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Imperialism is a specific word with a specific meaning, it's not "When a Bad Country declares war on a Good/Innocent Country and occupies them". Imperialism creates an exploited and exploiter, with a stark difference in the conditions of the imperialist and their new possession. For example, the European powers were imperialist during the Scramble for Africa because they occupied that territory and then created colonies were the native population was regarded as an inferior class to slave away (whether literally or figuratively) while the typically white population occupied higher positions and thus were exploiters.
It's why, for example, the argument that the USSR was imperialist (at least in the specific case of eastern Europe) is so obviously just liberals learning the word "imperialism" and then implying it to every situation that they think was bad, as they do so very often with leftist vocabulary, and in actuality have literally no idea what they're talking about. The eastern European nations were not exploited by the Russians, and USSR massively increased the quality of life and infrastructure of the people living there - which is why the later shock of capitalism was such a complete disaster. That was the point in which eastern Europe was conquered by an imperialist - the United States - because they were treated as an inferior people to be exploited (and so their quality of life and life expectancies plummeted).
Sure, the Americans are imperialist. But the Russians are even more so given that they’re trying to take over a sovereign nation.
By my previous explanation, you can now hopefully see why this statement is wrong. As the United States is the hegemonic capitalist power, they are able to manipulate the world via institutions like the IMF and World Bank to create debt crises and force countries into subservience. They force countries to cheaply export their resources abroad, and take special care not to allow them to create food agriculture, instead making them focus on cash crops like coffee, which has the dual effect of increasing the value of exploitation and making it so that those countries are reliant on food imports (usually from the United States) to survive. If all that fails and the country still wishes to rebel, the United States maintains 750 military bases around the world in lots of different countries. The threat of violence is implicit.
The United States doesn't need to physically occupy foreign territory if those countries are already within its orbit and doing its command, either because the leadership is in ideological agreement (e.g. Europe) or because they cannot rebel without being overthrown by coups or even invasions.
No one country has a monopoly on imperialism.
This is technically true, but the United States far and away is the dominant world hegemonic power and so is by far the largest imperialist power on the planet. We aren't talking "The United States is a little more imperialist than Russia", I'm talking one, two, maybe three orders of magnitude.
holy shit this is a great post. 72T remains far and away the best poster on hexbear
Death to America
Doing god's work, 72
First off, I appreciate the proper response. I don’t want to generalise too much but a lot of the replies I’ve received are very similar to the propaganda of a certain world government. I’ve had enough fun here so this will probably be my last comment. To quickly address Eastern Europe: I would suggest a read on the Hungarian Revolution, 1956 is to me one of the most interesting years of the later 20th century given that the Suez incident occurred at the same time (I’m Irish so the incompetence of Britain is slightly amusing to me). To use the revolution as an example, the revolutionaries had notable success in establishing a new democratic and socialist government, without any international backing. A significant issue they saw with the Hungarian Communist Party was to how it was largely subject to the geopolitical aims of the Soviet Union, to the detriment of the Hungarian people. Their revolutionary success was ended by a Soviet military intervention- which may be reminding you of some American antics. Czechia/Slovakia is another country where Soviet and Warsaw Pact subjugation prevented a democratic revolution. Now maybe you’ll have an argument for why such an intervention was actually necessary, which is fine- although I would ask to please not call the revolutionaries Nazis, as I have seen some on Hexbear do so and it’s simply not true. I’ll agree with you on the dangerous economic domination of the US. Although it’s not as bad as 100 years ago, the Americans have altogether too much economic control and their use of debt as a leveraging tool is reprehensible, and most likely a significant reason why so many non-western/third world countries have struggled to escape totalitarianism. But we can’t blame every problem on them, and I don’t think it’s fair to argue that countries aren’t victims of imperialism just because it wasn’t at the hands of Americans. Besides, the Soviets are a poor example of a successful socialist state given the development of the Nomenklatura and other such systems that are essentially direct parallels to the typical western systems that I think we can both agree are in need of change.
"The americans have altogether too much economic control and their use of debt as a leveraging tool is reprehensible, and most likely a significant reason why so many non-western/third world countries have struggled to escape totalitarianism"
"Muh those dumb ppl from the 3rd world doesn't know how to make politics only muh totalitarianism because they dumb unlike us in the walled garden"
And also
''(I’m Irish"
Fuck you gringo.
Learn how to read I beg you
Read this : pau no seu cu.
Truly intellectual, thank you my Indian friend