Ukraine may be the only country in the world where black-and-red flags can signify either anarcho-syndicalism — which they mostly do in the photos below, from David Chichkan’s funeral ceremony in Kyïv yesterday — or the right-wing nationalism associated with the world war two era OUN and UPA partisan armies. (Those armies and their followers today are commonly known as “Banderites” in honor of ultranationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who’s become a symbol of all things anti-Russian, though the flag long pre-dates Bandera and has been used well beyond the paramilitary legacy associated with him.)
In some cases they can even be both, as with Ukraine’s national anarchists or anarcho-nationalists. (On anarchism and the Russo-Ukrainian war, see here, here, here, and here.) Sometimes, the “Banderite” flag features red over black horizontal bands, while the anarchist flag features the two in diagonal bands, but that’s not always the case.
Irrespectively, the loss of anarchist artist David Chichkan is felt by many, and his funeral ceremonies featured many red-and-black flags alongside others. Posting about yesterday’s ceremony, Nataliya Gumenyuk, co-founder of Hromadske independent media, the Public Interest Journalism Lab, and The Reckoning Project, wrote [my translation]:
“I have met many people, but almost none who were as intellectually courageous as he. I was able to speak with officers from his brigade, who regarded him highly. ‘He could have remained an artist…’ […]
“Perhaps only now, after hearing everyone’s speeches, do I realize how much love David had. Love for people, for his country, for the world. That’s probably why he was so fearless.
“The anarchist artist died less than 100 km from [Ukrainian anarchist leader] Nestor Makhno’s homeland of a century ago. If we are honest with ourselves, we did too little during the artist’s lifetime, whose exhibitions were attacked by critics.
“But we must not just preserve his memory. David would have wanted us to remain faithful to his principles, and even better, to fight for the values of freedom, solidarity, and justice.
“Rainbow and national flags, other flags… All this was important to him, and not just because that red and black anarchist flag protected the face of the deceased from the sun’s rays during today’s funeral. […]
“Under a bright blue sky on Maidan, young men and women stood in uniform, many of them real-life heroes from David’s paintings with ribbons. Artists and activists lined up with slogans of solidarity, some of them also from David’s paintings. At that moment, his art came to life.”
[Click on the Facebook links below to see videos from the memorial.]
All of this provides an opportunity to reflect on the political leanings of this blog, which UKR-TAZ’s About page describes as having a “left-libertarian bias.” It’s worth reminding ourselves that in Ukraine, “left” doesn’t always mean what it means in a western or international context, as seven decades of Soviet rule (four and a half in western Ukraine) have left many Ukrainians allergic to the idea of the Left, with its associations of top-down authority, central command economics, and the “corrupt” machinations of the you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours style of everyday nepotism. Political parties in Ukraine have, in any case, tended not to be ideological, but rather personality-driven or more broadly geopolitical (pro-Europe versus pro-Russia, with the latter declining heavily over the last 15 years in no small part due to Russia’s ever more draconian efforts to control Ukraine).
On a global scale, however, “left” and “right” still mean things. I don’t believe it’s possible to understand the resurgent authoritarian right, so powerful in the U.S., Russia, India, and elsewhere today, without understanding a key difference. This is that the Left favors more egalitarian forms of social solidarity, rooted in a belief that all humans have capacities that deserve to be allowed to flourish, and that this is best done in circumstances that balance liberty with cooperative institutions. The Right, by contrast, favors more hierarchical forms of sociality — those of caste, race, class, and/or capital — in the belief that they are more “natural,” more deeply ingrained in “tradition,” more socially stabilizing, or something of that sort.
Economically, this difference translates into the Left’s desire for reining in the inequalities promoted by capitalist markets (which at its extreme becomes a desire to “abolish” capitalism, though it’s not always clear what that means or what should replace it) versus the Right’s tendency to allow capitalism free rein. Historically, however — and one finds this in many right-wing nationalist parties and movements today (including Trumpism) — right-wing politics can also be economically protectionist and even worker-friendly. What makes them “right” tends to be their ethnically or racially exclusionary character — sometimes called their “nationalism,” though ethnic and civic nationalisms remain quite different.
Political scientists often distinguish between social liberalism and conservatism, which map onto the left-right spectrum reasonably clearly, and economic liberalism and conservatism. But the latter can confuse more than clarify: which of them, for instance, promotes free markets, and which defends the welfare state? The answer to that has varied over the decades.
The left-right spectrum has also been scrambled somewhat by so-called identity politics, which have registered much more deeply on the Left than the Right. (The Right’s white or Christian nationalism has of course become its own form of identity politics.) More interestingly, it’s the Left, not the Right, that’s been quicker to recognize Indigenous people’s interests, which raise questions about notions of “tradition” in ways that detract from the civilizational “progressivism” of the historical Left. Environmental/ecological concerns do that as well, making left-wing thought a rather interesting place to be today, for political theorists.
All of that is to say that “left” and “right” are never as self-evident as they seem. Sometimes a red-and-black flag is just a red-and-black flag… until you speak to its carrier who will tell you what it means to them: pro-Ukrainian, nationalist, pro-freedom, “Banderite” (but almost never “fascist” or “nazi”), anti-Russian, anti-imperialist, anarcho-syndicalist, libertarian-communist, or what have you. And those meanings emerge in an environment shaped by its own concerns.
For many Ukrainians today, the predominant concern remains the desire to repel and expel Russian tyranny from Ukrainian soil. To that end, the anti-authoritarianism of David Chichkan blends quite well with the anti-imperialism of Ukraine’s struggle against Russia. As most Ukrainian leftists concede, other issues — such the economic distribution of goods, the influence of big capital, and so on — will have to wait until Ukrainian democracy is in a secure position to deal with them.
https://www.facebook.com/666521753/videos/pcb.10165837749456754/1964873657602549
https://www.facebook.com/666521753/videos/pcb.10165837749456754/782153708076678
https://www.facebook.com/666521753/videos/pcb.10165837749456754/786115157091426
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