American Progressives Face Intellectual Dilemma

[David Morris]

Does this analysis sound familiar to you?

Ibrahim al-Assil إبراهيم الأصيل@IbrahimAlAssil🧵

1/13
American progressives are facing an intellectual dilemma. For years, they
focused on criticizing US foreign policy. In part because of the
anti-capitalism perspective, but also because they, undeliberately, bought
into both imperialism & American-supremacy. I'll explain:

2/13 American-progressive millennials never experienced a threat from
another great-power. They grew up in an American-dominated global scene.
Their world views were shaped under Bush (41), Clinton, and Bush (43),
where the US almost did whatever it wanted.

3/13 The main global event for progressive millennials was the invasion of
Iraq. While they spent their adult life criticizing it, it left them with a
deep sense of guilt and shame. They became very introspective and
self-critical, but that is not the full picture.

4/13 The sense of guilt, coupled with a distorted view of global politics
where the US is always secure and dominant, resulted in progressive
millennials buying into two notions they loath: American supremacy and
tolerating imperialism as long as it's anti-US dominance.

5/13 Putin's Russia has been one of the most imperial forces in the world,
but it's anti-American dominance too. For a long time progressives didn't
feel threatened and they focused more on the ani-American side of Putin and
widely ignored his imperial ambitions. Same with Iran.

6/13 Progressives' stances have been absent on big issues like the
annexation of Crimea, Assad's war crimes, and Iran's interventionism. Their
focus was on where they saw the US policy being wrong, like Yemen,
Israel/Palestine, and Cuba.

7/13 They ended up being where they exactly didn't want to be:
American-centered. Many progressives ignored horrible and unprecedented
human suffering caused by Russia (Syria) and Iran (Syria, Yemen, Iraq,
Lebanon) because there was nothing there to criticize the US for.

8/13 Progressives advocated for isolationism. A view they share with Trump
& Rand Paul (clearly for different reasons). Another mistake entrenched in
their views was depriving non-Americans of their agency in global events &
interpreting them as always being American influenced:

9/13 They saw the war in Syria as a pure foreign power intervention,
ignoring the main role of Assad and how much Syrians didn't want to live
under him no matter what. In Ukraine, many argue that it was the west's
fault ignoring that Ukrainians made their decision to look west.

10/13 Some say it's the West's fault because Ukraine is within Russia's
sphere of influence. Okay, let's talk about that: sphere of influence is
the claim by a state to exclusive or predominant control over a foreign
area or territory. In other words: imperialism.

11/13 Looking at Ukraine as a country where Putin has the right to dictate
its future is the most imperial notion in the 21st century. Ukrainians made
THEIR democratic decision to ally with the west because THEY found that in
their economic and national security interests.

12/13 Progressive millennials and gen Z are facing a big intellectual
challenge. They should find a way to reconcile their world views to be
aligned with their inclusive values of democracy, freedom,
and self-determination, and not only when it overlaps with criticizing the
US.

13/13 This thread doesn't claim to offer the full picture. It's just one
piece of a complicated puzzle. It aims to discuss how geopolitics and
post-cold-war American dominance shaped progressive-millennials world views.