC who are being systematically denied entry.

It won’t be easy, but as internationalists, we must show solidarity with all genuine grass roots movements around the world, and end the temptation to side with our leaders, who have only ever brought war and poverty.

The newly formed Socialist Against the War Coalition in Russia has published a manifesto which argues: “This country belongs to us, not a handful of distraught old men with palaces and yachts. It is time to take it back. Our enemies are not in Kiev and Odessa, but in Moscow. It is time to kick them out. War is not Russia. War is Putin and his regime. That is why we, Russian socialists and communists are against this criminal war. We want to stop it in order to save Russia.”

Some refugees more welcome than others

Open the borders to all refugees – from Ukraine of course, but also from the Middle East and Africa


03/03/2022

The mobilization against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been inspiring. Tens of thousands organized in solidarity with a people under attack, collecting donations or organizing the transport of refugees. On Sunday, millions took to the streets to demand an end to war and to Russian imperialism. In Berlin, 100,000 people gathered in the city center to not only protest against the war, but to also demand immediate support for those who have to flee their homes.

A few months ago, in November, I was at a protest with a similar purpose. Also gathering at Pariser Platz and going down Unter den Linden, it was attended by a much lower, though by no means insignificant, number of people. This time it was to demand the immediate opening of EU borders for the intake of the thousands of Middle Eastern refugees whom Belarus had weaponized by forcing them to attempt illegal border crossings. At least 21 migrants died in the cold forests at the Polish border. While Poland is now welcoming all those who are allowed to leave Ukraine (with reports, however, of Africans pushed to the back of the queue at “Ukrainian-first” entry points into Poland), thousands of refugees are still stranded at the Belarussian border, not allowed to enter. Polish plans to build a border wall against migrants in the Białowieża Forest are also still in place and still protested by Polish activists.

Indeed, it is difficult to even find information about them in a media landscape understandingly dominated by the invasion of Ukraine. This is one example of a tension in the left’s response to the crisis in Eastern Europe. Calls for solidarity share space with remarks that conflicts, invasions, and imperialist aggressions outside of Europe have rarely received the same amount of attention and mobilization. These should not be competing narratives. Except for a few campists who support Russian aggression as a response to American imperialism, none would argue against unconditional support for the rights of Ukrainians to defend themselves and to find refuge in other countries. As journalist Vincent Bevins wrote in a viral tweet, “Why does the world care so much about Ukraine?” is a harmful, anti-solidaristic question to ask about the current situation. A better one would be “Why doesn’t the world care more about suffering in places like Yemen and Afghanistan?”

Humanitarian aid… is offered more willingly to those who are perceived to be productive capitalist workers (“middle-class”), to those who might be better assimilated without disturbing existing hierarchies (“like us”), and to those who are not racialized as others (“with blue eyes and blond hair”)

Unfortunately, the reason for this was often made explicit in media coverage of the invasion. Reporters have expressed their astonishment at the fact that war was happening in a “relatively civilized” country on the European continent. Although the US and European states have been direct causes of wars in “uncivilized” countries, Western reporters find it difficult to comprehend that militaristic aggression starts from the core of the so-called developed world. In this worldview, campaigns conducted by Western powers in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria are justifiable because they are against “uncivilized” peoples living in uncivilized places. The ideologies covering imperialism and capitalist accumulation have in the past week taken the role of preserving a self-image of a peaceful Europe.

In the case of refugees, this historical and political exceptionalism becomes inscribed on their bodies. It is not only the places that are civilized, but also the people seeking help. They deserve support, it is said, because they are “middle-class” or “like us.” In some cases, the racism is not only implied, but said out loud, with a former deputy prosecutor in Ukraine saying on BBC that the plight of Ukrainian refugees is shocking because they have “blue eyes and blond hair.” The comparison with Middle Eastern refugees is also not just implicit. The Al Jazeera English commentator sympathetic to “middle-class” Ukrainians went on to stress that “these are not, obviously, refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East.” Visegrad 24, a Central European news outlet, regularly tweets statements such as “Not all refugees are equal” or, captioning a picture of a Ukrainian woman with children, “This is how real refugees look like.”

It is essential to understand that this does not mean that all coverage of the Ukraine invasion is pure CIA propaganda badly covering up the fascist reality and that Russia is somehow the anti-imperialist hero of the story. Rather, we are now witnessing, in real time and close proximity, the uneven distribution of who is considered worthy of solidarity. Judith Butler wrote about the Iraq war and about the Guantánamo Bay illegal detention center, arguing that the mechanisms of imperial aggression and the ideologies that sustain them make some lives more grievable than others.

Humanitarian aid is predicated on a liberal universalism. An exclusionary universalism that judges all lives according to the Euroamerican standard. The capacity of European states to aid others, to welcome them into the prosperity created by imperial wars and accumulation, is not unconditional. It is offered more willingly to those who are perceived to be productive capitalist workers (“middle-class”), to those who might be better assimilated without disturbing existing hierarchies (“like us”), and to those who are not racialized as others (“with blue eyes and blond hair”). The wealth of the West is only justifiable if people elsewhere, who are different, are disposable.

That is why the Visegrad 24 Twitter account can tout the humanitarian hospitality of Poland, while arguing that the country has the right to defend its borders against the refugees pushed through Belarus. Some lives are considered to deserve being saved less than others, and some people are considered to deserve being here less than others. Saying this without weakening our claims to solidarity with the Ukrainian people may be a difficult rhetorical task. But we should not give up on saying it. As we should not ignore the outrageous increase in German military funding (which also caused the stocks of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall to go up 40% on Monday), even though we encourage support for Ukrainian defense efforts. As we should not ignore the violently Islamophobic video of Azov Battalion soldiers shared by the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian National Guard, even though we find Putin’s claims to “denazify” Ukraine to be themselves merely fascist pretenses.

There is no contradiction in acknowledging, at the same time, that there is rampant racism in Eastern Europe manifesting in the differential admission of refugees. That the Ukrainian people are the victims of imperialist aggression and deserve our unreserved support and help. We should care about Ukraine, and we should care about the Ukrainian people. If now is not the right time to question hypocrisy, when is? We should also take this chance to question why we have cared less about the suffering of others.