The Real Enemy: Confronting Imperialism and Resistance
Maybe this is what unsettles us the most—that we are complicit. That the imperial powers we support through our silence, are not the neutral arbiters of justice we’ve been led to believe.
There’s a moment when the world shifts, and the lines you thought were clear—good and evil, friend and foe—begin to blur. It’s unsettling, and yet, there’s something liberating in peeling back those layers, revealing a truth that no one ever handed you, but you somehow knew all along. We’ve been conditioned to see the world in binaries: heroes and villains, freedom fighters and terrorists. And yet, if we allow ourselves to sit in the discomfort of not knowing who the enemy is for just a little while longer, the answer becomes clearer than ever.
For years, I’ve watched as the media presented groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as faceless enemies, as threats to "our way of life," and as symbols of extremism. I absorbed it, like everyone else, until one day, I didn’t anymore. It wasn’t a sudden realization, but rather a slow unraveling—a growing awareness that the narrative I was being fed was too simple, too one-sided to be the whole truth. It’s hard to accept at first because it feels like betrayal, like you’re unlearning everything you’ve been told.
But here’s the thing: maybe the real betrayal is staying quiet, pretending not to notice that something doesn’t quite add up.
What we don’t talk about is the larger machine driving these conflicts. The imperialist powers—the United States, the West—are never positioned as the villains. Their interventions, invasions, and economic manipulations are sanitized with words like "democracy," "freedom," and "security." It’s always the other who is violent, irrational, the extremist. And yet, beneath this convenient narrative lies the truth: imperialism, not resistance, is what breeds destruction.
We can’t talk about groups like Hamas or Hezbollah without understanding the conditions they’re responding to. We can’t condemn resistance without asking ourselves what they’re resisting in the first place. When we zoom out, when we take a breath and allow ourselves to see the bigger picture, it’s not hard to see that imperialism—its invasions, its occupations, its endless hunger for control—is the common denominator.
It’s uncomfortable to admit that the powers we’ve been taught to trust, to see as the protectors of freedom, are often the instigators of the very violence they claim to be fighting. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it. U.S. imperialism has never been about protecting democracy—it has been about maintaining power, about controlling resources, about ensuring that those who resist remain at the margins. Whether it’s in the Middle East, Latin America, or elsewhere, this pattern repeats itself.
We are told that these groups are the enemy because they resist. But what are they resisting? Occupation, oppression, the stripping of their sovereignty. And when the world is stacked against you, when your land is stolen, when your voice is silenced—what choice do you have but to fight?
Resistance is not born from hatred—it is born from necessity, from the fundamental need to reclaim what has been taken. And yes, it can be ugly, violent even, but we must understand that resistance doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It is a response to something far more violent, far more insidious: the violence of imperialism.
Maybe this is what unsettles us the most—that we are complicit. That the imperial powers we live under, the governments we support through our silence, are not the neutral arbiters of justice we’ve been led to believe. That the real enemy is not the one resisting but the one imposing its will, its control, on others. It is the United States, leading the charge in destabilizing regions, in overthrowing governments, in backing autocrats who serve its interests. And all the while, we are taught to look elsewhere—to see the resisters, the ones who refuse to be crushed, as the problem.
But the truth is, the problem has always been imperialism. It’s the force that drives inequality, that strips nations of their resources, that perpetuates cycles of violence and poverty. The enemy is not those who fight back, but the structures that make that fight necessary in the first place.
It’s easy to stay quiet, to avoid the discomfort of knowing that the world is far messier than we’d like to believe. But there’s power in speaking up, in recognizing who the real enemy is. It’s not those resisting. It’s the imperialist powers that create the very conditions in which resistance becomes the only option.
And once you realize that, once you confront that truth—there’s no turning back.