RHADIKA DESAI—It is a sign of the difficult choices Europe has had to make in this conflict that even the most loyal US mouthpiece across the Atlantic, Britain’s The Guardian, had to demur: “declaring someone a war criminal is not as simple as just saying the words.”
Meanwhile, it is useful to consider Ukraine itself. There has been attention to the racism of reporters, opinion columnists, and policy-makers, and even many ordinary citizens of Western countries who favour refugees from Ukraine, along with the racism of some Ukrainians, who keep underling how “European” they, their country, and their cities are. Unacceptable as this is, however, it does not exhaust the racism that is at work in the Ukraine conflict.
Those rightly decrying the aforementioned racism do not appear to realise that, ultimately, racism is also the consolation prize that poor whites receive from white elites, the prize that permits the latter to consolidate support among the former, whose economic subordination continues or even gets worse.