Today i had the misfortune of encountering a western "leftist" on Twitter. He stans Podemos (a spanish demsoc party, very liberal and proNATO, they are now in a coalition government with the socdems and they love Zelenski). We discussed the Ukraine War and Russia. I thought he would do the typical "ok the US and NATO are very bad, but Russia is bad too!" so i brought up the NATO invasions of Yugoslavia and Libya to show how the west is manufacturing consent now with Ukraine just like they did with Yugoslavia and Libya, which i assumed he would say were bad. Well the motherfucker goes and says "akchually those invasions were good, we stopped genocides and evil dictators". WTF. How are these people "leftists"? They are straight up NATOist warhawks. How is this "the left" now? And this is in Europe, where the left is much stronger than in the US! I cant stand this. HOW IS THIS "LEFTISM"? Im so angry right now, what a piece of shit human being, defending imperialist genocides while calling himself a "leftist". He even had the gull of saying "you arent a leftist, you defend genocidal regimes like the USSR, Putin or North Korea, youre a fascist!". Fucking unbelievable. Ok rant over.
Oh and he also defended finnish and baltic nazis of WW2 and said "bolshevism is just like nazism". Plus he said holodomor was real and when i showed him that expert historians on the subject like Mark Tauger, J Arch Getty and Stephen Wheatcroft think otherwise, he said "youre wrong, the historical consensus doesnt agree with you".
I think what you said about China demonstrates the crux of the matter. The right approach that should be pursued depends very much on the particular circumstances of every revolution, the history and the cultural peculiarities of each individual country, and how much of an impediment or a significant reactionary force that the religious institutions in each case represent. I think the more tolerant Chinese approach was right for China, and the more militantly anti-clerical approach of the Bolsheviks was right for Russia where the church had historically been a very reactionary force and was in bed with all the worst of the old power structures.
The role which religion and church serve should be analyzed and studied on a case by case basis. For instance in Cuba it seems that they have managed to overwhelmingly embrace the progressive and socialist side of Christianity. In Libya Gaddafi had done something similar with Islam. In Poland on the other hand i see a situation much more akin to that of pre-1917 Russia unfortunately.
I'm going to go ahead and channel Mao here and say the key is to investigate and try to thoroughly understand the situation before formulating a policy position.
Exactly, this is part of why i think those people from GZ are nowhere near being ML - the very core of what Marxism Leninism is and why it is so successful is that it always need to pay attention to the material conditions and formulate theory and practice according to it (while staying troe to the marxist principles). They are obviously not doing it.