#campism

This tension points toward one of the most fiercely debated ideological rifts within modern political thought and a painful contradiction: the conflict between anti-imperialism (respecting a nation's right to self-determination free from Western interference) and universal human rights (the belief that certain rights, including LGBT protections, belong to all people regardless of borders).

When certain factions of the political left prioritize national sovereignty over the immediate plight of local LGBT minorities, it is rarely because they believe those individuals "do not matter." Instead, it is usually the result of a specific, structural view of global power.

To understand why this blind spot exists, it helps to look at the competing frameworks at play.

Within geopolitical analysis, there is a tendency toward what critics call "campism", a worldview that divides the geopolitics into two rigid camps: the Western imperialist core (the US and its allies) and the anti-imperialist periphery (any nation resisting Western hegemony).

Under a strict campist framework, the primary evil in the world is identified as Western imperialism.

Consequently, any state that actively opposes or resists Western dominance is viewed as a necessary bulwark, or at least a nation whose sovereignty must be defended at all costs.

When domestic atrocities or human rights abuses, such as the brutal repression of LGBT people in Iran, Russia, or various African nations, are brought up, campist logic often minimizes them. They are viewed as "secondary contradictions" that can be dealt with after the global threat of imperialism is defeated.

Another reason some on the left hesitate to champion LGBT rights in sovereign, non-Western nations is the historical awareness of how human rights have been weaponized to justify military intervention, economic sanctions, or regime change.

This is often referred to as pinkwashing or homonationalism, when a Western power highlights its own progressive record on LGBT rights to contrast itself with a "barbaric" or "backward" foreign regime, thereby manufacturing public consent for aggressive foreign policy.

Activists worry that by loudly condemning the horrific treatment of LGBT people in a country like Uganda or Iran, they are inadvertently feeding the propaganda machine of Western warhawks who want to sanction, bomb, or destabilize those nations. To avoid fueling the flames of intervention, some choose silence or pivot entirely to defending the nation's autonomy.

There is a strong current of thought on the left that emphasizes cultural autonomy and cautions against imposing Western frameworks onto the Global South.

Some theorists argue that the modern, Western concept of "LGBT identity" (tied to specific political rights, pride movements, and consumer identities) does not neatly map onto how gender and sexuality have historically functioned in other cultures.

There is also a pragmatic fear of a Western backlash. When Western governments condition foreign aid on the adoption of LGBT rights, it predictably backfires spectacularly. Local leaders can easily point to the pressure and say, "See? Homosexuality is a decadent Western import being forced on our righteous culture."

This can make life infinitely more dangerous for local queer populations.

This silence has not gone unchallenged, however. A massive, growing contingent of progressive thinkers, internationalists, and local activists within these repressed nations heavily criticize this blind spot. They label it a form of "left-wing Orientalism" or reverse chauvinism.

Critics argue that treating entire nations as monoliths completely erases the actual people living inside them. A nation's "cultural autonomy" should not mean the autocrat in power has a blank check to torture his own citizens.

Local LGBT activists in places like Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa frequently express immense frustration with Western leftists who defend the regimes oppressing them. For these local communities, state violence is not an abstract academic debate about "sovereignty" but a matter of daily survival.

They argue that true solidarity must be people-to-people, not state-to-state.

Why Maximalist Demands Must be Here and Now: Anticamp

Lenin called us an infantile disorder. The accusation, leveled in his polemic against the ultra-left, was that we refused the serious work of politics—that we would not fight inside reactionary trade unions or dirty bourgeois parliaments. A century later, the insult still stings, but not for the reasons he intended. It stings because the politics he demanded we embrace have become the left wing of capital’s own reorganization. This is why so many of us who identify with the communizer current find ourselves, almost viscerally, despising what calls itself “anti-imperialism” today.

The fundamental cleavage concerns the very definition of our enemy. Here is the inescapable distinction: capitalism is not a geopolitical system of nations. It is a global social relation, a totality of value production. The “anti-imperialist” does not see this. Their gaze is fixed on a world carved into blocs—a “core” that oppresses, a “periphery” that resists. Capitalism, in this view, becomes a problem of imperialist states, not a mode of production that must be abolished. When a figure draped in the mantle of resistance steps forward—a Putin, a Xi, an Ayatollah—the anti-imperialist does not see a rival bourgeoisie contending for a larger share of global surplus value. They see an ally. They cheer not for the abolition of wage-labor, but for a reshuffling of the spoils between national capitals. This is the politics of anti-monopoly. It demands a fairer, more multipolar capitalism with a human face. It has nothing to do with communism.

The communizer rejects this entirely. The proletariat has no nation. The primary contradiction is not between imperial and oppressed countries; it is between the class that must sell its labor power to live and the totality of social relations that compel this sale. The anti-imperialist vision works to shatter the global proletariat along national lines, erecting the barricades of “campism” and ordering the exploited of the world into cheering sections for their respective ruling classes. For those of us living in the so-called “belly of the beast,” anti-imperialism offers a special kind of paralysis. Our class position is erased by the hoary concept of a purchased “labor aristocracy,” fatalistically condemning us as beneficiaries of plunder, incapable of revolutionary agency. Meanwhile, any movement emerging from the Global South, no matter how steeped in patriarchal reaction, national chauvinism, or the consolidation of a local bourgeoisie, is romanticized as a force of liberation by virtue of its coordinates on a map.

This grotesque inversion reached its paradigmatic form in the 20th century’s great revolutionary moments, which were never revolutions at all. They were state-capitalist coups. The USSR was not the dictatorship of the proletariat; it was the total capitalist, pursuing accumulation and disciplining labor through the wage form and the state apparatus. Lenin’s “infantile” tantrum was aimed at anyone who refused the fatal embrace of this so-called revolutionary bourgeoisie. For a communizer, this is the original sin. The call to collaborate with a “national bourgeoisie” or a “workers’ state” is a call to lead the proletariat into the slaughterhouse of inter-imperialist rivalry, but with our class dyed red as camouflage. History returns a grim verdict on those who answer such a call. The Makhnovists were betrayed by the Red Army. The German communists were crushed by their social-democratic “allies.” The pattern is relentless: first, support the progressive faction of capital; then, get shot by it the moment the class struggle dares to step beyond the bounds of national liberation.

What makes anti-imperialism not just wrong but despicable is its logic of perpetual deferral. The formula is always the same: first we must defeat U.S. hegemony, or achieve national sovereignty, or win the trade war, and then, in some misty future, we can finally have a class struggle. This is a trap. It postpones communism forever, replacing the abolition of the present state of things with an endless series of colonial reconquests and regional trade blocs rebranded as progressive liberation. It asks us to fight imperialism with the tools of one faction of capital against another, guaranteeing that the final victory is never ours.

The US is worthy of heavy criticism but maybe its not good to take that as an excuse to simp for imperial authoritarians just because your politics are little more than vapid "US BAD"

honestly couldn't care less abt what any long-dead thinker 'would have thought' about something from today. it's a useless question, purely speculative, and a poor substitute for thinking about it yourself.