All the time I hear about “the CIA will coup this”, “America supported that”, “These people opposed US Imperialism”. A topic could have absolutely nothing to do with america and involve a place on the exact opposite part of the earth and Americans will find a way to make it about America. For example, people talk about Russian politics and Putin yet seem to support Putin wholeheartedly because his Russia “opposes american imperialism”. This framing of the conversation seemingly ignoring how Russian people feel about his reign, how the EU has been having to drag america into the latest sanctions against Russia, and how for the last 4 years America had an ostensibly Pro-Russian president. I swear American Leftists don’t care at all about Capitalism or Communism and just want to oppose the United States. Most of the world and people don’t care about American influence, let alone to such an obsessive degree.
I don’t see why the average american would care too much about bases in other countries. its a very slight cost and has little effect on their daily life or local politics. I bet if the US left every single military base it had abroad you’d still see a very similar if not same political situation of democrats vs republicans there. seems an issue that concerns the local country much more than america if anything
if another country get into a position of having that many bases all over the world and having that degree of influence over the world, then we’ll all start talking about them incessantly as well.
and socialists in general should be against imperialism regardless of the effect it has on their day to day life, tho even if we don’t think about those bases there part of the structure that maintains the us’s dominance and helped it build the wealth it has that american’s in general benefit from even if they don’t realize it
most of the american socialists I talk to seem to be neutral if not supportive of imperialism by “anti-imperialist forces” so it never seemed like much of a principle as much as an extension of anti-americanism to me.
