On social imperialism on the American "left"
Whenever there’s a flare-up with some Official Enemy of the US State Department—now China and Russia are the favorite targets, but Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea and others all get to have a turn—a sizeable portion of what counts for the “left” in the US joins in on the hysteria and starts to police the very marginal voices who speak out in opposition to these acts of imperialist aggression and propaganda which are disseminated by the entire media and political class.
From Fox News to the New York Times, from Mitch McConnell to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, to all the blue-checks on Twitter from self-identified MAGA Trumpers to DSA in bio New Yorker Dissent Mag progressive Soc-Dem anarchist antifas, all of them unite to proclaim the Official Enemy of the moment to be pure evil and worthy of condemnation.
Without even going into whether there is legitimate criticisms to be had of this Official Enemy of the moment, what is the point of joining in that chorus which is already the dominant narrative disseminated by literally the most powerful, influential media and political figures in the US and the Western world more broadly? You live there, you live in that country where every major institution is already saying this shit, so what is the point of adding your voice to it, and then even worse, policing the very few totally marginal, totally powerless people on social media who say something different, who instead call out the hypocrisy of the US, who instead call for diplomacy and the lowering of tensions?
There is no point in pathologizing these people. That’s too easy and it lets them off the hook. No, the reason they act this way, the reason the US “left” in general (although fortunately the DSA’s international committee has been doing some great work lately) is woefully lacking in any understanding of anti-imperialist principles, is because they are totally wedded to the ideology of Western and American supremacy. They believe fundamentally that the US empire is the “lesser evil” on the world stage, so whenever it is in conflict with an Official Enemy, the onus isn’t on them to do the very marginally effective thing they can actually do to change the situation, namely by vocally opposing the actions of the country they live and pay tax in—no, instead they immediately grasp for lofty moralism and abstractions about how complicated these situations really are and we can’t really judge what’s happening because there’s all sorts of agency involved and other countries are imperialist and bad too and oh my god things are just so complex and complicated we just have to analyze it more and write more articles and talk more and do nothing that has any impact on the world except for bolstering the prevailing imperialist propaganda that is already being pumped out by the dominant institutions in your society.
This isn’t anything new. Just read this excellent article on Michael Harrington, one of the founding members of DSA, and his grotesque, depraved attitude toward the Vietnam war, and his smearing of genuine anti-imperialist activists on the left.
They are few and far between, and always smeared, especially by others who claim to be on the left but are in reality just objective social imperialists in their actions, happily contributing to the manufacturing of consent for the US State Department along with literally every media outlet and politician in the country. But they couch it in flowery rhetoric and edgy post-structuralist frameworks of enabling the agency of the subaltern oppressed marginalized decolonial projects of…shut the fuck up, you have the exact same position as Tucker Carlson, Rachel Maddow, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell. The sad thing is that you think you’re doing something different because you have developed these elaborate justifications in your mind for why you behave the way you do.
One notable exception is of course Noam Chomsky, who has always maintained a steadfast commitment to anti-imperialism, while still also being very critical of the Official Enemies when asked about it. But he understands that the two need to be separated from one another, and that doing the criticizing while in a moment of total mass hysteria by the media and political class agitating for war and conflict, rather than emphasizing the hypocrisy and the evils of the US empire itself, which he as a US citizen can actually impact (however marginally)—not only puts him squarely on the side of the imperialist warmongers, but totally invalidates his professed anti-imperialism. It’s literally a performative contradiction. These are basic moral and logical principles:
See also Jeremy Scahill’s great video essay on another propaganda term like “moral equivalence” used as part of imperialist apologia, the ever-present “whataboutism”:
These are such basic truisms that you can’t attribute the fact that so many on the American “left” don’t comprehend it to ignorance or malice. No, again: it is because they are totally wedded to the American imperial project. Which is only natural for people born and raised in that culture, where that ideology is so prevalent. It takes a lot of work to get oneself out of that mentality, out of that immediate impulse to go: “YEAH OK THE US MAY BE BAD BUT WHAT ABOUT CHINA OR RUSSIA OR IRAN THOUGH. I MEAN YOU CANT JUST FOCUS ON THE US AND LET THEM OFF THE HOOK. YEAH SURE EVERY POLITICIAN AND MEDIA OUTLET IS ALREADY SAYING THEY ARE EVIL BUT WHATEVER IM A SOCIALIST ANARCHIST SOC DEM DISSENT MAG WRITER I HAVE TO SAY IT TOO MAN, THE PRINCIPLES ARE SUPREME BRO, I HAVE ABSTRACT PRINCIPLES IN MY HEAD BRO. YOUR A TANKIE CAMPIST BRO".
Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourselves. The entire world’s left is looking at you and cringing at how pathetic, narcissistic and self-serving you are. You live in the hegemonic global power that routinely kills millions across the world, that oppresses and murders hundreds of millions from Palestine to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, that spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined, that has ships and naval bases spanning the globe, cornering every country, that is leading the largest imperialist aggressive military alliance in NATO, and you’re bitching about “tankies” because it makes you feel better when you agree with what Fox News and the New York Times, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell are saying?
As an American leftist, your first and primary duty, if you care at all about anything you claim to care about, all those lofty principles, is to be an anti-imperialist who will do as Chomsky does: call out and oppose, with whatever means available to you, the actions of your ruling class and ruling institutions, which are wreaking havoc across the globe. If you can’t even do that, if you can’t even do the bare minimum, you deserve your marginal, totally feckless status.
Here’s a good piece on the US empire, and of course Killing Hope (PDF) is indispensable as a resource on US imperialism, and I highly recommend this documentary on the coming war on China by the always wonderful John Pilger.
I read all of this in a squirrel voice.
Great work, thank you