this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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No, you aren't, that's imperialist thinking pointed inward. Now if you were to go sign up for the US military and work on technology for bombing people in other countries, that would be scummy. But where you are born is something you have no control over and thus cannot possibly be your responsibility.
Try not to take it personally when people do this kind of thing. Anyone actually literally saying that is misguided to begin with, but it is probably coming from a place of hatred for the empire and what it does, rather than a preoccupied hatred of every single individual living in the regions it controls.
I think that is an oversimplified analysis. Is a homeless person a labor aristocrat just because they're homeless in the US? I don't think so. The labor aristocracy analysis can be useful for tracking the connection between imperial spoils and imperial worker seeing some benefits from it, and how that changes the way they think about class struggle and international solidarity. But it loses precision of meaning if it is applied as a blanket categorization to everyone living in the imperial core, which defeats the point of it being a tool for being more precise in doing class/caste analysis.
Not everyone, but certainly there is a lot of it. This is likely to keep shifting as people do what they can to educate and as conditions worsen, with the electoral system providing no real relief.
People unironically think that though! It really tempts me into digging the razor in deeper than I normally do.
Only ACP chuds unironically think that.
People think (or at least, act like they think) all kinds of shit, especially online. You'll end up in a bad way if you wrap your mental health up in seeking the approval of online "leftists" who say whatever shit enters their mind like it's gospel truth. Look for people who are doing detailed analysis and doing revolutionary political work, not just people who are opinionated and especially not just people who are hateful. Hating the baddies isn't an ideology in itself. And applying collective punishment style blame logic onto imperial core regions is, like I said, turning imperial logic inward, not being a communist. Now does this mean that any time somebody vent posts about wanting missiles to rain down on israel for its obscene actions, that they are failing to be a communist, no. But it does mean that if somebody were to do a serious argument that every person living in israel deserves to die and should be glassed by nukes because of what israel has done and is doing, that would not be a communist analysis. The same applies to the US. So it's important not to confuse impassioned desires said in the heat of a moment with serious strategic military analysis backed by a dialectical materialist understanding of change and contradictions, as well as backed by a humane, communal worldview.
In the heat of the moment, it can be unpopular to acknowledge this side of things and risk sounding like sympathy for monsters, but it does matter. It is imperialism and colonialism that persistently has a policy of collective blame and mass murder as the answer to those who get in its crosshairs (usually just by existing and not being a slave to it). It is not the purpose or goal of communism to continue this policy and apply it to the imperial core instead. It is our job to ensure that it stops and that the instruments of it are so smashed and its supporters so reeducated or removed, that it can never happen again; or in more scientific language, it is our job to resolve the contradictions that produce and reproduce this kind of barbaric behavior and system, so that it will cease to be and we can begin to live in a world where civilian life is actually protected and human life more generally is valued, instead of so routinely dehumanized for the sake of domination and exploitation.
More simply said, I always go back to how places like China talk about these things. Do they say, "Our enemy is everyone living in these regions and we aim to annihilate them all"? No. If they acknowledge it, they tend to do it insofar as recognizing at least one level of class distinction, as the ruling classes and the people below that. Strategically, no matter how they feel about average people in the imperial core, it is far more effective to speak in a way that emphasizes their beef is not with every single person living there, rather than hardening regular people against them, or sending the more conscientious ones spiraling into self-flagellating despair.