Walter Benjamin’s critical theory, particularly his concepts of history, violence, and the aestheticization of politics, provides a unique lens through which to explore the cacophony of discourses surrounding the extant Russo-Ukrainian war. His work reveals that armed conflict is not merely a military struggle but a battleground of contested historical narratives, aesthetic strategies, and competing forms of ideological violence. His analysis of the aestheticization of politics highlights the role of media biases in shaping public perception, while his reflections on violence question the ethical legitimacy of war itself. Ultimately, the development of his philosophy in the present context underscores the necessity of approaching the denouement of the Ukraine war not as an inevitable historical event but as a contingent, contested moment in which radical historical possibilities remain open.
Although heavily debated by philosophers, contemporary theorists of war have mostly ignored Benjamin’s “anti-historicist” account of contested discourse. In particular, Benjamin critiques the dominant historicist notion of progress, arguing that history is not an objective, linear progression but rather a site of contestation. His concept of “Jetztzeit” (now-time) challenges teleological readings of history, which are particularly relevant to the competing historical narratives deployed by Russia and Ukraine in the current conflict.
Russia’s justification for the present invasion often hinges on a historicist account of Slavic unity, invoking the continuity of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Putin’s discourse aligns with what Benjamin would very likely call “historicism,” portraying the war as part of an inevitable, dialectical process of reclaiming lost territories, grandeur, and global honor. In contrast, Ukraine’s narrative aligns more closely with Benjamin’s “messianic” narrative —an attempt to loose itself from externally-imposed Russocentric continuity that has denigrated Ukraine’s language, culture, and geopolitical autonomy. Benjamin’s concept of the “angel of history,” drawn from Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus,” illustrates this contrast. While Russia seeks to impose a deterministic historical vision, Ukraine attempts to forge a radical discontinuity—a rejection of history’s disastrous wreckage and an assertion of morally necessary self-determination.
Benjamin’s critique of fascism’s “aestheticization of politics” is helpful for readers seeking to understand how the Ukraine war has been mediated through digital platforms and propaganda. The Kremlin’s war discourse echoes Benjamin’s warning about aestheticized violence, where military aggression is transformed into a grand historical performance replete with heroism, martyr culture, and historical pride. Much like the Nazi propaganda Benjamin himself opposed, Russian state media continually romanticizes the war, glorifying military strength and portraying the invasion as a pivotal heroic struggle.
Ukraine, in response, has adopted an opposite but equally strategic media approach. While Russia aestheticizes war to legitimize it, Ukraine politicizes aesthetics to resist it. Zelensky’s use of direct, emotionally charged appeals to Western audiences leverages Benjamin’s idea that political art can disrupt hegemonic narratives rather than reinforce them. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict is not only fought on the battlefield but also in the realm of viral imagery, memes, and AI-generated content, confirming Benjamin’s insights into technical-mechanical reproduction and its ability to democratize or manipulate contested political meanings.
In “Critique of Violence,” Benjamin distinguishes between “mythic violence,” which establishes and preserves law, and “divine violence,” which ruptures oppressive legal orders. The extant Russian invasion exemplifies mythic violence—it seeks to establish a new geopolitical order by force. Ukraine’s self-defense could be interpreted as an instance of divine violence—an attempt to disrupt an oppressive structure rather than sustain the same. However, this distinction is complicated by Western military aid, which integrates Ukraine’s struggle into existing structures of international law rather than allowing for homegrown radical transformation. The West hardly gave a pence about Ukraine until the Russian invasion. Benjamin’s skepticism of the state’s monopoly on violence also raises questions about the legitimacy of NATO’s involvement and the instrumentalization of Ukraine’s resistance within broader Western geopolitical interests. For instance, President Trump’s proposed aid packages are at least partially predicated upon US access to the Ukrainian rare metal exportation sector.
Noam Chomsky’s critique of media, propaganda, and state power provides an interesting, contemporary, left-of-center complement to Benjamin’s analysis of history and aesthetics. In “Manufacturing Consent,” Chomsky and Edward S. Herman argue that media systems in liberal democracies do not function as neutral conduits of information but instead serve elite interests through selective framing, omission biases, and sophisticated filtering mechanisms. This position aptly aligns with Benjamin’s repeated warnings about the aestheticization of politics: Both thinkers highlight how war narratives are shaped to sustain power structures rather than reveal concrete historical truths.
Chomsky’s analysis helps explain how Western media often portrays the conflict through a Manichean dichotomy of democratic heroism versus authoritarian aggression, marginalizing discussions of NATO expansion, economic motivations, and the war’s role in subsidiary global power struggles. By applying Chomsky’s framework creatively to the media apparatus, we can see how dominant narratives reinforce a teleological view of history—one that Benjamin criticizes—by presenting the Russo-Ukrainian War as an inevitable clash between Western liberalism and Russian imperialism rather than as a contingent, politically constructed event with multiple interpretations and consequences.
Future study of the Ukraine war discourse from a liberal standpoint would benefit from engaging with Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle,” which extends Benjamin’s concerns about the aestheticization of politics into the realm of late capitalist media saturation. Debord’s concept of “the spectacle”—the transformation of political reality into a mediated, commodified experience—parallels the way digital platforms have turned the war into a globally consumed narrative of deepfakes, deliberate misinformation, valorization of grotesque violence, and departure from studied historical context. The constant stream of images, viral videos, and symbolic acts of resistance or aggression reflects a world where political agency is increasingly mediated through “spectacular time” rather than direct action. This analysis raises questions about how Western interventions, economic sanctions, and military support operate within a larger system of rationalized, institutionalized violence that often obscures its own complicity in global power struggles.
Liberal theorists of conflict might find further essential tools from midcentury theorists of abstract ideology and their modern exponents. Ernst Cassirer’s insights into myth-making and symbolic representation highlight how both Russian and Ukrainian discourses construct national identity through carefully curated historical imagery and linguistic tropes. Meanwhile, contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s work on ideology and the unconscious offers a contemporary critical perspective on the war’s ideological dimensions. Žižek’s critique of liberal democratic ideology and its blind spots could – like Debord and Chomsky – illuminate how Western support for Ukraine, while framed as a defense of sovereignty and democracy, also operates within a larger ideological apparatus that obscures deeper contradictions within the global neoliberal order. Combining these theoretical approaches with Benjamin’s insights might allow for a more comprehensive understanding of how the war is not only fought with weapons but also with narratives, images, and ideological constructs that will continue to shape its meaning in global discourse.
Works Cited.
Benjamin, W. (2007). Illuminations (H. Arendt, Ed.; H. Zohn, Trans.). Schocken Books.
Benjamin, W. (1999). The Arcades Project (R. Tiedemann, Ed.; H. Eiland & K. McLaughlin, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, W. (1986). Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (P. Demetz, Ed.; E. Jephcott, Trans.). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (2002). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Pantheon Books.
Debord, G. (1995). The society of the spectacle (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Zone Books.
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments (E. Jephcott, Trans.). Stanford University Press.
Cassirer, E. (1955). The philosophy of symbolic forms (R. Manheim, Trans.). Yale University Press.
Žižek, S. (2008). The sublime object of ideology. Verso.
