To the best of my knowledge, this alleged pro-Putin "Western Left" just... doesn't exist? The vast majority of "leftists" I know are against all kinds of authoritarianism - they hate Putin at least as much as they hate the failed US democracy. Especially in Europe leftists are the one calling for an EU-wide army for territorial protection - that would've been fairly helpful by now!

Sure, there are plenty of pacifists who just want the war to stop, or who are against direct involvement by non-UA troops, but I don't believe there's even a significant minority fraction who wants Ukraine to capitulate, broker a peace over the status-quo, or stop foreign aid.

I have heard criticism against a more direct involvement, but considering the track record of Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, is it really all that surprising? You can't spend half a century sending people to die in far-away lands for profits or vague political goals and expect them to trust you that this time will be any different.

That said: I was shocked to walk by an anti-NATO "hands off Ukraine" protest shortly after the 2022 invasion. I delved into it a bit and there seemed to me to be at least two kinds of people who would have such a point of view.

* People with an extremely deontological morality: if they saw a runaway trolley, then they would never pull the lever. Some of these folks seem to have their beliefs so tied up in anti-Americanism, pacificism, and/or isolationism that they refuse to accept exceptional situations.

* Fanatical socialists who think that global unity among socialists is more important than national interests or human life - they usually point out how the First World War caused the demise of the Second International[0]. This reminds me of a reprehensible argument apocryphally attributed to Lenin: socialists shouldn't try to make peoples' quality-of-life better under capitalism (indeed they should try to make life worse) because doing so would slow the coming of the Revolution.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_International#First_wor...

My belief is that US leftists should be focusing on collapsing the US empire from within, leaving in a weakened state ready for queer automated communism to thrive. I have felt that focusing on foreign policy would tend to do nothing for the American Collapsionist cause, apart from distracting us from domestic sabotage we should be doing. The same liberals who speak with anti imperial vitriol against Russia are the same liberals who are not sabotaging America, and this has seemed to demand an "America first" sabotage policy for American leftists.

Thus I have asked my leftist friends to ignore the situation in Ukraine - which we have no control over in any case - and focus instead on sabotage efforts targeting US corporations, governmental organizations, and the general public.

I am less than satisfied with this stance, and feel particularly stung by the charge that I might be engaging the "anti-imperialism of idiots".

Yes, as American Collapsionists we must sabotage and collapse the American empire. But if possible, we must also help sabotage and collapse Russia, and more broadly, all states and imperial and corporate powers globally. The idea I have - work to collapse the empire you are culturally equipped to deconstruct, and let members of other empires collapse their respective empires - seems only to alienate me from any serious or effective international policy.

I write this to find other collapsionist anti imperials who have struggled with these ideas and have a more coherent and effective response. If I also antagonize accelerationists, American nationalists, and humanist anticollapsionists, I hope this nevertheless leads to constructive dialogue even with these, my supposed antagonists. Thanks for reading me.