My Reflections on Ukraine
News Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
The unique threat of right-wing nationalism on steroids takes center stage — and it’s a horror show.
Good morning! Today is Tuesday, March 1, and you are reading today’s section of Examiner+, a digital newsmagazine serving Westchester, Putnam, and the surrounding Hudson Valley.
I don’t know about you, but doubts regularly creep into my mind over my own views.
If my bent is slightly different today than when I was younger and different from the shape it’ll take in older age, how much faith can I possibly assign to my current perspective?
If my opinions, like everyone’s opinions, are molded by coincidental factors like where I grew up, the sensibilities of my parents and grandparents, and, say, the last mood-tweaking song I overheard this morning, along with infinite other prejudicing factors, it seems reasonable to cast doubt on my own objectivity, if there is such a thing — which there isn’t — when analyzing this, that, or the other thing.
But, when it comes to politics, there is a general principle I apply to stress test my ideological starting point, and the test always reveals a durability in that starting point — one that gives that starting point a unique place in my thinking. A place that (unlike other views I hold) shows this particular view, in my mind, as abidingly correct, even true, as opposed to just another one of my flimsy opinions at risk of evolving tomorrow or next year, or next decade, or ever.
That view (and I’m not going out on any limbs here) says far right-wing extremism poses a moral and mortal threat to our world unlike any other threat, even while stipulating the bloody danger of far-left ideology run amuck, from Castro’s Cuba to Stalin’s Russia to Kim’s twisted North Korea. (I can’t stress this enough. Left-wing extremism, to state the obvious, is fatal).
Tragically, the unique nature of right-wing-style nationalism on steroids and what it looks like at its near ugliest is on horrifying, vivid display with Vladimir Putin’s planet-shaking, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. (All the while acknowledging how Putin isn’t a traditional righty, from, say, an economic standpoint).
The world’s most prominent right-wingers have been Putin lapdogs and fanboys for years, salivating over the king of all strongmen. You don’t have to just look at wannabe-tough-guy-Trump and his cringy bromance with Putin. After all, the former NBC make-believe TV business titan is an empty vessel. There’s no passionate, deeply felt ideological underpinning that fuels his crass rhetoric.
It’s more informative to look at right-wing world leaders and politicians who trumpet deeply considered (and often dangerous) populist views, now caught in a bind for lavishing years of unadulterated praise upon Putin.
Whether Marine Le Pen in France, Nigel Farage in Britain, or Matteo Salvini in Italy, to name just a few, the worldwide right-wing thought leaders are twisting themselves in pretzels to explain away past unvarnished praise of Putin and their prior claims that the Russian imperialistic threat was a kooky, misinformed nightmare scenario concocted by globalist fools.
Granted, being the son of a Holocaust survivor positions far right-wing hate prominently in my thinking. But as a moderate with a clear leftward tilt based on today’s terms, there are myriad ways to examine which general worldview, even over just the course of our brief American history, reveals itself as the loser of every great debate.
(My family is all too personally familiar with the dangers of extreme thinking on the left and right, with aunts and uncles murdered in the Holocaust and later a business seized and freedom strangled by communist rulers in Budapest. As Russian ground military entered Ukraine last week, my father was reminded and shook by the memory of hunkering down on the floor of his family’s apartment in 1956 as Russian tanks rolled into Budapest).
So back to the aforementioned stress test: If given truth serum, does anyone really doubt which side of history, say, Donald Trump’s political ancestors reside? It’s too easy to forget the incredible progress we have made in this country, winning hearts and minds against those populist ancestors.
Even with all of our divisive contemporary squabbles, we have gained consensus in a few key areas over the past couple hundred years. Slavery outlawed. Women winning the vote. Civil rights broadly embraced. It might take another half-century, but I suspect similar conclusions will eventually be reached across the entire American political mainstream, left and right, in regard to LGBTQ issues — we’re immensely closer than we even were in the 2008 Democratic primary when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both opposed gay marriage. We know who has been right about every existential fight for the soul of this country over the past almost 250 years. That’s evidence enough for me in stress testing my biases against the virtues of my allergy to right-wing politics.
But what does this have to do with Ukraine?
It’s about the root of the problem: a brand of far right-wing thinking that elevates nationality over humanity, machismo over safety, and violence over diplomacy. Imperial domination over the lives of innocent men, women, and children.
Beating back against that particular fascist tendency was at the heart of a statement local Congressman Jamaal Bowman issued last week.
In recent years, the right has openly and proudly mocked the importance of embracing desperate refugees, thinking of the care in abstract terms, blinded by the brownness of the need. Thankfully for the embattled and courageous Ukrainians, white war-torn refugees enjoy far wider and righteous support.
“I vigorously condemn Russian imperialism and fascism,” the Yonkers Democrat remarked. “I am committed to supporting the Biden administration in holding Putin and his oligarchs accountable and in caring for the inevitable refugees who will need the international community to open its doors.”
None of Putin’s demonic behavior should have come as an impossible to forecast shock. It’s hard to avoid feeling skeptical of right-wing world leaders voicing total surprise and bewilderment at Putin’s aggression.
“Prior to the most recent escalations, Putin’s unchecked imperialism in the Donbas region has resulted in more than 14,000 deaths and forced more than 1.5 million to flee their homes,” Bowman reminds us.
It feels relevant to point out how Bowman legislates from the left side of American politics, to my left included. Think AOC, not Obama. Think Teddy Kennedy’s liberalism, not Bill Clinton’s triangulation.
But in every era, there are fundamental issues we’re debating. It’s essential to prioritize. Perhaps in prior moments, the central fight was over the size and scope of domestic government spending. At least for now, the most important debate we’re having in America and across the world is about kindness versus brutality, empathy versus xenophobia, unity versus nationalism, and, yes, tolerance versus racism.
It feels really easy in 2022 to be on the right side of history across a broad swath of fundamental debates.
Not just in Russia, but across the world, and right here at home, it’s just so incredibly simple to see who the good guys are and who the bad actors are in the inevitable future movies about today’s political stage.
It’s always good to challenge your own preconceptions. But it’s also comforting to know which preconceptions have unambiguously and rightfully earned their unbudging place in our thinking.
Unified worldwide condemnation in word and deed of not just Putin but what he more broadly embodies will be vital to supporting the Ukrainians.
Amidst all the horror, it’s been encouraging in recent days to see some of that sentiment emerge. Here’s to more of that.
Pray for the armed men, women, and even little boys and girls firing the guns of peace, fighting bravely against all odds for their lives and their country, and against the tyranny of imperialism, nationalism, and greed.
Love trumps hate. Of that, I’m sure.
Adam Stone is the publisher of Examiner Media. When not running local news outlets or chauffeuring his children, Stone can be found on the tennis courts at Mt. Kisco’s Leonard Park, on his Ipad playing chess, or on the floor cleaning after his two dogs.
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