What have you done for Ukraine/Ukrainians lately? Offering a postcard as thanks.

Ukraine is fascist. Are you re-evaluating and coming to love the Arrow Cross too?

This is a lovely idea, but the lack of response doesn’t seem terribly surprising; posting anything would feel like an ego trip, a demand for applause (as well as a postcard). Certainly no one with any sort of self-awareness is going to want to go first – this might almost be an experiment in social psychology…

I’m going to side-step this by talking about something that really isn’t very much about me, but is rather inspiring: the Brew For Ukraine initiative. Very soon after the invasion, a craft brewery in Lviv – and you could take it as evidence of a Western orientation in Ukraine that there are craft breweries in the first place – called Pravda Beer Theatre had to stop production; via social media, they made their recipes and artwork freely available, and asked brewers across the world to brew their beer as a fund-raising activity. By early April over four hundred brewers had signed up, mostly from the US – granted, this figure does include home brewers like me, brewing a single 5-gallon batch – and they’ve raised over 40,000 EUR. Updates at https://www.facebook.com/groups/369756971660877/.

It’s been fascinating for me to see the recipes and how they vary from regular styles (the touch of smoked malt in the imperial stout, for example, echoing Baltic porters). The frustrating thing has been the impossibility of trying any of them apart from my own, as it’s all incredibly local, and the only places doing mail order seem to be in the States – so, all I can suggest is that you do keep an eye out for local beer festivals or the like. There is a different beer-related initiative (https://drinkersforukraine.com/#SOLIDARITY-BREW), with brewers producing a beer to a newly-created recipe; I remain to be convinced by the idea of stout with beetroot – but since a local brewery is doing this (Gyle 59 in Thorncombe, Dorset) I will at least have the chance to find out. The webpage has a list of participating breweries across the world.

My own brew has now matured in barrel and is ready for bottling, then to be distributed in return for donations. I fear the logistics of sending this beyond my bit of the West Country would be prohibitively expensive…

Here’s something important anybody can do, in addition to donating, helping refugees and so on:

Publish comments in comment forums (like blogs, social media, media web sites …) to counter the pro-Putin trolls and apologists. They are still out there in force, working relentlessly. Don’t ever underestmate them. It is hard and often depressing work but it’s important to not leave the social media discourse to the fascists and their apologists.

As an example, NYTimes published a disturbing article with the absurd title “America’s road to the Ukraine war”, as if the and not Russia US had gone on a road to war. The comment editors almost exclusively publish comments from Putin apologists. I know because I have been trying for hours to publish a comment slightly critical of the NYT framing. NYT editors consistently make sure no such criticism gets published. It is really important to push back against these propaganda efforts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/us/politics/russia-ukraine-diplomacy.html

“Ukraine is fascist”

“What I find more disturbing is that this denazification narrative turns into an operational concept for the troops on the ground, and that’s very, very worrying. I mean, we already see what it leads to because once the troops perceive the situation as a battle against Nazis, they start doing what they were doing in Bucha. They were trying to purge, to purify, to clean the land from the Nazis. And since Ukrainians have resisted, it obviously implies that they, too, seem to be nazified. Therefore soldiers have to denazify them completely, meaning purges. …
We heard about those crazy ideas, the ideas of the Nazis in Ukraine and Nazis in the government, but it never took such a terrible turn until now. It never was like, We have to purify the whole 40 million people near us. This is a Nazi vision of national purity, of attaining the purity of a whole nation through force.”
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/04/depoliticized-authoritarianism

Today’s fascists are calling their victims fascist in order to render political categories meaningless, but fascism is not a meaningless category. It’s right before our eyes, threatening the world as gravely as it did last century. No pasaran!

In the spirit of trying to stay on topic (something I find increasingly tricky with age!), in addition to ramping up my usual donations to MSF and opening up my home, I’ve also increased my volunteering efforts at my local foodbank (long planned due to the increasing crises in the UK, and though not directly related it does also help support our local refugees). I’ve followed the kind suggestions of my Ukrainian and Russian colleagues regarding donations of clothing (as well as appropriate food and medical supplies), and fortunately my institue is already prioritising assisting refugees. I will also continue (as I have done for the last couple of decades) lending my voice (such as it is) in pressuring the government to adopt a humanitarian approach to refugees (I’m not particularly hopeful due to past experience, but we can but try).

Probably there is more I can do, so certainly I’m hoping this thread will provide useful suggestions – thanks to Eszter for opening up the topic.

MFB: I trust you are not a pacifist (correct me if I’m wrong). So your position is that Ukraine is the only country in the world that does not have a right to self-defense against imperialist aggression. Why exactly is that? Because Putin says so?

Thomas P @15: being perhaps a little older than you, I know a great deal about humanity’s capacity for evil. But I don’t connect it all, or even mostly, to the war on terror. And of the examples you give, I can’t see how the undoubted atrocities in Yemen or Myanmar are remotely connected to the War on Terror. I’m not sure what major atrocities in Palestine you mean, but the minor ones I know about are orders of magnitude slighter and, again, unconnected with the WoT. Many of those in Iraq or Afghanistan seem to be due to the other side.

I would add, within living memory, atrocities in Tigray, Sudan, East Pakistan, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Colombia, Argentina and so forth (I’m sure I’ve missed several) that had nothing at all to do with the WoT. Not to mention a few things largely outside living memory in Nazi or Soviet territories, or in Japanese occupied Asia. Or in previous centuries, across the globe.

But I do try not to remain desensitised: and I realise that the USA is not the sole source of evil.

Stephen, I gave a number of examples, and didn’t mean to imply all of them were connected to the war on terror or that the list was complete. Yemen does have a connection since both AQ and IS has been operating from there.

Palestine may be a conflict in slow motion, but it has been going on for a very long time, and a few thousand here and a few thousand there adds up.

USA is certainly not the only source of evil, but it is the Rollo Tomasi of the world, the one nation that always get away with it, and at the same time largely gets to decide who is good and bad in the rest of the world. (Like with Israel, where USA has decided that Israel are the good and those who fight the occupation are terrorists).