Should we stay for the revolution? If it’s even possible?
I’ve seen some on the internet (mainly TikTok and twitter, sue me) say that moving to another country to escape your problems (this is mostly directed to those in the US and Canada) is a form of colonialism and you would contribute to gentrifying the country you leave to. Do you agree?
I’ve mentioned on here a few times my disdain for living in Canada and how I am happy to leave when I am able, I’ve even had some comrades encourage me to do so if I can, so for a time I was sure that moving was an okay thing to do but now I don’t know. I don’t want to gentrify another nation and I don’t want to abandon people here who aren’t afforded the same privileges as me. I figured maybe I could help from a distance, or at the very least “visiting”to help but not living here, does that make sense?
Anyway, I really wanted to move away but now I’m not so sure and I may be causing more damage by leaving. I don’t want to colonize another place, I’m already a settler in Canada and I wasn’t planning on moving to Portugal either (locals can barely afford to live there themselves). I know I shouldn’t be taking statements made on social media so seriously but I can’t help but take these criticisms into consideration.
From the standpoint of being a settler and the like, I’d think it’s only an issue if you are coming into some other country and expecting their culture to change for you, rather than expecting to adapt to what their culture is, especially if the expected change revolves around western imperialist norms.
To the point of abandoning those who can’t, I think there is no single “correct” answer and you kind of have to judge based on your situation. For example, some things for a person with our kind of ideology to consider: Are you doing it for safety? For individual material convenience, with no intention of contributing to the revolutionary processes of the country you move to? In other words, do you intend to do what you can to contribute to community and to the struggle elsewhere, or is it more a tiredness and exhaustion with fighting and a desire to escape from it, similar in spirit to retreating into a fantasy world to avoid problems in RL life? The anti-imperialist struggle reaches across the whole world, so there’s no real escaping it. But people can have various good reasons for wanting to move, whether it’s going somewhere that actually accepts them or is safe for them or is something they can contribute to meaningfully that they can’t figure out how to do where they are. The imperial core does need people who know what they’re doing to fight back from within, to help protect regular folks caught up in it and especially the most marginalized groups, but it’s also a worldwide struggle, so there will always be stuff you can do somewhere, if you look for it. And for some people, it might turn out they’re more effective elsewhere than they are in the imperial core. Or they might be able to learn things from communists abroad that they can later bring back. Doesn’t necessarily have to be seen as a commitment for life.
(Mind you, I’m not asking you to answer these questions here and I know at least one point you already addressed in OP, just posing them as stuff for people to think about.)