GenZedong

• Tim Anderson argues that much of the Western left’s hostility to BRICS stems from imperial habits of thought, orientalism, saviour complexes, and ahistorical “Marxism”, that align them, often unwittingly, with the very global order they claim to oppose.

Western left-liberals carry much more imperial cultural baggage than they care to imagine. Yet the problem with politics, at a time of propaganda wars, is that perspective is everything. Missing that, no slogans will save you.

This failure of left-liberal perspectives is due to social perspective, with several root causes which turn them into unwitting allies of their imperial states (however much they object to this status) and against the main emerging alternative of BRICS and, in particular, its most highly demonised protagonists: China, Russia and Iran.

Some generic problems faced by Western left-liberals are the failure to see that solidarity is for a people and presupposes that particular peoples determine their own future, and not pursue a path imagined by Westerners. This classic orientalism helps explain left-liberal hostility to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the most powerful independent state in West Asia since 1979, key sponsor of the Palestinian Resistance and, for that reason, the main target of Zionist and imperial hostility.

Another problem is that left-liberal Westerners tend to cheer on those separatisms sponsored by imperialism, to break up independent southern states which refuse to submit. Adherence to these pseudo self-determination projects helps explain why much of the Western left cheered on the Zionists in the 60s and 70s and why many have cheered on Kurdish separatists this century, as they helped dismantle Iraq and Syria and moved against Iran. In the case of Iran, subject to a permanent hostility from the USA and "Israel", the ‘imperial left’ misses the obvious point that the 1979 revolution and its Islamic foundation were chosen by the great masses of the Iranian people and not by Western left-liberals. Yet there is hardly a pretext to dismantle and dismember Iran that is missed by most Western left-liberals. They would love to see it weak and divided like Iraq, Libya and Syria. The global dictatorship approves.

A final general problem is that wrong questions are posed about the emerging countervailing powers. For example, "Why doesn’t China save Palestine? Or, why didn’t Russia save Syria?" The idea that one nation can save another is classic orientalism, reflecting the Western ‘saviour complex’ embedded in imperial culture. It misses the key reality that a coherent indigenous struggle is essential for emancipation. Once that exists, others may assist.

A linked concept is the idea that the great countervailing powers are all corrupt and useless because they just pursue their own interests. This misses the point that any responsible state has to pursue its own national interests and so remain accountable to its own people. Given that, it is the task of indigenous forces and decent internationalists to make the case for building bridges based on common interests. That was exactly what the Iranian national hero, the late Qassem Soleimani, did when in 2015 he persuaded Russia to enter Syria, on invitation, to help fight the proxy terrorist armies and support the independent government led by Bashar al-Assad. Yet Russia could not “save” Syria after most of the commanders of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) were purchased by the enemy and the SAA collapsed. The collapse of the SAA was a tragedy, but no one can save those who will not save themselves.

What are the main rationales of these Western left-liberals, in denigrating and opposing the role of BRICS and its “controversial” leading states? It is clearly quite different to the emerging consensus in the Global South (most of Africa, Latin America and SE Asia) that a multipolar world, no longer ruled by an Anglo-American dictatorship, is desirable and the way to a more tolerable future. This presupposes a greater role for BRICS and for its most heavily demonised protagonists: Russia, China and Iran.

In that southern view, a multipolar world is replacing a centuries-old Anglo-American domination of the world, and presents the best possibility of escaping this hegemony, including that of the dollar dictatorship, which directly damages developing economies and allows Washington to weaponise the globalised financial system against independent nations. The expanded use of US and EU unilateral “sanctions” (actually ‘unilateral coercive measures’) continues to cripple entire populations under total or partial siege until they surrender. That is a vicious weapon many left-liberals fail to appreciate. BRICS provides hope for the first real alternative to this global dictatorship.

Demonisation of Russia's war in Ukraine, to avert a NATO threat and to end the post-2014 bloody war against the Russian people of the Donbass, has not been an obstacle to developing countries rushing to join BRICS. Rather, many (such as the revolutionary Sahel bloc) have seen Russia’s role in standing up to the great bullies of the world as a sign that there is some significant political will within BRICS.

Yet most Western left-liberals remain anti-Russia, as well as anti-China, and anti-Iran. While many profess “support” for popular struggles like those of Palestine, Yemen and the revolutionary West African states, they hold quite distinct perspectives to those of the Global South, including that of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who made it his life’s work to build stronger Latin and Southern organisation to resist imperial hegemony.

I suggest there are three overlapping currents of rationale for this hatred of BRICS and the emerging counter hegemonic states (1) the romantic orientalists, (2) the Anarcho-Trotskyists and (3) the ahistorical pseudo Marxists.

1. Romantic orientalists

This current has some sympathy for the struggles of oppressed peoples, such as the Palestinians and perhaps the Cubans and others, yet views any support from the big BRICS counter weights with disdain, often adopting the clichés of imperial demonisation.

This includes liberals (including liberal Zionists) who “support” Palestinians as victims but ignore or oppose the Palestinian Resistance and its chief allies, the regional Axis of Resistance led by Iran. This includes fans of the obsolete “two-state” solution, who naively imagine a weak Palestinian ghetto can co-exist alongside a voracious and heavily armed apartheid regime.

This claim of supporting a popular struggle without “dirtying” one’s hands with state politics extends to those Westerners who romanticised the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico, while steering clear of progressive yet (in imperial parlance) “dictatorial” Latin American states like Cuba and Venezuela. Any independent state which arms itself to survive hegemonic pressure will be branded a “dictatorship” by the actual global dictatorship.

Avoiding both resistance and the independent states empowers many Western left-liberals with a sense of moral superiority while avoiding the avalanche of criticism that falls on the heads of those who actually support resistance. These western “saviours” then become the heroes of their own imagination.

2. Anarcho-Trotskyists

In a parallel current, we have Western Trotskyists and Anarchists (often indistinguishable) who habitually reject progressive states as “betrayals” of ordinary people, whatever their achievements. The draw on a deep tradition of Western cynicism, where all states are captured, and no emancipatory change is possible. In practice, these groups often revert to liberalism, to remain relevant and attract new members, supporting such things as public health, social security and refugee rights, all of which require state agency.

Yet the Anarcho-Trotskyist tradition is rooted in permanent attacks on left governments and competing splinter groups. For that reason, they are often coopted into support for imperial driven "color revolutions" and the destruction of independent states. The easy part of that is, when those color revolutions turn into humanitarian disasters (e.g. the destruction of Libya and Syria), they claim “the revolution was betrayed”. Many spend their lives saying this.

Of course, they hate Russia, as the successor state to the hated Soviet Union, and many deny that there was ever a socialist revolution (neither in Russia nor China nor Cuba), as none met their own esoteric criteria. Most are extreme sectarians who have never gained the trust of any part of the organised working class, the constituency of which they claim to be the “vanguard”.

Many of those who now raise their voices for the suffering of the Palestinian people have a track record of Israeli-aligned attacks on those who provided weapons to the Palestinian resistance, like Hezbollah, Syria (under Assad) and Iran. Some of them have established opinion columns in the Israeli media.

3. Ahistorical pseudo-Marxists

Another current is that of ahistorical pseudo-Marxism, those who cite 19th and early 20th-century canonical texts to determine that all capitalism and imperialism are the same and that China and Russia are just the latest additions to this global capitalist logic. In this sense then, global capitalism is not seen as a historical process with particular power structures but an amorphous matrix within which we are all helplessly trapped.

Now it is true that Karl Marx did not properly understand the colonial world and its emancipatory objectives. We see this in the biography he penned of Simon Bolivar, the great Latin American liberator, whom Marx labeled as just another Napoleon-like populist dictator. Marx missed the demands for a consolidated decolonisation, including the abolition of slavery and construction of states which could resist further imperial incursions and resource pillage. Yet he did recognise the importance of particular histories in shaping human futures. That much is missed by the ahistorical pseudo-Marxists.

For this reason, an end to the centuries-long Anglo-American hegemony is seen as trivial by these people. Displacement of the Anglo-American dictatorship by a multipolar order is seen as having no real meaning for ordinary or working class people. Similarly, the rise of China is not appreciated because it has accommodated a controlled form of capitalism. The tremendous achievements of China in lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and spending its surplus on public infrastructure instead of wars of domination – are dismissed as meaningless and just a new phase in the integration of ‘global capitalism’.

Other ahistorical Marxists want this amorphous “capitalism” to destroy all traditional and indigenous social structures so that capitalist ‘modernisation’ will ‘inevitably’ lead to some sort of imagined socialism. This arrogant view abandons any idea of social struggle or resistance, let alone sympathy for ordinary human beings.

Orientalist clichés (“freedom from authoritarian regimes”) about the great BRICS counterweights are put up as “evidence” of a dystopian future in which there is no hope of change. This is little more than an empty cynicism, with no real sense of history.

Meanwhile, dozens of southern nations flock to BRICS, despite the Western demonisations, as it seems to offer a world order which will provide some relief from the dollar dictatorship and the possibility for little people and independent nations to survive, in a savage world.

Of course, the above currents do not fully explain the actual motivation for such stupidity. For that we should look to psychological explanations. I personally favour the Western “saviour complex” idea, where a moral high ground is staked out but without any inclination to support and defend the actual achievements of indigenous social struggles.

Yet, as the late Malcolm X said, “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything”.

Source -> https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/why-do-so-many-western-left-liberals-hate-brics