Why are ‘anti-imperialists’ defending dictators?

Protestors during anti-government demonstrations in Hong Kong, July 1, 2018

Joseph B. writes in +972, “Over the past few years, anti-authoritarians on the left have been paying increasing attention to “tankies.” A derogatory term, “tankies” was originally applied to members of the Communist Party of Great Britain who supported Moscow’s crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, which was infamously carried out with the heavy deployment of Soviet tanks.”

“Today the word refers to leftists, primarily Western, who resort to all kinds of justifications for authoritarian regimes in the so-called “global south,” such as in Syria, Hong Kong, and Nicaragua, and/or in countries with an ambiguous status within “the West,” like Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. These countries can be referred to collectively as countries of “the periphery,” to use Istanbul-based Mangal Media’s terminology, so as to emphasize the centrality of “the West” in tankie ideology.”

“On domestic issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, tankies tend to take progressive positions. This makes their politics on peripheral countries all the more confusing, especially for those of us on the receiving end of our governments’ brutalities. Tankies would thus condemn American cops yet praise Hong Kong cops, or condemn the Israeli military while praising the Russian army.”

Protests on Lebanon’s 76th Independence Day celebration in Martyr’s Square, Beirut, November 22, 2019

“This contradiction at the heart of tankie logic derives from a simplistic interpretation of imperialism, and with it, of anti-imperialism. This “alt-imperialist” logic divides the world into two camps : those who are “pro-West” and those who are “anti-west.” In the words of the late theorist Moishe Postone, this is essentially a manifestation of the “dualistic political imaginary of the Cold War.” The Syrian writer Leila Al-Shami, meanwhile, called it “the anti-imperialism of idiots.” Activists who are otherwise progressive and even revolutionary can therefore end up, at best, reproducing the narratives propagated by authoritarian governments in peripheral countries; at worst, they could be actively supporting brutal repression.” (more…)