Right, Miriam webster, that’s what I thought. So using that definition opens up gaping holes in your ideology.

the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions

If Palestine manages to push out the zionists and take back some of their land, will that be imperialism? Because according to this it will.

or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas

So then every economic bloc is imperialist, every capitalist organization is imperialist (always gotta capture a bigger market share!), every political party is imperialist, and any sufficiently influential cultural product is imperialism (what is pop culture if not a form of indirect political control?).

Your definition, and mirriam webster’s boils down to “imperialism is when a government exerts control over something”. It has the same problem as all liberal concepts: it’s flat and unmoving, a child’s diorama view of the world where all things are eternal and contextless, without beginning or end. Our violence, the violence of that capitalist bloc, is just a fact of nature, while violence against us is an unforgivable aberration. To see this play out in microcosm, look at how the media is treating Luigi Mangione. Our profitable mass murder of thousands is Just How Things Are, while the revenge killing of one of the figureheads of this industry is unthinkable. America’s constant aggression, genocidal crimes and nuclear brinksmanship are just the order of things, while any moves by Russia/Iran/China/Venezuela/Cuba/North Korea/whoever to protect themselves from us is warmongering, and they must be punished like children.

Simply put, if we accept the definition you’ve given, then we have to answer the questions it raises, questions like “why should I, a citizen of the country that perpetrates the very worst of these crimes as a matter of daily business, believe anything it says about it’s enemies? Why are you choosing to apply your definition only to those countries that the US has made it expedient to hate? If you genuinely hold anti-imperialist convictions, what makes you think supporting your imperialists at home instead of fighting them is an effective way to act on that? What are you actually accomplishing with your “Neither Washington nor Moscow, but actually Washington” faux-anti authority that every communist has witness four trillion times before?”