Too often I notice when a nation in the global south is targeted by the imperialists there are all sorts of people rushing to proclaim "critical support" for the said nation, even if it has no left-wing bent at all or is openly anti-communist. There are two problems with this.

First, all support should be critical support. Uncritical support is anti-Marxist and against the spirit of "ruthless criticism of all things". It breeds dogmatism which is poisonous to critical thinking. There is a reason why Mao railed so hard against dogmatism.

Second, it frames the discussion as to whether the said country is good or not, which is not the point of the political line. We do not support global south countries like Iran just because, especially if they are not socialist. We should not be centring the governments that are affected, but the imperialist actions themselves.

I see discussions about this where people end up talking over one another. After seeing someone proclaim 'critical support', someone else will point out said countries faults and as to why they are worthy of support. The first person will then say that because that country is under attack we should support them. These discussions usually go nowhere because both people are technically right, it's just that they are misunderstanding each other.

This is where my idea of replacing "Critical support to countries affected by US imperialism" with "Unconditional opposition to US imperialism in all its forms" comes in. The second slogan allows a lot more flexibility in thinking, instead of committing to supporting countries, you commit to opposing imperialism and nothing more. Your support for various reactionary anti-imperialist causes starts and ends with their opposition to imperialism. As soon as they stop you stop supporting them. If they do awful things you don't have to support them on that basis as it's not relevant to opposing imperialism.

What do you think?

  • Classic_Agency [he/him,comrade/them]
    1·
    4 years ago

    but from an image standpoint propaganda wonks swear by the idea that you look better supporting something than opposing something else.

    I don't disagree with you here, but in the context of anti-imperialism from my observed experience, critical support seems more detrimental. What we ultimately support is a world without imperialism, we should focus more on that.

    People respond poorly to critical support of periphery countries because they’re indoctrinated with jingoist, nationalist bullshit

    It depends, yes there is absolutely propaganda like with Bolivia and the fires, or with Iraq and the incubators, but there are also legitimate criticisms one can make. Assad aligned himself with the west and carried out neoliberal economic policies before the Arab spring for example. We cannot dismiss these criticisms if we want to have a holistic understanding of what is going on. The point of my reframing is to make it so that it doesn't matter if we criticize of the target government because we are committed to anti-imperialism.