just to close down, at least for now, i think we need to remember that a lot of this discourse around supporting "nationalist revolutions" in the face of "imperialism", especially in the middle east, shouldn't be separated from the context of the cold war.

really, when you drop the bullshit, this was just an argument made by useful idiots supporting soviet causes. the "nationalist uprisings" were almost always soviet front groups, and rarely represented the people any more effectively than the british or american installed dictators did. 

so, the narrative, when deconstructed properly, was really a lot of bullshit in the first place - it was really never about supporting indigenous groups, but almost always about supporting soviet front groups masquerading as indigenous groups, and adopting this whole framework of propaganda designed to uphold that.

whatever you thought of that, that world doesn't exist anymore, and the left shouldn't even be entertaining these ideas as valid anymore. if we want to call ourselves a left, we need to be supporting lefts on the ground - no exceptions.