Wow this conversation is really something.

1. WSWS is actually garbage, as a trotskyist we think these people are cranks. Gotta respect the hustle, their magazine has a far reach and they aren’t 1000% terrible. But a friend of mine claims that the closest he’s ever come to being the victim of political violence was at a WSWS convention.

2. Ukraine actually banned all their left wing political parties and it wasn’t actually because of Russian ties. Not saying the ties didnt exist in this instance, or in other instances, but it isnt evidence of complete ideological corruption by Russia of the far left. Denial of Nazi influence and Banderist militias is a denial of history. The Maidan revolution was a US backed operation, the US knowingly and explicitly funded Far right Nazi militias for years in the lead up to this conflict. The US baited Russia into Ukraine hoping for a protracted war to weaken them and their anti US influence. The associations are plain and not just Russian propaganda. Ukraine has always had a Nazi problem, as many countries, including the US, also do. And why not? Nazis are frothing violent nationalists who hate communism and socialism. So to the western imperialists, Nazis are and have been useful for decades, and explicitly in the Ukraine since 2014, but not just since the Russian invasion.

However,

3. The invasion of Ukraine is actually terrible the Ukrainian people don’t deserve to be the victims of Russian invasion and deepening capitalist corruption. Its not a left wing position to be on the side of invaders! I know a few Ukrainian Americans who were active and capable in the left wing who stopped organizing because of peoples delusional and toxic attitudes around these conflicts. If someone makes a political analysis that most Ukrainian people are Nazis, they are only doing so to dehumanize them, so that their suffering can be dismissed.

I understand the position of US defeatism, and probably strategically agree with it. But like communists are supposed to be better analysts, we don’t base our analysis on whatever the opposite of our enemies say, we are supposed to ground our conclusions in historical circumstances, material relations, and by uniting objective fact with subjective truth. A popular front with Russia is a losing proposal, and progressive liberals are more correct for opposing it. But the facts are in, the Ukrainians were done dirty by “the west” long before the Russians invaded. They don’t deserve an invasion, and they don’t deserve to have their economy raided and they don’t deserve to have the far right funded by the US and its allies, and their left wing dismantled by the corrupt Ukrainian government, who is not made just by a just defensive war, if in fact it can be accurately called that. Like in some ways yes, but other ways no, and still others it is very unclear.

Liberals should learn more history and Commies should actually learn dialectical materialism instead of abandoning it for disasterous popular frontism.