I mean, I’m certainly very far from pro-Ukraine, but I definitely think Russia is far better equipped to handle whatever NATO throws at it than Gaza. I’ve been saying since Oct 7 that every dollar Zelensky grifts is a dollar that doesn’t go to the genocide and is thefore a dollar I support being wasted to slow down Russia’s inevitable victory. I still hope every single factory that is making bombs for Ukronazis or Zionazis goes up in flames at the earliest convenience, of course.

To them, it geopolitics isn’t US & European imperialism vs. these powers & the global south. It is right wing / authoritarian forces vs. left wing / libertarian forces. Big vs. little. Frame everything in these terms and you have a lib indistinguishable from frothing fascists in terms of geopolitics.

Same as it always has been. Colonizers have always had a white savior mentality that they are bringing civilization and culture to the barbarians to eliminate primitive tribal attitudes we would call reactionary. The Iraq War was justified with “we are spreading democracy and human rights” yes, but even further back the white nations were justifying the colonization of India and Bangladesh by saying the British were building ports and railroads and raising standards of living. They were only building railroads between the resource extraction points and the ports however, and only the comprador minority have raising standards of living.

They see South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine and Japan as successfully done colonization, where they are made honorary aryans after they fully submit to “Western values” ie white supremacy and imperialism. The Liberals think they can repeat this process, and this is the Liberal “permanent revolution”. These are not well intentioned soft-hearted lefties, these are self-interested chauvinists who are actually even more bloodthirsty than your standard paleo-conservative Liberal who tends towards isolationism.

Radlibs who were obsessed with Rojava were, in my experience, a lot more imperialist in their online presence and the policies they pushed for than disinterested “normie” liberals who didn’t know anything about Syria besides “I guess Assad is like a dictator or something?”. They were extremely rabidly anti-Assad, anti-Hezbollah, anti-Iran and would make endless excuses for Kurdish compradors becoming an American military base. They protested against Trump cutting off the funding to FSA!

Sometimes these radicalized pseudo-leftists are more dangerous than just a generic apolitical liberal. This is how the trot to neocon pipeline formed, this permanent revolution urge is channeled to serve imperialism because the radlib has the fury and anger of radicalization, with just enough of the latent chauvinism to just believe whatever they hear about the people they’ve been primed to hate. They’re in that sweet spot to be an earnest crusader for “western values”.