I believe that anti-imperialism is definitely important, but are there any cases where that crosses the line?

Say for example a fascist government. Now, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were imperialist powers so it made 100% sense to oppose them. But take the Taliban, an extremely reactionary government that opposed the USA. Or India, ruled by a far-right nationalist party that is a member of BRICS. Or pretty much any other fascistic and/or genocidal government that opposes imperialism while not being imperialist themselves.

Now, I’m not saying we should support the imperialists, but are there cases where we should also not support the ones fighting the imperialists?

  • @pancake@lemmy.ml
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    1611 months ago

    My guess is, we should support whoever makes our revolutionary task easier. According to Lenin, anti-imperialism does exactly that, and according to Mao, we should join forces even with reactionaries if that serves the Revolution, provided we don’t let them influence us.

  • @m532
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    1411 months ago

    Never. Nothing is worse than imperialism. Imperialism currently enslaves more than half of the world.

  • @CountryBreakfast
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    11 months ago

    Anti imperialism goes beyond states and their present ruling parties. Getting caught up in the political spectrum will not make anti imperialist positions clearer, but actually muddier.

    The classes that rule “problematic” states are susceptible to the global system. Anti imperialist politics is a necessity, regardless of the contradictions istcreates for these classes. The fallacy is to say it is entirely cynical because it is actually still threatening to them. It is perilous.

    In Russia for example, Putin must both resist and protect neoliberalism, but this only fosters and enables more resistance to it because it both creates a path away from it while not taking it with satisfactory vigor. This is contradiction in action and it is dangerous to imperialism.

    Anti imperialism isnt necessarily about being “based,” it’s about a process of history that is ultimately corrosive to the capitalist system. IMO getting caught up in “they are theocratic over there,” “they are nationalists over here,” “the rhetoric of these leaders is too problematic,” “these people here are not communists,” completely misses the forest for the trees. To me, when people distract themselves with holier than thou politics, it results in something quite similar to howpeople say China is strickly capitalist but then go and ignore or are ambivalent towards how lethal rising wages in China are to the capitalist system.

    • The Free Penguin
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      -210 months ago

      holier than thou politics is when you realize that Russian capital and Western capital are fighting for influence in the Ukraine

      • @CountryBreakfast
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        310 months ago

        Like all of your comments on this matter, your incrediblely late reply speaks to absolutely nothing I or any of our other comrades of said. Further, you don’t really substantiate your claim that Russia has symmetrical goals with the US. You don’t even substantiate Russian imperialism, and absolutely you do not substatiate it within any Marxist terms. Anyone one of us could use the exact sophistry you use to make the outrageous claim the Dominican Republic is imperialist or South Africa is imperialist. But you very clearly do not understand the dialectic, you do not understand imperialisms of the last 100 years, you only understand ideology.

  • @HaSch
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    1011 months ago

    If you look a little deeper into regressive powers like al-Qaeda or the Taliban, you will find that they are inextricably intertwined with the imperialist bourgeoisie even if they seem to oppose the USA on the surface. They exist not only to repress nascent leftist currents like classical fascist movements do, but on top of that to plunge entire regions into chaos and to hinder and revert their agricultural and industrial self-development, so that these regions will not become a serious threat to the Western hegemony. The same was ostensibly true for the Nazi Party which had many supporters among the tycoons of the US-American industry such as Henry Ford, even before it came to power.

    Regarding India, whom the US is currently trying to involve in some dubious geopolitical scheme called the Quad (together with Australia and Japan), they are on relatively amicable terms with the governing BJP and Modi. However, the US puts pressure on India for little other reason than to counter China’s growing diplomatic influence in the region; India isn’t as close to them as Britain or as strategically important to them as Eastern Europe or Taiwan, which is why they never really succeeded to contain anti-imperialist currents in India. This is how, despite on the whole implementing certain regressive policies, you also get local communist governments in Kerala or the 2020 general strike of 250 million people.

    In general, I do think there is a “right side of history”, but it is much more complicated than to simply say that Iran is on it, India is not, etc. Rather than looking only at the actions of central governments, it is important to consider the people of the Third World and look which movements are trying to improve the humanitarian situation and develop the material conditions.

  • ButtigiegMineralMap
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    711 months ago

    The reason why I say no is because I believe in self-governance. Afghanistan has a better chance at self-governance without the largest military force on Earth present. Is it ideal to have the fucking Taliban in power? Of course not, but in time things can change and lead to a different outcome, that can’t happen with Imperialist forces present. I agree that Iran has some bad policies for women, but that’s infinitely better than a U.S. puppet in charge that gives away natural resources for pennies on the dollar. I could go on and on, but essentially yea, these people are worth supporting, critically of course. To do so without criticism would be undialectic and literally just ignoring issues that should be addressed at a later date.

    • @cfgaussian
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      11 months ago

      Russia and Iran are both extremely important to the global anti-imperialist struggle, and to combating imperialism in their respective regions. For this reason they have been very heavily demonized by the West. Yes it is true that both their regimes clearly have reactionary elements to them, but the degree to which they are reactionary has been greatly exaggerated. Despite what you may have heard Iran is actually fairly progressive for its region, most of the US aligned Gulf Arab states are far worse. Iran is also an essential pillar to resistance movements all across the “Middle East” from Palestine and Lebanon to Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Without Iran (and to a lesser extent Russia thanks to their intervention in Syria preventing the US from succeeding in replicating the Libya scenario there) the imperialists would have an easy time dominating the entire region. Both Russia and Iran are full of contradictions but that shouldn’t mean that we allow ourselves to be duped by the imperialist propaganda narratives into renouncing even critical support for them. This sort of “both sides are bad so we shouldn’t support either” attitude only serves the Empire. The liberal obsession with only ever supporting regimes that are “pure” and “free from sin” doesn’t bring us any closer to achieving our goals.

      As for India, currently it is about as close to a “neutral” player as you can get in conditions like today when the confrontation between the imperialist and anti-imperialist camp is sharpening and the neutral space is shrinking fast. It remains to be seen which way it will go, and in fact this same conflict is also reflected internally in very intense struggles like the recent massive farmers’ protests, the attempts by the reactionary BJP to divert attention from the economic struggle thorough stoking religious conflict with the Muslim minority, and some local governments of certain regions being almost diametrically opposed politically to the national government. Here again what should be supported is not the reactionary element but that which is progressive, e.g. India’s independence and resistance to Western pressures to join in on either their anti-Russia or their anti-China crusades.

      Of course as other commenters have pointed out all of these regimes are to a greater or lesser degree a direct result of past imperialist meddling, wherever they couldn’t suppress the resistance, they instead created conditions for the reactionary right to replace and suppress the left wing revolutionary forces. They did this in Afghanistan, Palestine, and in other places too.

      • @comdev
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        10 months ago

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