Bret Devereaux

I think you're missing the point, which is that relying on imperfect allies in an anti-colonial struggle doesn't make that struggle hypocritical. We're talking about national movements to end colonial regimes that remained active!

This is like arguing the early US could not accept any ally with a hereditary monarch.

My point isn't that struggles of liberation were invalid (they weren't). We were talking about ideologies here - imperialism of the left and right. My point is that a cause of liberation basically had to choose between one imperialist ideology or another *imperialist ideology*

I'm not judging a person forced to choose between these demons and those demons who takes the one who can make him free. But they're both demons; both demons who claim to be angels, but for some reason one of the claims is treated seriously when neither should be.

To return to the original point the question is 'is imperialist apologia naturally at home on the right?' and my point here is that rightist tend to defend right-imperialism, and leftists tend to defend left-imperialism. If there is more of the former than the latter...

...that seems honestly to be merely an accident of the fact that traditionalist regimes had a lot longer to set up empires. But leftist regimes seem to set up empires at roughly the same *frequency* - they just had less time to do it in.

I think there's a lot of historical specificity elided in making this comparison, particularly with respect to what the global anticolonial movement actually looked like during the Cold War. I think we mostly haven't been talking about ideologies at all. But...

I think it remains obvious as a matter of present-day fact that in countries with imperial legacies if you show up and ask "so who do I join here if I like our imperialism" you will almost always be pointed to the right.