I don’t know who needs to hear this, but refusing to support the self-determination or validity of a nation because they are socially conservative is liberal imperialist logic. That does not mean you need to be a Russia fanboy or cheer on the actions of Saudi Arabia’s government, but it means that you understand that society will achieve social progress and progress beyond primitive ideologies when the level of development in that society reaches a similar state as the western world. The tribalism that we see across the entire world is due to underdevelopment and primitiveness as well as influence from reactionary organizations such as churches and extremist think tanks such as PragerU or Victims Of Communism which are supportive of western imperialism and rightism. We can even see great correlation in rightism and underdevelopment here in the United States, where the rural and less prosperous regions tend to be the most socially conservative. This explanation does not excuse racism or participation in hate groups, but it helps us to explain why a person with no education and financial insecurity would externalize their problems towards some demographic which does not even have real control of their society. We may hear someone complain they can’t get into college or work because of affirmative action, but this is an example of tribal thinking resulting from poor infrastructure in the educational system.

When we understand rightist groups indoctrinate and recruit from underdeveloped societies, this contextualizes a lot of rightism we see in the third world and why so many people tend to end up in theocratic or oppressive societies despite being on the receiving end of imperialism. Despite liberals in the US supporting invasions and bombings on the world in the name of social liberal ideology, that’s actually the worst thing they can do because it prevents the development of the society and their eventual transition into free societies. If the United States and Europe magically disappeared, what would happen to Afghanistan if left alone for a couple hundred years? What would true Korea look like if world peace was maintained and there stopped being a need to defend their nation from the American imperialists? Maybe instead of having their progress reset by drones and bombs they could actually achieve the material conditions that allow them to progress into a democratic socialist society. Oh, wait. I think that may be what the ruling classes of imperialist regimes do not want and the reason they use liberal ideas to support their actions.

The regime is not shy about using social liberal ideas such as LGBT rights or feminism to infiltrate and sabotage foreign governments. They have done so much harm to the movement by promoting LGBT membership in their genocidal military or trying to use gay reactionaries to infiltrate governments and promote liberalism. (I’m tempted to ask how someone can be a liberal and support America in a free country like Vietnam but that’s beside the point.) Imperialist states use the logic of their country being more progressive and socially advanced to justify these invasions which is a cycle that stops the entire world from improving, and even has detrimental effects on the citizenry of imperialist states since they do not benefit from this warfare, only a small elite do. Other pro-imperialist logic is even worse such as American exceptionalism or theological justifications for war as seen in Israel and Imperial Japan. This logic we see liberals putting out that being more socially liberal than another group justifies war historically has been used against Native people to take their land and could literally be used right now to continue taking their land as the government is doing. As a member of multiple minority groups, I ask that you do not use social liberalism to be a pretext for supporting western imperialism.