I had a Zoom call the other day with two comrades, one in Scotland, the other in England, about a new Resistance Books project. We were discussing campism, a word that has lived inside the left for decades. Once, it described a division within the left between those who aligned uncritically with the Soviet Union and those who believed in a more independent, internationalist socialism. The Cold War may be over, but the logic remains, only now, it is applied to rival power centres, where some on the left mistake opposition to the West for an obligation to defend its adversaries, even when they too are imperialist powers.
At some point, one of my comrades left to put something in the oven for their tea. There was a lull, the kind that happens in these conversations, when everyone pauses to gather their thoughts, or when the topic is too familiar to sustain momentum. The old arguments, endlessly rehearsed. The old betrayals, returning in new forms.
After the call, I opened YouTube. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but the algorithm had already decided what I needed.
A row of videos appeared.
I didn’t need to click. I could already picture the cadence of the voiceover, the slow layering of context designed to lead the viewer to a single conclusion: that the West is the true aggressor, that NATO’s expansion forced Russia’s hand, that what appears to be an invasion is, in fact, a defensive action. Oh, as expected, here we have Aron Maté of The Greyzone with one of those exposés where history is presented not as a tangled web of competing forces, but as a neatly plotted conspiracy.
The structure of these videos is always predictable. A montage of NATO military exercises. Footage from the Maidan protests. A cut to Ukrainian far-right groups marching with torches. A list of Western interventions—Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya—offered as proof that no Western condemnation of Russia can be taken at face value.
It’s a compelling formula. It flatters the viewer, offering the satisfaction of knowing something others don’t. But in practice, it functions less as analysis than as exoneration.
The British Left and the Limits of Pacifism
In 2003, I marched through London with two million others against the Iraq War. It was a moment of moral clarity. The war was based on lies; the people leading us into it were liars; and the movement opposing it was, unquestionably, on the right side of history. That certainty didn’t last.
Over time, opposition to Western militarism hardened into something else: a habit of mind that saw only Western militarism. Anti-imperialism, once defined as solidarity with those resisting oppression, became a reflexive anti-Westernism.
That shift was evident in 2011, when the Syrian uprising began. The initial protests were real, a mass movement against dictatorship, but the battlefield was soon crowded with external actors. The U.S., Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia sought influence over the opposition. Meanwhile, Russia and Iran moved to shore up Assad.
For some on the Western left, this interference was the only story that mattered. The Syrian revolution, once a hopeful rejection of tyranny, became little more than a proxy war. Assad’s barrel bombs, his use of chemical weapons, his mass executions, none of it registered in the same way. The opposition’s legitimacy was doubted because the wrong people supported it.
Even now, as Assad the butcher lives in quiet exile outside Moscow, some continue to speak of his downfall as a Western coup, as though the millions who rose up against him had no agency of their own.
He did not fall because of NATO airstrikes, nor because of CIA plots or Gulf-funded militias. He was beaten in a popular uprising, one that emerged from the ruins of his own brutality, a people who had endured over a decade of shelling, torture, and starvation, rising to finish what they had started in 2011. But revolutions do not unfold in a vacuum.
By the time Assad’s regime collapsed, his former patrons in Moscow and Iran had deserted him. Russian support had been instrumental in keeping him in power, supplying the airpower, the military infrastructure, the diplomatic cover. But empires cut their losses when necessary. Russia’s calculations shifted; its attention and resources were tied up elsewhere. And so, in the end, Assad’s fate was sealed not by Western intervention, but by the erosion of his own base of support.
The forces that finally overthrew him were those that had been fighting all along, but they were not without foreign backing. The United States and Turkey, both of whom had spent years balancing between different rebel factions, played their roles. Turkey’s influence had long shaped the Islamist and nationalist elements of the resistance, while the U.S. had backed factions it deemed palatable, often more concerned with its rivalry with Russia than with the fate of Syria itself.
And then, there were the Kurds, those who had fought the longest and the hardest against both Assad and ISIS. They had carved out a fragile autonomy in the northeast, building a movement that, for all its contradictions, represented one of the few genuinely democratic forces in the region. Yet, they too had learned the bitter lesson of imperial pragmatism. Betrayed by the West before, they could be betrayed again.
Washington had armed them, funded them, made them key allies in the fight against ISIS, only to cut deals with Turkey at their expense, only to withdraw support when it became inconvenient. When the time comes for a new political order in Syria, who will stand for them? Will they once again be deemed expendable?
Still, some on the Western left defend Assad, or at least continue to frame his fall as a U.S.-led conspiracy. Why?
Why, after everything, after the mass graves, after the chemical attacks, after the years of Russian and Iranian intervention propping up his rule, do some still insist that the greater crime was his overthrow? Why do they reduce an entire people’s struggle to a puppet show directed from Washington and Ankara?
Perhaps because to accept that Assad was overthrown by his own people would mean rethinking the simplistic binaries they have clung to for years. Perhaps because acknowledging that an uprising can be both popular and geopolitically manipulated is too uncomfortable a reality, one that does not fit neatly into narratives of Western villainy.
To believe in the anti-imperialism of fools, you must believe that all resistance is counterfeit unless it aligns perfectly with your ideological expectations. You must ignore the people who actually fought, who actually won. You must see only empires, never those who rise against them.
We see the same logic at work in Ukraine.
When Russia invaded in 2022, Stop the War Coalition condemned the war, but their emphasis was unmistakable. The primary villain was NATO, not Russia. There was no call for Russian withdrawal, no unambiguous support for Ukraine’s right to defend itself. The invasion was framed not as an act of aggression, but as an inevitable consequence of Western provocation.
Ukraine: The Right to Resist
There is a familiar pattern to the way some on the left respond to imperial aggression. It begins with a denunciation of war, framed in the language of peace. It moves swiftly to a consideration of context, one that, curiously, focuses only on the actions of NATO and the West. Finally, it arrives at its quiet conclusion: that those under attack should not be armed, that resistance will only prolong suffering, that peace can be achieved through negotiation, though always on terms dictated by the invader.
We have seen this before. We saw it when sections of the left refused to support the Spanish Republic in 1936, warning that arming the workers and peasants fighting Franco would only escalate the violence. We saw it in Chile in 1973, when some insisted that Allende could avert the coup through compromise, as if generals could be placated by appeals to legality. And we see it now, in Ukraine, where some on the left have decided that the best thing for a country under siege is to lay down its arms.
It is true that NATO has long treated Ukraine as a buffer zone, a useful pawn in a larger struggle for influence in Eastern Europe. It is true that the Zelensky government has embraced a neoliberal reconstruction project, opening up vast sectors of the economy to Western capital. But none of this cancels out Ukraine’s right to self-determination. You do not get to surrender the sovereignty of a people simply because their government does not align with your ideological ideals.
And yet, some on the left frame the war as nothing more than a proxy conflict, in which Ukraine is merely a tool for Western imperialism. They speak of the need for peace but rarely demand a Russian withdrawal. They call for negotiations but never acknowledge that Putin has made it clear he will accept nothing short of Ukrainian submission. And most tellingly, they oppose military support to Ukraine, arguing that arming the oppressed only extends their suffering.
This is not anti-imperialism. It is the anti-imperialism of fools.
The principle should be simple: oppressed people, wherever they are, have the right to arm themselves against those who seek to destroy them. We understood this in Spain in 1936, when international brigades flooded to fight fascism. We understood it in Vietnam, when those on the left supported the National Liberation Front’s fight against American occupation. We understood it today when Palestinians continue to resist Israeli colonial expansion.
Yet when it comes to Ukraine, some on the left lose their conviction. The idea that Ukrainians might have a right to resist, might need weapons, missiles, drones, artillery, seems, to them, unthinkable.
The argument is sometimes dressed up as a concern for escalation. It is suggested that arming Ukraine risks provoking nuclear war, that the West should seek a diplomatic solution. But this is not an argument for de-escalation, it is an argument for surrender. And it is always the oppressed who are expected to surrender. Not the invaders, not the occupiers.
It is worth remembering what happened to the Spanish Republic when it was denied arms by the same voices that preached peace. While Franco received steady military support from Hitler and Mussolini, the Republic was embargoed, abandoned to fight with whatever it could scavenge. The result was not peace, but mass executions, decades of dictatorship, the total obliteration of Spain’s democratic left.
The lesson should be obvious: you do not win wars against fascists by refusing to fight.
And yet, when it comes to Ukraine, the left finds itself repeating the same errors, calling for ceasefires that benefit only the aggressor, refusing to see that Russian imperialism is still imperialism, refusing to accept that in a war of conquest, solidarity must be with those fighting for their survival.
To demand that Ukraine lay down its weapons is not a call for peace. It is a call for Ukraine to be crushed.
A Peace Built on Plunder
There are some on the left today celebrating a so-called peace in Ukraine, one struck not between Kyiv and Moscow, but between Trump and Putin, two men who, for all their theatrical antagonism, understand imperial deal-making when they see it. For them, Ukraine is not a nation defending its existence but a territory to be carved up. A bargaining chip, a commodity, an obstacle to be swept aside.
The deal, if it can be called that, bears all the hallmarks of great-power politics at its most cynical. Trump, in his usual transactional style, made clear what he wanted: Ukrainian resources. His administration reportedly floated the idea that in exchange for continued U.S. support, Ukraine should “repay” America by handing over half of its mineral wealth, a grotesque colonial throwback masquerading as economic realism. Lithium, grain, and gas, everything that makes Ukraine valuable as a state was suddenly up for auction. The fact that Zelensky refused this offer hardly mattered to those now hailing Trump’s supposed “peace deal” as a victory for diplomacy. The assumption, as always, is that Ukraine does not get to decide for itself.
This is hardly the first time a peace deal has concealed an imperial bargain. From the great-power summits of the 19th century, when Africa was divided with little concern for its people, to the so-called ‘peace’ agreements of the 20th century that left resistance movements to be crushed, the logic has remained the same: better to let the strong divide the world between them than to risk continued bloodshed.
And Putin? His demands have never wavered. A broken Ukraine, neutralised, divided, permanently under Russian influence. His rejection of a ceasefire was as revealing as it was predictable. Russia has no interest in stopping its war unless it is certain that Ukraine cannot rearm, cannot rebuild, cannot function as an independent state. If peace is to come, it must come on his terms.
That this agreement has been hailed by some on the Western left as preferable to continued military aid is an extraordinary thing. For years, they have opposed sending arms to Ukraine on the grounds that it would prolong the war, that diplomacy was the only real solution. Now, when diplomacy reveals itself to be an imperialist carve-up, they celebrate it anyway.
What does this tell us? That for some, the most important thing is not what kind of peace is reached, nor who benefits from it, nor whether it leaves Ukraine whole or gutted, but that it happens under the auspices of powers they perceive as counterbalancing the West. In this reading, a U.S.-Russia settlement is somehow less imperial than Ukraine continuing to fight for itself.
But there is nothing anti-imperialist about forcing a country to surrender its sovereignty at gunpoint.
Remember the great-power summits, after the First and Second World Wars, where borders were redrawn without consultation. The Yalta-style agreements where the fate of smaller nations was decided by larger ones. The so-called diplomatic solutions that left resistance movements to be crushed. Every time, it was sold as pragmatism. Better to let the strong divide the world between them than to risk continued bloodshed.
But a dictated peace is no peace at all.
What Trump and Putin want from Ukraine is obvious. Trump wants its wealth. Putin wants its submission. Neither man can be trusted, yet the deal they have concocted is, somehow, seen by some as preferable to Ukrainians being given the means to defend themselves.
Ukraine’s right to self-determination does not depend on the ideological purity of its government, nor on whether Western financial interests exploit the war for economic gain. Sovereignty is not conditional. It cannot be revoked because of NATO’s opportunism or Zelensky’s economic policies.
A true anti-imperialism would stand with the people who fight for their own liberation, rather than applauding their subjugation under the guise of diplomacy. Instead, we are left with the anti-imperialism of fools, for whom Ukraine’s right to exist matters less than the West’s right to retreat.
Ukraine is not the first place where anti-imperialism has been selectively applied. The willingness to ignore imperial aggression when it comes from the ‘right’ state, has played out elsewhere. In Africa, the retreat of one empire has often meant the arrival of another.
The Neocolonial Question
When France was driven out of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, it was widely celebrated as a victory against neocolonialism. And it was. French troops had spent years entrenching their military and economic influence under the guise of counterterrorism, maintaining a post-colonial grip on the region. Their expulsion was, by any measure, a step towards sovereignty.
But what followed? The Wagner Group stepped in.
Russia’s mercenary army moved swiftly into the space left by France, securing access to mines, looting resources, propping up friendly regimes. Wagner operates in much the same way that the French did, only with fewer public constraints, fewer legal restrictions.
And yet, for some on the Western left, there has been little critique.
Why? Because Wagner is not NATO. Because the governments aligning themselves with Russia are, in the logic of campism, part of the “anti-imperialist” bloc. The shift from one empire to another barely registers, because the narrative does not allow for more than one empire at a time.
If anti-imperialism is to mean anything, it must mean opposing all imperialisms, not just the ones headquartered in Moscow, Paris, Washington or London.
The Other Empire
The logic of empire is never static; it adapts, shifts terrain, finds new frontiers. China’s expansion into Africa is often framed as a counterweight to Western neocolonialism, a relationship of mutual benefit rather than subjugation. The roads, the railways, the glittering new ports, these are presented as symbols of partnership, of development untainted by the conditionalities of the IMF. But infrastructure is only part of the story. Alongside the motorways and megaprojects, China has been quietly acquiring vast tracts of farmland, not to feed local populations, but to produce food (the next battleground) for shipment back to China. These land purchases, often made through long-term leases negotiated with compliant governments, follow the same extractive logic that defined European colonialism: raw materials flow outward, profits accumulate elsewhere.
For all the talk of multipolarity, the reality is that China’s global ambitions look remarkably imperial. The Belt and Road Initiative, touted as an alternative to Western economic dominance, is little more than imperialism with a new vocabulary, a soft-power expansionist project wrapped in the language of “win-win cooperation.” In practice, it has followed a familiar pattern: extractive lending, debt entrapment, and the strategic acquisition of ports, railways, and industries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Beijing’s message is clear: the world should be grateful that Chinese loans don’t come with the moralising lectures of the IMF or the military conditions of NATO. But debt is debt, and Chinese-backed infrastructure projects have left many countries in economic dependency, their sovereignty weakened, their resources mortgaged to Beijing’s strategic interests.
This is not an empire of bayonets and barracks, but of loans, contracts, and supply chains, an empire that insists it is nothing of the sort. Yet the results are the same: land that once sustained local economies repurposed for export, food security subordinated to foreign demand, sovereignty eroded not by military force, but by economic dependency. The old imperial languages of civilisation and progress have been swapped for the smoother rhetoric of “development partnerships,” but the outcome is familiar. The empire takes, and those who resist are told they should be grateful.
And yet, there is silence from parts of the Western left. Those who decry IMF structural adjustment programmes say little about China’s predatory lending. Those who rail against Western neocolonialism in Africa have nothing to say about Beijing’s land grabs, its sweetheart deals with authoritarian regimes, or its export of surveillance technology to bolster police states. The logic is simple: if the U.S. is bad, then China, as its greatest rival, must be good, or at least better.
This same logic governs the left’s approach to China’s internal repression.
The Uyghurs, subjected to mass surveillance, forced labour, and internment camps in Xinjiang, are largely ignored or dismissed as a Western propaganda project. The reports of mass incarceration, up to one million people placed in “re-education camps”are waved away as CIA disinformation, despite overwhelming evidence from leaked Chinese government documents and survivor testimonies. To some, the fate of the Uyghurs is a mere distraction, a narrative promoted by Washington to undermine China’s rise.
It is the same instinct that led some to dismiss the Hong Kong protests in 2019 as a Western plot. When hundreds of thousands marched against Beijing’s encroachment on civil liberties, many on the left did not see a struggle for freedom; they saw a colour revolution, a CIA-backed operation designed to weaken China. The reality was more complex. Yes, the U.S. sought to use the protests to its advantage, as it does in every geopolitical struggle. But the movement itself was real, a genuine rejection of Beijing’s tightening grip, a resistance to authoritarian rule. And this has been borne out by the arrests of pro-democracy activists, journalists, and dissidents, not just in Hong Kong, but across the world, as Beijing extends its reach beyond its borders, hunting down those who dare to oppose it. This is not the behaviour of a democratic state; it is the hallmark of a regime that sees no limits to its authority. And yet, because the West supported it, some on the left felt compelled to oppose it.
The same is happening with Taiwan. Beijing presents its claim over Taiwan as a matter of historic justice, but the island’s democracy, its very existence, is treated as an inconvenience by those who insist that Taiwan’s independence is merely a fabrication of Washington’s meddling.
This is where campism leads. It turns every struggle for self-determination into a proxy conflict. It refuses to acknowledge that people might fight for their own freedom on their own terms, independent of U.S. interests. It is an anti-imperialism that refuses to see non-Western imperialism, a framework that lets China expand its power unchallenged simply because the U.S. happens to be its chief adversary.
But an empire is an empire. It does not matter if its banks are in Beijing rather than London, if its warships fly red flags instead of the stars and stripes. If the left is serious about opposing imperialism, it cannot keep making exceptions.
A Different Anti-Imperialism
I thought back to the conversation earlier that evening, the moment my comrade left to check their oven, the way we had been circling around the real question without quite asking it.
What does anti-imperialism mean now?
If it is only opposition to one empire, then it is not anti-imperialism. If it cannot acknowledge that Moscow and Beijing also have their own imperial ambitions, that Wagner’s looting is no different from France’s looting, that Turkey’s expansionism in Syria does not cancel out Assad’s brutality, then it is nothing more than an ideological reflex, a pattern of thought that justifies itself through selective outrage.
Anti-imperialism should mean, and it starts from below, standing with those resisting oppression, whoever they are, whoever they fight against.
The old betrayals return in new forms. The people change, but the excuses stay the same.
I shut my computer down. The book we are writing won’t settle the argument, but that isn’t the point. The point is to ask the question properly.
What if anti-imperialism meant refusing every empire’s claims to justice? What if it meant choosing the people who fight back, whoever they may be?
The conversation is long overdue.
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