chapotraphouse

what about extremely critical support for the US in its own efforts to destroy the US

Uncritical support to comrade Stalin eating all my grain. He can have as much as he wants

Critical support goes back at least to the subreddit days, and it's probably not original to us. And hexbears are not the only people browsing our site. I think it's still a good idea to distinguish the fact that we support this particular action even if we don't support everything the country does. Even with our current use of critical support, we are still accused of being Russian/Chinese bots. If we want people to come to our side, the last thing we need to do is validate those claims.

It's like there is a fear of being ridiculed or called a shill or something.

I agree, pretty much given how much of hexbear culture inherits from reddit left-chapo days, critical support does sound exactly like that, saying critical support for China or Vietnam because you don't have the time or space to clarify why these countries make mistakes or have straight up bad policies. So it was useful in that context because in those days even getting liberals to agree China not bad was a valuable step. In the 2016-2020 days and specialy during the anti-China racism surge during COVID-Xinjiang-HK. Just saying CHINA GOOD just isn't a useful conversation starter in that environment, no matter what you believe, if the point is turning the general opinion around.

Using this on HB does feel redundant too, except I still think the legitimate use to me is more towards e.g Russia-Ukraine where its absolutely necessary to clarify why you'd support them, but not always having to repeat the same obvious criticisms.

I think the reason it's overused is because we are a minority and our opinions and positions go against the dominant ideology, so we feel a need to take a preemptively defensive position. It's like there is a fear of being ridiculed or called a shill or something.

I can't speak for hexbear because I don't even see an overuse here, but in the left corners of Reddit they abuse the hell out of the phrase, seemingly because they just don't know what it means. I've lost count how many times I've had to explain in the deprogram sub that critical support doesn't mean having policy disagreements.

is not a dogwhistle kind of thing where you shy away from supporting something publically.

It means that while you disagree with some state's general politics, you support a specific action done by them that have positive outcomes for the working class.

It should be distinguished to support a capitalist country in its struggle for self determination for example, and to support an actually socialist country for making progress in its development.

no u

Critical support for this post and poster

Saying you support this or that state doesn't mean unconditional or blind support.

I think the reason it's overused is because we are a minority and our opinions and positions go against the dominant ideology, so we feel a need to take a preemptively defensive position. It's like there is a fear of being ridiculed or called a shill or something.

Fine, conditional support. The enemy of my enemy goes against western Capital's interest and I support them thus only in that regard.

Does that go?

I really only see this used as a joke, similar to

https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1969/abc/abc.htm

Adding a second comment to point out that the term "critical support" goes back at least to the mid-century era. This link is to an article from 1969 that uses it. I don't think we should just casually drop it since it's a defining way of thinking about how we should support revolutionary elements.