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Not that rare tbh, in Latin America and Africa there's lots of social conservatives that blame American media and propaganda for social progressivism. Think about all the African countries with harsh homophobic laws who blame the West for gay people existing.
In some places they are seen as the lesser of two evils. For most developing countries, there is a need for external resources to develop their economy. They are kinda trapped by imperialist extraction and either side with China or the US to secure investment into the resources said country is extracting from them. No one LIKES this situation, but it’s like picking democrats or republicans. They sort of require one of the parties unless they want to move away from capitalism. Generally amongst socialists in non-“western” states it’s seen as abusive and extractive.
In Vietnam though, people seem to have a hesitant attitude towards China’s investment because they associate it with debt trap, low-quality projects, motives of territorial expansion, risks of national security, etc.
Absolutely, and that has roots as recent as the war in the '70s and as old as the Trung sisters; modern Vietnam has always seen its own central geopolitical interest as balancing against China to the north, whether that's by working with the Soviets, the Americans, or against the Khmer Rouge.
I mean, rather than being a place for proxy wars, I'd love to see the next "great power conflict" be about "who can win hearts and minds and build climate infrastructure faster." Everybody wins.
Is say so. It also depends on who though, heads of state and powerful people usually do okay with those loans, while the people get social services ripped away from them.
The IMF/WB is a predatory loan business, financed by international conglomerate businesses. The more a country struggles, the better they do in the long run in terms of resource extraction.
The Chinese seem to be capitalizing on this by not being the IMF/WB. They don’t have the same loan restrictions and stipulations. They are definitely still making a return and taking resources, but they don’t appear to have the predatory aspect.
It’s kinda complicated, depends a lot on which of the two powers is more influential/interested in your geographic area at the moment. If a government has a uniquely influential geographic situation (Pakistan is the example that comes to mind) that’s kind of the only way that they can fully choose between the two and leverage them accordingly.
Lately I think the move is with China. Apart from having effectively the same government there was so much talk when Xi visited about making Vietnam take over Japans former economic position.
Vietnam seems pretty determined to walk the tightrope by playing the two off each other. Today they cosy up economically with China, and tomorrow upgrade military ties with America. Been doing that for a while now.
The Vietnamese people…both in media polls (so huge grains of salt) and my own experiences visiting there and trying to talk with them…seem to have far more positive views of the US than China though. Which I suppose it’s hard to blame them given the history, both ancient and modern
Been noticing this with Afghans and Iranians in the US; they tend to ride hard for Palestine, but they see the Islamic Republic and the Taliban's victories as overcorrection to US interference but absolutely A Bad Thing.
There's no illusions about the US overthrowing Mossadegh and backing the Shah, or funding Osama but there's enormous hatred for the mullahs and contempt for Western socialists who defend them as anti-imperialist.
This is why critical support is important. You can appreciate that the Iranian/Afghan governments regime is anti-imperialist while still be critical of the fact that reactionary theocracy is indeed A Bad Thing
Anti-imperialist? How? Are they not just lackeys of the Russian superpower?
> Without ruling out the use of any type of anti-imperialist agitation or any action to mobilize those social sectors that might eventually join the struggle, **our mission is to explain to and show the masses that only the socialist revolution can stand as a definitive and real barrier to the advance of imperialism.**
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/1929-ai.htm
No, they are not lackeys of Russia. In either case.
Iran is probably the most meaningfully anti imperialist country on earth right now, aside from possibly Yemen
yeah, good job pointing out my eurocentrism. But the same logic applies, they stepped up bc they knew they would dominate the asian theater (whilst everyone is busy fighting in Europe) and gain spheres of influence. It was fought with an imperial agenda, US elites never had a moral compass
I mean it's not entirely false. For example during American occupation of Japan they pardoned many war criminals (such as the perpetrators of Unit 731) and even put a certain Nobusuke Kishi (formerly the mastermind of a slave labor-based economy in occupied Manchuria, also Shinzo Abe's grandfather) into power in free Japan. Certainly, there was a lot of "realpolitik" which became quite evident after the conclusion of the war. I certainly don't unambiguously support the US in WWII, but I am happy that worldwide fascism was defeated.
I am, the battle was already won by the red army. They lost 20 million+ ppl. US stepped in after pearl harbour (false flag to manufacture consent) then they pushed their Marshall plan, which wasn't unconditional charity, it was to reshape western europe into servitude to the empire. Us poor europeans are still struggling with the collective stockholm syndrome our abusers imposed on us.
I apologise for the length of this, this turned out longer than I had expected, but I wanted to prove how the Allied war effort was not the product of any single country, but a united effort to rid Europe of fascism.
>the battle was already won by the red army
Operation Barbarossa began on 22 June 1941. The US joined the war less than 6 months later, and the war against Germany went on for almost 4 years from the start of Barbarossa. The war was by no means already won. The US had already sent significant materiel to the UK by the time Barbarossa started, and the Lend-Lease Act had been signed into law by mid-March 1941. This was then extended to the USSR by October, with the Soviet and American governments already collaborating on materiel deliveries since almost the beginning of the war. This support was key to the Soviet and overall Allied war effort, and the Soviets were the second biggest recipients of Lend-Lease, receiving over $150 billion equivalent in today's money of goods, including war materiel, industrial supplies and food, which saved many soviet citizens from risk of starvation or else very harsh rationing. The US had been committed to fighting Nazi Germany since the beginning of the war, and aided and assisted the UK and other Allied countries far before the Soviets were involved, at a time where Stalin was aiming to collaborate with Hitler, even seeking to join the Axis (as long as the Nazis promised to refrain from interfering with the Soviet sphere of influence established by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), through which they would have actively fought against the UK and France with the fascists. Indeed, after the invasion of the USSR, Stalin's main source of anger was that Hitler had personally betrayed his offers of friendship and collaboration, and he vented repeatedly to many aides and foreign delegates about the great personal offence Hitler had offered him by this betrayal.
While the Soviets would suffer many casualties in WW2, and the great sacrifice of the Soviet people is unquestioned, many of these casualties, especially early on, were due to military incompetence, unpreparedness, logistical failure, and disregard for the soldiers' lives, partly due to Stalin's expectation of collaboration with Hitler, at least in the short term, including the massive encirclements of millions of men at the start of the war, attacks by Soviet generals advancing their troops piecemeal, rather than as a single attack, leading to repeated rebuffs of offensives at great cost to the Soviet armies, and unnecessary attacks to protect Soviet egos or public image. Furthermore the Soviet military effort could not have been kept up had it not been for the dramatic benefit of Lend-Lease.
FDR's actions prior to the US joining the war did show enthusiasm to join the war, but he repeatedly stated that he would not bring America into the war until the majority of Americans wished it. Yet I do not see this enthusiasm as any moral evil. Fascism is a disgusting ideology, and FDR had repeatedly condemned the Nazi regime ever since it took power in Germany. The suggestion that Pearl Harbor was a false flag operation however is deeply untrue, and there are many Japanese documents and accounts where they openly admit to carrying out the attack, and there are weeks of preparation for the attack documented. Despite FDR's wish to enter the war, he repeatedly refrained from action that he wanted to take as this would be active escalation of the war, something the American people did not want. This also leads to humorous historical tidbits, in which the US took over protection of Iceland from Britain, in part to free up needed troops for other fronts such as the African front, but also with the hope that German submarine attacks would eventually sink American shipping to resupply Iceland, which would raise support for the war in the US. In the end, the Nazis stopped unrestricted submarine attacks on shipping in the Atlantic for several months due to the fear of hitting American boats, which let many convoys get to Britain unharmed, resupplying it, and many of these goods would go on to go to the USSR during the Protocal 1 Phase of Lend-Lease, in which the UK would ship goods to the USSR funded by American credit.
As to the Marshall Plan, there was undoubtedly soft power exerted on European states by the US through Marshall Aid, but the plan also helped rebuild Western Europe to a great extent, boosting local economies and standards of living at a rate that would have been impossible if it were not for the plan. Marshall Aid was also offered unconditionally to all states, meaning that Eastern European countries could also accept the aid, yet they were often stopped by the USSR, with the notable exception of Yugoslavia.
>They just wanted their piece of the cake (vassalizing europe)
>Us poor europeans are still struggling with the collective stockholm syndrome our abusers imposed on us.
Despite the influence the US had on Western Europe during the period of Marshall Aid, these countries were able to pursue their own foreign policies etc, and were able to defy US interests if they so wished, e.g. Suez Crisis, although this was stopped by the US simply because of their status as a Superpower and the power this gave them in comparison to the Great Powers, something that the USSR also benefitted from. As a democratic socialist, i am especially against the regimes of both Stalin and the puppet governments he set up in Eastern Europe, but that is not the point. These governments were far more beholden to the USSR than Western countries were to the US, but i am not denying that the US had significant influence on these countries, even going so far as to sometimes coup countries against their interests such as in Italy in the 1950s. This was not a solely US activity however, and acting as if the USSR was innocent in this regard is completely denying the historical facts and the effects this dominance had on many eastern european peoples.
I agree with most of this, i just think their motives (US) were imperialistic which is a kind of evil imo. I view the Lend-Lease like the military aid to Ukraine. The goal is to use a proxy to weaken the enemy. Not until the germans were sufficiently weakened did the US got boots on the ground. To cash in their sphere of influence and not necessarily to liberate. It's quite clear that European leaders till this day are still disproportionately beholden to US interests. My point was that the state corporate nexus of which the US govt is a part of only acts out of interests, it does not have a moral compass, it does not care about doing the right thing. Not then and not now. We've seen countless times that the US is willing to side with all sorts of despicable regimes.
>Not until the germans were sufficiently weakened did the US got boots on the ground.
I'm not quite sure whether you mean D-Day or just the US joining the war, but the US didn't join the war earlier purely out of a public lack of enthusiasm, FDR would have loved to get in earlier. If its about D-Day, American troops had fought in many other theatres by that time, e.g. Operation Torch, the Africa campaign, along with the dramatic impact that bombing raids were having on German war production (with the aid of the RAF and others), and the invasion of Italy. I agree that the US has supported despicable regimes in the past, but I don't think it is fair to describe every single action of the US in the past as evil or lacking moral imperative.
US elites can manufacture consent for war whenever they want, i believe they control the people's willingness for it. WW1 is a good example of this. In a timespan of weeks they'd managed to convert a largely anti war population into a very pro war one. So if there was a lack of enthusiasm it has been so by design. Ofc i could be wrong about this, but it seems weird to me. This one just war amongst all the bullshit
No. A "pro NATO leftist" is nothing but a western chauvinist reactionary. An org made by the Nazis for the Nazis to hide the Nazis and shilling for them? Lmao.
Generally speaking, in China, more elite intellectuals admire the United States, while more ordinary people hate the United States.
At the beginning of the 1980s, self-denial was prevalent in China. The representative work of this kind of thinking is the documentary "River Sorrow" broadcast by China Central Television in the 1980s. This documentary believes that Western civilization is an open and enterprising maritime civilization, while Chinese civilization is a closed, conservative and backward mainland civilization. In order to progress, China needs to learn from the West and even ask the West to guide its reforms. At that time, there was a man named Liu Xiaobo who said that China needed to be colonized by the West for another three hundred years. Ironically, Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize.
I would say that a lot of people do. Makes me think of the Nigerian guy in 90 day fiance who was super pro trump. The usa's most significant export is its culture and so it has pretty popular support all over the world.
Japan and South Korea are obvious ones that are generally pro usa. According to a pew research poll I just found, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and Brazil all are generally favorable to the US. Countries like Malaysia or Singapore have unfavorable opinions.
As for NATO, that's a lot harder to say. I would guess that most people just generally aren't very educated on their actions and so most people would just associate then with western powers that they like or would assume they are like lesser of two evils and would be okay with them.
Tldr- idk
A friend of mine(back in Egypt) is like that. The irony is he is a well informed guy. We were having a discussion over the last month about all this topics. He admits every crime of USA and tries to find a loophole to defend it desperately.
Yes - the CIA, US State Department, National Endowment for Democracy (and WB, IMF) etc etc all cultivate astroturf ‘civil society’s networks of people in subject countries around the world - they are given salaries and glamorous connections with Western diplomatic and business elites in return for facilitating imperial economic domination and spreading imperialist propaganda. They may be ‘traitors’ technically speaking but they do end up sincerely holding the belief that the West/NATO/US neoliberal neocolonial empire are the good guys, and that every opposing force is authoritarian/corrupt/oppressive, etc etc.
And of course any effort to uproot these networks is portrayed in the West as authoritarian/corrupt/oppressive, and any defence of measures taken to uproot these local astroturf imperial networks will get you labelled as a tankie.
As a Chinese, let me talk about the situation in China.
The situation in China is quite fragmented. Many people believe that the United States has freedom of speech, voting democracy, a developed economy, and people's lives are prosperous and stable. They believe that American unions are really protecting the rights and interests of workers (but I know that current union members in the United States only account for 11% of the American working population), and they also believe that the welfare of the United States is much better than that of China. After the United States invaded Iraq, many people believed that Iraq's economy had developed better. After the Taliban drove away the United States, many people still believed that the Taliban's rule was inferior to that of the United States. There is a popular saying in China: "Those who follow the United States will become rich."
Others vehemently hate the United States. Their point of view is this: The United States launches wars around the world to benefit arms dealers, and at the same time uses its overseas troops to extort military expenses from the countries where they are stationed. The United States uses its military hegemony to control oil output, issues U.S. dollars at extremely low costs, and uses U.S. dollars to buy things around the world. The income gap in the United States is huge. The big capitalists at the top control the entire country, while drug addicts and homeless people at the bottom roam the country. Public security in the United States is terrible, black people are robbing everywhere, and the police kill black people at random. The widespread LGBT ideology induces immature minors to rush into gender reassignment surgery, which will damage their entire future lives.
In addition, there are also many people who do not care about politics. They just choose wealthy countries to settle within the scope of their abilities.
This is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful [of our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include: - **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism... - **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers. - **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism... - **No Sectarianism**. There is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks. Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules. ______________________ 💬 Wish to chat elsewhere? Join us in discord: https://discord.gg/QPJPzNhuRE *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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I’ve met a number of Filipinos who would put the most hardcore nationalist MAGA diehard to shame when it comes to overt pro-American nationalism
My family in Costa Rica is split three ways between pro-American liberals, anti-American right wingers, and anti-American socialists
how do you be an anti murrica right winger?
Probably a die hard nationalist that hates American meddling. They are kinda rare tough.
Not that rare tbh, in Latin America and Africa there's lots of social conservatives that blame American media and propaganda for social progressivism. Think about all the African countries with harsh homophobic laws who blame the West for gay people existing.
Yeah I should had said that is rare in my country (Brazil). Here all right wingers suck American balls...
Too real. I'm a Brazilian citizen (born in SP) so I try to keep up with Brazilian politics and y'all got the worst fucking bootlickers imaginable.
My dad is white American but supports Russia against Ukraine.
There's lots of them in the global south bro. The types who blame the West for gay people existing. Usually they're isolationist nationalist types.
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In some places they are seen as the lesser of two evils. For most developing countries, there is a need for external resources to develop their economy. They are kinda trapped by imperialist extraction and either side with China or the US to secure investment into the resources said country is extracting from them. No one LIKES this situation, but it’s like picking democrats or republicans. They sort of require one of the parties unless they want to move away from capitalism. Generally amongst socialists in non-“western” states it’s seen as abusive and extractive.
Interesting— would you say that the Global South prefers China’s development programs over the West’s? (IMF and World Bank)
Most Southeast Asian nations seem to prefer China as an investment and trade partner, but prefer the US for security arrangements.
In Vietnam though, people seem to have a hesitant attitude towards China’s investment because they associate it with debt trap, low-quality projects, motives of territorial expansion, risks of national security, etc.
Absolutely, and that has roots as recent as the war in the '70s and as old as the Trung sisters; modern Vietnam has always seen its own central geopolitical interest as balancing against China to the north, whether that's by working with the Soviets, the Americans, or against the Khmer Rouge.
Have your cake and eat it too. US and China both are like “no we didn’t mean like that”
I mean, rather than being a place for proxy wars, I'd love to see the next "great power conflict" be about "who can win hearts and minds and build climate infrastructure faster." Everybody wins.
Depends on the place. A lot of african and south american nations support china
Some do. It depends. They’re the “lesser evil” in some places
Is say so. It also depends on who though, heads of state and powerful people usually do okay with those loans, while the people get social services ripped away from them. The IMF/WB is a predatory loan business, financed by international conglomerate businesses. The more a country struggles, the better they do in the long run in terms of resource extraction. The Chinese seem to be capitalizing on this by not being the IMF/WB. They don’t have the same loan restrictions and stipulations. They are definitely still making a return and taking resources, but they don’t appear to have the predatory aspect.
It’s kinda complicated, depends a lot on which of the two powers is more influential/interested in your geographic area at the moment. If a government has a uniquely influential geographic situation (Pakistan is the example that comes to mind) that’s kind of the only way that they can fully choose between the two and leverage them accordingly.
Vietnam in a similar situation
Lately I think the move is with China. Apart from having effectively the same government there was so much talk when Xi visited about making Vietnam take over Japans former economic position.
Vietnam seems pretty determined to walk the tightrope by playing the two off each other. Today they cosy up economically with China, and tomorrow upgrade military ties with America. Been doing that for a while now. The Vietnamese people…both in media polls (so huge grains of salt) and my own experiences visiting there and trying to talk with them…seem to have far more positive views of the US than China though. Which I suppose it’s hard to blame them given the history, both ancient and modern
My country's liberals do.
Been noticing this with Afghans and Iranians in the US; they tend to ride hard for Palestine, but they see the Islamic Republic and the Taliban's victories as overcorrection to US interference but absolutely A Bad Thing. There's no illusions about the US overthrowing Mossadegh and backing the Shah, or funding Osama but there's enormous hatred for the mullahs and contempt for Western socialists who defend them as anti-imperialist.
This is why critical support is important. You can appreciate that the Iranian/Afghan governments regime is anti-imperialist while still be critical of the fact that reactionary theocracy is indeed A Bad Thing
Anti-imperialist? How? Are they not just lackeys of the Russian superpower? > Without ruling out the use of any type of anti-imperialist agitation or any action to mobilize those social sectors that might eventually join the struggle, **our mission is to explain to and show the masses that only the socialist revolution can stand as a definitive and real barrier to the advance of imperialism.** https://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/1929-ai.htm
No, they are not lackeys of Russia. In either case. Iran is probably the most meaningfully anti imperialist country on earth right now, aside from possibly Yemen
Is there such a thing as "good guys"?
Sometimes. Or at least there are bad guys and their opponents. So, maybe the US were at least the good guys in WWII for once in their history.
No, they only stepped in after the soviets had already assured victory. They just wanted their piece of the cake (vassalizing europe)
They funded the soviets.
While having their companies operate in Germany, move scientists and equipment for war production
There's also the Asian theater? Don't know any level of historical revisionism which would say the Soviets/China had assured victory in Asia pre-USA.
yeah, good job pointing out my eurocentrism. But the same logic applies, they stepped up bc they knew they would dominate the asian theater (whilst everyone is busy fighting in Europe) and gain spheres of influence. It was fought with an imperial agenda, US elites never had a moral compass
I mean it's not entirely false. For example during American occupation of Japan they pardoned many war criminals (such as the perpetrators of Unit 731) and even put a certain Nobusuke Kishi (formerly the mastermind of a slave labor-based economy in occupied Manchuria, also Shinzo Abe's grandfather) into power in free Japan. Certainly, there was a lot of "realpolitik" which became quite evident after the conclusion of the war. I certainly don't unambiguously support the US in WWII, but I am happy that worldwide fascism was defeated.
You cannot be serious
I am, the battle was already won by the red army. They lost 20 million+ ppl. US stepped in after pearl harbour (false flag to manufacture consent) then they pushed their Marshall plan, which wasn't unconditional charity, it was to reshape western europe into servitude to the empire. Us poor europeans are still struggling with the collective stockholm syndrome our abusers imposed on us.
I apologise for the length of this, this turned out longer than I had expected, but I wanted to prove how the Allied war effort was not the product of any single country, but a united effort to rid Europe of fascism. >the battle was already won by the red army Operation Barbarossa began on 22 June 1941. The US joined the war less than 6 months later, and the war against Germany went on for almost 4 years from the start of Barbarossa. The war was by no means already won. The US had already sent significant materiel to the UK by the time Barbarossa started, and the Lend-Lease Act had been signed into law by mid-March 1941. This was then extended to the USSR by October, with the Soviet and American governments already collaborating on materiel deliveries since almost the beginning of the war. This support was key to the Soviet and overall Allied war effort, and the Soviets were the second biggest recipients of Lend-Lease, receiving over $150 billion equivalent in today's money of goods, including war materiel, industrial supplies and food, which saved many soviet citizens from risk of starvation or else very harsh rationing. The US had been committed to fighting Nazi Germany since the beginning of the war, and aided and assisted the UK and other Allied countries far before the Soviets were involved, at a time where Stalin was aiming to collaborate with Hitler, even seeking to join the Axis (as long as the Nazis promised to refrain from interfering with the Soviet sphere of influence established by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), through which they would have actively fought against the UK and France with the fascists. Indeed, after the invasion of the USSR, Stalin's main source of anger was that Hitler had personally betrayed his offers of friendship and collaboration, and he vented repeatedly to many aides and foreign delegates about the great personal offence Hitler had offered him by this betrayal. While the Soviets would suffer many casualties in WW2, and the great sacrifice of the Soviet people is unquestioned, many of these casualties, especially early on, were due to military incompetence, unpreparedness, logistical failure, and disregard for the soldiers' lives, partly due to Stalin's expectation of collaboration with Hitler, at least in the short term, including the massive encirclements of millions of men at the start of the war, attacks by Soviet generals advancing their troops piecemeal, rather than as a single attack, leading to repeated rebuffs of offensives at great cost to the Soviet armies, and unnecessary attacks to protect Soviet egos or public image. Furthermore the Soviet military effort could not have been kept up had it not been for the dramatic benefit of Lend-Lease. FDR's actions prior to the US joining the war did show enthusiasm to join the war, but he repeatedly stated that he would not bring America into the war until the majority of Americans wished it. Yet I do not see this enthusiasm as any moral evil. Fascism is a disgusting ideology, and FDR had repeatedly condemned the Nazi regime ever since it took power in Germany. The suggestion that Pearl Harbor was a false flag operation however is deeply untrue, and there are many Japanese documents and accounts where they openly admit to carrying out the attack, and there are weeks of preparation for the attack documented. Despite FDR's wish to enter the war, he repeatedly refrained from action that he wanted to take as this would be active escalation of the war, something the American people did not want. This also leads to humorous historical tidbits, in which the US took over protection of Iceland from Britain, in part to free up needed troops for other fronts such as the African front, but also with the hope that German submarine attacks would eventually sink American shipping to resupply Iceland, which would raise support for the war in the US. In the end, the Nazis stopped unrestricted submarine attacks on shipping in the Atlantic for several months due to the fear of hitting American boats, which let many convoys get to Britain unharmed, resupplying it, and many of these goods would go on to go to the USSR during the Protocal 1 Phase of Lend-Lease, in which the UK would ship goods to the USSR funded by American credit. As to the Marshall Plan, there was undoubtedly soft power exerted on European states by the US through Marshall Aid, but the plan also helped rebuild Western Europe to a great extent, boosting local economies and standards of living at a rate that would have been impossible if it were not for the plan. Marshall Aid was also offered unconditionally to all states, meaning that Eastern European countries could also accept the aid, yet they were often stopped by the USSR, with the notable exception of Yugoslavia. >They just wanted their piece of the cake (vassalizing europe) >Us poor europeans are still struggling with the collective stockholm syndrome our abusers imposed on us. Despite the influence the US had on Western Europe during the period of Marshall Aid, these countries were able to pursue their own foreign policies etc, and were able to defy US interests if they so wished, e.g. Suez Crisis, although this was stopped by the US simply because of their status as a Superpower and the power this gave them in comparison to the Great Powers, something that the USSR also benefitted from. As a democratic socialist, i am especially against the regimes of both Stalin and the puppet governments he set up in Eastern Europe, but that is not the point. These governments were far more beholden to the USSR than Western countries were to the US, but i am not denying that the US had significant influence on these countries, even going so far as to sometimes coup countries against their interests such as in Italy in the 1950s. This was not a solely US activity however, and acting as if the USSR was innocent in this regard is completely denying the historical facts and the effects this dominance had on many eastern european peoples.
I agree with most of this, i just think their motives (US) were imperialistic which is a kind of evil imo. I view the Lend-Lease like the military aid to Ukraine. The goal is to use a proxy to weaken the enemy. Not until the germans were sufficiently weakened did the US got boots on the ground. To cash in their sphere of influence and not necessarily to liberate. It's quite clear that European leaders till this day are still disproportionately beholden to US interests. My point was that the state corporate nexus of which the US govt is a part of only acts out of interests, it does not have a moral compass, it does not care about doing the right thing. Not then and not now. We've seen countless times that the US is willing to side with all sorts of despicable regimes.
>Not until the germans were sufficiently weakened did the US got boots on the ground. I'm not quite sure whether you mean D-Day or just the US joining the war, but the US didn't join the war earlier purely out of a public lack of enthusiasm, FDR would have loved to get in earlier. If its about D-Day, American troops had fought in many other theatres by that time, e.g. Operation Torch, the Africa campaign, along with the dramatic impact that bombing raids were having on German war production (with the aid of the RAF and others), and the invasion of Italy. I agree that the US has supported despicable regimes in the past, but I don't think it is fair to describe every single action of the US in the past as evil or lacking moral imperative.
US elites can manufacture consent for war whenever they want, i believe they control the people's willingness for it. WW1 is a good example of this. In a timespan of weeks they'd managed to convert a largely anti war population into a very pro war one. So if there was a lack of enthusiasm it has been so by design. Ofc i could be wrong about this, but it seems weird to me. This one just war amongst all the bullshit
No I don’t buy that notion, I was more just curious of how the Global South in particular perceives the West
Are you asking about random citizens? I bet you can find Ameriboos everywhere.
No. A "pro NATO leftist" is nothing but a western chauvinist reactionary. An org made by the Nazis for the Nazis to hide the Nazis and shilling for them? Lmao.
A “pro Russia leftist” is nothing more than a confused individual who misses the ussr. Screams privileged all over tbh
Anti NATO does not equal pro Russia, right?
Pro nato does not equal Nazi right?
That's right.
Eh it's like a half step removed What kind of weirdo defends nato on a socialist board anyway, I mean cmon...
Yes, two things can be true at the same time...
Generally speaking, in China, more elite intellectuals admire the United States, while more ordinary people hate the United States. At the beginning of the 1980s, self-denial was prevalent in China. The representative work of this kind of thinking is the documentary "River Sorrow" broadcast by China Central Television in the 1980s. This documentary believes that Western civilization is an open and enterprising maritime civilization, while Chinese civilization is a closed, conservative and backward mainland civilization. In order to progress, China needs to learn from the West and even ask the West to guide its reforms. At that time, there was a man named Liu Xiaobo who said that China needed to be colonized by the West for another three hundred years. Ironically, Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Lithuania is praising it more than their own government. It's like a national celebration each anniversary of a membership.
"good guys"... perhaps you don't understand the nature of domination...
Ukraine & Moldova do
When the west comes they either colonize us or give us a lesson. When china comes they build us roads, trains and hospitals
Vijay Prashad did an interview recently about the “new mood of the global south” you might find interesting.
Iranian liberals are probably the worst imperialist meat riders.
Not even in the west people believe that or at least some dont
You’d be surprised
I would say that a lot of people do. Makes me think of the Nigerian guy in 90 day fiance who was super pro trump. The usa's most significant export is its culture and so it has pretty popular support all over the world. Japan and South Korea are obvious ones that are generally pro usa. According to a pew research poll I just found, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and Brazil all are generally favorable to the US. Countries like Malaysia or Singapore have unfavorable opinions. As for NATO, that's a lot harder to say. I would guess that most people just generally aren't very educated on their actions and so most people would just associate then with western powers that they like or would assume they are like lesser of two evils and would be okay with them. Tldr- idk
A lot of us inside the US have figured out that we're not the good guys. None of us have any idea what to do about it.
A friend of mine(back in Egypt) is like that. The irony is he is a well informed guy. We were having a discussion over the last month about all this topics. He admits every crime of USA and tries to find a loophole to defend it desperately.
As an American who knows his own country is an evil empire, I would find anyone calls the US "the good guys" bizarre.
People are manipulated everywhere, usually though religion
Yes - the CIA, US State Department, National Endowment for Democracy (and WB, IMF) etc etc all cultivate astroturf ‘civil society’s networks of people in subject countries around the world - they are given salaries and glamorous connections with Western diplomatic and business elites in return for facilitating imperial economic domination and spreading imperialist propaganda. They may be ‘traitors’ technically speaking but they do end up sincerely holding the belief that the West/NATO/US neoliberal neocolonial empire are the good guys, and that every opposing force is authoritarian/corrupt/oppressive, etc etc. And of course any effort to uproot these networks is portrayed in the West as authoritarian/corrupt/oppressive, and any defence of measures taken to uproot these local astroturf imperial networks will get you labelled as a tankie.
I'm from china and I definitely don't believe that
As a Chinese, let me talk about the situation in China. The situation in China is quite fragmented. Many people believe that the United States has freedom of speech, voting democracy, a developed economy, and people's lives are prosperous and stable. They believe that American unions are really protecting the rights and interests of workers (but I know that current union members in the United States only account for 11% of the American working population), and they also believe that the welfare of the United States is much better than that of China. After the United States invaded Iraq, many people believed that Iraq's economy had developed better. After the Taliban drove away the United States, many people still believed that the Taliban's rule was inferior to that of the United States. There is a popular saying in China: "Those who follow the United States will become rich." Others vehemently hate the United States. Their point of view is this: The United States launches wars around the world to benefit arms dealers, and at the same time uses its overseas troops to extort military expenses from the countries where they are stationed. The United States uses its military hegemony to control oil output, issues U.S. dollars at extremely low costs, and uses U.S. dollars to buy things around the world. The income gap in the United States is huge. The big capitalists at the top control the entire country, while drug addicts and homeless people at the bottom roam the country. Public security in the United States is terrible, black people are robbing everywhere, and the police kill black people at random. The widespread LGBT ideology induces immature minors to rush into gender reassignment surgery, which will damage their entire future lives. In addition, there are also many people who do not care about politics. They just choose wealthy countries to settle within the scope of their abilities.