[We need to be far more generous with each other, able to hold
conversations without resort to insults and abuses. Out of
disagreement comes understanding. But out of malicious slander only
comes disorientation.]
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CAN THE LEFT DISAGREE WITHOUT BEING DISAGREEABLE?  
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Vijay Prashad
December 20, 2022
CounterPunch
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_ We need to be far more generous with each other, able to hold
conversations without resort to insults and abuses. Out of
disagreement comes understanding. But out of malicious slander only
comes disorientation. _

, Photo by Pavel Neznanov

 

I have been a reporter for thirty years. During this period, I have
been to many former war zones and to active war zones, including in
Iraq, Libya, and Syria. I have seen things that I wish I had not seen
and that I wish had not been seen by anyone, let alone experienced by
anyone. The thing about war zones that is often not talked about is
the noise: the loud noises of the military equipment and the sound of
gunfire and bombs. The sound of a modern bomb is extraordinary,
punctuated as it often is in civilian areas by the cries of little
children. Imagine the trauma inflicted upon generations and
generations of children by the noise itself, not to speak of the
neurological fear of the adults around them and the great loss of life
that they experience from early in their lives. There is no war that
should be supported based on the catastrophic cost paid by humanity
for the violence.

There is no war that I have experienced that has been as devastating
as the war on Iraq, which snatched the lives of millions, devastated
the lives of the entire population, and left the country scarred
beyond belief. No doubt other reporters who are in Ukraine will come
with their own stories. There is no comparison of warzones, one more
deadly than the other, although the sheer destruction of Iraq compares
to the pain inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs.

Wars are to be opposed and every effort must be made to prevent wars
and to end wars.

So, to claim that I support the Russian war on Ukraine is against
everything that I have said or done on the record. I oppose this war
as I oppose every war, which is why I have written – since 2014 –
for the need for negotiation and for the need for neighbours to find a
way to live with each other. It is peculiar that a call for
negotiation between Russia and Ukraine is now painted as a ‘talking
point’ of Vladimir Putin rather than a gesture towards peace. That
is the toxic nature of debate, including within the left, where
anything that is not identical with what someone believes is pilloried
as the absolute opposite position; the space for nuance and dialogue
is being withered by this sort of attitude.

I posted a picture on social media about Zero Covid. Having lost
family and friends in the COVID pandemic, beloved people who lived in
countries that had failed their populations, I remain in awe of the
three years of Zero Covid policy and practice of countries with
efficient governments (such as in China). When I took that picture, I
was in a hotel room, where I used the stationery and pen provided for
me. I had to draw the Z for Zero twice, which made the Z darker. This
extra dark Z was taken to mean support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
This is the absurd place we have entered, where such fantasies are
peddled as fact, despite the public record of my arguments for an end
to the war.

Second, the picture was interpreted as a sign that I am a full-scale
supporter of the government in China and all its policies. To be sure,
I am impressed by the Chinese government’s many policies, such as
the way it handled the pandemic, the way it has eradicated absolute
poverty, and the way it has managed the social development of the
population. If you compare China with India, you will have no problem
seeing the impressive developments in the former. There is a noxious
way in which Western media claims about China are taken as completely
correct, and then these claims – often exaggerated – are put
before one as a litmus test: what do you think about this or that
policy of the Chinese government, and based on one’s answer, one is
measured for ones correct leftism. What is your view on Xinxiang? What
is your view on Hong Kong? What is your view on Taiwan? I have never
been interested in these kinds of litmus tests. I am interested in
discussion and debate, not in treating left discourse as a
multiple-choice exam where there is only one correct answer to every
question. History is a bundle of contradictions; social policy is
fraught with difficult choices: to believe that history is a sequence
of questions with one pure answer is erroneous and it creates a
fratricidal culture in the left. We need to be far more generous with
each other, able to hold conversations without resort to insults and
abuses.

Out of disagreement comes understanding. But out of malicious slander
only comes disorientation.

_Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The
Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US
Power (New Press, August 2022)._

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