Lenin’s Tomb blogger Richard Seymour, having quit in less than a year both the Socialist Workers Party and the International Socialist Network, has become something of a far-left boll weevil (“Just lookin’ for a home”).
Now he has come under attack by Stop the War Coalition vice president, Communist Party of Britain member and USSR-nostalgist Andrew Murray for daring to challenge Head Stopper Lindsey German’s one-sided version of the recent events in Ukraine, and to suggest that the US and the EU were not the only guilty parties.
Murray wrote:
Of course, the idea that the situation in the Ukraine is multi-faceted and hence complex is true, and this should not be a ”barrier to understanding”. But nor should it be a barrier to action. Seymour risks analysis-as-paralysis, since his arguments would leave the anti-war movement with maybe two-and-a-half choices. First, sit this one out. Second, join the Henry Jackson Institute [sic], Nick Cohen, Harry’s Place and sundry Bandera-ites* in a demonstration outside the Russian Embassy. Or, as a variation on the second position, follow the AWL’s inspiring example of 1999 and go on a demonstration against western intervention in Yugoslavia and then leave it to join a simultaneous demonstration for western intervention.
I don’t know anything about what the AWL did in 1999, but I’ve seen no indication that the STWC plans any sort of action on Ukraine– although Lindsey German has grudgingly conceded: “I oppose foreign military intervention in other people’s countries. I therefore do not agree with Russian military intervention in Ukraine.” As weak as this is, it’s more critical than anything she would ever say about a Hamas or Hezbollah attack against Israel.
Murray finds laughable the idea of the STWC joining Harry’s Place and others for a demonstration outside the Russian embassy. I find it laughable too, because if I had anything to say about it, the demonstrations would not be at the Russian embassy but rather at the offices of British politicians who refuse to support tough sanctions against Russian financial and business interests, and at the offices of lawyers and brokers who help grease the wheels for Putin’s wealthy friends.
*I was unfamiliar with the term Bandera-ites, but I suppose it’s a reference to a Ukrainian nationalist who both collaborated with and was imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II, and was poisoned to death by the KGB in 1959.