I am against imperialism, be it French, British, US or Chinese. I am not an “anti-imperialist,” since that is a political position supporting national liberation movements opposed to imperialist powers.
—Gilles Dauvé
Mark Twain was an anti-imperialist, a member of the American Anti-Imperialist League (1898-1920) which opposed US annexation of the Philippines. For the League, just republican government was based on the principle of the “consent of the governed” as embodied in the Declaration of Independence, Washington’s Farewell Address, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The imperialism of US territorial expansion thus violated the classical liberal precepts of self-government and non-intervention as put forward by British writers like John A. Hobson. Twain’s dark sarcasm and claims of America’s liberatory intent notwithstanding, he was neither so generous nor as damning regarding the US continental expansion of Manifest Destiny that expropriated the native peoples. The raison d’être of this type of anti-imperialism was simple; empire was bad and needed to be morally opposed.
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September 1, 2021
Categories: "Lefty" Hooligan, "What's Left?", Afghanistan, anarchism, anarchists, capitalism, China, communism, Communist Party, fascism, imperialism, Karl Marx, left communism, leftism, Leninism, Mao, Maoism, Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Modernism, national liberation, nationalism, Politics, postmodernism, Russia 1917, Russian Revolution, socialism, Soviet Union, Stalin, Stalinism, Third Positionism, Third World, Traditionalism, Trotskyism, ultraleftism . Tags: "Fascist anti-imperialism", "Lefty" Hooligan, "objectively anti-imperialist", "proletarian nationalism", "What's Left?", 1917 Russian Revolution, 1959 Cuban Revolution, 1989 Warsaw Pact’s dissolution, 1991 Soviet Union’s collapse, Afghan intervention, Alcesta De Ambris, American Anti-Imperialist League, anarchism, anarchists, anti-authoritarian Left, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-imperialist, Assadist chemical genocide, “Autumn of Nations”, “proletarian nation”, “socialism in one country”, Benito Mussolini, bourgeois nations, Brezhnev, capitalism, Catholic Church, Ceausescu, Charter of Carnaro, Chernobyl, Chiapas, China, Christian clerical fascism, CIA, colonialism, communism, corporatist Third Positionism, Cuba, Cuban Communist Party (PCC), Cuban socialism, democratic confederalism, Enrico Corradini, Ernest Mandel, EZLN, fascism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Frank García Hernández, Fredric Jameson, fundamentalist Islam, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Gilles Dauvé, gulag socalism, Hong Kong, imperialism, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Italian Nationalist Association, July 11 protests, Karl Marx, Khrushchev, Laos, late capitalism, late-stage capitalism, left communism, leftism, Leninism, libertarian Marxists, Manifesto of the Italian Fasces of Combat, Manuel Alexandro Martínez, Mao, Maoism, Mark Twain, Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, monopoly capitalism, national autarky, national liberation, national self-determination, North Korea, pan-Islamic clerical fascism, permanent revolution, Politics, Pope Pius XII, Populist nationalism, reactionary socailism, reactionary socialism, regime change, revolutionary internationalism, Rojava, Russia, SDF, Serbia, social democrats, socialism, socialist struggles for national liberation, Soviet Union, Stalin, Stalinism, substitutionism, Syria, tankie anti-imperialism, tankies, Third World, Third World Left, Third Worldism, Tiananmen Square, Traditionalism, Traditionalist, Trotsky, Trotskyism, Uighur concentration camps, ultraleftism, US blockade, US Cuban embargo, US intervention, Vietnam, Vladimir Lenin, Warsaw Pact, Western imperialism, world systems theory, Yankee imperialism, yanqui imperialism . Author: leftyhooligan . Comments: Leave a comment
I am against imperialism, be it French, British, US or Chinese. I am not an “anti-imperialist,” since that is a political position supporting national liberation movements opposed to imperialist powers.
What's Left? 