I am a Marxist in China
Orthodox Marxists in the Chinese internet community often view Russia and Iran as weak links in imperialism, rather than as anti-imperialist forces .However, in the view of Chinese Marxists, opposing the global hegemony of the United States takes precedence over opposing secondary imperialisms (Iran, Russia).
The person in the picture is Yang Heping, a US citizen with a Chinese green card, and he is the most popular orthodox Marxist-Leninist-Maoist self-media figure on the Chinese internet (with 3 million followers on Tiktok and 800,000 on Bilibili). Yang Heping advocates that whether it's Ukraine, Russia, or Iran, "the truth is on the side of the proletariat, not on the side of any government or capitalist."
In China, those who unconditionally support Iran and Russia are usually nationalists or national leftists.
I wonder if the differences between the left-wing in Europe and America and the left-wing in China are really that significant?
At least in my part of Europe, the position you describe is also the position of most leftist and communist organisations. Whether that’s because open support for Russia or Iran is a sure way to put a target on your back for intelligence agencies and possible criminalisation, or if it’s because it’s actually the majority position is unclear to me.
It is becoming more common for people to openly support Iran in their fight against US imperialism, but support for Russia remains very controversial. Most orgs will say that working class people suffer from war, and that all sides should seek for diplomacy above everything else. That’s also the largest argument against increased military spending. But it’s not a very convincing argument to the masses who believe that Ukraine deserves our material support (at least where I live).
Only recently has local leftist media started reporting on the Ukrainian neonazi movement and how it’s selling off all its capital to Western investors, I think because they realise that support for Ukraine in the West needs to fall before people are willing to get behind an anti militarisation platform.
The Capitalists had been well prepared in advance, they were pushing and pushing, surrounding Russia with missles, ETC, such that it was only a matter of time before Russia would need to act to protect itself, since the populace of Capitalist countries had been successfully kept completely in the dark about that building situation, they were well prepared to paint Russia's actions as out of nowhere, sudden and vile "those evil evil Russians", they showed manufactured atrocity propaganda and went into overdrive with, stuff like, taking things that the azov/keiv regime did to donbas or simular, and passing it off as stuff Russia did to the ukraine for example.
On top of that, the more emotionally supported a belief is, the more painful it is to acknowledge that it is wrong, since the atrocity propaganda had so traumatized liberals, and since they got so drawn into emotionally supporting what turns out to be a fascist state color revolutioned in by the US, facing just how badly they were made the fool, and their emotions played like a fiddle, for many liberals, facing that is brutal, so they go into denial instead, it is one reason why they may support the Palestinians, but condemn Russia.