No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations. — Lenin referring to an earlier statement by Marx. “[I]t was the combined effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the subsequent wave of globalization, and Washington’s aggressive drive for a unipolar order that led to much more open denials of imperialism on the left. Ironically, at a time when liberals were celebrating a new naked imperialism, much of the global left jettisoned all critical notions of imperialism theory, even, in some cases, offering support for the new empire ideology. Here the ideological hegemony exerted by capital over the Western left was on full display. [with its derivatives and distractions: identity politics, ‘democracy promotion’, ‘the threat of Islam’, ‘humanitarian intervention’, expansion of NATO, ‘it’s in their culture’, ‘saving Muslim women’, ‘we are all middle class now’, ‘human rights’, liberal feminism, celebrity culture …] “[T]he gap between the views of imperialism...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51