For instance, I have an aunt who is definitely MAGA, and is flirting with Q-Anon ideas. However, she has pretty good views on the environment and animal rights. For instance, after travelling to Ecuador, she donates to some Ecuadorian land trust run by locals. However, if you start talking to her about the border or gender, she goes full Orbán.
This sounds like Trotskyism, embracing imperialism in order to support socialism. It makes sense in a utilitarian way, but it goes directly the opposite way of what Marxism is about and the world that we fight for. The USSR may have survived for longer if it were more agressive, but it would be remembered for its imperialism and fairly regarded as a betrayal of what it stood for, not just by western propaganda but by communists too. The USSR followed Marxism very faithfully under Stalin and that’s why it’s a great implementation to study and improve upon in future attempts of socialism.
I’m sorry but this is absolute nonsense to me. Even today you have people already purposedly misusing the interpretation of Imperialism to claim Russia and even China are imperialist countries.
By this same logic nobody would ever claim China is imperialist and guess what? There is a non-negligable amount of “weak”(in terms of theory understanding) Marxists at best and just straight up western “socialists” at worst claiming this.
And in their mind it makes no difference whether its China, Russia or even Iran. Heck I’ve seen some even claim Brazil. Claiming the USSR shouldn’t have done something because of modern reputation only makes sense if you ignore the actual reality of today, and that reality? Imperialism is already reaching woke status among libs, it lost its meaning and it just represents “when countries go to war or act on their self-interest”.
That’s not what imperialism is. And the “communists” already think of the USSR as an imperialist betrayal of the working class anyway.