The communist mentality towards a just, revolutionary war is that this war must be brought to its conclusion. That once you enter into a conflict with the oppressors, it would be betrayal to back out of that fight while you still have the option to fight. Such is the position of Russia’s predominant communist forces, and of all the global communists who share their principled belief in the anti-fascist struggle. We within this ideological camp are upholding the resistance philosophy articulated by Mao, who said: “We desire peace. However, if imperialism insists on fighting a war, we will have no alternative but to take the firm resolution to fight to the finish before going ahead with our construction. If you are afraid of war day in day out, what will you do if war eventually comes?”
It’s this reality about political struggle that all anti-imperialists must grasp. It’s a way of thinking that comes from studying dialectical materialism, and through involving oneself with the class struggle; because when your goal is to win victory for the workers, it becomes apparent that wars can’t be avoided. That as long as there’s a class which seeks to prevent the workers from gaining power, new wars will arise, so therefore those on the side of the workers must be willing to persist in fighting. “Revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society,” said Mao, “and without them it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power.”
The fight that Russia entered into over three years ago is a continent-wide version of these social conflicts. It’s not just a war to rescue an oppressed nation—that being the Donbass—but a fight whose outcome will determine the future of the global proletarian struggle. That Russia’s bourgeois government got successfully pressured into undertaking the Ukraine operation is a major victory for the Russian workers movement, which had long been mobilizing to bring about intervention against Ukraine’s Nazi state. And should Russia’s Operation Z end Ukraine’s era of Banderite rule, this will strengthen the proletarian cause all around the globe, irrevocably weakening the schemes of global monopoly capital.
There are elements of my country’s communist movement that have worked to obscure these realities, and to promote a false narrative about this being an “inter-imperialist war.” But they are not the main U.S. political actors who I seek to confront at this point, because their ultra-left ideological camp has lost the relevance it had during the Biden era. At this stage, a more important element to confront is the one that supports the anti-imperialist position on a surface level, while lacking a class analysis. That cheers for Z, multipolarity, and BRICS, while not understanding that these things can only defeat the hegemon if they have a serious workers movement behind them.
This is a relatively niche group, and one whose members certainly shouldn’t be dismissed; they’ve already managed to get quite far in breaking from imperialist indoctrination. But the danger is that by merely taking on a “multipolarist” position, while not internalizing the essential lessons which Marxism provides, they’ll be led into a complacency. A complacency that comes from expecting BRICS to do the work for us, and not seeing the urgency of building up our international workers movement.
This has become such a risk because there is a concerted effort to divert anti-imperialists in such a way. To astroturf a network of “dissident” or “alternative” media sources which claim to support BRICS, while putting forth deliberate falsehoods. Falsehoods that are designed to instill hubris among those who stand with the anti-imperialist cause. Two of the biggest examples are BRICS News and Globe Eye News, which regularly get boosted by Twitter’s algorithm and thereby reach millions of viewers.
What these sources mainly do is track the diplomatic and military progress of countries that are inside of or aligned with BRICS, but that are subservient towards the hegemon; BRICS News recently posted about how India’s Prime Minister Modi praised Russia’s air defense cooperation efforts, and both accounts have recently been emphasizing Trump’s efforts to strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Something that’s really given away the true agenda behind these accounts is how they’ve praised Trump for lifting sanctions on Syria’s U.S.-installed Salafist regime, with these statements illustrated by images of Trump and the new Syrian president standing next to Gulf dictators.
When you look at the surrounding events, it becomes clear what these accounts are trying to do: provide PR for the Trump White House’s geopolitical pivot, wherein Washington seeks to make Russia back into a U.S. client state through diplomatic strong-arming. This scheme involves an effort to strengthen relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council, letting the White House sell the illusion that it’s doing something substantial to bring peace for Gaza. Washington aims to do this by leaning into the notion that the Gulf states are allies of the Palestinians, and that through their efforts, the negotiations with Hamas will be brought towards a solution which pleases everyone.
As outrageous as that sounds when phrased so plainly, this is seriously the idea Trump seeks to push; it’s really the only narrative he can use when his goal is to keep assisting Zionism’s genocidal campaign, while portraying himself as a heroic peace-making figure.
Sure enough, Globe Eye News has uncritically reported this last week’s rumor about Trump planning to recognize a Palestinian state. When a “Gulf diplomatic source” started this rumor, the purpose behind it wasn’t just to placate Trump’s base; arguably its biggest function was to try to draw Russia, or at least those who support Russia, into Washington’s trap.
Aside from India-Pakistan, the Zionist entity’s genocide against Palestine is the global event with the most potential to make Russia switch its geopolitical allegiance. There’s a wing of Russia’s ruling class that would be willing to totally sell out Palestine, and stop all Russian efforts at challenging the entity. It’s the same wing that wants to go along with the White House’s “peace” plan, which would mean Russia ceasing its progress in the war and letting NATO re-arm Ukraine.
When the empire and its proxies put forth psyops like “Trump will recognize Palestine,” the goal is to make the White House’s strategy for maintaining U.S. hegemony look compatible with the world’s desire for an end to the Gaza genocide. To create the illusion that capitalism’s contradictions can be resolved through means which don’t involve war, and that there can be a “peace” between the different social classes; even when those classes are the Palestinians who are living in a death camp, and the “Israeli” colonizers who are exterminating them.
As many communists have observed, Donbass is Gaza. It’s a victim of subjugation and aggression that would have come to resemble the Gaza of today, if not for Russia’s intervention against the Kiev Nazi junta. Unsurprisingly, there is a connection between what Russia did to save Donbass, and what the Palestinian resistance did on October 7; when Russia exposed the hegemon’s new strategic weaknesses, that encouraged the Palestinian fighters to act as well. This is just one of the ways Z accelerated the progress of the anti-imperialist struggle; it catalyzed an expansion of BRICS, and helped inspire the Sahel’s recent anti-colonial revolutions. It also gave the globe’s communists an opportunity to make new gains in the class struggle; an opportunity which is being taken advantage of by all the communist parties that understand their task.
There is no going back to the way the world was before February 2022, and that’s why the liberal pro-appeasement capitalists within Russia can’t effectively argue their case. For the foreseeable future, their side has lost the policy debate; Russia keeps rejecting Washington’s insulting offer for a temporary “ceasefire” that would resolve nothing, and only give the imperialists more time to recover. Within Russia, and within many aspects of BRICS, we are seeing hopeful signs. But we cannot pretend that these sources of hope simply came into being due to the inevitable course of history. These gains came from popular struggle, and from collective organization.
Z would not have happened if not for the class struggle. And all of the positive future outcomes which Z may produce will only come about if we put in the work to bring proletarian victory. We have no time to waste; we must speed up our efforts to build the workers movement in all of our respective countries. And we must strengthen the global anti-imperialist united front, which is essential for the victory of the Palestinians, the Russians, the Yemenis, and all others who are fighting the enemy.
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