In Episode 150 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls out the panelists at The People's Forum event on "The Real Path to Peace in Ukraine"—including the inevitable Noam Chomsky and Medea Benjamin—for actually spreading Russian war propaganda, in Orwellian manner. As Ukraine makes advances on the ground, liberating the city of Kherson (which Moscow had declared as "annexed"), Russia retaliates with massive missile strikes targeting civilian infrastructure such as heating plants as the bitter Ukrainian winter approaches—clearly war crimes, aimed at breaking the will of the populace. But rather than protesting the Russian bombardment, these pseudo-anti-war voices join with the Trumpian right in calling for an end to Western military aid to Ukraine. And rather than Russian mass atrocities and illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory, they point to imaginary pressure on Kyiv from the West not to negotiate as the obstacle to peace.

Other exponents of this tankie pseudo-left (such as, of course, Max Blumenthal) shamelessly hype every report of reprisals against suspected Russian collaborators in liberated Kherson—while ignoring or dismissing as propaganda eight months of persecution and torture of the city's inhabitants under Russian occupation. This war propaganda is all the more sickening for being disguised as peace propaganda.

Most ironically, these voices now line up with NATO in assuming that the missile that struck Polish territory on Nov. 15 was an errant rocket from Ukraine's air defense system—on no basis other than the supposed authority of NATO, and despite the denials of Kyiv. As Orwell wrote: "Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence."

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Production by Chris Rywalt

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