Here’s How Much Worse Things Will Get If Capitalism Isn’t Overthrown

A supermarket during the 2019 California blackout wave

In his novel The Man in the High Castle, which depicts a Nazi-dominated world, Philip K. Dick describes a dynamic where the Reich, despite holding enormous power, makes itself progressively more volatile and reactive. At one point in the book, a character observes that “most high-placed Nazis are refusing to face facts vis-a-vis their economic plight. By doing so, they accelerate the tendency toward greater tour de force adventures, less predictability, less stability in general. The cycle of manic enthusiasm, then fear, then Partei solutions of a desperate type...all this tends to bring the most irresponsible and reckless aspirants to the top.”

This satirical vision of Naziistic excess parallels the dynamic that’s now making the capitalist world collapse. The ruling elites, by refusing to address the plight of the global poor and ignoring the environmentally and economically unsustainable nature of capitalism, are making civilization ever more unstable. As civil unrest spreads around the world in reaction to the decline of living standards, and as a recession looms that will be worse than the last, the political and business class throws crumbs to the suffering masses while seeking militarized solutions to the growing chaos. The neoliberal regimes in Ecuador and Chile aren’t going to yield to future protests much beyond the minor concessions they’ve made so far. They’ll respond to further uprisings by escalating their police repression, which in Chile’s case has already come to mirror the brutality of the Pinochet era.

The manic enthusiasm that America’s capitalist class has engaged in during the last few years, wherein the Trump administration has encouraged stockholders by wildly deregulating corporations, has started to turn to fear. Anxiety over a new recession has increased in recent months, reflecting upon the larger attitude of dread over systemic instability that’s spread among the rich in the last decade. At this year’s World Economic Forum, the wealthy attendees passed around a form letter by billionaire investor Seth Klarman, who wrote that “It can’t be business as usual amid constant protests, riots, shutdown and escalating social tensions...Social cohesion is essential for those who have capital to invest...It’s not hard to imagine worsening social unrest among a generation.”

The solutions of a desperate type that the capitalists are carrying out consist of a series of authoritarian profiteering approaches which Naomi Klein calls the “shock doctrine”: further privatization of services, police state crackdowns, the proliferation of private security and surveillance capitalism, the increased militarization of society, and the mass detention of refugees for the profit of prison companies. These policies are naturally being exacerbated amid the rise of the most irresponsible and reckless political aspirants, like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Jair Bolsonaro.

This is capitalism eating itself during its decline. Even when the system fundamentally damages itself, like during this last month’s wave of California electricity shutoffs as a result of corporate greed and climate change-created fires, opportunistic business interests take advantage of the crises and reinforce capitalism; the backup-generator company Generac Holdings has seen its profits soar as a result of the power outages. Whether it’s disaster materials or security services or immigrant-policing operations, commodities that can be useful during the climate crisis are being profited off of amid a paradigm of crisis capitalism.

How much worse will things get if the cycle continues for decades longer, if people don’t rise up to overthrow capitalism in time? In California alone, the power company PG&E predicts that these arbitrary power shutoffs will continue for ten years as the company’s woefully neglected infrastructure is slowly improved. During the great economic crash that’s going to hit during the 2020s, non-wealthy Californians will find themselves in increasing economic desperation as they try to manage these disasters. Fires, droughts, and floods will disrupt more and more people’s lives, further straining the economy and making it harder for infrastructure to be repaired.

In response to the growing humanitarian crises and social unrest, the U.S. military will have a growing role in American urban areas. The statements from U.S. military authorities in recent years have repeatedly revealed that government officials are preparing to carry out military crackdowns in response to climate change, with the most recent of these telling statements coming from last week’s report by the U.S. Army. These excerpts from the report state that: 

Most of the critical infrastructures identified by the Department of Homeland Security are not built to withstand these altered conditions...The power grid that serves the United States is aging and continues to operate without a coordinated and significant infrastructure investment. Vulnerabilities exist to electricity-generating power plants, electric transmission infrastructure and distribution system components...The US Army will be called upon to assist in much the same way it was called upon in other disasters…[there is] no question that the [Syrian] conflict erupted coincident with a major drought in the region which forced rural people into Syrian cities as large numbers of Iraqi refugees arrived.

Sometime during the 1990s, author William Gibson famously said that “The future is already here — it's just not evenly distributed.” As time goes by, it makes more sense to view his assessment in an ominous light. The bleak reality of post-invasion Iraq, where war continues and the remaining stable areas are defined by stark inequality and resource shortages, is what the rest of the world will soon face if the system isn’t upended.

Our salvations will be anger and action. The Iraqi people, like us Americans, are victims of capitalism and empire. They lost their socialist government when the U.S. invaded them in 2003 and installed a neo-colonial puppet regime which is run by predatory corporations. But this year, the Iraqi people began an anti-government protest movement that continues to grow, with many people even defying curfews because of how much they hate the regime that the U.S. forced upon them.

Are you as angry as they are? Would you be willing to keep showing up to protests amid police repression, to go on strike when you’re called upon it, to take time out of your schedule to help build the organizations that the socialist movement will need in order to win? I’m sure you’re angry if you’re aware of all of the ways I just described the capitalists are going to ruin our collective future. These are the actions that you’ll need to take if you want to seize control of the direction that history goes in.

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If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pinch during late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11988744

Morales Isn’t A “Dictator,” He’s Bolivia’s Indigenous Savior

The U.S./NATO regime change machine is following the exact playbook as it has in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ukraine, and the dozens of other countries which have been politically interfered with by the CIA. Those who’ve studied this playbook assuredly know how to see through the lies the American media is telling about Bolivia, because the U.S.’ underhanded tactics are extremely obvious. To help less knowledgeable people recognize the deceptions on Bolivia, it’s necessary to provide an overview of how current events in the country match up with what the U.S. has done so many times in countries like it.

Firstly, Bolivia’s indigenous socialist president Evo Morales has from the start been a target of a U.S.-led campaign to paint him as an aspiring dictator. In Orwellian fashion, the default online information source Wikipedia states in a version of its page on Morales that Morales is a “dictator illegally participating in 2019 presidential elections.” (This statement doesn’t appear when you click on the article, but it shows up when you see how it’s presented in a Google search engine.) This falsehood about Morales, practically enshrined into the capitalist world’s free encyclopedia, provides the rationale for stoking violent unrest within Bolivia and trying to overthrow a leader who’s in the process of being freely and fairly re-elected.

Whenever a pundit or official claims Morales is harming democracy, they’re arguing in bad faith. The mischaracterization of a democratically elected leftist leader as a “dictator” is always what precedes the operations to aid right-wing groups within a regime change target country, to carry out economic warfare against the country’s people for the purpose of weakening the state, or to prepare for invasion against the country. As is documented in Steve Kangas essay “A Timeline of CIA Atrocities,” America’s efforts to violently strong-arm disobedient countries into submission has caused a staggering amount of death and destruction throughout the last century:

This scenario [of regime change] has been repeated so many times that the CIA actually teaches it in a special school, the notorious "School of the Americas." (It opened in Panama but later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia.) Critics have nicknamed it the "School of the Dictators" and "School of the Assassins." Here, the CIA trains Latin American military officers how to conduct coups, including the use of interrogation, torture and murder. The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (2) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."

The idea that political meddling between could cause the same amount of deaths that came from Hitler’s campaign to exterminate the Jews seems almost too stunning to believe. But you get a sense of how Blum came to his estimation when you look at the staggering losses of human life that have been brought about by the U.S. empire’s most recent acts of geopolitical warfare. A report from this year found that around 40,000 Venezuelans have been killed by the U.S.’ efforts to deprive the country of resources, an atrocity that the Trump administration is in the process of replicating in Iran by imposing sanctions on the country that are designed to kill. Economic warfare, which is even more destructive than direct warfare, is the less visible accessory to the political violence that the U.S. is manufacturing within these and other countries.

I iterate these facts because while they’re fairly common knowledge among my typical readers, they provide a context for the enormity of what anti-imperialists like Morales are resisting. The lower-class and indigenous people who support Morales and Maduro, the people in decolonized socialist countries like the DPRK and Cuba, and the people protesting neoliberalism in countries like Chile are all survivors of the fascist genocidal war that the empire has long waged against exploited and colonized people. Morales isn’t “undermining” Bolivia’s democracy or otherwise harming his country’s people; he’s saving them from becoming more victims of America’s campaign of destruction and plunder.

This reality demonstrates how disingenuous all of the attempts to vilify Morales are. The absurd narrative that he’s to blame for the Amazon fires, the claim that he’s making Bolivia a “dictatorship” by running for a new term when he has continued popular support from voters, and the baseless accusations of electoral fraud that have rationalized the recent violent right-wing protests are diversions from the fact that Morales is saving his people from poverty and subjugation. Bolivia's socialist development under Morales has made the country thrive economically, with Morales’ competent management largely saving Bolivians both from capitalist exploitation and from the destructive effects of U.S. economic warfare. Morales has also made Bolivia into a climate action leader by giving the environment the equivalent of human rights, putting Bolivia on the same path towards ecosocialist revolution that Venezuela is on.

Both of these nations are experiencing the solidification of indigenous and proletarian power that the protesters in Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, and Honduras are working to bring about in their countries. Bolivia and Venezuela are where the struggle against empire has triumphed. The protests throughout Latin America are efforts from the rest of the Third World indigenous proletariat to attain the same victory that their Bolivian and Venezuelan comrades have. 

As indigenous people in the global south rebel, the colonizers are naturally trying to paint them as savages who deserve to be suppressed. The vilifications of Maduro and Morales parallel the Western media’s efforts to whitewash the violent repression of the U.S.-backed neoliberal regimes in Ecuador and Chile against indigenous protesters, to minimize media coverage of the anti-neoliberal protests, to claim the demonstrations in Chile are masterminded by Venezuela or Russia, and to denounce the protesters for being violent.

But Maduro, Morales, and the Chilean revolutionaries don’t need the support of the West, anymore than they need the approval of rich whites for the tactics they use to win. The imperialists don’t have the moral high ground when it comes to engaging in violence, and Maduro and Morales have so far been very peaceful in their efforts to combat the imperialists. So Latin America’s indigenous revolutionaries, both the ones who are national leaders and the ones who are fighting for freedom in the streets, deserve our utmost respect.

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If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pinch during late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here:

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A Massive Revolt Against Capitalism And Colonialism Has Begun

Indigenous people are who we must look to for guidance on how to free the world from capitalism and imperialism. They’re who have been victimized by capitalist plunder to the most grievous extent, and they’re naturally the group that’s now leading country after country towards overthrowing the colonialist bourgeoisie.

In the last year, the neo-colonialist regimes that the Western empire created have been weakening amid an enormous wave of worker-peasant revolts. This string of protests started in Sudan, where people began demonstrating in December against the country’s U.S.-backed dictatorship. In incredibly fast succession, the people of Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Ecuador, Lebanon, and Chile have done the same to their neoliberal governments.

The revolt of the Third World has spread so quickly because in both the core imperialist nations and the exploited countries, the foundational rot of global capitalism has reached a point where the entire structure is in the process of collapsing. In the last half century, the capitalist world has experienced so much privatization of services, exporting of corporate jobs to low-wage countries, erosion of worker’s rights, and economically destructive banking deregulation that global inequality is now at truly dystopian levels; the world’s few dozen richest people hold more combined wealth than the poorest half of humanity does. It was only a matter of time before large sections of the Third World proletariat would join in on protest movements against capitalism and colonialism.

To get a sense for how much the Third World proletariat in particular has suffered under the boot of the Western corporatocracy, we can look to this passage from John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman:

I spend time in Central America. I speak Spanish. I used to be an economic hit man (EHM) whose job was to corrupt government officials so our corporations could exploit natural and human resources. I see that what has happened in Central America during my lifetime is a microcosm for much of the world. Predatory capitalism, global corporations, and US government agencies have used the stick and carrot–– EHM methods–– to coerce governments to promote economic systems that enrich the wealthy and drive the Poor and what used to be the Middle Class deeper and deeper into poverty. The Titans of industrial agriculture and infrastructure projects, and the retailers of sporting goods, clothing, and other sweatshop-oriented industries have ravaged and chemicalized lands that once supported thousands of small farmers. At the same time, they’ve created working conditions akin to slavery.

This is a slave rebellion. The victims of capitalism are fighting for freedom so hard that even when Chile’s billionaire oligarch president Sebastián Piñera has brought back the tactics of the Pinochet era by sending in the military to declare war against protesters, the protests in Chile haven’t stopped. Now that the boiling point of global proletarian suffering and anger has been reached, our job is to direct this revolt’s unstoppable energy towards a worldwide proletarian revolution.

For those in places where protests haven’t yet broken out, the best thing to do is to put in intensive work towards getting your fellow exploited people organized. We must build organizations and advance ideas which reflect the principles of Marxism-Leninism, the ideology that calls for the establishment of communism through overthrowing and replacing the capitalist state. We Americans must also work with the goal of decolonizing the North American continent, which is under the illegitimate occupation of indigenous land.

But as we go about this, we can’t act like our situation or experience is identical to that of those in the Third World. To find out why Americans haven’t stormed the streets like so many in Latin America have, one must acknowledge how much relatively worse the material conditions of the latter group are. Unlike most Americans, the protesters in places like Ecuador and Chile typically have nothing to eat and make a few dollars a day. The average American is rich compared to them, and the homeless Americans whose privation matches that of the Third Worlders certainly aren’t organized for revolution.

The relative comfort of Americans makes them unwilling to pursue political change outside of voting, or outside of participating in protests that are sanctioned by the corporatocracy. So many still want to see nonviolent reform as the solution, rather than take part in the physical power struggles and civil disobedience which is required to bring down capitalism and colonialism. By and large, the current American left is supporting “socialist” Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who merely offer to expand social programs while not challenging the narratives and machinations of global capitalism and empire. These two politicians alone have declined to challenge this year’s coup attempt in Venezuela, and neither they nor any of their fellow FDR Democrats intend to replace capitalism.

For anyone who does support these politicians, consider that I used to support them as well before my circumstances forced me to re-evaluate what I believe and who I stand with. The reality is that we’re heading for a series of economic, political, and environmental crises which can’t be fixed by working within the capitalist framework. Voting for candidates who want to implement partial changes to the system won’t stop the imminent global recession, or the progression of fascistic politics, or the collapse of the climate. In the U.S., things are already much too far gone for capitalism to be repaired, as if capitalism ever worked for poor and exploited people in the first place.

Once you view our situation from the perspective of the Third World and colonized people who have been struggling against capitalism and imperialism for centuries, you see that the true class struggle isn’t taking place within bourgeois elections. It’s taking place in the jungles where Maoist guerrillas are fighting to win territory from India’s corporate fascist government. It’s taking place in Bolivia’s anti-imperialist military school, which is training Bolivians to defend their country’s socialist, indigenous-led government from an escalating American regime change attempt. When true class struggle happens in America, it takes the form of road blockades and the kinds of protests that happened three years ago at Standing Rock. In circumstances of intense systemic oppression, like during the racism and poverty that the Natives at Wounded Knee experienced before they took up arms to occupy their town in 1973, American class struggle truly comes to resemble what’s happening throughout the Third World.

As we First Worlders look to the Third World rebellions for revolutionary inspiration, we need to honestly examine the material conditions which have brought about these developments. Marxism-Leninism is all about scientifically applying the realities of a given region or nation in order to bring about class liberation, and we must recognize the constraints that America’s current material conditions put upon our ability to mobilize the masses. It’s no wonder why most Americans aren’t coordinating an armed anti-government uprising like the people at Wounded Knee did; while things are bad for Americans, most aren’t in quite such a desperate situation, and most haven’t been properly educated about colonialist oppression and class exploitation.

While we American Marxist-Leninists wait for conditions to reach a point that gives rise to what’s happening in the Third World, we can strengthen the liberation movement by working to give people this education. There are already people in this country who are organizing in the radical vein of the Third World revolutionaries; the armed black groups who are patrolling communities represent a modern version of the Black Panthers, who got American black people armed and organized with the goal of communist revolution. If we get more people to embrace the Panthers’ worldview of militant anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism, the country’s proletariat will be ready to fight for our freedom.

And when we’re ready, we’ll become what those in the Third World are becoming: a people who will never again be subject to the grip of capitalism and imperial control. As columnist Sean Orr has written about what they’ve so far accomplished:

The dream that motivates millions to risk their lives in Ecuador and Chile today is the reality unfolding right now in Bolivia. It is the reality being built in Venezuela and Cuba, places where the masses have or are taking political power, in organic unity with revolutionary parties, and where imperialism will never again exercise control. The day is coming when reaction will crumble and revolution will be on the agenda across the continent - maybe quicker than many imagine, if the protesters in Ecuador and Chile have anything to say about it.

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If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pinch during late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11988744

Regime Change In China Would Accelerate Climate Change & Make World Poverty Rates Explode

I’ll do my best to estimate what would happen if the China regime change advocates get the scenario they’re hoping for: sometime in the next decade, China’s government becomes so overwhelmed by Western economic warfare, U.S.-supported political unrest, and threats of military confrontation that Chinese Communist Party officials are forced to step down. A new government is then installed, fulfilling the wishes of Chinese billionaires like Guo Wengui, American neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, and Western imperialists overall.

In the event of this coup, the U.S. media claims that a “democratic” new government is being set up by the Chinese people themselves, but the shapers of China’s new system are exclusively wealthy oligarchs, neoliberal economists, and designated U.S. puppet politicians. No socialists are allowed to come to power as the new regime is formed. Pro-communist protests throughout the country go unheeded by the political class, as happened during the anti-austerity demonstrations of Russia’s post-Soviet era.

The promises that the free market reforms will make China prosperous are quickly proven false. In the same way that living standards collapsed in Russia and East Germany after the fall of socialism in these countries, the bulk of the Chinese populace experiences falling wages, lost social benefits, rising prices amid the privatization of services, and the disappearance of workplace rights. The country becomes a kleptocratic oligarchy where poverty and inequality skyrocket, the government invests in military expenditures for the benefit of the U.S./NATO empire, and refugees, poor people, and religious or ethnic minorities are treated with increasing amounts of violence by the state.

This is what’s happened in basically every capitalist country throughout the last half century, and China’s transformation into a capitalist state would subject over a billion additional people to these symptoms of the 21st century’s global economic and social collapse. Assuming that a Western capitalist takeover of China sufficiently repairs the declining U.S. empire, the people in other anti-imperialist countries would also feel the destructive consequences of the CCP’s ouster.

With China’s foreign policy under the sway of the U.S., Venezuela, the DPRK, and other countries that were once militarily protected by China would be left to fend off imperialist aggression on their own. The DPRK’s communist government would likely survive because of its nuclear weapons, and Syria would soldier on under its resilient socialist Ba’athist leadership. But the U.S. might successfully invade Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba amid the absence of a China that’s willing to defend these socialist countries. Russia and Iran, stuck in a fractured international alliance and newly vulnerable to attacks from a powerful U.S./China alliance, would at the very least be weakened by the demise of socialist China.

However much damage the U.S. empire would be able to do though, the biggest problem would that the planet is spiraling into climate apocalypse much quicker as a result of China’s collapse. The efficient approach to reducing greenhouse gasses that socialism grants to China has set China on course to be nine years ahead of its climate goals, and it’s estimated that China’s emissions will peak well before its 2030 target. The dismantling of the Chinese government’s dominance over the economy and the emergence of an unrestrained Chinese corporatocracy would drive up carbon consumption perhaps more than any other 21st century event. 

The decline of Chinese living standards and the subsequent Chinese population increase would produce a situation where by mid-century, Asia is a densely populated and deeply impoverished region where capitalist China and India wildly exacerbate climate change. Generally throughout the Third World, which is partly depending on China to lend its support for global socialist development, a transition out of capitalism will also be made much harder. Given the choice between socialism and barbarism, civilization will take the latter path if China isn’t there to hold together the global anti-imperialist alliance.

In this scenario, the estimated 3-5 degrees Celsius range for global warming throughout the next century will be pushed towards the worst possible outcome. Regime change in China would have a catastrophic snowball effect with consequences that are difficult to estimate, much less comprehend. The world would see hundreds of millions of people driven into poverty, the start of multiple wars amid a resurgence of American imperialism and militarism, and avoidable climatic destabilization that significantly raises sea levels and expands the zones that are too hot for humans.

Historical analyst Brian Becker has written that “If counter-revolution were to succeed in China the consequences would be catastrophic for the Chinese people and for China. China would in all likelihood splinter as a nation as happened to the Soviet Union when the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was toppled. The same fate befell the former Yugoslavia. Counter-revolution and dismemberment would hurtle China backwards. It would put the brakes on China’s spectacular peaceful rise out of under-development. For decades there has been a serious discussion within the U.S. foreign policy establishment about the dismemberment of China which would weaken China as a nation and allow the United States and Western powers to seize its most lucrative parts. This is precisely the scenario that cast China into its century of humiliation when Western capitalist powers dominated the country.” A broader-scale consideration of the issue shows that not only would Chinese regime change ruin China, but it would ruin the rest of the planet.

Will this happen? Almost certainly not, given China’s ever-growing economic and military might, virtual lack of poverty, and presence of a population that’s overwhelmingly unified behind the Communist Party. But because of the fact that the Western bourgeoisie and even many Western leftists desire the demise of China’s government, it’s necessary to warn people about just what would happen if China were to go under.

China regime change advocates like Bill Kristol don’t really care about “democracy” or “human rights.” Their promotion of disingenuous propaganda about “Chinese prisoner organ harvesting,” “1 million Chinese Muslim prisoners,” China’s “Orwellian social credit system,”and China being a “totalitarian dictatorship” are tools to rationalize their actual agenda, which is the dissolution of Chinese socialism at the behest of Western corporations and imperialist destabilization networks. Like when they’ve wreaked havoc and misery by implementing disastrous neoliberal policies within numerous countries, they’re only pretending to believe that their desired corporatist takeover would benefit the people of China; their only concern is to further the interests of the Western corporatocracy.

Our priority should be to stop these heinous predators from getting anywhere remotely close to their goal of Chinese regime change, and to ultimately get them out of power altogether through socialist revolution. The best way to do this is to not only fight for socialism, but to identify as a communist who supports Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Because not only should China be supported as a bulwark against imperialism, but its greatly successful socialist project should be learned from and applied globally.

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If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pinch during late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11988744

The Hong Kong Protests Fit The Definition Of A Fascist Movement

As I’ve watched the videos of masked young men in Hong Kong brutally attacking people for not agreeing with their pro-capitalist agenda, I haven’t been able to help thinking of every time in history where fascism and normalized reactionary violence have taken root. The Hong Kong protesters have taken off their masks of progressive populism and revealed themselves and their backers for what they are: right-wing ideologues who are eager to use the tools of fascism, including its brazenly violent aspects, to crush those who stand in the way of capitalist power.

What other conclusion could be made upon seeing the routine public beatings, displays of American far-right symbols like Pepe the Frog, and open embrace of American rightist politicians that the Hong Kong protesters have engaged in? Protesters haven’t bloodily assaulted non-aggressive people out of self-defense. The demonstrators haven’t just displayed Pepe; they’ve outright praised Donald Trump while holding up American flags, clearly demonstrating their sympathy with American nationalistic and fascistic political affiliations. Protest leader Joshua Wong has known exactly what he’s doing when he’s met with Marco Rubio, the neoconservative senator who’s strategically spread lies to advance Washington’s Venezuela regime change project. The words and actions of these people repeatedly prove the inescapable fact that this year, Hong Kong has experienced a violent public intimidation campaign by fascists who align with the U.S./NATO empire.

It’s appropriate to call the protesters fascists because what they’ve participated in perfectly fits the historical definition of fascism: a development where the capitalist class maintains its own power by stoking reactionary sentiments which rally the petty bourgeois sections of society around stamping out political dissent. Fascist propaganda campaigns usually start with the invoking of vague but culturally resonant nostalgia for a nation’s past; demagogues
promise that if people try to “Make Germany great again,” or to “Make America great again,” or to “Make Hong Kong British again,” living conditions will improve and the nation will have honor.

From there, the fanatical crowds start to form. Disaffected people, often young men wearing matching pieces of clothing, gather in public spaces and display the movement’s agenda for restored national glory. Their rhetoric is intentionally vague, with lofty words like “freedom” and “independence” often being used. But for them, it always comes back to the idea that society’s ills are caused by some insidious force-like the Chinese Communist Party and its supporters-which must be driven out.

Under this rationale, those who’ve bought into the movement’s line feel justified in carrying out violence against their demonized opponents. It becomes a pattern for crowds of these super-patriots to beat up people with differing views. Public humiliation can become one of the tactics of the fascist mobs, such as when the Hong Kong protesters shine lights in front of the faces of their bloodied victims to make them feel exposed and vulnerable. At a certain point-like when a Hong Kong protester was found to have created a homemade bomb last week-the violence ratchets up to a level that would have previously been unthinkable. 

The essential element in the efforts of the fascists is to create a sense of terror among their opponents, something that the Hong Kong protesters have accomplished very effectively; a Hong Kong resident identified as Mr. Edmond has reported in an interview that “If someone publicly disagrees with the protesters, they get beaten. They managed to silence people. People come here, to this wonderful [Tai Kwun] art center, and if they are from Beijing, they are now hiding their identity. It is because they are scared.”

The leaders of fascist movements are always bourgeois or petty bourgeois figures who seek to defend the stability of the capitalist order. In Hong Kong’s case, capitalist interests have come under threat amid the emerging potential for Hong Kong’s real estate tycoons to be arrested for corruption and to have their assets nationalized, as well as the approaching prospect of the Chinese Communist Party taking control over the island. The recent decline of American global power has also been a factor behind the decision of the CIA, in coordination with its front group the National Endowment for Democracy, to fund anti-Chinese groups in Hong Kong and to use agitation propaganda to incite Hong Kongers to riot.

Joshua Wong, a 23-year-old politician from a middle class upbringing whose rise as an anti-China crusader was encouraged by his surroundings in Hong Kong’s capitalistic culture, has made the perfect designated ringleader for the CIA to use in its fascist destabilization effort. He and his movement are paralleled by Juan Guaido and the right-wing Venezuelan opposition, which manufactured political violence at the behest of the Trump administration earlier this year in their efforts to oust the Chavista government.

Like the Hong Kong protesters, the members of the Venezuelan opposition have been corralled into taking out their frustrations with society onto socialists. And in both cases, the fascists haven’t cared that the source of their country’s problems is actually capitalism, or that most of the people in Hong Kong and Venezuela respectively don’t oppose the CCP or the Chavista movement. These two reactionary factions, encouraged by a sense of national superiority and the backing of the West, are so sure in their cause that they’re willing to tear their societies apart over it.

“Fascist” is how to basically describe every opposition group that the U.S. uses to try to overthrow regime change target countries. The CIA has long employed far-right groups to help overthrow socialist countries, and the U.S. has supported fascist dictators like Pinochet numerous times in order to stop the spread of communism. So there’s no doubt that the U.S. will soon promote fascist movements in additional countries. The next location where Hong Kong-type fascism will likely emerge is Taiwan, which the West urgently desires to stop from being absorbed by China. 

It’s virtually guaranteed that in the coming years, we’ll be hearing about “pro-democracy” protests in Taiwan, ones which will also reveal their fascist nature by turning violent and by promoting reactionary sentiments. When the U.S. carries out its planned regime change mission in socialist Bolivia, we can also expect to see fascist mobs terrorizing Bolivian public spaces in the name of “freedom.”

Recognizing the Hong Kong protests and similar U.S.-backed right-wing movements as fascist is an excellent way to avoid being fooled by imperialist propaganda. What’s happening in Hong Kong is a prelude to the violent measures that the capitalist class will use to try to crush the resurgent global socialist movement in the coming years, and we socialists must take note from it on what we’ll need to defend ourselves from.

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