{"id":168548,"date":"2026-02-07T19:08:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T03:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=168548"},"modified":"2026-02-07T15:21:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:21:39","slug":"decoding-lenin-at-nuremberg-anti-imperialism-and-the-juridification-of-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=168548","title":{"rendered":"Decoding Lenin at Nuremberg: Anti-Imperialism and the Juridification of Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amanda Alexander\u2019s chapter, Lenin at Nuremberg, in the 2021 book Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917<\/a> analyzes how the codification of “Crimes Against Humanity” was driven by a specific anti-imperialist narrative influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution. This analysis challenges the standard liberal view of the Nuremberg trials as a purely Enlightenment-driven victory of “Reason over Power.”<\/p>\n

The Shift from Profane Vengeance to Sacred Peace (Jeffrey Alexander)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Alexander\u2019s model<\/a> highlights how events move from the mundane or “profane” to a “sacred” level of normative violation. In the orthodox liberal narrative, Nuremberg is a purification ritual where international law represents civilization standing against “lawlessness”. However, Amanda Alexander identifies a different sacred hierarchy at work in 1945.<\/p>\n

The trials moved the discussion from the profane level of individual murders to the sacred level of “Crimes Against Peace”. Aggressive, imperialist war was sacralized as the “crime of crimes”\u2014the ultimate pollution of the center of international order. By framing aggressive war as the “parent” of all other horrors, the delegates triggered a generalization of consciousness: they argued that an international legal regime condoning such wars was so ethically misguided it had to be radically purified.<\/p>\n

Alliance Theory and the Anti-Imperialist Pretext (David Pinsof)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alliance Theory<\/a> suggests that morality is a tool used by diverse groups to coordinate against a common enemy. Amanda Alexander argues that the “Crimes Against Humanity” label was a secondary focal point used to drag horrific state actions into a legal framework that was primarily focused on aggressive war.<\/p>\n

The anti-imperialist narrative provided the necessary pretext for an alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. By defining the Nazis as “rapacious and piratic imperialists,” the Soviet jurist A.N. Trainin created a signal that Western leaders like Robert Jackson and William C. Chanler could adopt. This shared language allowed a temporary alliance to synchronize their actions, even though they held fundamentally different underlying interests\u2014the Soviets seeking to dismantle global capitalism and the Americans seeking to “forestall Bolshevik influence” by promoting their own version of self-determination.<\/p>\n

Expertise as the Foundation of Legal “Closure” (Stephen Turner)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stephen Turner<\/a>\u2019s analysis of expertise explains how a specialized class creates “liberal property” to establish an authoritative closure of a field. The chapter shows how jurists like Trainin, Lauterpacht, and Quincy Wright acted as the “high priests” of this new legal order.<\/p>\n

They used their specialized knowledge to redefine what was “criminal” in international law, often bypassing existing legal precedents. Trainin\u2019s work was described as a “godsend” because it provided the technical vocabulary needed to justify the prosecution of “Crimes Against Peace,” despite the fact that aggressive war was not formally criminalized at the time. This expert-led closure ensured that the trials could proceed under a facade of legality, even while the “priests” themselves admitted they were “instituting customs” that would only later become law.<\/p>\n

The “Everything is Bullshit<\/a>” Framework (David Pinsof)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finally, applying the “Everything is Bullshit” framework reveals the adaptive deceptions embedded in the Nuremberg Charter. The insistence on linking “Crimes Against Humanity” to “Crimes Against Peace” (Article 6(c)) served a strategic purpose that the liberal narrative often obscures.<\/p>\n

The high-minded rhetoric of “universal humanity” was often “bullshit” used to mask the strategic need to avoid scrutinizing the Allied powers’ own colonial violence or internal affairs. By requiring a connection to the war, the legal cartel ensured that the “humanity” being protected was only that which had been violated by the specific “polluter” (the Nazis), thereby preserving the reputations and sovereign immunity of the Allied alliance. The “history” produced at Nuremberg was thus a curated narrative designed to maintain the status of the winners as the “pure” defenders of reason while concealing the profane geopolitical interests that truly drove the proceedings.<\/p>\n

ChatGPT says: <\/p>\n

1. Alliance Theory. Nuremberg as a temporary anti-imperialist coalition<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexander\u2019s core intervention is to show that Nuremberg was not born as a liberal-humanist project, but as a fragile alliance between liberal victors and anti-imperialist, Marxist ideas about war.<\/p>\n

At Nuremberg, the dominant elite coalition was unstable.<\/p>\n

On one side were Western liberal states that wanted to punish Nazi leadership while preserving the legitimacy of imperial power and state sovereignty.
\nOn the other were Soviet and anti-imperialist actors who understood aggressive war itself as the crime of crimes, rooted in capitalism and imperial exploitation.<\/p>\n

The alliance compromise was juridification.<\/p>\n

Instead of prosecuting imperialism as such, the tribunal translated anti-imperialist critique into criminal categories. Crimes against peace absorbed Leninist ideas about imperialist war without endorsing revolutionary politics.<\/p>\n

Alliance Theory predicts this move exactly. When elites must cooperate across incompatible worldviews, they convert political critique into legal form. Law becomes the lowest-conflict coordination language.<\/p>\n

Nuremberg did not defeat imperialism. It neutralized its most radical critique by legal translation.<\/p>\n

2. Alexander\u2019s sacralization model. How aggressive war became the sacred violation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexander\u2019s chapter tracks a precise sacralization process.<\/p>\n

Profane baseline<\/p>\n

Before World War II, war was a sovereign prerogative. Brutal, tragic, but legally ordinary.<\/p>\n

Normative shock<\/p>\n

The scale of destruction and fascist aggression produced a crisis of meaning. War itself threatened to delegitimize the international order.<\/p>\n

Sacralization move<\/p>\n

Aggressive war is elevated into a supreme moral violation. \u201cCrimes against peace\u201d become foundational. War is no longer just politics. It is a moral rupture.<\/p>\n

Pollution of the center<\/p>\n

Imperial aggression is framed as contaminating civilization itself. This allows prosecution without indicting colonialism as a system.<\/p>\n

Ritual of purification<\/p>\n

The Nuremberg trials function as a liminal ritual. History is bracketed. Nazi leaders are isolated as moral monsters. The international community purifies itself through judgment.<\/p>\n

Symbolic classification<\/p>\n

Aggressive war planners are absolute evil. Victors are lawful guardians. Colonial violence disappears into the background.<\/p>\n

Alexander\u2019s crucial insight is that anti-imperialist meaning survives only in sacralized, depoliticized form.<\/p>\n

3. Pinsof. Why Lenin appears without revolution<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pinsof\u2019s signaling logic explains the strange structure Alexander identifies.<\/p>\n

At Nuremberg, elites wanted to signal moral seriousness without signaling revolutionary sympathy.<\/p>\n

Endorsing Lenin openly would have signaled ideological danger.
\nRejecting anti-imperialism outright would have signaled moral emptiness.<\/p>\n

So the solution was symbolic absorption.<\/p>\n

Lenin\u2019s critique of imperialist war is present, but stripped of class struggle, capitalism, and revolution. It survives only as a legal principle condemning aggressive war.<\/p>\n

This is classic \u201ceverything is bullshit\u201d logic. Not because actors lied, but because speech was optimized for alliance safety.<\/p>\n

The tribunal says: war is criminal, but the system that produces war remains intact.<\/p>\n

That is elite signaling equilibrium.<\/p>\n

4. Turner. Expertise replaces political judgment<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s framework explains the lasting consequences.<\/p>\n

By translating imperialism into criminal law, Nuremberg transferred judgment from politics to experts. Judges, prosecutors, historians, and lawyers now define which wars are criminal and which are legitimate.<\/p>\n

Revolutionary critique is no longer voiced by peoples or movements. It is adjudicated by courts.<\/p>\n

Once aggressive war becomes a legal category, only professionals can invoke it credibly. The masses lose standing. Anti-imperialism becomes a courtroom argument, not a political project.<\/p>\n

Turner would say this is authority laundering. Radical moral claims are made safe by professionalization.<\/p>\n

How the four tools fit together<\/p>\n

Alliance Theory explains why Lenin appears at Nuremberg at all.
\nSacralization explains how war becomes morally absolute.
\nPinsof explains why the critique is hollowed out.
\nTurner explains why revolutionary politics never returns.<\/p>\n

The central takeaway<\/p>\n

Alexander\u2019s chapter shows that Nuremberg did not betray anti-imperialism.<\/p>\n

It contained it.<\/p>\n

Lenin was allowed into international law only as a ghost. His critique of imperialist war was preserved just enough to legitimate the new legal order, but not enough to threaten it.<\/p>\n

Crimes against peace survive.
\nImperialism survives.
\nRevolution is juridified out of existence.<\/p>\n

That is the lasting legacy Alexander is exposing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanda Alexander\u2019s chapter, Lenin at Nuremberg, in the 2021 book Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 analyzes how the codification of “Crimes Against Humanity” was driven by a specific anti-imperialist narrative influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution. This analysis … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42954],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t