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“Anti-Imperialism” vs. “Anti-Fascism”: A Brewing Rivalry on the Left?

The source for this extended essay is somewhat dubious, but its content is interesting nevertheless. This kind of writing seems to have become increasingly common in some far left circles. A serious rivalry seems to be brewing between the “anti-imperialist” and “anti-fascist” camps among the far left. The anti-imperialist far left tends to be Stalinist or Maoist oriented, or at least has its roots in all that, and favors supporting anti-imperialist (or at least anti-Western imperialist) regimes worldwide. However, a problem is that anti-imperialist regimes tend to be socially and culturally conservative (which is true of the developing world generally). The Western Left has made “anti-cultural conservatism” into its primary issue in recent decades. While the anti-imperialist far left emphasizes opposition to Western/American hegemony, the Western Left (which some far left anti-imperialists described as the “colonial left”) emphasizes cultural leftism, with so-called “anti-fascism” being the most extreme example of this. So the issue seem to come to down who the different factions of the far left regard as a greater enemy, Western imperialism on one hand, or things like “fat phobia” on the other hand. Another complication is that sectors of the “far right” have adopted a view of international relations that is almost identical to that of the anti-imperialist Left. So the far right and far left end up at largely the same place on foreign policy issues, which is an outrage to the left-wing camps that regard anti-fascism, anti-cultural conservatism, anti-rightwingism, etc. to be their primary value. For those uninterested in reading the whole essay, a decent summary is offered here.

LibCom.Org

Originally posted on Ravings of a Radical Vagabond this is a comprehensive summary of Third Positionist fascist currents old and new, and the successful insertion of their ideas into leftist milieus and alternative media outlets.

Note for safety purposes: this post will contain links to far-right pages for documentation and sourcing purposes, and any link to such a page will be in bold and italic, such as this.

Note: Several revisions were made to this post between its initial publication and its present re-publication, and therefore there might be significant differences between its present form and quotes from its original version, such as in Tendance Coatesy‘s boosting of this post and commenting it (which I highly encourage reading).

This long post started as an investigation about the Left and Syria which I started after I read the Sol Process blog’s publicati0n of three posts concerning shady pro-Assad sources used in leftist circles (which can be read here: part I, part II, part III), and which later expanded into a more extensive investigation. I also thank the acknowledgement of my blog post by Russia Without BS, whose blog was helpful in the initial stages of my research.

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