{"id":188700,"date":"2021-06-02T17:32:55","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T17:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=117399"},"modified":"2021-06-02T17:32:55","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T17:32:55","slug":"leftist-anti-anti-imperialism-supporting-imperialism-but-with-caveats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/02\/leftist-anti-anti-imperialism-supporting-imperialism-but-with-caveats\/","title":{"rendered":"Leftist Anti-Anti-Imperialism: Supporting Imperialism but with Caveats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Academic Gilbert Achcar, in an article originally in New Politics<\/em><\/a> and \u00a0picked up by The Nation<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> proves by his own example that what he calls \u201cprogressive democratic anti-imperialists\u201d are not progressive. Rather, they (1) serve to legitimize reaction and (2) obscure the singular role of US imperialism, while (3) attacking progressive voices. Such anti-anti-imperialism provides left cover for the foreign policy of the US as well as the UK, where Achcar is based.<\/p>\n

Legitimizing imperialism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Achcar, by his own admission, supported the US\/NATO imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya, which quickly and predictably morphed into a full war of Western imperial conquest against one of the then most prosperous African nations. Today Libya is a failed state, where black African slaves are openly traded and military factions contend for state power.<\/p>\n

Achcar\u2019s alibi<\/a> is that he warned \u201cthere are not enough safeguards in the wording of the [no-fly] resolution to bar its use for imperialist purposes,\u201d adding that he favored the imperialist action as a measure for the \u201cprotection of civilians and not \u2018regime change.\u2019\u201d This is an example of leftist anti-anti-imperialism; i.e., supporting imperialism but with caveats.<\/p>\n

Achcar wished for a democratic people\u2019s uprising in Libya rather than Western imposed regime-change. So, while he echoed the main imperialist talking points about the \u201cbrutal dictator\u201d and his \u201cregime,\u201d he hoped for a nice imperialism which would achieve regime change by \u201cdemocratic\u201d means. He admits to no responsibility for his propagandizing which \u2013 whether it was his intention or not \u2013 foreshadowed the ensuing disaster.<\/p>\n

Behind Achcar\u2019s leftish rhetoric is a flawed belief that somehow the imperialist actions of the US and its allies may be truly humanitarian. In short, the US purportedly has a \u201cresponsibility to protect (R2P).\u201d Achcar championed R2P in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, where his article lauds how the US bombing \u201crescued\u201d people on the ground, even though in every instance the outcomes were neither democratic nor humanitarian.<\/p>\n

That such noble intentions regarding \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d inexorably devolve is because R2P is nothing more than an ideological defense of the imperial project. The true anti-imperialist stance, contra Achcar, is no intervention \u2013 humanitarian or otherwise. The fundamental lesson should be evident that, after the multitude of US-backed post-WWII \u201cmilitary actions,\u201d neither the motivation to participate nor the outcomes were democratic or humanitarian.<\/p>\n

How many wars<\/a> has the US been involved in lately? Timothy McGrath, in an article in The World,<\/em> documents anywhere from 0 to 134 depending on your definition, since the last officially declared US war was WWII. McGrath concludes that the right answer to how many is \u201ctoo many,\u201d which is an appropriate anti-imperialist view.<\/p>\n

Obscuring the singular role of US imperialism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Achcar says: \u201cTo illustrate the complexity of the questions that progressive anti-imperialism faces today \u2013 a complexity that is unfathomable to the simplistic logic of\u201d the peace activists he criticizes. \u201cComplexity\u201d is indeed the crux of his argument and what is wrong with it. Achcar\u2019s political universe does not recognize a single, imperialist superpower but a \u201ccomplexity\u201d of imperialisms. His plea for opposing all imperialisms renders the role of the US imperialism equivalent to all other nations.<\/p>\n

But how can this be given the facts? The US has over 800 foreign military bases<\/a>, not including<\/a> secret \u201cblack\u201d sites, active-duty combat bases, and foreign installations nominally under the name of the host nation but garrisoning US troops. And that does not include what are literally armies of US private military contractors abroad. US military spending<\/a> eclipses the next ten nations in the world. US arms sales<\/a> makes it the greatest war profiteering nation. US has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons of mass destruction and a \u201cfirst strike\u201d nuclear posture<\/a>. No other nation or combination of nations have such imperial reach.<\/p>\n

Achcar\u2019s formulation in effect obscures the hegemonic role of US imperialism. In his view, the US has \u201ckept a low profile in the Syrian war\u201d compared to the \u201cincomparably more important intervention of Russian imperialism.\u201d Not mentioned is that Syria in near Russia\u2019s border, while it is a half a globe away from the US. Moreover, Russia is in Syria at the invitation of a sovereign nation in accordance with international law, whereas the US is committing the supreme crime of waging war.<\/p>\n

Although Achcar says all imperialisms should be equally opposed, that has not been his practice. Achar teaches at the London School of Oriental and African Studies where an anti-imperialist student group revealed that he taught a training class<\/a> to members of a counter-insurgency branch<\/a> of the UK military. In his defense<\/a>, Achcar responded: \u201cShould we prefer that the military and security personnel of this country be solely exposed to right-wing education?\u201d<\/p>\n

Attacking progressive voices<\/strong><\/p>\n

Achcar\u2019s central thesis is: \u201cMeanwhile, Cold War \u2018campism\u2019 was reemerging under a new guise: No longer defined by alignment behind the USSR but by direct or indirect support for any regime or force that is the object of Washington\u2019s hostility.\u201d \u201cCampism,\u201d according to perennial Cold Warrior Achcar, is the political deviation of not being sufficiently hostile to the USSR or Russia or communism.<\/p>\n

Achcar laments what he considers errant voices of leftist \u201cfools,\u201d but not the larger issue of the decline of the anti-war movement. In fact, the very elements that he attacks – the US Peace Council<\/a>, UNAC<\/a>, and the Stop the War Coalition<\/a>\u2013 are among the leading anti-war organizations in the US (USPC and UNAC) and the UK (StWC).<\/p>\n

Achcar\u2019s \u201cplague on all houses\u201d is a recipe for inactivism by the peace movement. If all state actors are imperialist, then there is nothing left to do but empty moralizing. For example, by conflating US imperialism with the Syrian defense, no solution is possible for ending that benighted struggle. The only option left for progressive politics under the Achcar paradigm is to wish for a magical perfect socialism to arise triumphal out of the ashes of the bombs.<\/p>\n

Surely the fundamental demand of the genuine peace movement, \u201cout now,\u201d is anathema to Professor Achcar, who espouses the imperialist prerogative of the \u201cright to protect.\u201d Those who promote such non-intervention are attacked as \u201cfools.\u201d Achcar, incidentally, dismisses political understandings to the left of him as \u201clunatic\u201d and \u201cnot intelligent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Achcar begins his article with the observation that \u201cthe last three decades have witnessed increasing political confusion about the meaning of anti-imperialism\u201d and proceeds to prove that thesis by his apologetics for US imperialism and his disdain for those who object to Washington\u2019s hostility to nations that assert their independent sovereignty.<\/p>\n

The article concludes with Achcar elevating to a \u201cguiding principle\u201d the responsibility to support \u201cintervention by an imperialist power [when it] benefits an emancipatory popular movement\u2026[with] the restriction of its involvement to forms that limit its ability to impose its domination.\u201d In other words, he supports imperialism but with caveats.<\/p>The post Leftist Anti-Anti-Imperialism: Supporting Imperialism but with Caveats<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Academic Gilbert Achcar, in an article originally in New Politics and \u00a0picked up by The Nation, proves by his own example that what he calls \u201cprogressive democratic anti-imperialists\u201d are not progressive. Rather, they (1) serve to legitimize reaction and (2) obscure the singular role of US imperialism, while (3) attacking progressive voices. Such anti-anti-imperialism provides [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Leftist Anti-Anti-Imperialism: Supporting Imperialism but with Caveats<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[579,731,194,196,3074,202,203,714],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188700"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188724,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188700\/revisions\/188724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}