I do think the sort of “don’t talk about it” mentality does more harm than good. Why are we trying to pretend these reactionary elements don’t exist in these countries instead of just holding our whole, principled stance (Anti-Imperialism is needed to properly oust the reactionaries, so anti-imperialist action is needed first, and that can include support for Russia in E.G. the Ukraine/Russia conflict)?

Trying to literally bully people into not complaining about homophobia in those countries seems not only counterproductive but silly. Complaining about gun-obsessed chuds is technically within line of the mainstream narrative of gun control, but it’s also entirely justifiable because gun-obsessed chuds are deeply unhinged. It’s like we think every single person alive is such a completely politically illiterate person that writing “DEATH TO AMERICA AND CRITICAL SUPPORT TO RUSSIA (their current policies on queer people suck though)” will lead to that person going off and voting to murder Russians

This is why weirdos in the Fediverse are able to slander us so easily, people coming in and seeing us outright shut down gay people complaining about homophobia or whatever is a really fucking terrible look. If our concern is that the optics of being… checks notes not outright delusional about the amount of reactionaries in countries ravaged by imperialism… could lead to more imperialism… then first of all, we’re doing something horribly wrong, because we could just MAKE IT CLEAR that the presence of these reactionaries is the FAULT of imperialistic countries like the US, and second of all, why do we then not care about the optics of literally hushing queer people because they’re making our politics too difficult?

Russia isn’t a fucking MONOLITH, there isn’t a single fucking Russian Hivemind that controls every belief of someone there. When we reject criticisms like this because “oh but it’s an imperialized country!” you ignore the fact that 1. These reactionary elements, again, CAME FROM imperialism, so trying to be all hush-hush about it is far less effective than just acknowledging that, and 2. Progressive elements in the country probably share the exact same criticisms because these are criticisms of lobbying groups and conservative orgs, not Russian people as a whole (why would it be? There’s some weird noble-savage shit going on here where some people who call themselves “anti-imperialist” can’t help but act like every single person in an imperialized country is infallible, EVEN WHEN their existence and power came directly or indirectly from imperialism. Yeah, I’m just some white person, but this feels super racist and dehumanizing to me, like some kind of fetishizing)