It’s like China is just that one country (aside from the Khmer Rouge) that every ML (aside from Dengists like us) agrees to hate on.
Fellow Traveler and leftypol uploaded videos criticizing them, the Shining Path hung up literal dogs to protest them, Maoists go all insane saying that it’s some red fash social-imperialist nation because (insert nato propaganda here). And Hoxhaists claim that China was never socialist and that the only socialist nation ever was USSR before Khrushchev and almighty holy Albania.
What is it that makes China so controversial even among MLs? I get that it’s not perfect and every AES state has their Ls, but jesus.
Let’s be fair, there are a couple of Maoist groups that are engaged in meaningful struggle, e.g. in India and the Philippines.
Personally, I view those groups as fellow travellers and not as comrades. For me, the only distinction between those two terms being that we can both talk about the destination down the road we’re heading to, but I will tune you out if you start talking about how we should be riding donkeys rather than driving the EV.
I mean, there’s a difference between anprim bugbears and waging protracted guerilla warfare against an imperialist-aligned government. There are shitty maoists out there too, but also ones too involved in actual fights to be concerned with fighting over whether it’s okay to drive an EV.
That there is, but there is also no rule that denies the capacity of any non-ML struggle from achieving good or combating imperialism and the philosophical distinction I gave above were made precisely for those groups.