I often have people tell me I am a “Cassandra” because I am “ahead of the curve” in much of what I say. However, this is not because I am not special or extra smart. I am just a Marxist-Leninist.
News broke recently that President Biden is pushing for a ten-year deal to send Ukraine $1 trillion in military aid and $500 billion in reconstruction loan guarantees, with a provision preventing the next two presidents from cutting off aid.
It's ironic and infuriating to see individuals who vehemently supported military intervention in Ukraine now lamenting the lack of equivalent support for domestic needs. This same group dismissed voices (like mine) two years ago, when we raised the exact same points about how the U.S. prioritizes its financial resources and linked it back to imperialism, making it clear that, if one understands any of this in the first place, it is simple to be on the right side of this issue.
I had conversations online and in person about this, and have had concerns about the imperialist Ukraine war ignorantly dismissed to my face “because Putin bad.” When I see one of those people express any point from my argument a couple of years later (and I have now seen numerous people do so), it makes it clear to me their problem: they are “leftists” and, therefore, idealists.
People like myself are ahead on these issues because we are operating on a material understanding of class and capitalism in its imperial stage. These people are intellectually lazy, often good examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and when I see them saying anything against a war that is no longer popular among “the left,” I am reminded why they repeatedly gain no ground: their ideology is made to prevent them (and others) from doing so.
As a friend of mine puts it, they are “virtuous losers” – only able to pipe up when the counter-hegemonic viewpoint has become ineffective. They’ve been conditioned not to take a stand (no matter how intellectually consistent it is with their professed beliefs) until it is no longer relevant against Western hegemony. After they have lost, then they can be “right.”
I’m sure it feels good!
Many think I am a contrarian, but this is due to their entirely popularity-driven idealism. I just don’t take arbitrary positions on things. I am an anti-imperialist Marxist-Leninist. It shouldn’t be too hard to predict what I will think about things if you know what any of that means.
Though this state of affairs is not these people’s fault, I have no respect for this kind of person. They help redirect the energy of awakening from the political quagmire back into paralysis. It is not productive that they “get it” now; these are the people who repeat things only when they become harmless and popular.
Real anti-imperialist stances and activism would have been useful as our country ramped up support for war (and I personally participated in my writing and on the ground). However, they mean very little now, as the general consensus is already turning on the imperialists.
I am not on the side of this kind of person. I had to fight with this kind of person to attempt to get information out.
Lawd, had to see what those internet former Dem friends were saying nowadays, and wouldn't you know, this incredibly smart scientist who is incredibly dumb with politics posted, "why are palestinian protests so ineffective?"
That was fun to write a response to