If, like me, you live in relative comfort in a rich country, and your attempts to change the world are limited to ‘safe’ (and generally pretty ineffectual) activities such as writing, demonstrating, ‘online activism’, making music, making films, etc, then you should probably think twice before branding people or movements as ‘sellouts’.

According to our western coffee shop socialists, people like Nelson Mandela and Daniel Ortega are sellouts because they have made various compromises in order to get or keep state power. Qaddafi was a ‘sellout’ because of his (limited) rapprochement with the west since 2003. Mugabe was a sellout when he accepted a Structural Adjustment Program. Deng was a sellout because he invited foreign capital into China. Gerry Adams was a sellout when he signed the Good Friday Agreement, etc etc.

But the reality is that these issues are *incredibly* complicated and cannot be understood with simple formulas (generally I don’t think they can really be understood by people who are not right there in the thick of the situation). Have you ever tried running a third world state that doesn’t accept the dominant world order?

Have you ever had to choose between famine and an unfair loan? Or between a principled war and an unprincipled peace? Between increasing political freedom and preserving basic security? Between winning power in a shaky alliance and not having power at all?

It really isn’t for us to make all these gut-feeling blanket condemnations of people and movements who have made incredible sacrifices for the cause. It only ends up feeding into the divide-and-rule strategy that imperialist states are *always* using against the rest of the world. Our focus should always be on opposing the main enemy, including its very sophisticated divide-and-rule tactics.

this blog post has the right idea about "divide and rule" tactics being used to undermine solidarity for regimes which are targeted by imperialism. i'm reminded specifically of Aristide and Gaddafi having been accused of enacting neo-liberal reforms in order to soften up the opposition to their overthrow.

but then again, aren't there legitimate cases of leaders of national liberation movements being co-opted and in turned into full-time collaborators w/ their direct oppressors and/or international capital? Nelson Mandela and the ANC enacted a lot of neo-liberal reforms in South Africa and I used to be critical of them for that, but now I really don't think they had much of a choice.

it gets even more complicated w/ the Palestinian struggle (which the author noticeably doesn't even mention). today there is widespread condemnation of the post-Oslo Palestinian leadership for supposedly being "collaborators." I've heard it said before that Arafat was doing what he thought was best for Palestine in a shitty situation while Abbas crossed the line into collaborator territory.

it's also easy to say "support the left opposition to these regimes and oppose the reactionary/neo-liberal opposition." the fact of the matter is that the US is well aware of how anti-neo-liberal arguments can be utilized against regimes it doesn't like. the 2004 overthrow of Aristide in Haiti is a perfect example of this. the NED, working through the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, even financed a radical leftist union within Haiti that condemned Aristide as a neo-liberal imperialist shill.

TL;DR: shit's complicated.

Qaddafi was a ‘sellout’ because of his (limited) rapprochement with the west since 2003. Mugabe was a sellout when he accepted a Structural Adjustment Program. Deng was a sellout because he invited foreign capital into China. Gerry Adams was a sellout when he signed the Good Friday Agreement, etc etc.

I mean good lord we're discussing huge world-shaping events with all the nuance of scene kids deciding whether or not a band is punk.

Gaddafi, whatever you think of him, paid the price for his beliefs via a NATO-backed knife up the pooper, how the fuck anybody living in the safety net west has the gall to label him a 'sellout' i'll never understand.

people would say, well, socialism collapsed around the world, they suffered decades of punitive sanctions, their main importer and aid partner imploded, they had no viable alternative but to open up. but examples like cuba show that there is the potential to resist even in small countries.

I mean, Cuba was the richest country in Latin America in 1959 and would be incredibly wealthy today without communism. But if keeping some communist dictator in power for decades is all that matters, North Korea still has a lot of "potential to resist"!

babyhueypnewton posted:

any blow to imperialism

babyhueypnewton posted:

the most effective system of propaganda and media control

maybe everything is great and you're just a malcontent

c_man posted:

we should all follow japan and tell the older generation to fuck itself and completely abandon procreation

"we have" -tpaines dad, in mourning over the loss of his son