TOM EATON | SA, where it’s fine to call out a foe’s aggression, but defend that of a friend

In the week since Russia invaded Ukraine, a clearer picture has started emerging of why so many people who profess to care about social justice continue to repeat Vladimir Putin’s talking points and tacitly or explicitly support his war.

Of course, people have many reasons for endorsing war over peace, the least hypocritical perhaps being that they are making a killing from the killing.

On Tuesday, Open Secrets tweeted: “In profiting from military news ... [arms manufacturer] Thales’ share price is up about 20% since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” It was a useful reminder of General Smedley Butler’s famous observation that war is a “racket”, “the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives”.

Shilling for the military-industrial complex under the pretext of offering commentary, likewise, is an ancient and ignoble tradition. If you’ve been on social media this week you would probably have seen a Washington Post headline from 2014: “In the long run, wars make us safer and richer.” Yes, satire is dead.

Of course, perpetual war has been a huge money-spinner for the US, but paid-for war porn certainly isn’t limited to major powers. Even down here in our little backwater, the pimps get paid for punting, or at least defending, state violence.

On Wednesday Iqbal Surve’s IOL carved another four-letter word on his legacy, publishing a story via Russia’s state-run Sputnik news service that parroted Putin’s claim that Russia was involved in a “special operation to demilitarise and ‘denazify’ Ukraine in response to calls for help from the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics to defend them from intensifying attacks by Ukrainian forces”, adding that “the civilian population is not in danger”.

(In case anyone hadn’t got the message loudly and clearly enough, the piece repeated the above quote verbatim three paragraphs later.)

It's been startling to see how many apparently left-leaning folk concerned with social justice are happy to repeat the rationale of the abuser: 'I warned you. I didn’t want to do this. But you pushed and pushed and pushed, and now look what you made me do.'

Propaganda is very clear about its methods and objectives, but a great deal of the support for Russia, or at least a reluctance to condemn it, also seems to be the result of muddled, binary thinking.

Consider, for example, the widespread argument that Russia has invaded Ukraine because it feels threatened by Nato’s relentless encroachment eastward towards its border.

Now, it is obviously true that Russia has a right to be concerned by Nato’s eastward spread, just as the US would have the right to be fearful if Russia formed a military alliance with Canada and Mexico and started moving troops and missiles into Toronto and Tijuana.

It is not true, however, that this anxiety gives Russia the right to invade anyone. If feeling threatened were a legal and valid justification for attacking another country, you would have to argue that Japan was entirely justified in attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941 and that apartheid SA acted sensibly and justly by sending troops to Angola.

And yet that is the gist of what I’m seeing from any otherwise liberal people. It’s been startling to see how many apparently left-leaning folk concerned with social justice are happy to repeat the rationale of the abuser: “I warned you. I didn’t want to do this. But you pushed and pushed and pushed, and now look what you made me do.”

Further to the political right, I’ve seen Putin hailed as a defender of “traditional” or “family” values, both of which have become dog-whistles for homophobia. To many conservatives alarmed by modernity, Putin isn’t a despot running a gangster state: he is a defender of a mythical, old-world masculinity, harking back to a time when men were men, riding bareback and shirtless, adored and idolised by woman.

The irony here, of course, is that Eastern Europe as a whole is infamously homophobic. Attitudes seem to be shifting slowly in Ukraine, but it remains overwhelmingly opposed to same-sex marriage, and same-sex households still don’t share many of the rights and protections of opposite-sex couples. Just two years ago, a prominent Eastern Orthodox cleric, Patriarch Filaret, told his followers in Kyiv that Covid-19 was God’s punishment for same-sex marriages. (He didn’t have an explanation for why he tested positive for the virus later in the year, but then again, God works in mysterious ways.)

Once, the enemy of my enemy was my friend. Now, whatever annoys people who disagree with me is truth. And even if it isn’t true, it must be repeated, because annoying my critics is better than being right.

Clearly, those who believe Putin is fighting a war against an LGBTQI menace have simply picked the bigger bigot. Still, it remains absurd and nauseating to realise that there are people in the US and Europe and SA who are happy to see Ukrainians killed to soothe their own terror of LGBTQI people in their own countries.

Profit; toxic patriarchy; bigotry: all of these are ancient motives. But the final one feels very modern: the crude, schoolyard logic of “owning the Libs”.

To be fair, this one’s origins are perhaps the most ancient of all: the primordial belief that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Certainly, I’ve seen a lot of it in SA, where many ANC and EFF supporters have a deep-rooted suspicion of or hatred for the US. Since the US is the largest power condemning Russia, these people feel compelled to support Russia, which is how we’re seeing the bizarre spectacle of South Africans denouncing US aggression and imperialism, while simultaneously defending Russian aggression and imperialism.

That ancient formula, however, has evolved into something much more pervasive, infecting not only how we see other countries, but how we see each other. Once, the enemy of my enemy was my friend. Now, whatever annoys people who disagree with me is truth. And even if it isn’t true, it must be repeated, because annoying my critics is better than being right.

Donald Trump was a master of this tactic, turning liberal condemnation into votes and millions of dollars. He didn’t even have to believe what he was saying. All that mattered was how angry it made the liberals.

Remember those two men at a Trump rally in 2018 wearing T-shirts that said “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat”? Well. There you have it.

Like I said, satire is dead.