Whatever Happened to the Antiwar Left?

 The 2003 protest movement that gave rise to the antiwar left is now all but defunct

• Two decades later, as U.S. hawks press for relentless escalation against nuclear Russia, and as European leaders unfailingly toe Washington's line, there is no major movement of the left to channel dissent
• The post-9/11 atmosphere of pro-war conformity has returned-only, instead of dour "security moms," it's enforced by irony bros with Ukraine flags and pronouns in their bios
• Leftists who were supposed to be post-nationalist became the most ardent nationalists, prepared to ignore even the most unsavory aspects of Ukrainian nationalism

Three explanatory factors stand out:

• Changing nature of American and Western way of war
• The shift toward proxy wars fought by foreign clients and mercenaries
• Cultural progressives' conquest of America's security apparatus
• Recasting of non-Western powers like Russia and China as reactionary forces to be stamped out by US and Western power

It is up to the rest of us, including the remnants of the old left, to resist the logic of total ideological war, of conflicts waged to advance simplistic moral binaries.

• In doing so, we might take up one of the great slogans of the 2003 protest: "Not In Our Name."

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/whatever-happened-to-the-antiwar-left/