Have they in any of those hours of content ever expressed support for what Russia is doing in Ukraine or even Russia’s actions in Syria?

Yes, critical support. War is bad. War is hell. But Russia didn’t start the war. They go into the history of NATO, they speak to Russia’s legitimate security concerns. Becker explicitly says something like “I may not personally agree with the choice to go to war but it’s not my choice, it’s Russia’s choice to defend it’s national sovereignty against NATO which is an existential nuclear threat”.

At this point i have personally drawn a line in my life and i have no more time for westerners who call themselves communists or socialists but refuse to support or even defend the boldest and most serious military challenge to the US’ global imperialist hegmony in 50 years.

Becker isn’t a cheerleader for anyone attacking the US. That’s not his role. But he absolutely states the US should lose the proxy war, that the US is the most powerful anti-worker and anti-communist force in the world, and that it should not be defended. He also states, correctly that the US losing is insufficient for the socialist cause and if the US loses it could just result in an openly fascistic and crazed nuclear conflagration so we need to build socialism here and stop the US from destroying us all. It’s not enough for Russia to win this battle if the US just escalates to global conflagration, it’s got to be MORE than just Russia winning.

Not to mention that Russia is literally fighting against a genocidal fascist regime.

We all are, it’s called the North Atlantic. The Ukrainian state is genocidal and fascistic only through the influence and material support and cultivation of and by the North Atlantic.

The least any principled leftist can do is critically support them in that

They do. Stop listening to Shea. He’s deliberately misrepresenting this and we haven’t figured out why yet.

To me this goes hand in hand with supporting the economic challenge that China’s BRI represents to the global neocolonial yoke. They can praise the USSR and talk Marxist theory all day but the bottom line is: anyone who refuses to support either of these two main pillars of modern anti-imperialism is simply not worth taking seriously as a revolutionary.

Becker and the PSL are not sitting around talking about glorious histories. They are engaged in trying to figure out how to get more people on the socialist track and hopefully with least amount of conflagration possible, knowing full well that war will happen. They don’t shit on China, nor the BRI. To the contrary, they defend it against attack. What they don’t do is glorify it and cheerlead for it. Again, not their role.

Because there is no way in hell you will ever get to socialism without first defeating imperialism

And Becker and the PSL know that. And they also know that they can only defeat imperialism domestically, so they waste as little time as possible in trying to get Americans to support China, because it literally does nothing material. They spend half their time tearing down liberal arguments and the other half trying to paint a picture of what socialism might look like in the hopes of inspiring people to actually support a socialist party in America and take down the imperialists from the inside.

the only ones currently striking any serious blows at it are Russia and China

Which is why the PSL and Becker defend them against liberal arguments but also try to build a movement domestically so that it isn’t solely on the shoulders of Russia and China.

and as much as i love the PRC at the moment the Russians are actually doing more, they are physically fighting and dying in battle against fascism and imperialism.

We can agree to disagree here. The Russians didn’t invade Ukraine to undermine US hegemony. They invaded to protect their national security interests against a deadly encirclement. China, on the other hand, is proactively undermining US hegemony on multiple fronts simultaneously (diplomacy, industrialization, finance, currency, education, rhetoric, etc)

Meanwhile the likes of Becker and the PSL can sit comfortably in the imperial core criticizing Russia for its contradictions while they themselves opportunistically work with the imperialist murderers of the Democratic Party. And don’t try to deny it, both the PSL and the CPUSA have ties to the Democrat political machine and both have at times advocated for voting Democrat.

I have no love for the CPUSA. The PSL is currently the best option for a socialist party that I’ve seen. They’re not PatSocs, their not a voter mobilization association, they aren’t revisionists. Simultaneously, they’re not millenial/gen Z integrated - no memes, no loud calls for death to America, no cheerleading US opponents. They are sober, measured, and thoughtful.

Honestly though, I just remembered this is all so fucking silly. Becker’s show used to be on RT America before it got shutdown and he had to go to independent podcasting. Like, if you’re upset enough to not listen to some imperial core leftists, then stop listening to Rainer Shea. This article he wrote is literally trying to generate the response you’ve just had, and it’s crystal clear to me and anyone else who’s been listening to Becker and the PSL that Shea is full of shit and deliberately sowing discord.