(Howie, at left, is addressing North Texas Greens in Denton, Texas, in 2019, and not, surprisingly, the Council on Foreign Relations or some Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ Harvards.)
I missed when this started in January, but I'm still weighing in.
Howie is a founder or cofounder of the Ukraine Solidarity Network. Interestingly, though he, and Margaret Flowers, have repeatedly urged the West to judge China "on Chinese terms" on things like the slave labor and cultural genocide — I did NOT say "genocide," pseudoleftists! — of the Uyghurs, she did not cosign this piece of bullshit. (I totally called them out on cosigning Xi Jinping's bullshit.) I guess she thought it was a Potemkin bridge too far. (I do love mangling metaphors.)
I saw it when I saw "Green Party" trending on Twitter a week ago. Turns out, a lot of it was about the British Green Party, but the top tweet in the list for me was Ajamu Baraka calling out Howie over this.
I quote-tweeted Baraka and said that Hawkins and Draitser should both read or listen to some Norman Finkelstein, who says good leftists don't have to apologize for Russia fighting a war of self-defense. Baraka then referred to Angela Merkel's use of the Minsk Accords as a stall tactic, and other things related to that, which I've covered here.
Draitser, I discussed about a year ago. I later noted he's gotten pushback within Counterpunch, over his review of a book on the war by Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies.
From that CP link, I'm going to quote, because it applies just as much to Hawkins and his Ukraine Solidarity Network:
The review begins by accusing Benjamin and Davies of presenting a one-dimensional view of the war that is too close to the official Russian narrative used to justify the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Draitser scores some points here; this history, strongly influenced by the authors’ opposition to the role of the U.S. and NATO in helping create the conditions for the conflict and then escalating it, ignores certain complexifying facts and tends to relieve Putin of all responsibility for the invasion. But he does not advocate a shared responsibility for the conflict and a shared duty to end it. His conclusion (which he labels a “sound leftist position”) is that Ukraine needs to win the war and the Russians need to lose it.
Eric may be right to allege that the Ukraine conflict is more than an “easily understood proxy war,” but whatever other factors may be involved in this conflict, it is a proxy war by definition. Eight years of civil warfare in the Russian-speaking Donbas provinces are not simply the result of some demonic Putin plot.
In any event, this is not the main reason anti-war radicals call for peace negotiations. They do so not only because Russia has legitimate security interests that the U.S. and NATO have refused to recognize, but also because seeking a “victory” by the Zelensky regime is likely to kill hundreds of thousands more people, turn Ukraine into a bombed-out desert, and generate escalatory spirals.
The key questions, it seems to me, are how to end this ghastly, increasingly destructive war, to guarantee Ukraine’s long-run independence and security, and to establish a sustainable basis for peaceful relations between Russia, the U.S., and Europe. Advocating a Ukrainian “victory” by any means necessary does not answer these questions even if the advocacy is dressed in the language of self-determination. Negotiations – the sooner the better – are urgently needed.
There you are.
Or, let's reference John Pilger's piece in Counterpunch recently.
In 2014, neo Nazis played a key role in an American bankrolled coup against the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was accused of being ‘pro-Moscow’. The coup regime included prominent ‘extreme nationalists’ — Nazis in all but name.
At first, this was reported at length by the BBC and the European and American media. In 2019, Time magazine featured the ‘white supremacist militias‘ active in Ukraine. NBC News reported, ‘Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real.’ The immolation of trade unionists in Odessa was filmed and documented.
Spearheaded by the Azov regiment, whose insignia, the ‘Wolfsangel’, was made infamous by the German SS, Ukraine’s military invaded the eastern, Russian-speaking Donbas region. According to the United Nations 14,000 in the east were killed. Seven years later, with the Minsk peace conferences sabotaged by the West, as Angela Merkel confessed, the Red Army invaded.
Again, there you are.
And, Draitser, by retweeting a piece like this about Western (and Saudi) oligarchs grabbing Ukrainian land, Zelensky's land law of 2020 showing him to be an EU-US economic lackey and more? The longer the war drags on without a settlement, under Zelensky's regime, the more it becomes a Western economic lackey.
As for other signatories? I don't recognize a single major GP thought leader. There are a lot of DSA Roseys, which IMO just denigrates the whole movement more. Note this long piece by two DSA Roseys that, despite Pope Francis' repeated calls, despite Xi Jinping's mentions, and despite the Goldilocks three bears of Kissinger, NYT op-ed board and Chomsky's urgings a year ago, never mentions the phrase "peace talks." Also, that piece has a certain degree of smug to it, where, in talking about things like the Maidan and its aftermath, the two Roseys claim that many leftists, in essence, don't know what they're talking about. Of course, Draitser has a certain amount of that smug, too.
Under lesser GP leaders is a national committee member from California and another from Wisconsin. There's one former GP elected official, but as vice mayor of a smallish town in California where municipal elections are officially nonpartisan. There are several identifying as "Green Party member." And that's it.
Further trumping Howie? Andrew Cockburn notes how US sanctions (nowhere discussed by Hawkins) may have actually HELPED Putin do some internal reforms. This is based on a paper by James K. Galbraith, here. And, speaking of that, for people who really follow Russia-Ukraine war issues, and may have heard of Nadin Brzezinski? They were a nutter long before this. (I'll be writing in more depth about the sanctions issue next week, and that is now up.)
That said, there's a problem with the callout by Baraka and others. Hawkins is, as I now see it, not just half-wrong, but closer to two-thirds, on Russiagate. But, he's not totally wrong. So, I disagree with them that (DNC PR portions aside) it is totally a hoax. And, I'm sure they would disagree with my callout of both Hawkins and Flowers (and others) on China. And, by the end of 2019, as I noted, this had led to the rise of conspiracy thinking on the issue within the Green Party. Howie's going in the tank will only increase this.
Dario Hunter still is not likely to have a change. Instead, libertarian pseudo-Greens and their new, currently unrecognized AFAIK state parties will try to crash the stage with Jesse Ventura. Others will promote Jimmy Dore or some other conspiracy theorist.
And, this is why I'll continue to remain an independent leftist, which has passed the 2-year mark.
