Move over, Trump Derangement Syndrome, we’ve got a new madness infecting the left and the normiecon right both: Ukraine Derangement Syndrome.
Of course, UDS is nothing new. It’s been a more-or-less constant in some circles from the moment Putin rolled over the border in 2022. Never mind that Putin was doing nothing different to what we’d been doing for the previous two decades, in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was different, for reasons that have never been adequately explained.
But the Ukaboos (derived from the slang Weeaboo: a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture; Slavaboos are similarly obsessed with Russia) have really gone into overdrive after Zelensky’s on-camera spat in the Oval Office. So much so that anything other than all-the-way-to-WWIII sabre-rattling draws unhinged comparisons with the deranged, anti-Semitic left.
Move over, Israelophobia, there’s a new bigotry in town […] Ukraine is to the batty right what Israel is to the mad left.
The bitter right’s swirling contempt for Zelensky mirrors the loathing for Israel that has infected leftists for years. In both cases a frothing moralism masquerades as anti-war critique. And in both cases one nation is made the scapegoat of world affairs, held responsible for virtually every ill facing mankind.
What on earth has Brendan O’Neill been smoking? Perhaps I need to get out more, but I can’t say I’ve heard literally anyone advocating for the complete eradication of the Ukrainian state, or demanding to ‘cleanse the world’ of Ukrainians. Perhaps I’ve missed it, but there haven’t been any firebombings of Ukrainian neighbourhoods. There certainly haven’t been crowds thronging the Sydney Opera House and chanting ‘Gas the Ukes!’
Ukraineophobia and Israelophobia are two cheeks of the same arse of moral nihilism. The similarities between rightist Ukraineophobia and the leftist hate for Israel are striking.
No, they’re not: they’re completely non-existent.
Both nations are libelled as looters of America’s coffers. Members of the online right love to call Zelensky a “welfare queen”, no doubt chuckling with self-satisfaction as they do so.
After the Trump-Zelensky shouting match, right-wing commentator Matt Walsh gloated that Trump had put this “international welfare queen” in his place.
Even Donald Trump Jr has called Zelensky an “ungrateful international welfare queen”.
Where are they wrong? Is O’Neill denying the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxpayer’s money and taxpayer-funded armaments showered on Ukraine? A largess for which Zelensky behaved, in the Oval Office, like a brat who didn’t like his Christmas present.
Neither the Ukraineophobes nor the Israelophobes demonstrate even the barest understanding of geopolitics, the fact it is in America’s interests to provide assistance to allies under assault.
Except that Ukraine isn’t an American ally. Just a minor point that someone sneering about ‘the barest understanding of geopolitics’ might want to consider.
The Zelensky-bashing oddballs have convinced themselves that Ukraine threatens to drag all of humanity to hell, just as the Israel-haters say about Israel.
Witness Trump’s rant about Zelensky “gambling with World War III … gambling with the lives of millions of people”.
Which he literally is. By demanding NATO membership and US troops on the Ukrainian ground facing off against Russia, Zelensky is asking for something we’ve spent the last 80 years doing everything to avoid: a direct war between the nuclear-armed superpowers. Yet, European leaders, especially, seem keen on provoking exactly such a diabolical confrontation.
Which would be just the third time in a century that Europe has dragged the world into global war.
This is just the start of European hypocrisy, as former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer points out.
So what is the European plan for ending the war? The Europeans profess outrage as Trump in his own astonishing way tries to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin to agree to a ceasefire.
But when I asked an EU ambassador in London recently what Europe’s alternative plan was, he surprised me. He said we should keep the war going for another year and by then the Russian economy would have collapsed. That’s some prediction! Half a million civilians and soldiers will have died in that period, hundreds of billions of dollars will have been spent, and somehow the Europeans believe China will stop providing Russia an economic lifeline.
Piling hypocrisy on hypocrisy, even the Europeans concede that what Trump has offered Putin for peace is exactly what Putin is going to keep anyway.
When I’ve asked them whether they thought the Ukrainians could seize back not just the eastern Donbas but Crimea, they’ve said this was militarily impossible.
So, they know the war is lost. They know that Trump, far from ‘rewarding’ Putin, is offering him little that he doesn’t already have. Trump is not ‘betraying’ Ukraine – he’s trying to end a war which is already over bar the killing. This is the essential point the Ukaboo sabre-rattlers refuse to admit: it’s not a choice of victory or defeat; it’s a choice of how many more Ukrainian lives and Western taxpayers’ money they want to throw away before they agree to the inevitable.
