this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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I long ago gave up on feeling empathy towards these people. I was raised right wing. Most of my movement left was due to just being a person with empathy, morals, and a sense of logic and understanding of the world. You know, basic shit humans kind of naturally have. I was raised in an environment that should have easily left me as a naive liberal baby man yet here I am. When I see these liberals and anti-com "leftists," I see them with the knowledge that there is even more, and even easier access to, the information than what I had. More examples. More blatantly in your face facts and details that prove the western propaganda. It's easier to see then ever now.
So for it to be this way, and them still be as ignorant and brainwashed as they are, I just am unable to feel sorry for them in any way. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." If we present them with these things and they are unable or unwilling to learn, why should I waste my empathy on them? No, I save it for people that deserve it. People that are suffering right now and truly don't have the means to understand it or change it. Palestinians, Iranians, Cubans, Venezuelan, and so many other people around the world that are being hurt while these libs spend their time worrying more about "Stalin bad, China bad, look at tank man picture." No, fuck those people. Empathy is long gone.
You said yourself why this is a bad take: basic stuff like "empathy, morals, and a sense of logic and understanding of the world" is how a lot of people move left. If you compromise those things to too great an extent you can get lost, or you stop being a person who's able to convince non-leftists to come around to our side. And without millions of people who currently aren't leftists coming around, we're going nowhere.
Empathy, morals and a sense of logic and understanding of the world will always lead you to a position of uncompromising solidarity with the people of the global south in their struggle against imperialism.
The propaganda that reddit leftists and liberals consume is overwhelmingly aimed at designating the countries engaged in the global struggle against imperialism as bad, evil, barbaric. The purpose is to offer the citizens of the west a moral licence to suspend their empathy and acknowledgement of the global south's human dignity and abandon the international solidarity that must logically proceed from this acknowledgement in favor of enjoying the benefits of labor aristocracy as a loyal subject. It offers a way to have your cake and eat it too while glossing over the violence needed to enforce the system as a simple case of bad people getting what they deserve. The most disgusting example of this is the cherring over endless compliations of russian soldiers dying that is all over the internet nowadays.
The moment you abandon international solidarity in a misguided attempt to offer empathy to those who have already forfeited theirs, you aren't moving them left, they are turning you into the moderate wing of imperial terror.
It's not a mutually-exclusive trade-off, nor something you have to be ideologically compromising on. Indeed it is true you shouldn't abandon international solidarity in favor of empathy for empire citizenry, but having empathy for some of them doesn't negate international solidarity. Nor does trying to move some of them left necessitate compromising on anti-imperialism. The Mamdani/Bernie/AOC types are a good example of what not to do. They choose the path where they prioritize the imperial core citizenry at the cost of the rest of the world and give up on anything revolutionary.
Simply having empathy or trying to change people does not de facto lead you down that path though. I can't confidently say what all factors do lead one down that path, but if we look at the institutionalists like Bernie, along with a lot of history of struggle, it is safe to say that believing you can change the system from within is one false path. However, this does not mean you can't change a society while living in it (else revolution would be impossible). What it means is you can't become part of the system and then use the procedures of the system to destroy the system; you just get subsumed by it in the process. At some point you have to confront the system in order to fundamentally change it.
Another false path, which also sometimes relates to the institutionalists, is believing that you must make ideological compromises with imperialists in order to gain their support, and then you can move forward. This is wrong not "because they are bad" but because imperialism is the primary contradiction, so making compromises with it in order to defeat it is another form of trying to change the system from within. In the CPC's earlier struggle, they worked with the KMT at times, to defeat the primary contradiction (imperialist/colonial powers occupying/invading them). When this contradiction was resolved, they then had to struggle against the KMT for control of China, who did not have identical interests to the CPC.
So, identifying the primary contradiction and understanding it from that perspective is important. Through this, we can better tell what is a necessary alliance and what is undermining our own goals. An example of a necessary alliance in current day is between Russia and China, in spite of current Russia being run by capitalists. Since imperialism is the primary contradiction, this is a reasonable alliance, due to Russia having been maneuvered into an anti-imperialist stance in order to protect their sovereignty. However, if Russia were an ally of the empire, it would not make sense for China to be allying with it in order to defeat imperialism.
You are correct in asking why these types consistently choose that path over and over again. It's a very important question. If we accept that people are generally intelligent and competent, there has to be some wisdom to their actions. Why do they always abandon anything revolutionary? Why do they stop moving their followers left at a certain point? Why does it always end in throwing the rest of the world under the bus?
If Bernie went wrong by working with the system and being subsumed by it why did he not simply confront it, is he stupid? We are assuming he is intelligent and capable and I think he at least has the experience and understanding to match us internet communists so there has to be a more reasonable explanation.
When it comes to not making compromises with imperialists, you mention the KMT and CPC but you are an american citizen. Your conditions and relation to imperialism are fundamentally different than those in 1940s China. The purpose of learning Marxist thought is to understand the processes that move history and how they apply to your conditions. The KMT and CPC allied against Japan because they had common ground in their interests being opposed to the Japanese and compromising with them meant accepting their own subjugation. Can you as an american communist make a persuasive argument to your fellow citizens that imperialism is opposed to their interests? Does compromising with the imperialists actually require that you forfeit your own interests? If it does, this once again begs the question - Is Bernie just stupid, making an alliance that does not benefit him?
No. Him and the Berniebros who give up on revolution are intelligent. They have identified that under current conditions, their interests are best served by playing along with the empire and simply asking for more bits of what the empire extracts from the rest of the world. Moving these people left to a principled anti-imperialist position requires that you give them a better deal otherwise they will keep siding with imperialism. Can you do that? Is allying with the revolution against imperialism a reasonable alliance for them right now? If they are better served being loyal imperial subjects, then as you correctly point out it does not make sense for them to ally you.
If you cannot make a persuasive argument to libs and the compatible left that both upholds their interests and does not cede ground on the primary contradiction in the world then you have a decision to make. Do you put your own citizens above the rest of the world and start making concessions until your position is more palatable to them, eventually ending up next to Bernie? Or do you maintain your postion on the principal contradiction knowing that the only way we will ever get socialism worldwide is by destroying imperialism, even if it will logically limit you to a significantly smaller number supporters for the time being? It is, in fact a mutually exclusive trade off that you will eventually have to ideologically compromise on in order to align with a large mass of people in the imperial core. Thus, instead of moving them left, the cold logic of imperialism will move you into a compatible position.
Revolution it possible but it requires favorable conditions. There is little potential for a genuine anti-imperialist mass movement in the west right now and that's neither your fault nor something you can reasonably fix yourself. The Bolsheviks did not create the conditions for the revolution either, the devastation of WW1 did and they were able to sieze the moment. Eventually your time will come too and so will mine even if right now it seems impossible. In the meantime, do not feel pressured to gain the favor of those who are better served by imperialism for the sake of growing your movement right now and at all costs because that's how you become Bernie.
Side note: the original post mentioned empathy but we know Marxism does not actually concern itself with that. A sense of logic and understanding of the world is enough to reach the correct stance on imperialism. Empathy and morals can set you on an alternate track to reach the same conclusion, but they are not strictly necessary, only an addition that can give more personal meaning to the struggle and solidify your position.
However, I believe that empathy and morals are fundamentally incompatible with imperialism. To have empathy with another is to recognize your own humanity in them. Seeing your fellow man as fully human and equally worthy of dignity and expanding this to include the whole of humanity cannot be reconciled with the dehumanization and expolitation inherent in imperialism. To accept imperialism and become its willing subject you must reject the humanity of those it extracts from. The role of propaganda in the core is to provide a convenient fanfiction in which everyone else is worse and totalitarian and an orc or a woman hating terrorist therefore it is okay to suspend your empathy with them and enjoy the spoils in peace. People choose to subscribe to the fanfiction because it justifies the underlying interest they have in allying with imperialism.
Probably something like:
Good faith evaluation: He believes that he can do more with the power he does have than with no power at all, so he retreats if he has to, in order to cling to any semblance of power within the system at all.
Material interests: He personally benefits from the stability granted by working for the system. Both as personal prosperity and a buffer from being targeted by the state as an outsider who is a danger to the system.
Yes I'm aware. The point of the comparison, along with comparing to modern day China and Russia vs. siding with imperialists, it to make a point about the difference between justifiably working with someone who might normally be an enemy vs. working with the ones who are most interested in, and capable of, killing you (to put it bluntly).
I mean, I was a lib for a while. Some of it was self interest that I moved left, but some of it was a sincere interest in working out the most effective way to create a better world. There's a lot more to it than that, of course, the voices I encountered along the way who helped change my views and so on. But I think it is maybe misguided to overly reduce it to formulas of who will or won't be moved.
Class traitors, however uncommon, do exist. Dialectical materialism is a science of change, not a science of describing and then going to bed. Be careful of fatalistic evaluations that assume a certain outcome must happen because of the dynamics of what is likely to happen, especially when so many complex variables are in play. For example, in the US, there are plenty of people who are going to be (and probably already are) going down a rung in stability and comfort as the contradictions sharpen and conditions worsen. Things can (seem to) change fast, at times, because of how a cross over from quantitative to qualitative can be so dramatic.
So though I get the point about evaluating things strategically and not expending a ton of energy on people who are mired in wrong paths, I would also emphasize that investigating a person's beliefs and conditions takes precedence over abstract evaluations of their likely circumstances.
I think this is a bit like saying "medicine does not concern itself with morals." No offense meant. But though we may be able to technically say that marxism as a science is not a religion or a science of morality, marxism-leninism is something that, historically, is practiced toward deeply compassionate and humane goals. To divorce it from empathy takes away its storied history of dramatic increases in quality of life for hundreds of millions of people. It risks putting it in a position of academic purity, rather than compassion-driven praxis. Granted, you can be self-interested and still benefit from taking on a marxist view and goals. But this doesn't change the character of its impact on human lives on a large scale.
I would agree and I'd say this is a very good reason that the empire puts so much effort into atrocity propaganda and/or both sides narratives. They are trying very hard to steer compassionate people away from the realization that they are supporting something unbelievably horrible and are trying very hard to steer those same people into believing that the best alternative (a communist vanguard) is "just as bad", so that they will be trapped in cynicism, despair, or various wrong paths like adventurism and ultra-left shenanigans.
It's more like: He correctly understands that working within the system and upholding imperialism at the expense of the Global South is a viable path for meeting the needs and interests of the American proletariat, overwhelmingly more so than opposing the system and building a revolutionary anti-imperialist movement. This is what I mean by material interests - the American proletariat as a class with Bernie as their representative, not Bernie's own personal prosperity as an individual. The tendency of socialist politicians within the US to Bernify over and over again is the consequence of these basic realities of imperialism.
Weren't we all? It's not about reducing it to formulas of who will or won't be moved but about understanding the logic behind the positions people take and how it informs political strategy. And generally I find that you do not move people, instead people move themselves out of their previously entrenched positions when those can no longer be reconciled with their needs, wants, self image, etc. and what you can do is spot these people and offer them something that covers what they were lacking previously. It's less going wololo Lenin wololo at people until their shirt changes from blue to red like a priest in Age of Empires and more like identifying political strays who would benefit from your movement (the actual potential leftists) and addressing their pain points. I know people who back in 2022 were generic liberals ranting about Putler and how communism means no freedom and no toothbrush but after worsening economic conditions and the genocide in Palestine are willing to listen to me explain Marxist concepts and even actively ask questions themselves. But the first step away from the liberal civil religion was taken on their own.
Class traitors absolutely exist, otherwise we wouldn't be on this website. However, as you note yourself we are uncommon and we need to understand why. Why do conditions within the imperial core produce such low numbers of principled anti-imperialists? When the masses overwhelmingly choose to break solidarity with the Global South, what is the wisdom behind their actions and what does that mean for Marxists inside the core? Can you change those conditions in order to produce more anti-imperialists? If you can't change them, what can? Dialectical Materialism is indeed the science of change but understanding how change occurs is not equivalent to being able to enact any change you want at any time and any hour, and having a sober analysis of what is currently possible and what is not does not mean you are giving up and going to bed.
Consider again the Russian Revolution. Why did it happen in 1917 and not earlier? Why not in 1907? How did conditions change to enable it? We know the devastation of World War 1 created those favorable conditions. The Bolsheviks themselves did not start World War 1 - that was the result of imperialist competition between the great powers of Europe. And even more, the Bolsheviks would not have been able to start World War 1. But this does not mean they just sat in bed waiting for the Revolution to happen by itself either. They were out there studying and writing and agitating and arguing, and doing all of that without compromising for the sake of getting liberals or social-democrats on board when it seemed hopeless. Consider Lenin - he was famously sectarian, splitting groups and writing huge pamphlets denouncing all sorts of characters instead of considering them potential Bolsheviks. And even more, he was at a time convinced that he would never get to see the Revolution happen in his lifetime and kept dedicating his life to it nonetheless. When I say there is little revolutionary potential in the West right now, I do not mean it fatalistically, that's it you can't do shit, go to bed. You should keep fighting regardless, without compromising solidarity with the Global South, and if that means a longer and harder and lonelier road that you might not live to see the end of, accept it like Lenin was willing to.
Change is absolutely happening and as I have stated before the last 10-15 years have been absolutely amazing. Consider the example of a person who wishes for healthcare and education and is pondering joining the military for those benefits. Back in 2006, when US military power was uncontested, this was a no-brainer. Now the world is full of strong and determined adversaries who support each other and lob hypersonics when threatened and there's a horrifying land war in Europe that makes it clear that war with those adversaries would be hellish and dangerous instead of a human safari against poor goat herders, all the while tensions are escalating. The empire demands more sacrifice for the same benefits. The calculus is slowly changing. The Global South pushes back and reclaims sovereignty over its resources. Less wealth is flowing in to the core. Contradictions sharpen as the brunt of the effects falls on the proletariat. There is a smaller pie to split and it's getting harder and harder for people to claim their share or expand it. This is what creates actual potential leftists that you need to find and pour your energy into to educate and agitate.
I agree with you here. This thread started from empathy and morals and I simply meant to clarify that I don't consider Marxism to be primarily an ethical philosophy. Of course we can derive ethical conclusions from it and personally, becoming a Marxist has made me a much better, more compassionate person.
If the attitude towards imperial core citizenry who don't already agree with us is that they can go to hell, there is no way to build an effective resistance to imperialism from inside the machine. That's forfeiting a lot for... what gain, exactly? The best way to demonstrate solidarity with the struggle against imperialism is to oppose empire, and in the imperial core that first means growing a movement big enough to make a difference. Can't do that if you call every potential new leftist a fascist.
The problem with building a movement to oppose imperialism from the inside is that the average core citizen has a much easier and safer path to securing their material needs by being a loyal subject of the empire in exchange for a small piece of the pie extracted from the global south. Imagine a US citizen who wants healthcare and education. What can your movement offer them that beats joining the military? Or how do you intend to sell ending the petrodollar to the american public?
In order to grow a large movement you will have to put yourself in a position where you are not fighting to end imperialism but merely to offer your fellow labor aristocrats an increase in the slice available to them or an easier path to claim the benefits of empire. This is what I mean by becoming the moderate wing of imperialism.
It is a conundrum and solving it by chipping away at anti-imperialism to get anarcho-nafoists who post xinnie memes on your side is not the right strategy. I understand that you want a revolution and as soon as possible preferably and being told that there is little revolutionary potential in the imperial core right now is shitty and frustrating but have some paitence. Conditions are not static and the world is changing. The past 10-15 years have been nothing short of amazing after the uncontested imperial domination that strangled the planet after the fall of the Soviet Union. The victoires of the anti-imperialist resistance around the world are bringing us all closer to a communist planet and your time will come too. In the meantime cheer for them and don't feel pressured into ceding ground to liberals.
Imperialism will fall. Communism will win, but not on terms dictated by the people who donate to nazi batallions so they can have their names signed on the munitions that get dropped on Donbas schoolchildren. Those are not "potential leftists" but intellgent labor aristocrats aware of their interests and how they align with the empire. Don't waste your time on them and instead accept that your movement will be limited for the time being and focus on the marginalized people who are blocked from accesing the benefits of empire.
And I'm not saying this from a position of shitting on you. I live in a very reactionary country at the empire's edge that will probably ukkkrainize and become openly fascist again before there is any chance to get better so it's not like I'm the revolutionary vanguard of the world either.
I don't believe you. I mean, I believe that you wrote this with sincerity, but I don't believe that is what actually occurred. This is a view of change that implies it came down to tools everyone has in equal measure and you choosing to use them where others don't, which is easily disproven and looks a lot like individualist willpower view.
Even if this were universally true, which is questionable to begin with, there is still a metric ton of propaganda to turn people astray and there is the existing inertia of the pervasively integrated superstructure across basically all facets of life. It is possible for people to change, but if you expect them to change simply because they view some information that contradicts their worldview, that is unrealistic.
I can say that in my case, having empathy and critical thinking skills may have helped once I started adopting and integrating anti-imperialist, pro-communist information, but those things are not a guarantee of becoming ML at all. For example, critical thinking can be redirected toward getting lost in the weeds of bougie philosophy and individualist intellectual superiority. Empathy can be redirected toward hating AES states because of believing atrocity propaganda. And I don't mean this hypothetically. It's clear that these are active angles the exploiting classes play on to steer people wrong.
I didn't wake up one day and say "this is all bullshit", I had some persistent exposure to information that challenged my worldview and through that, gradually developed. There was a point where I was sympathetic to commies but still believed in Bernie Sanders. I think his colossal failure helped push me past that. Had he succeeded, become president, and pushed through various reforms, I might still be languishing as an underdeveloped vaguely "leftist" right now.
That's fine. I don't need the approval or belief of some random person online. My history and my growth as a person are my own and I don't talk about it lightly. You also seem to be assuming I just like, woke up one day and was a communist or some shit. No, it took a few years, but what I was exposed to was no different the what everyone else was. But to me it was wrong and cruel. I feel shame for what I used to believe, but I changed myself, I learned, and I did it using the same tools everyone else had. And it was much harder to find information back then then it is now. And that's the point I'm making. It's sooo much easier now. The oligarchy has to work so much harder to censors things BECAUSE it's so much more wide spread. I remember saving YouTube videos with like, a couple thousand views that were amazing information. Now we have better produced versions out there with 100 times the views. Not to mention podcasts. When I was having my mind changed about China there wasn't a lick of easy access information about it. They hadn't even really made major progress on the air pollution back then. And don't even mention the DPRK. Now though? It's next to impossible NOT to see it. It's so damn easy.
So no, I won't give them the benefit of the doubt. I won't feel sorry for them. Many of us communists are out there every day trying to change people minds, only for them to dismissively label us tankies like its slur and ignore the facts we present. So fuck em. They have it easy while innocent's across the globe suffer. My empathy has better uses.
These two do not make sense together. One the one hand, you claim everyone has the same information. On the other hand, you claim it was really hard to find the needed information when you were changing as a person. What I hear is "when I was learning to be a communist, I had to walk uphill both ways in a blizzard and people have it easy now and they still don't learn, so fuck em." This is bootstraps individualism hiding under a commie flag.
Having access to a tool, and using it, are different things. I was exposed to all the same media, websites, debates, etc. as everyone else. But anyway this feels like you are cherry picking this and ignoring the actual point is was getting at, which is that I know how hard it was back then to find this stuff out, and that now, it's so much easier. And we make it easier. We spread the knowledge. We send people the data and the facts and the resources to learn. I have whole documents of links I have used to teach people if a chance presents it. I have formed actual groups that meet and talk about communism. And now it's to the point where I barely need any of it cause it's just out there. It's so much easier now for anyone who actually cares to look.
So when I see so many more people out there trying to spread this information. To literally spoon feed it to libs and "leftists." If they still can't see it, then I feel to reason to burden myself with sympathy towards them. I will continue to try and teach people. It's up to them if they want to learn, but I won't like, sit around and feel sorry for them if they don't.
And I really don't care if this comes of as callous or self righteous. It's the only way I can deal with this world. I see innocent people suffering across the globe, real people who actually deserve my empathy, and the suffer because of the empire I can't stop BECAUSE people don't want to listen or learn. And so any "leftist" that refuses to learn when the information is out there, not caring about them is about the best I can do.
It's honestly ironic and a little confusing. I'm usually one of the people on the fence when this site has a post shitting all over western leftists, which it regularly likes to do. And I do so because the term "leftist" is so broad, and contains some that truly are real MLs. And many on here love to point out western leftists failures, and the inability to form any meaningful movement while (those "leftists" this post are about) criticizing international communist movements. And now I'm being harassed cause I admit I don't what? Feel sorry for those same people? I really don't get it.
I had a suspicion it had something to do with this, but didn't want to assume. Best I can gather is you think I'm trying to emotionally blackmail you or something, and tell you that you must feel sympathy for people who are on the wrong side of history.
This is the furthest thing from what I'm saying and it frankly isn't about you, it's about the message you are putting forth and whether it is ideologically correct or misleading. If that is "harassment" to you, then I really don't know what to say. SHOW me where what I have said has the character of harassment. Do not simply say it as if it is a given, which poisons the well on what I'm arguing.
What I'm doing is something I'm pretty sure I'm pretty consistent about on here: pushing back against people who post in favor of selective empathy (or in some cases, selective humanization) and then try to say it is somehow still communist because it's against the baddies. This is the ideology of the empire but with the flag changed, not what communism is about and certainly not what dialectical materialism teaches us about the world.
If you don't want to cry bitter tears over some rabid neoliberal or whatever, I don't think most people are going to care, much less ask you to. That doesn't mean you need to announce that you don't care and insist that this is justified because "it's easier for them to learn now". If China thought in the imperialist way about the world, they would be readily justified in going to town on imperial core states with missiles the moment they thought they could pull it off. People need to be conscious of the fact that the original ideology you grew up with does not evaporate the moment you change alliances.
It is frankly frustrating how often this comes up as an issue and it is very irresponsible. There are fash out there who are shamelessly willing to try to infiltrate communist spaces and steer them in a darker direction, and when people recklessly promote this stuff they are doing a favor for the fascists by normalizing pre-existing imperialist thought as okay, as long as it's semi-coded in working class language. That is part of why I am so staunch about it. And I say to be preemptive, do not confuse this for me being pacifistic about the imperialist threat. It is in fact an act of trying to root out imperialist thought in people who haven't fully unlearned it.
Well said! An important application of the masses, elites and rebels analysis around why people have the beliefs they have, and how to change people's minds and beliefs. Might be worth plugging the essay too as it's a good one and regularly passed along here: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Losurdo likes to bang on about aristocratic ideologies and aristocratic democracy too which is very much in this vein of critique. A good chunk of Liberalism: A Counter History covers it alongside the analysis of Herrenvolk Democracy. I haven't read it but he often footnotes his own work on Nietzsche when covering this stuff too.