Personally, I’ve never looked at it like the states that oppose the US are inherently good and worth supporting (sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not). Objectively speaking, our support means nothing. I don’t have any ICBMs to give to those enemy states. So what I do think is that the way we talk about the enemies of the United States can make a difference in terms of providing license for imperialist intervention which is always a bad thing.

Example: whether you believe Nicolas Maduro stole the 2025 elections or not, propagating the narrative that he did makes it easier for Americans to accept Trump invading Venezuela. If no Americans believed that claim to be true, the cost of an invasion would be higher for the ruling class, so it’s materially meaningful to have control over that narrative. This means that, even if the principled thing to do would be to condemn it, an anti-imperialist who believes he stole the election might choose to avoid the subject.

That hypothetical person isn’t supporting an evil dictatorship, because support from private citizens with no capital and no power means nothing. They’re instead just applying a miniscule amount of personal power in the opposite direction of empire’s interests. The same applies for any enemy of the United States. I don’t “support” Iran, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Hamas, the PFLP, China, Russia, Cuba, etc. I often deny criticisms aimed at those entities when I hear friends or family make them, with the goal of undoing a bit of the effort that US empire undertakes to villify them and grant itself moral license to slaughter their people.