> I feel much better about a movement if it carries a hammer-and-a-sickle banner
immediately after caricaturing (not for the first time, in so many words) those who march under such banners for their
> knee-jerk anti-westernism and romantic populism. These two work as
> follows: social movements are good only inasmuch as they genuinely
> spontaneous, i.e. coming entirely from the low social status people.
> If they are tainted by outside help or support, they become suspect.
> By definition, anything of western origin, especially in the so-called
> Global South is bad - so anything that ostensibly stands against
> Western influence is good, and anything that receives any form of
> assistance or endorsement from the West is automatically suspect.
> Hence petty tyrants like Castro or Qaddafi are seen as generally good
> by the sole virtue of "standing up" against the evil West, and their
> autocratic rule is dismissed as temporary aberration "caused" by
> Western aggression. By extension, any popular movement against such
> petty tyrants is automatically suspect of "playing into Western
> hands." And if such a movements actually receives Western endorsement
> or help, that becomes the "evidence" that the movement is nothing more
> but a Western puppet created for the sole purpose of subduing Global
> South leaders who had the chutzpah to defy they Western masters.
>
> This trope is predictable like bowel movement. As soon as a Western
> power endorses a movement elsewhere, you can safely bet that the
> chorus of self styled Global South champions on the US campuses and
> environs will condemn that movement as the pro-Western fifth column
> against Global South independence.