An attempt to spell out anti-imperialist moral truism. Or, why Western dissent against Chinese or Russian crimes does not make the world a better place. A thread.
As usual, the starting point is Chomsky. One of his moral truisms is that it is only moral to campaign on issues you can affect.
This moral truism is implicitly about the politics of dissent. A dissenter goes against the common sense of their own society or against the government policy of their own country. Chomsky is all about dissent.
The dissenter follows their conscience and tries to change both public opinion and government policy of their own country.
Why this emphasis on one's own society? Because the premise of the politics of dissent is that the dissenter has influence over their own society, and the ability to influence means the moral responsibility to try to exert that influence for good.
So, whether you are concerned about human rights, war and peace, poverty, or environmental devastation, your dissent can make meaningful change in your own country. In another country, not so much.
And that is why American anti-imperialists focus on what the US is doing and why leftists generally "act locally".
That's it for the argument. Now to address two counter arguments.
There's the internationalist counter: "I am a citizen of the whole world", the internationalist says. "Right and wrong do not change based on arbitrary borders. I criticize whoever does wrong."
The dissenter's rebuttal: criticizing whoever does wrong is fine, but has no moral or political value unless directed where it can make a difference: in one's own society.
There's the human rights NGO counter: "The world is connected now," the human rights NGO says. "So dissent in my country actually *can* make a difference in another country. In fact international dissent can be more powerful and at the very least is much safer."
This one isn't simple to rebut, because the world *is* connected, but it is connected by an empire, not a global network.
The connections are asymmetric, unequal, apartheid-like. Palestinians criticizing Canada's prison system or police violence have no effect, but Canadians have the idea that their criticism makes a difference anywhere in the world.
Worse, the human rights NGOs and their campaigns have become tools of the empire.
So now, by joining a campaign against a targeted country, if you are not careful, you could actually be contributing to a buildup to a war that will devastate more lives and harm the planet more than if you had done nothing at all.
I watched human rights NGOs and academics help destroy Haiti, Honduras, Libya, Syria, and Bolivia, and am watching it happen now with Venezuela, Iran, China, and Russia.
The dissenter says, you can avoid this moral hazard by focusing your dissent on what your society is doing.
But the human rights NGO comes back: "Actually, it is your anti-imperialism that is full of moral hazard."
"The moral hazard of leaving the worst human rights violators, who happen to be China, Russia, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Cuba, Gaza and the West Bank, outside of powerful Western criticism and therefore outside of accountability," the NGO continues.
Despite having started out trying to set out a set of moral truisms, the dissenter is now faced with a debate about the facts about a set of international situations.
Things usually get stuck at this point in the debate, where a lot of detailed knowledge is required to get to the truth, and all imperial common sense, as well as the clock, is working against the dissenter (hence some of the books I've written).
But let me add one more defence of dissent.
If you accept that the globally connected world is asymmetric (imperial and white supremacist, to be specific), one of these asymmetries is in the means of communication and information. That is to say, propaganda;
If you accept that the forces that push for war, inequality, and ecological catastrophe also have disproportionate control over information, communication, and narrative through concentrated wealth and concentrated media and social media ownership;
Then you have to view Western campaigns and claims in those same media, about societies targeted for violence by the West, with extreme skepticism. Skepticism so deep that unraveling the lies even in one of these areas takes a great deal of systematic investigation.
If you accept that, you're back to the dissenter's default position that you are safer from moral hazard if you focus your dissent on your own society.
There is one other legitimate counter: that you aren't a dissenter at all, but a rebel, a revolutionary, someone engaged in the politics of resistance. So you aren't trying to change government policy, or change public opinion. You are trying to overthrow the whole rotten system.
That is different from dissent, and is a problem for another day.
