When Anti-War is Pro-Aggressor

 

The “Rage Against The War Machine” rally if it had occurred in 1941: pic.twitter.com/HIBMMvxurX

— emilio “#StandWithUkraine” vigil 🇺🇦 (@emiliovigil5) February 19, 2023

I genuinely don't think war is great, I don't. It's a brutal, stupid waste of resources and life. It is never the best solution to human difficulties, and only serves to create more problems and misery than whatever unfortunate situation supposedly brought it about. That said, every person at the "Rage Against the War Machine" rally except for journalists and counter-protesters are goddamn dumbfucks, grifters, clueless babies and Russian operatives, and they can go get fucked. And I mean that with all the love and sincerity I can muster.

If anyone purports to be from the so-called left and rallies with a backdrop of Russian flags and shares a venue with pretend-reformed neo-Nazis, wow. Sucks to be you. It's sad that back when a lot of us who were whole adults 20 years ago and were against the US invasion of Iraq we were also looking up to Dennis Kucinich and Scott Ritter, but we know a whole lot more now that we did then. Ditto Madea Benjamin. (I've got no dirt on her background, she's just a clueless peacenik who thinks Putin is a reasonable person who can be negotiated with and that people who tell her differently are warmongers for thinking sovereign nations should be able to defend themselves. In short, she should also get fucked for not using the brain she was gifted with.)

Anyway, it's hard to say folks are anti-war when they seem to have picked a side:

And by picked a side, I mean support absolutely everything Vladimir Putin could possibly want:

No more US military aid to Ukraine, negotiate "peace", stop the war "inflation". disband NATO, global nuclear de-escalation, slash the Pentagon budget, abolish the CIA and military industrial Deep State, abolish war and empire, restore civil liberties, and, my whole entire god in his heaven, free Julian Assange. 

I can get why some of this list is appealing to people, I seriously do. But the parts that are appealing are there to make dummies think the rest of it isn't dogshit. And people should seriously consider just who the shitty excuses for spokepersons are who are trying to deliver this pablum.

Take Tulsi Gabbard--actually US military. Anti-war? Weird, right? Even people on the vague left anti-war side know she's dodgy.  Is she an asset, like Hillary Clinton might have implied? I don't know, but I can see how others construe her actions that way. I only know that if you show up on Tucker Carlson on the regular to badmouth the country you swore to serve twice-over and support election denialists to stir up shit in the homeland you can fuck off forever. 

Take Ron Paul--an old school isolationist? Yeah but, his grandson-in-law got busted for laundering Russian money through the  Trump campaign, so, it makes you wonder, right? 

Anyhow, I went through the funny old list of participants and thought for the life of me how much I want them all to fuck off. Max Blumenthal, who I once thought did really good work on stuff like his books, Republican Gomorrah and Goliath, and then went really weird. Like how do you kind of reject Greyzone-ish pro-Syria regime by at first thinking pro-Assad shit is horrific to being rah rah Greyzone let's back Seymour Hersh's batshit reporting on Syria (and now Russia)?  And be this guy? (And about Seymour Hersh, as always, I can't always factcheck him, but I have more shade than Hades for what he's doing.)  Some folks think a trip to Moscow was involved. 

Or Chris Hedges, of Russia Today? Who went on about "useful idiots" in 2016 and supported Jill Stein and never appreciated the irony? And does this idiot Putin-propaganda fellating shit right now? Little glasses, big balls there, fella. (PS, they are putting "useful idiot" right out there because they know some folks are stupid enough to go "Yerp, that's them not me!".) Or Jill Stein herself, late of Putin's table which she shared with Mike Flynn in days gone by, who has the smile of a person who knows her 100% natural crystal deodorant has failed in a crowded place but thinks no one is on to her. 

It was a pro-Putinist clusterfuck, thinly attended by actual anti-war standards, but the talking points seen here will be bubbling up among Putin's lil' GOP friends, like Greene and Gaetz. And maybe people will disregard the conspiracy theorist contingent, the LaRoucheites (fascists upon fascists). And just think wow. Why do so many people not want peace and not want to free truth teller Julian Assange? 

Sigh. Russia doesn't want to stop genociding Ukraine (which is exactly what they are doing) but they might want a breather to stop losing their personnel for a minute, though. And Julian Assange leaks a little too much to the Western bias, and hardly ever leaks Russian shit. We've known what he is. 

Anti-war for Ukraine is pro-genocide and pro-war crime. Even if sparsely-attended, this rally was an abomination, and we don't ever want to forget where pro-Putin talking points are percolating up from, when they will be voiced by Ron Johnson or Marjorie Taylor Greene. And we should properly recognize those that voice them as not being isolationist or anti-war but opposed to democracy and the American way.  Because I believe you call a thing by its right name if you want to call it out.