Casualties of war-by-peaceful means

The quashing of a panel at the journalistic free speech organization PEN America's World Voices Festival that had included ex-patriot Russians has unleashed a kerfuffle among the commentariat. Two Ukrainians, arriving to participate in another panel about their experiences as writers in the military resistance to Russia's invasion, said they could not speak if the first panel with the Russians went ahead. PEN acceded to their demand and erased the panel that had included the Russians from the proceedings. 

And many liberal US intellectuals felt they had to have an opinion. I want to leap into that fray.

High-end media accounts -- New York Times, The Atlantic -- treat this as an instance of "cancel culture." I think that is wrong. 

What happened here is an instance of forceful, nonviolent, war-by-peaceful means colliding with a culture that has forgotten the compromises raised up by life and death struggles. There's a genuine boycott on ...

Ukraine asks and demands that its soldiers, and by extension its partisans and friends, participate in that boycott of all people and things Russian. By invading a neighboring country and committing atrocities against its population, Russia has broken the compact of civilization between peoples and states. Ukrainians fight their war of resistance -- but they also aim to shame and stigmatize in the interest of a vision of justice.

This is not fair to Russian individuals, perhaps especially those likely to turn up at a PEN conference. These people are not part of Putin's war machine. But this sort of unfairness is exactly how boycotts work. Often those harmed are among the least guilty, either for lack of power or lack of intent to commit the offense that inspires the boycott. But they are also the ones who can be moved to destabilize a situation because they can feel shame.

Let's remember the boycott of South Africa which contributed to the end of that country's apartheid regime. For decades, the Black-led African National Congress called for the rest of the world to boycott and stigmatize white minority rule. Materially it was hard to tell whether this hurt. But when I worked with anti-racist newspapers in the country in 1990, it was abundantly clear which part of the worldwide effort was making a dent among privileged whites: the sports boycott. South African teams were barred from the Olympics and other international competitions. This stung and sapped support for maintaining white rule, even and especially among its white beneficiaries. There was grievance -- sure; but also exhaustion with pariah status. That's how well targeted, rigorously applied, boycotts work.

I don't fault Ukraine for pushing a Russian culture boycott. They are fighting extinction of their hopes and country with every tool they have got.

Yascha Mounk, speaking for highbrow Western liberalism, thinks PEN's decision to cave denigrated a proper concern for respect for each individual.

... a person’s moral standing is not defined by their nationality. There can be no collective guilt by virtue of wrongful birth. ...

This is a powerful and hopeful principle -- but a right of self-defense for an invaded society is also a vital principle, especially those aspects of that defense that are not physically violent. As far as we know, Ukraine is not randomly killings its local remnant of Russia supporters, though the longer this goes on the more danger there is of tit-for-tat murder. (Yes, I know; being unjustly stigmatized and shamed is painful to individuals. So is being killed.) 

A consequence of the cancellation of PEN's panel with the Russians was that the writer Masha Gessen resigned as the organization's vice president. They (Gessen uses they/them) had been supposed to moderate that event. No sensible person disputes Gessen's human rights bona fides.

Gessen, who immigrated from the former Soviet Union as a teenager in 1981 and holds both Russian and American citizenship, has been a prominent critical voice in Russia, where they returned in 1991 to work as a journalist. Their books include “The Man Without a Face,” a 2012 biography of Vladimir Putin, and “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017. In 2013, Gessen moved back to the United States with their family, citing growing persecution of L.G.B.T.Q. people.

But Gessen has been one of the most nuanced commentators here:

Gessen emphasized that they remained a member of PEN, and remained committed to the Russian Independent Media Archive, which they spearheaded. The decision to cancel the panel, Gessen said, “was a mistake, not a malicious act.”

“My objection is not to the Ukrainian participants’ demand,” Gessen said. “They are fighting a defensive war by all means available to them. My issue is solely with PEN’s response."

The whole kerfuffle is a reminder to me that worthy Western non-profits, even ambitious ones like PEN, are profoundly unable to navigate principled struggles where something more than funding is on the line. Most have not needed to be. But we live in times when we must grapple with these contradictions.