They're too fuckin dumb to understand nuanced material critique, so all you're doing is giving them ammo to justify their own anticommunist biases from a left lens. There is no nuance in mainstream politics and the discussions therein, only extremes of black and white, with freedom countries on one and evil dictatorships on the other. Stop it.
Hard disagree. You should choose your battles and framing, but spreading anti-imperialism is your absolute duty as a Western leftist and it requires defending AES states. If you don't, you're going to end up supporting their internalized anticommunist propaganda, something that is far worse than alienating them because your views are so different from theirs.
And to be competent at this, you need to read a lot of history, since their misunderstanding is hegemonic and you have to displace it.
If my duty is to argue with a wall, then I'd rather use my time to engage in direct action. The anti-war movement is probably one of the most relevant and accessible forms of anti-imperialism, it's easier to convince the average uneducated buffoon that war is materially negative for them as well as those on the receiving end than it is to condense 70 years of history which will be inevitably dismissed as lies.
Anti-war messaging has anti-imperial effects, but doesn't require you to dive into conversations most libs aren't ready for. Besides, there's a pathway from general anti-war sentiment to more specific anti-imperialism (and even stuff like critical support for AES states).
Totally reasonable to go with the anti-war direction, I agree that has a good balance between anti-imperialist action and pipelining libs.
I was working under the assumption that you wanted to talk to libs but radicalize them carefully by avoiding defending AES, but I think I misunderstood.