{"id":50368,"date":"2019-12-31T09:29:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T14:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50368"},"modified":"2019-12-31T09:29:37","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T14:29:37","slug":"why-i-dont-criticize-russia-china-or-other-unabsorbed-governments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50368","title":{"rendered":"Why I Don\u2019t Criticize Russia, China, Or Other Unabsorbed Governments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Why I Don\u2019t Criticize Russia, China, Or Other Unabsorbed Governments<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Depending on whose political echo chamber I happen to be arguing with on a given day, one common criticism I run into a fair bit which many of my readers have surely also encountered is that I put all my energy into criticizing the foreign policy of the United States and its allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not anti-war, you\u2019re only anti-AMERICAN wars!\u201d they say, as though they\u2019re delivering some kind of devastating slam-dunk point. \u201cIf you\u2019re so antiwar, why don\u2019t you criticize Assad\u2019s war in Syria? If you\u2019re such an anti-imperialist, show me where you\u2019ve ever once criticized Russian imperialism, or Chinese imperialism?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The argument being that someone who opposes US-led warmongering isn\u2019t really motivated by a desire for peace and an opposition to war unless they\u2019re also voicing opposition to all other violent governments in the world. If you\u2019re only criticizing US imperialism and not the imperialism of other nations, you must be motivated by something far more sinister, perhaps a hatred for the United States of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have three responses to this feeble line of argumentation, which I\u2019ll list here for the benefit of anyone else who\u2019d like to make use of them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. People making this argument never apply its own logic to themselves.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody criticizes all misdeeds by all governments everywhere in the world. If you run into someone making this \u201cyou have to criticize all bad governments or your criticisms are invalid\u201d argument on Twitter, just\u00a0do an advanced search<\/a>\u00a0for their Twitter handle plus \u201cDuterte\u201d or \u201cSisi\u201d or one of the other US-allied tyrants who the mainstream media haven\u2019t spent years demonizing, and you\u2019ll find that they\u2019ve never made a single mention of those leaders the entire time they\u2019ve had that account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why I Don\u2019t Criticize Russia, China, Or Other Unabsorbed Governments Depending on whose political echo chamber I happen to be arguing with on a given day, one common criticism I run into a fair bit which many of my readers have surely also encountered is that I put all my energy into criticizing the foreign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17039,827,3142],"class_list":["post-50368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-caitlin-johnstone","tag-united-states","tag-us-empire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50369,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50368\/revisions\/50369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}