I understand the impulse for diaspora/exile politics, especially the types which exist regarding Burma, Tibet, China, Cuba, Israel, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, even though I somewhat abhor the violence, propaganda and ill feelings which usually accompany such politics. I’m far less understanding of the bitter anti-exile feelings which pervade much of the left wing in the United States.

For instance, when Spain’s Civil War ended in 1939 with a Falangist victory, a Republican government-in-exile was created in the resulting Spanish Republican diaspora which jettisoned to the United Kingdom and many parts of Latin America, and that same diaspora did not make amends with the Spanish state until democracy returned under the rule of the current monarch, Juan Carlos I, in the late 1970s.

At the same time, when a diaspora in favor of a currently-installed regime has a larger presence in another country, a large number of that diaspora’s local branch will lobby in favor of satisfactory treatment in foreign relations with their home country’s current regime.

I don’t even think that most people on the left know how to perceive diaspora politics or understand the feelings and impulses which are embedded in such politics, unless (of course) they revert to early 20th century paranoia about "dem hyphenated Americans" which were uttered by at least one or two presidents.