When Progressives Reveal Their Inner Imperialist

Mention Ukraine and watch as many ostensible leftists betray every value they profess to hold.

Worthy victim or not? To some leftists, it depends. Kyiv, Ukraine, April 2022. Credit: Shutterstock

You are a good progressive. Your Twitter history is an extended paean of praise to social democracy and a philippic against systemic racism. You staunchly oppose imperialism and advocate for the rights of the oppressed.

How, then, did you ever find yourself uttering the term “sphere of influence” like you are Otto von Bismarck?

Or parroting the inane rationales of an imperialist state in its bid to conquer another country?

Or defending the “legitimate security concerns” of an avowedly genocidal regime?

Or calling on the world’s great powers to decide the fate of smaller nations over cigars and brandy?

Or doing whatever the fresh hell this is?

How on earth did you get here? I will tell you how: By letting your justified rage over America’s crimes blind you to those of its adversaries. By presuming, rather moronically, that America’s history of imperialism means that no other country, especially one opposed to the U.S., can possibly be guilty of the same. By being so stridently critical of U.S. conduct abroad that you conclude that any country it supports must somehow harbor nefarious aims. By getting so lost in knee-jerk contrarianism that you are suddenly justifying a genocidal war of conquest.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has all the right ingredients to turn a certain gullible progressive bad. The perpetrator is a longtime enemy of America and the victim an ally. The West has made periodic overtures at welcoming the victim into its institutional structures. The invasion engendered mainstream condemnation throughout the Western world along with near-universal sympathy for the targeted nation.

It is a combination tailor-made to arouse the skepticism of leftists who are allergic to the appearance of conformism. Never mind that the war is strikingly one-sided from a moral standpoint. Never mind that every single one of Moscow’s stated pretexts—whether NATO’s “provocation” of Russia or the Euromaidan “coup” or Ukraine’s “genocide” against Donbas “Russian-speakers”—can be easily debunked. Never mind that, by supporting Ukraine, the United States is actually doing the right thing for once.

Such realities stand no hope of puncturing the rigid Manichaeism of a specific Western left-winger. Let us call them neotankies, for want of a better word. The original tankies of the Cold War era were so-named because their socialist leanings led them to cheer or excuse the Soviet tanks suppressing anticommunist protest movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Their successors today do the same on behalf of the Russian forces invading Ukraine while also apologizing for other imperialist autocrats. In fact, contemporary neotankies somehow exceed the stupidity of their predecessors, as the regimes they simp for—whether Putin’s Russia, Assad’s Syria, or the corrupt capitalists who run communist China—are just about the exact opposite of “left-wing.”

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Rather than maintain a semblance of consistency by opposing both genocidal occupations at once, the neotankie views one occupier with reasonable lucidity and the other through rose-colored glasses. Israel’s criminal brutality is regarded as such while Russia’s becomes rationalized beyond recognition.

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If neotankies have one redeeming quality, it is their vigorous support for the Palestinians. This is the one cause they happen to get right. But it comes with a catch: To the extent that neotankies recognize the genocidal subjugation of the Palestinians for what it is,¹ this is only because the state doing the subjugating happens to be an American ally.

In this way, the humanity that neotankies ascribe to the Palestinians hinges on the identity of their oppressor. To see how, consider the way they react when the roles are reversed. When the perpetrator is an American adversary and the victim an ally, as is the case in Ukraine, neotankies suddenly lose their ability to detect a genocidal war of conquest—this despite the fact that the evidence for genocide in Ukraine is, if anything, more definitive than it is in Palestine.

So, rather than maintain a semblance of consistency by opposing both genocidal occupations at once, the neotankie views one occupier with reasonable lucidity and the other through rose-colored glasses. Israel’s criminal brutality is regarded as such while Russia’s becomes rationalized beyond recognition. The Palestinians, for their part, qualify as noble victims but the Ukrainians somehow brought their suffering on themselves.

Edgelord Ontology

The core problem is an ontological one. As products of the Enlightenment, most of us regard the human being as the fundamental unit of moral worth. Sure, we may not always be consistent in how we apply this ethical frame. Some tend to privilege the value of Israeli Jews over Palestinians, or vice versa. Others can remain laser-focused on the plight of African-Americans while dismissing that of other groups in other places. Nevertheless, most people, if pressed, would recognize that the rights of the individual are what truly matter.

For neotankies, however, the fundamental moral unit is not the human being but the national regime—in essence, the ruling establishment of a given country. Some regimes are seen as oppressed, while others—the West in general and the United States in particular—are the oppressors.

On the plus side, this perspective enables one to call out America’s past crimes in Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. This, we can all agree, is a good and necessary thing. On the other hand, it can lead one to sympathize and even identify with autocratic regimes on the basis of their opposition to the U.S.—regimes like those which rule in Russia, Syria, Iran, and China.

But in defending these regimes, neotankies confront the rather awkward matter of the millions of people who suffer under them. Who, after all, are the real victims here? The regimes themselves, or the individuals they persecute? Neotankies come down firmly on the side of the former, at the latter’s expense.

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For neotankies, then, the rights of the oppressed are contingent on who, exactly, is oppressing them. If you are victimized by a Western regime, or an ally thereof, you will receive unquestioning support. But if the perpetrator is a regime opposed to the West, neotankies will rationalize the victims’ humanity out of existence.

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By way of illustration, consider the following quote by Aaron Maté of The Grayzone News, a leading neotankie outfit. In an interview with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame and himself a prominent neotankie voice, Maté explains how he views Vladimir Putin:

When Putin said in 2007 that ‘we can’t have Western hegemony anymore, you have to take our concerns seriously,’ that’s when Putin became the number one enemy.  When he called for diplomacy and cooperation, all of a sudden he became a ‘tyrant’ and ‘autocrat’.

Note how neither the antagonist nor protagonist in this narrative are regular human beings. Instead, they are the national regimes of the West—whom Maté casts as the bad guys—and that of Putin in Russia, who emerges as the struggling hero, beset by forces more powerful than himself. It is he, or, rather, his regime, whose rights are unjustly infringed in Maté’s telling—so much so that he is unfairly designated a “tyrant” and “autocrat” by his Western enemies.

Where, though, does this leave the millions of people over whom Putin rules? If Putin’s regime is the victim, it must necessarily be innocent of whatever charges are leveled its way. “Autocrat” and “tyrant” thus become unmerited smears with no grounding in reality. One must disregard the fact that Putin’s Russia allows no political opposition worthy of the name, holds stage-managed “elections” with predetermined results, jails independent journalists, and sentences grandmothers to multiyear prison terms for errant social media posts.

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This is how supposed progressives end up indulging silly atrocity-denial theories and defending the “sphere of influence” of an openly genocidal state. The irony would be hilarious if the underlying reality were not so grim.

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For neotankies, then, the rights of the oppressed are contingent on who, exactly, is oppressing them. If you are victimized by a Western regime, or an ally thereof, you will receive unquestioning support. But if the perpetrator is a regime opposed to the West, neotankies will rationalize the victims’ humanity out of existence.

Are you a Palestinian suffering genocide at Israel’s hands? Congratulations! Neotankies will move heaven and earth to ensure your voice is heard. Are you a Ukrainian lying dead in a ditch along a Bucha roadside, hands bound by the Russian occupiers who executed you? Or a Syrian killed in a chemical attack by Bashar al-Assad? Sorry, but your dignity must be sacrificed to protect the good name of the regime that took it away—so much so that neotankies will concoct all manner of ridiculous false-flag theories to shift the blame onto more acceptable culprits.

Thus, instead of speaking out for the people brutalized by such regimes, neotankies defend the rights of their tormentors. The true victims, after all, are not the human beings suffering arbitrary detention, torture, and other abuses at the hands of authoritarian rulers. Rather, they are the authoritarian rulers themselves, who are supposedly victimized by the imperialist states of the West.

As moral worldviews go, this one is absolutely bonkers. Still, to a certain Western leftist, it has an indisputable attraction. It identifies a definite villain and victim, and thereby offers the delusion of moral clarity. It allows one to pose as a cynical contrarian. At the same time, it promises membership in a community of the like-minded.

But the mental gymnastics required to maintain these advantages are nothing short of ludicrous. Exonerating heinous authoritarian regimes is hard work. This is how supposed progressives end up indulging silly atrocity-denial theories and defending the “sphere of influence” of an openly genocidal state. The irony would be hilarious if the underlying reality were not so grim.

Tankaholics Anonymous

The antidote to such thinking is twofold. First, one must allow room for a certain degree of moral complexity on the part of nation-states and the regimes which govern them. For instance, however blood-stained the hands of the United States may be—and they indisputably are—America does occasionally do things that are ethically neutral and even good.

Second, at the same time that we acknowledge the moral complexity of states and regimes, we should remain steadfast in viewing the dignity of the individual as the ultimate locus of moral value. This means that we must speak up whenever human dignity is infringed, wherever it is happening, and regardless of who is culpable. Human rights abuses are wrong and should be recognized as such, no matter whether the offender is America, Russia, Israel, Syria, or Hamas.

Follow these two rules of thumb and you will find that maintaining basic decency in a complex political world is really not that hard at all.

1. If you disagree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, you will have to take it up with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, a non-political expert who maintains that it is, in fact, genocide.