[It’s important the left challenges language intended to
suppress serious discussion of the war and its causes. You can counter
an accusation of spreading disinformation or propaganda with evidence
that what you are saying is true.]
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‘TALKING POINTS’ – THE NEW LANGUAGE OF CENSORSHIP  
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Editorial
September 14, 2023
Morning Star
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_ It’s important the left challenges language intended to suppress
serious discussion of the war and its causes. You can counter an
accusation of spreading disinformation or propaganda with evidence
that what you are saying is true. _

Ukrainian emergency employees and police officers evacuate injured
pregnant woman Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was
damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022,

 

This week, commenting on a Morning Star editorial urging the TUC not
to endorse sending arms to Ukraine, the journalist Paul Mason
criticised our references to 2014’s Maidan coup and Nato’s
eastward expansion since the end of the cold war as “Kremlin talking
points.”

The “talking points” concept has crept in too among that minority
of the British left who try to justify Russia’s war. Raising
Vladimir Putin’s comparison of himself to expansionist Russian tsars
like Peter and Catherine the Great, his regime’s national chauvinism
or war crimes allegations can attract accusations of spreading “Nato
talking points.”

It’s important that the left challenges this language, which is
intended to suppress serious discussion of the war and its causes.

It is common enough to accuse opponents of spreading “propaganda”
or “disinformation.” Both allegations are being used by
governments to restrict access to alternative accounts of world
events, and the massive expansion of online censorship needs to be
opposed.

But these charges are more straightforward to challenge.
“Disinformation” indicates that a particular narrative is untrue.
Though “propaganda” originally merely meant the promotion of ideas
(both the Catholic church and communist parties have historically had
propaganda departments tasked with this) in common usage it also
implies dishonesty.

You can counter an accusation of spreading disinformation or
propaganda with evidence that what you are saying is true.

That the elected government of Ukraine was overthrown by force in 2014
is a fact. Its immediate consequences included the Russian annexation
of Crimea and the eruption of a separatist war in the Donbass,
whatever you think about either of those developments.

That Nato’s eastward expansion broke US promises made to the Soviet
Union in return for its withdrawal of troops from eastern Europe is
also a matter of historical record.

That it would be perceived as a threat by Russia and make conflict
more likely was a view expressed by a huge range of political figures,
including within the US foreign policy establishment.

US diplomat George Kennan, one of the foremost “cold warriors” who
had advocated an aggressive anti-Soviet policy throughout the cold
war, called the first round of Nato expansion eastwards in 1998 a
“tragic mistake” to which “the Russians will gradually react
quite adversely.”

Henry Kissinger, an unscrupulous champion of US imperialism and one of
the most influential US strategists of the last century, predicted
that offering Nato membership to Ukraine would lead to war.

So it’s hard to justify the idea that references to the 2014 coup,
or Nato expansion, as factors which contributed to the war in Ukraine
are mere propaganda.

But calling them “talking points” avoids such scrutiny. If
something is a “talking point” of your enemy it no longer matters
whether it is true. The simple fact that Russia has cited these
factors means that we should not be allowed to consider them.

The “talking points” dismissal has been used too when anyone on
the left raises the role of openly neonazi units like the Azov
Battalion in the Ukrainian military.

Because Putin cited “denazification” as one of three war aims when
invading Ukraine (another was “decommunisation,” which those on
the left who try to defend his war should remember), we should
apparently ignore the voluminous evidence of the Azov Battalion’s
fascist ideology, its founder’s stated desire to “lead the white
races of the world in a final crusade against semite-led
untermenschen,” and reports of its war crimes by organisations like
Amnesty International.

Putin has attacked the Azov Battalion — so it’s a “talking
point” and if we mention it we are playing into his hands.

This is guilt by association. It is impossible to analyse world
developments if whole subjects become taboo as soon as they are
mentioned by an official enemy.

Anyone who uses the “talking point” charge to try to shut down
debate should be given short shrift across the left.

* Propaganda
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* Ukraine
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* Russia
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