I’ve been astonished by the extent of poor thinking that’s going around in these social media corridors about the war in Ukraine. Following my post yesterday, I seem to have upset a lot of people judging by my DMs.
Anyhow, let me point out a few faulty patterns of thinking that I have observed.
- Speaking out against an unjust war against Ukraine (not that I believe there is such a thing as a just war), does not equate to endorsing unjust racist actions by some Ukrainians.
- Speaking in support of ordinary men and women of Ukraine does not mean an alignment to the hegemonic mainstream media narratives that have made heroes of ordinary citizens opposing an unwelcome occupation, while persistently demonising those who have done the same in other places such as the occupied Palestinian territories.
- Condemning the forceful actions of Russia does not mean the unilateral despicable destructive actions of the US-led coalition in Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Afghanistan were less evil or justifiable by any stretch of the imagination, but rather it is a categorical rejection of all brutal and narcissist acts of the world superpowers.
- When one sovereign state violates the sovereignty of another, the act of abstaining from speaking against such an action in the name of ‘neutrality’ is hypocritical at best and plain selfish at worst. It diminishes any moral authority of such nation to condemn past or future atrocious actions such as slavery, colonisation, and all manner of subjugation of one nation by another. It’s really a very poor show of thinking.
At the core of all these really poor thinking patterns is the faultline of binary thinking. This is a type of thinking that presents life’s options as limited to only two options (hence binary). It’s either we support one superpower or oppose another. We can reject all superpowers as evil and narcissistic, which in my book they are.
