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?
Isn't this kind of semantic? I'm pretty sure "critical support" always meant "critical support (in the struggle) against imperialism". For instance no Marxist supports an Iranian theocracy, unless the other option is US imperialism, so we maintain our criticisms of the Iranian theocracy, but recognize that it is the better option and so we support it in the struggle against imperialism. Similarly we would support a bourgeois struggle against fascism (unless you're a Trot I suppose), while maintaining a criticism of bourgeoisie capitalism.
On the other hand we have maintained unconditional opposition to imperialism since the end of the 19th century so I certainly don't disagree with that framing either.
Edit: I suppose the problem comes from the fact that "critical support" might have actually been tied to actual material and political support in the past. Now it's just an empty phrase.
That is what it is supposed to do, but I see a lot of people leaving the critical out of it. Emphasising that it doesn't matter that the target state is bad or not is good for preventing people from falling into the trap of defending countries that are anti communist.