That fella comes from the group of “lefty influencers” who denounced war as “Russia doing imperialism”, called those trying to organize humanitarian aid “Putin’s collaborators” and called the entirety of Russian military imperialist nazis. One of that group, Andrew Rudoy, escaped to France a couple of days ago aided by French trots and through them by Macron himself. Guess all that should give you an idea of what kind of guy we’re looking at here. He also admitted to being funded by some bourgeois guy, probably someone from the western-rigged opposition. Never looked into it, the fact itself is enough.

P.S. “Прииивеееееет, козлыыыыыыы!” Those who know - they know.

I generally agree with most things discussed on the podcast but the whole “Putin did this because he wanted to be immortalized in history books” take is a johnny harris level take.

This is like… The third time I’ve seen them strafe around in the issues of the Donbas war.

Im gonna be honest. I dont think ANY medium to big leftist commentators currently can be honest about this war.

Other than RBN or Breakthrough News the only people who seem to be able to afford being honest are “nonleft but not really right wing” commentators and independant right wingers; The New Atlas, Nathan Rich, The Duran…

Well… There is Richard Medhurst who is absolutely left wing.

So many of the leftist podcasts i listen to have had on really shitty people from the left in eastern europe, i think this calls attention more to the decline in leftism in eastern europe than the podcasters in general

I have not listened to this or any other episode of theirs, so I’m unsure of their politics…

I’ll unpack a few ideas to see where it gets us (I’ll be talking from the perspective of someone within the imperial core)…

Does it depend on where one lives?

Where I live, struggles against the bourgeoisie are also, naturally, struggles against global imperialism. And that bourgeoisie comprises national and foreign capitalists. A mix of US, British, French, German, and Canadian, mainly.

Should the struggle be against all the bourgeois operating in one’s own country? Or only against the citizen-bourgeois? Is there even such a thing as a domestic bourgeoisie today? The US capitalists are everywhere. And in the US, even Chinese investors have a stake (which may or may not be imperialism – I’m inclined to say it is, although I don’t have a view on whether it’s ‘successful’ in the way that US imperialists successfully use their power for, well, evil).

What about in a colony? In, say, 1920s Ireland or 1960s Algeria? Surely siding with the national bourgeoisie to oust the Brits and French is acceptable by Marxist standards? But it is complicated… Like, we know that the Catholic Church betrayed the Irish revolutionaries… Then more history happened, until the ‘national’ bourgeoisie sold out to the EU after 2008. And how can one separate comprador bourgeois in Africa from a national or domestic bourgeois? Isn’t that exactly why outsiders use compradors?

So my main question is: what is the difference between one’s

own country’s bourgeoisie [and] global imperialism[?]

There’s probably a different answer for people who live nearer to and further from the imperial core. For example, it would not make much sense to me for a Libyan to struggle against the Libyan bourgeois before 2008 because realistically this would only ever support global imperialism by creating another route into Africa for Anglo-capital. But struggling for socialism within that framework, without weakening the country’s defenses against the West? That seems different.

However, I do agree that the focus should be domestic. Within liberal discourse, any criticism of domestic capitalism is brushed off because there’s always a bigger enemy somewhere else. How can you criticise our government at a time like this, don’t you know [Putin is on a warpath / COVID is indiscriminate / China… such and such]?

So part of the problem is convincing liberals that (i) even if ‘outside’ is as bad as they suggest, this does not excuse their ‘own’ bourgeoisie, and (ii) they better start thinking about what they can do at home because they cannot do much from France/Denmark/Wales, etc about Russia/China, etc. They could blockade arms manufacturing or shipping that happens on their own soil, for example.

Focusing on what one can achieve within an hour’s journey from one’s front door does not mean forgetting about internationality or imperialism. Indeed, it’s the opposite: it’s realising that helping the people that Western liberals claim to pity means taking action at home and not expecting the Global South to do all the hard work.

Class consciousness is mostly absent in the West. So if turning the gaze onto a ‘domestic’ bourgeoisie helps people realise that there is a national and international class struggle, then the message isn’t terrible. I do not know if this podcast makes these points or others.

What do we think? Is this a better way of seeing it?

I would perhaps caution against ‘global imperialism’. Imperialism is inherently global already. And there seems to be a rise in anti-Semitism in which ‘globalism’ is used as a synonym for Jewish people organising in secret. So (i) the addition may be redundant, and (ii) we probably want to avoid accidental support for anti-Semitism.

Edit: typos.