No one is more committed to centering “the West” (& specifically U.S.) than “anti-imperialists”. To them, no one else has true agency in world affairs; only “the empire”. Every other actor is an automaton; no agendas or ideology of their own, only ever reacting to the empire.
Chomsky is probably the single greatest living embodiment of this tendency. He’s written three dozen books or so, but they’re all basically the same txt: “actually, it’s America’s fault.” Hence the Cambodian/Bosnia Genocide denial stuff. Because Pol Pot/Milosevic who?! Empire!
Unsurprisingly then, a core pillar of the modern anti-imperialist project is systematic authoritarian apologetics. Axiomatically, no non-Western/U.S. actor can ever be worse than the Great Evil, so historical revisionism becomes an unavoidable necessity of their politics.
This is how in the year 2021, you have 20-something yr old “anti-imperialists” defending Stalin, Mao, even Hoxha. Bc this is a perspective out of time; it’s plug and play. Just accept that the West is uniquely evil & all of world politics & history becomes a Western conspiracy.
Also why their “historical materialism” trumps the lived exps of Syrians, Kosovars, Bosnians, Ukrainians, Uighurs etc. Because our lived exps center local voices, local actors, and actual historical-political developments. But bc that would invalidate their narrative — wrong!
This is also how large segments of the post-9/11 anti-war movement became apologists for the Assad regime — peddling the same Islamophobic rhetoric in the 2010s they’d critiqued a decade earlier. Because there is no actual substance to their politics beyond “America bad”.
As I was saying. “Hang in there sisters,” indeed.
https://twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/1427012544523296774
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