Civilisational racism, ethnonationalism and the clash of imperialisms in Ukraine

Abstract

This article, developed from a panel speech on ‘Radical internationalism and shifts in the global order’ at the IRR50 New Circuits of Anti-racism Conference at King’s College, London, October 2022, takes issue with simplistic and partial positions surrounding Russia’s war with Ukraine. It points to the fact that we now have to reckon with a clash of imperialisms (of the US and Russia), the weaponising of local nationalisms and a reworking of Eurocentrism born of the Cold War. The author warns that revanchist ethnonationalisms in central and eastern Europe and the Baltic States − based in a distorted rereading of history, especially of the countries’ roles in the Holocaust − are being ignored in the interests of a larger geopolitics with consequences also for the future direction of the EU (see Figure 1). In this, anti-Communism, which has defined so much of the history of the Global South in terms of violent opposition to anti-colonial liberation struggles, is being updated and revitalised.