Idk what communist movement you think is going to emerge pristine out of this horrific, traumatizing, wasteland of reality without being wrong in really terrible ways. A socialist or anti-imperialist movement does not have to be morally correct for me to back them. Class struggle does not have to be led by good people to succeed, they don’t have to have a correct interpretation of Marxism or be Marxist at all, they don’t have to not have corruption, and they will almost always carry reactionary baggage. In a lot of situations it’s not realistic or possible at all for any kind of resistance to capitalist exploitation, colonialism or imperialism to exist without all of those problems and more, but doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist, if they’re opposing capitalism, even if they’re doing it badly, I’ll support them. Also, yes, MLs shouldn’t do apologia for the things the USSR did or other socialisms did, they should state the truth clearly without discomfort. I’m kinda disillusioned with ML spaces on the internet, actually, because they really suck. It’s like a game to some people; a game about being right and not caring about fucking anything. It puts me off when I see like uncritical support of past socialisms as if they were perfect, which is impossible, and you’ll always end up being disappointed, which is the one of the points of this whole message, but it only serves to make them look like atrocity-denying historical revisionists to other people. Like the Soviets really did deport Tatars in trains, and really didn’t work to correct the colonialist past they inherited from the Russian Empire. However, the dissolution of the USSR and the throwing of its people to the wolves of finance capital was a humanitarian catastrophe for Eastern Europe and created a situation that even now is actually sickening to think about. It put into motion the fucking tragedy that is happening now in Ukraine plus all of the unseen suffering in the poor regions of what was the Eastern Bloc. The ex-Soviet countries are are perfect example of what losing looks like. Like I’m sure there are lurid, real crimes that Hamas, or Iran, or Ansar Allah committed, but I hope to god they don’t lose, because they’re fighting against the IDF and the American military and all of the bad things that the resistance has done cannot hold a candle to what the US and Israel have done. That’s how I feel about resistance to capital. Like you’ve gotta understand historical materialism and a lot more than just that, you have to keep trying to understand things for years to be good communist. I’m not a good communist. If you approach politics with the goal of having the correct hot takes, you’ll never want to understand anything. Just stop making hot takes, and look at the world.