this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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El Chisme
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I'll never understand why it's so hard for some people to understand that the US is literally an evil empire that exploits, oppresses, and murders people all over the world. Of course all rightwing governments suck, but it's easy to see that the US is the primary enemy of leftist movements across the planet. If we want communism, we need the US to collapse and movements all over the place preventing the vacuum from being filled by something worse.
Idk seems like anyone left of liberals would understand this.
"I'm comfortable which means the US can't be that bad"
Similar reasoning for why suburbanites generally don't care about police violence.
I think it literally is because books like 1984 and other propaganda has given people this idea that "authoritarian" countries are just this miserable 24/7 nightmare for everyone who lives in them and therefore any country that has any significant population of people who seem happy and comfortable can't be evil. It's like how liberals shit their pants when they hear accounts of people living in the USSR who actually enjoyed their lives and did fun stuff like go to the beach and have barbecues cuz apparently under evil communism everyone is just supposed to work in the orphan crushing factory all day and then go home to eat gray mush.
"In bad countries, the color pallet is dark gray or tan. In good country, they use all the colors of the rainbow."
Russia isnt even that authoritarian so in this case it’s literally propaganda
Plus, even if Russia wasn't much weaker than the US, I still can't do anything to affect them except support the Military Industrial Complex or their candidates. I'm not gonna do that anyway. So what does it matter if, emotionally, I like Russia? It's not like my "support" for them means anything.
Right.
Any correct thinking leftist in the west would obviously be against their own government's imperialist actions. They should all support limiting military spending, aiding arms embargoes, withdrawing our forces, pushing for peace/ceasefires in all of our active conflicts, etc. Any anti-war hippie knows this, even the lib ones going totally on vibes.
So as long as you do that part, actually opposing your own empire in material ways as directly as you can, what does it matter your opinion on the russian or iranian states are? We aren't russian or iranian, we can't do anything to change their policies from without - all we can do is beat the drums of war of our own empire to do it on our behalf, which directly contradicts the goals above. What's the point in even bringing up how evil Russia or Iran are as a westerner? Whether they are pure saints or demons incarnate it doesn't change what your short-term tangible goals are, so why are you wasting time squabbling over it instead of getting to work?
There's a chinese saying... something like 'an egg cracked from within brings new life. an egg cracked from without is someone's meal'. This is how social progress must work, it must arise organically from within following the natural development of that society advancing. It cannot be imposed from without via violent force, and those who claim to do so are looking for a meal.
obligatory Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing" mention:
it doesn't materially matter directly to the situation but the analysis that gets us to our position and all the media literacy and so on are still relevant.
it's potentially productive to tell libs who are mad at the democrats but don't know anything besides nonviolent brunch marches that euromaidan was a coup, that western media was reporting on the nazi stuff and then stopped because they're an extension of the government, that russia is in the right at the very least to protect the separatists from nazis, that they'd want canada to intervene on behalf of the PNW if those "greater idaho" nazis popped off shelling seattle for 7 years etc.
Yes, helping them see the bigger picture is beneficial - you are right. But I think right at the outset it's important to determine whether you and the other person are even on the "same team" so to speak. If they can agree to opposing their own empire first and foremost, I'm willing to have further discussions later to get into the weeds of history and analysis and understand things better. However, if you cannot get them to agree to opposing American empire first and foremost, and they insist on continuing their chauvinistic attacks on "enemies" then this person is not on "your team". You can never come to an understanding with such a person until you get them to accept the primary and first axiom, their revolutionary defeatist duty, that they are part of the evil empire and must oppose it first and foremost.
yeah. "look they did a fuckload of coups and ukraine was one of them" ought to be enough to get people on board with hating the empire, along with the invasion of iraq and a thousand other crimes against humanity.
The biggest problem reaching westoids really is just western chauvinism in the plain-ass dictionary meaning, but if you call it out it just sounds kind of gay and european to the Usian ear, so it's hard to get them to stop and register chauvinism as a bad thing and not just a funny thing to say.
I feel like even before I became a socialist I realized this. Like it shouldn't be that hard (in the sense of breaking from stated liberal theory) to recognize it for the average lib... I could imagine a lib even being moderately successful in being aggressive against "conservative aggression costing us so much abroad".
Some conservatives and chuds seem more aware then the average lib about foreign meddling. Often its because they want to be isolationist/bring home fascism, but a lot of "average joes" at least say they don't see the point in constantly stepping in shit (that we left) overseas. Its really funny. Its like the conservatives yell about X thing abroad, but (some number) don't actually believe it to be a threat. But then the libs pick it up and unironically believe it. Like at this time, I'd expect more conservatives to say something like Iraq was bs that obama kept us in, then a liberal saying it was bs that bush dragged us into.
During college I got a lot of the "intellectual elite" libs saying that liberalism, free trade, etc, brings global peace and prosperity. Peace of Westphalia, magna carta, or w/e shit they pull out for "modern civilized" global-national organization.... All of it is just the weakest cover to pretend to be nice while being 20x as evil as they say Stalin was.
In many cases it's because they live in that empire and benefit from its economic subjugation of the world.