The good that China has been doing for the Global South defeats imperialist attempts to discredit BRICS

Above: a MAP of China’s BRI

The mission of the imperialists is coming to be centered around dividing the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries; around preventing the rising Eurasian powers, and the neo-colonies across Africa, southeast Asia, and Latin America, from forming a singular force that can isolate western capital. With the recent maneuvers by countries like Mali and Burkina Faso to defy imperial control, this need to ruin the chances for a cooperative new global order is seen by the hegemon as more urgent than ever.

To prepare for when the hegemon starts carrying out acts of terroristic and economic sabotage against the Global South—a project that’s to go along with the eventual U.S. exit from Ukraine—the oldest and most decayed colonial powers are putting forth propaganda to portray such a collaborative future as impossible. The narrative they’re constructing is that BRICS is built on a fundamentally unstable foundation, making inevitable its failure to sufficiently assist the Global South. Hugo Dixon—the UK political operative whose career has mainly focused on defending the imperial asset the European Union—made an argument this week where he attempts to instill within BRICS supporters such a sense of futility:

The BRICS are now talking about adding new letters. The summit’s South African hosts say 22 countries have asked to join - and another 20 are interested. While no official list has been published, countries that have shown interest in the past range from Saudi Arabia, Argentina and Egypt to Iran, Cuba, and Kazakhstan. Developing countries are understandably resentful that rich countries haven’t addressed their needs. The United States and its allies have been guilty of breaking international norms, as in the invasion of Iraq, and of neglect, for example during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the Global South won’t get much from a club whose leading members are China, which is throwing its weight around in its region, and Russia, a near-pariah state. India and other emerging economies would do better to form their own non-aligned bloc.

Now that Biden’s attempt to shatter Russia via the Ukraine proxy war has failed; and the psyops behind this war have become unsustainable due to the revelations about Nord Stream and Kiev’s Nazi fighters; this is the only argument the hegemon’s narrative managers have. It’s the argument that even though we all know the U.S. government has proven itself to be a force for evil both abroad, and in relation to its own people, it’s comparatively the best option for the Global South to embrace as a helper. This is what’s implied within Dixon’s call for the peripheral countries to form a “non-aligned” bloc separate from China and Russia; because even if such a formation were to claim to be non-aligned, if it cut off Washington’s greatest rivals it by default would be a tool for the hegemon.

We’ll see if this policy proposal of Dixon’s also gets articulated by the officials who are to be facilitating the hybrid war on BRICS. If they try to convince the Global South to do this, they could build upon their existing strategy for trying to get the peripheries to side against the semi-peripheries. That strategy being Washington’s recent “trojan horse” ploy, where it maneuvered to prevent Russia from participating in a Ukraine peace meeting and thereby set up the other countries to look as if they’re in opposition towards Russia. 

This manipulative scheme hasn’t actually changed the thinking or policies of these countries though, so Washington won’t be able to use their supposedly anti-Russian action as an argument for breaking from the Chinese bloc. You can’t hold somebody to their word when they never truly said what you wanted them to say; the out-of-context sentences spoken by Global South officials that the western media has been repeating, in which it’s construed to appear these officials are condemning Russia, simply don’t amount to what the hegemon wants them to. It’s a game where the manipulators attempt to twist reality, even if this won’t have a tangible effect on the great-power competition.

Consistent with this summer’s resurgence of old anti-Chinese media tropes, such as the Xinjiang genocide hoax, the primary narrative strategy the imperialists must now pivot to is discrediting China as a source for global leadership. When the narrative managers have to try to argue that China shouldn’t be a defining player in the Global South, as Dixon is, inevitably they say things that involve begging the question; insofar as it’s accurate to say that China is “throwing its weight around in its region,” why does this mean the Global South can’t expect to gain sufficient benefits out of a relationship with the PRC? Are we supposed to infer from this that China can’t be trusted to fulfill the needs of the Global South’s because its aim is supposedly to dominate and exploit? If so, Dixon can’t honestly try to support this argument by saying China is imperialist; like Russia and Iran, its global role is one of a semi-peripherial country, not of a core country. 

Dixon also can’t argue that China, even if not an imperialist force, is still going to bring about a net negative outcome for the Global South. This has already been disproven by how, as observed by the musician Akon, China has done more for Africa than any other country; it’s the PRC that’s been building infrastructure which would never have been built if these countries had stayed loyal to the neo-colonial hegemon. And as the commentator Saikat Bhattacharya has concluded, the only thing that can come from this is these countries fully lifting themselves up from out of their forced underdevelopment; and then, as a consequence, the conditions emerging for a new wave of workers revolutions:

China never actually moved away from Marxist approach but changed course as time and material conditions changed. Under Xi, state companies will do more infrastructural investments often incurring losses. By 2035, the Communist Party of China has assessed that China will outcompete the USA not only in production but also in finance and military. It is then that socialism will be popular across the globe again. Following China, as different Third World countries will narrow per capita income gap and wage rate gap with imperialist countries, the capital’s bargaining power will reduce and working class bargaining power will rise considerably. Then working class revolutions will spring across the globe again. Belt Road Initiative is one way to develop the Third World quickly…Third World development will be followed by an increase in the power of the working class throughout the globe. Neoliberal globalization is already dying out and there is no strong political ideology strong enough to take the opportunity. Global communists must grasp the opportunity.

It’s this larger trend towards victory for the global working class which also ultimately discredits the most solid part of Dixon’s argument against BRICS: that because China and India are presently frenemies, China lacks hope to make BRICS into an effective tool for advancing its goals. Dixon names the ongoing disputes between these two countries as the reason behind why BRICS has experienced many delays in progress; and this is an obstacle towards China helping the Global South that’s undeniably real. Is the situation with India going to stay this way forever though? When you look at the collapse that India’s present productive system is experiencing, you see how fragile its leadership actually is. Bhattacharya talks about the hope for class struggle to defeat the country’s anti-Chinese fascist government:

Many military strategists suggest that Chinese navy can overrun the Indian Ocean by 2025. Thus the Indian ruling class is afraid that India cannot stand before the might of China aggravated by its religious and ethnic divisions. Therefore, the Hindutva fundamentalist regime under Narendra Modi (the BJP Party) was brought to power by the deep state, with the hope of its ultra-conservative and radical approach might ruthlessly suppress minority ethnicities and freedom-seeking nationalities to help India counter the rise of China…India is dominated by the cow belt politically, demographically and hence economically too. Thus non-cow belt ethnicities (significant minorities) are gradually feeling the heat of fascist politics incorporated by the fundamentalist regime of BJP. If communists can organise the national emancipation of non-cow belt ethnicities and use geopolitical rivalry of Indian ruling class, India is definitely an excellent place for a twenty-first-century revolution. The Communist movement is already strong in non-cow belt areas of Bengal, central Indian tribal areas and Kerala in the south. The Indian communist movements until now divided on the constitutional line and armed revolutionary line. But suppression by Hindutva fascist policies they may be compelled to unite.

The same is true about the Philippines, the other southeast Asian country Dixon points to as a source of opposition towards China: capitalist crises are intensifying within these places, and their governments are making the crises worse by deciding to partially fight against the transition towards multipolarity. When these crises reach the right degree, the revolutionary movements within these countries could triumph. The only reason Dixon says the present China-India-Philippines tensions are reason enough to abandon BRICS is because Dixon is invested in BRICS failing.

It’s totally plausible that by the end of this century, countries like India and the Philippines will be fully united with China after undergoing proletarian revolutions. But those seeking to discredit BRICS can’t entertain such a scenario. They don’t want to talk about the benefits that are already coming about from the world’s increasing friendliness towards China; and they certainly don’t want the peoples of the peripheral countries to get hope for workers victory. They want the global discourse to only focus on the negatives when it comes to BRICS; to dissuade all from imagining what incredible outcomes could be at the end of the multipolar trend which BRICS is furthering. This is how they hope to effectively re-colonize the formerly colonized world: through the lie that things can only look bleak for the Global South, unless it reaffirms its dependence on the imperial masters.

After all the good the BRI has so far done, what possible argument could they use to try to make this lie look believable? The argument they’ve decided on is that Washington’s leadership is essential for saving the planet from global warming. Even though Dixon’s Labour Party has in its words taken the “green growth” stance, in the long term, the terminally contracting capitalist order can only embrace a “degrowth” policy of eco-fascist austerity. One where the globe’s working class gets further strangulated, so that the bourgeoisie don’t have to give up their means for making profits. 

This is a policy whose deceptive arguments Dixon repeats when he uses climate to make U.S. leadership appear indispensable: “Countries which see China as a threat, including India and the Philippines, have recently tilted towards the United States. But almost all developing countries can agree on two issues. They don’t want a new Cold War that would crush their growth opportunities. And they need help to decarbonise their economies rapidly and protect against the worst ravages of climate change. So they should be able to unite on keeping the global trading system open and ramping up flows of climate finance. But to do any of this, the club would have to exclude China and Russia.”

There’s another example of begging the question: why is excluding these countries a prerequisite for achieving those goals? Even if the U.S. imposes sanctions on the Global South countries in retaliation for their trading with China and Russia, as Dixon seems to imply could happen, China and Russia have already built a global trading system that’s an alternative to the one the imperialists control. As Pepe Escobar wrote this January: “The year 2023 will proceed with China playing the New Great Game deep inside, crafting a globalization 2.0 that is institutionally supported by a network encompassing BRI, BRICS+, the SCO, and with the help of its Russian strategic partner, the EAEU and OPEC+ too. No wonder the usual suspects are dazed and confused.”

The basis for the idea that the Global South can’t fulfill its climate goals while partnering with China is seemingly supported by how as a developing country, China lacks any obligation to distribute climate finances. It’s still not compelling enough of an argument though; the world doesn’t need the charity of neo-colonial exploiters in order to be able to reduce emissions. China is truly the thing that the world needs in this arena; Environment and Society Programme Senior Research Fellow Jiangwen Guo has concluded that “the international community needs to join forces to accelerate the deployment of renewables and China could play a critical role in doing this. China is the world’s most populous nation, has the second largest economy and is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, and as such, is fundamental to the success of any global agreements to tackle climate change.”

This is what the PRC and BRICS have to offer the world: a practical path towards a hopeful future, where peace, global cooperation, and the sharing of vital technologies get proliferated. Whatever the imperial powers and their propagandists say, all they have to offer is more war, more exploitation, and more false promises.

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The hegemon aims to perpetuate global chaos forever. We have to unite towards ending it.

Above: anti-NATO graffiti in west Ireland

As was the case in pre-revolutionary Russia, when the capitalist ruling class was determined to sustain the war it had started, the only way for today’s workers to end this latest imperialist war is via proletarian revolution. Even though from a practical perspective the imperialists at some point have to at least lessen their efforts to militarily aid Ukraine, they’re going to continue their war against Russia (and against the wider anti-imperialist bloc) for as long as this revolution is delayed. Should the Ukraine war only be allowed to “end” on the terms of the imperialists, what follows the present stage of weapons shipments will be even more destructive than the situation the hegemon has so far created. Because international monopoly capital can only survive if China (and Russia and Iran by extension) get defeated; and if monopoly capital can’t do this through sanctions combined with a proxy war, it will try to bring about greater levels of chaos.

Such chaos is the logical conclusion of the model for trying to maintain U.S. dominance that the hegemon has been utilizing since the start of the new cold war; a war that became clearly visible with Obama’s Pivot to Asia and proxy wars against Russia, but arguably began with Bush’s creation of AFRICOM in 2007. That was when, in response to the strengthening of the globe’s anti-imperialist forces which had occurred after Washington’s self-destructive “War on Terror,” the hegemon started expanding its occupations of the formerly colonized world. The goal behind this expansion was to make the peripheral countries too heavily under U.S. influence to be able to build serious ties with China; or, should these countries build such ties anyway, to create the means for destabilizing them. 

This project to hold back history’s progression towards the multipolar new era is one that’s been constantly fluid in its tactics; a destructive campaign that’s more concealable than the original cold war, which was fought within the bipolar world of the USA vs the USSR. The nature of this 21st century war is more complex, its key events harder for the casual observer to identify as attempts at subduing Washington’s rivals. Gabriel E. Merino from Argentina’s National University of La Plata assesses this ambiguity at the center of these efforts to prevent a multipolar future:

While for the American authors the term “Hybrid Warfare” is generally used to describe the sophisticated means that both state and non-state actors would employ to mitigate a conventional disadvantage against the United States—closely linked to the concept of asymmetric warfare, for the Russian researcher (Korybko, 2015), Hybrid Warfare is a new method of indirect warfare conducted by the United States (the only power with the capacity to do so) with a view to producing regime change. In order to achieve this objective, this type of indirect warfare combines the tactics of “color revolutions” with non-conventional wars, in a multipolar scenario and where the costs of conventional warfare between powers are very high. For this author, Hybrid Warfare is the new horizon of the United States' strategy to produce changes in regimes contrary to its interests. Although it is played out in secondary scenarios, it is aimed especially at three states that constitute the core targets of the United States: China, Russia and Iran…A central characteristic [of this] is that Hybrid War is completely blurred: the boundary between military and civilian, between the beginning and the end, between public and private is blurred.

That the new cold war is easier to conceal doesn’t make it less destructive; this makes it moreso. We’re increasingly going to see its catastrophic consequences as the hegemon transitions from the Ukraine proxy war, to a campaign of hybrid warfare again BRICS. Because in a time when the globe is experiencing unprecedented heatwaves from the climate crisis, made so severe by an emerging El Niño within an unbalanced atmosphere, the worst thing that can happen is for a major world power to start doing all it can to bring the world to anarchy. Countries like Somalia, which have been reduced to a state of mayhem and mass suffering by AFRICOM’s criminal acts, are only the first of the new cold war’s victims. The hegemon aims to perpetuate chaos within as many places as it can, as that’s the only way to stop the loss of the dollar’s reserve currency status and thereby a fatal contraction in U.S. capital. 

That’s the nature of U.S. foreign policy when the hegemon can’t realistically restore the unipolar world order: endless efforts to either expand the zones of chaos, or ensure the existing zones of chaos aren’t allowed to recover. This is what Washington has been doing in Yemen; even as China has facilitated attempts at a peace deal, such a deal remains ineffective at ending the violence in large part because of Washington’s ongoing arming of the Saudis. It’s what Washington has been doing in Afghanistan, where even though its efforts to colonize the country have proven a failure, the hegemon has been imposing horrifically cruel sanctions upon the country for the last two years. And it’s what Washington will try to do in Ukraine, whose dedicated Nazi terrorist groups will be able to continue the attacks against Russia even as the country’s official armed forces fail. 

This won’t be able to destabilize Russia, and the Ukraine conflict overall has represented more of a gain for multipolarity than a loss; it also doesn’t mean monopoly capital is going to stop existing after this stage of the proxy war ends though. Whenever global attention has shifted away from Ukraine enough for NATO to be able to end its wasteful aid efforts, the sanctions will go on, and the arms contractors will find new avenues to gain profits. These avenues in part will be Washington’s growing occupations of southeast Asia; a place which, in the months between the Afghanistan withdrawal and the Ukraine escalation, the hegemon was already starting to shift towards as its main location of military involvement.

The problem with this project to complete the pivot to Asia; one where the hegemon would continue sending arms to places like Taiwan indefinitely and (it hopes) provoke China into entering into a new proxy war; is that even Washington’s biggest allies in the present proxy war are finding less and less reasons to participate in such a war on China. Washington may have been able to momentarily ruin the hopes for a German-Russian pipeline, but the widespread awareness that Biden was behind the Nord Stream explosion has come with longer-term consequences. Consequences that involve a loss of perceived credibility for Washington among the peoples of Germany and wider Europe. And even if this growing wariness towards Washington isn’t enough to make the capitalist dictatorships of these countries abandon the war on Russia, it could be enough to deter them from joining the war on China; that, along with the increasing economic incentives Europe has to keep building a relationship with the PRC.

As was written about this month by Jacobin’s Patrick Maynard, an internal mass pressure is building within Germany to end the war effort. Pressure that can only grow more acute as the government keeps refusing to obey the popular will:

The country recently released its first public national security strategy, which lists Russia as the country’s primary threat and urges continued military buildup. Such pushes worry German antiwar activists like Karl-Heinz Peil, who told Jacobin that Germany’s leadership, pushed along by uncritical media coverage, is willing to allow “economic decline with dramatic social disruptions” in order to militarize. Ultimately, though, their opinions are unlikely to produce significant change, as despite being the EU’s largest economy, Germany is largely forced to follow the US lead. Analyst Schwarz says that this is US “leadership” instead of a real “partnership.” [Leftist German politician Sevim] Dağdelen is less diplomatic. For her, Germany’s role has “no democratic sovereignty in sight,” she comments by email to Jacobin. “And the United States seems not to acknowledge any allies, just vassals.”

What could come from this situation where, even as rallies within Germany to end the war have been able to reach numbers like thirteen thousand, the ruling class fully intends to reinforce NATO’s dominance? Given that even such pro-American of a leadership as Germany’s Green Party likely wouldn’t want to commit to a war on China, we could see a return of inter-imperialist rivalry. Washington has already brought tension between Germany’s government and people, and for it to ask the government to do something even more destabilizing and self-sabotaging would force some meaningful choices to be made. 

Choices which, should they bring about either a newly U.S.-defiant Germany or a Germany that’s helping wage war on China, will create the conditions for workers revolution. That is, if the communists sufficiently work to take advantage of these circumstances. What we know at this point is that there does exist a social base for a German movement that’s come to a synthesis between anti-imperialism and class struggle. That was indicated by the positive receptions to last month’s speech in Germany by the members of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform:

In this city, Cologne, which was devastated by imperialism in the World War II, the anti-imperialist and anti-NATO struggle for the liberation of the world people has a special significance in the present. In the historical anti-imperialist war, the world anti-imperialist forces including the international communist forces have to strongly conduct the anti-imperialist and anti-NATO struggle against the NATO including the main enemy, US imperialist. The World Anti-imperialist Platform unites the working class and working people under the banner of anti-imperialism and, holding the anti-imperialist and anti-NATO joint actions, plays a vanguard role in advancing a new day of true communism. Keeping the scientific idea of the working class proven by the history and practice as the scientific conviction for revolution, we are convinced of the great victory of the people, that the shining era after the victory of the Second World War will come again. Workers of the World, Unite! The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

Movements like the one WAP represents are an instrumental part of the story of how imperialism becomes no longer able to menace the globe. Just as much as the class struggle within the imperialist countries depends on the success of the global anti-U.S. struggles, these worldwide liberation efforts depend on us in the core countries sufficiently combating the crimes of our governments. We can only expect the empire to lose so much of its power simply due to its self-inflicted process of collapse; much of the globe will continue to be subjected to the empire’s evils until we in the core have ended these evils ourselves. 

If our governments don’t listen to our calls for peace, then we’ll instead have to bring peace by overthrowing these governments. Our rulers have already helped provide us with a mandate for that revolution through their criminal actions, and through their willingness to condemn the workers to economic pain. The destruction can only end, though, when we’ve done what’s necessary to defeat the state. Which entails projects, exemplified in things like WAP, to connect and unite the world’s anti-imperialist forces. 

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The Russiagate psyop was about trying to prevent the rise of BRICS, and it’s failed to do this

Above: this month’s Russia-Africa summit

The backfiring of Biden’s Ukraine proxy war—which the president himself has implicitly admitted to be a failure with his “Ukraine can’t join NATO till it’s won” ultimatum—has necessitated that the empire shift towards a new front in the great-power competition. This front is going to be a campaign of hybrid warfare against BRICS, and against any countries that assist in China’s efforts to help lead BRICS. 

Obscuring China’s recent successes to make it look like the war on BRICS can be won

This campaign hasn’t officially started yet; Washington hasn’t so far expanded its hybrid attacks against China and Russia to Brazil, India, South Africa, or the other “swing state” players within the new cold war. At the most, Washington and its narrative agents are at the moment merely putting forth propaganda to try to demoralize China, as well as anybody who supports multipolarity.

We’re seeing this in headlines like the one this week from Bloomberg—the publication whose owner Mike Bloomberg is personally sympathetic towards China, yet has ultimately conformed to the State Department-aligned media culture it inhabits. Bloomberg declares:

“BRICS Membership Expansion Push by China Falters as India, Brazil Push Back” 

This attempt to influence one’s perceptions when they Google things like “BRICS” or “China Brazil relations” is aided by another headline from the South China Morning Post, the separatist-sympathetic Chinese publication:

“Views of China ‘broadly negative’ in India and Brazil, survey finds”

If the only news you’ve been seeing about BRICS comes from these statements which the empire’s algorithmic digital platforms are designed to push, you must think Washington has a chance of subduing the PRC in the post-Ukraine diplomatic contest. Look a little deeper though, and you find there’s much context that these headlines omit. Iran’s Press TV has reported that Brazil, along with numerous other countries, have been acting friendlier towards China than not:

In Brazil, at the end of 2022, the yuan surpassed the Euro as the second most important currency in foreign reserves. At that time, 5.37% of the assets of the central bank of the country were in Chinese currency and 4.74% were in Euro. Now in Bolivia, after months of severe shortage of dollars, the use of yuan begins. The sweeping US sanctions on Russia in the wake of the Russia Ukraine war sent a warning to the rest of the world about the risks of the US using the dollar as a tool for geopolitical gain. Several countries are looking to move away from their dollar dependence and China is promoting the Yuan as an alternative. China has become a major rival for the United States, a rivalry that is increasing on many levels. Last Month, Pakistan paid for its first shipment of crude oil from Russia in the Chinese Yuan. In February, the Central Bank of Iraq, a major oil supplier, announced that it would allow trade with China to be settled in the Yuan for the first time. Members of the China dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the SCO, agreed to increase trade in their local currencies. Brazil is also leading the call to move away from the dollar. When Brazil's President, Lula da Silva, visited China earlier this year, he blasted the monstrous role of the US dollar in the global economy.

The long-term trend, whether with Latin American countries, with Eurasian imperialist victims like Pakistan, or with non-aligned actors like South Africa, is an increasingly comfortabe attitude towards the PRC. Assuming the survey data SCMP cites is totally accurate, this broader economic, financial, and diplomatic shift towards accommodating China is still the most important part of the story. A reality which shows that ultimately, peoples across all parts of the globe have more of a material incentive to become pro-China. Large amounts of the people across Africa have already come to love China, due to the ways the PRC has provided their continent with the tools to lift itself out of colonial poverty. The only reason the same levels of affection for China don’t exist in Brazil and India is because these places haven’t (yet) had China repair the damages that international monopoly capital has done to their societies. 

And regardless of whatever suspicions towards China still exist within these countries, the practical reality is that they’ll have to embrace China in order to succeed. As Hu Weijia of Global Times has written in response to an Indian official’s statement this week that India is open to greater Chinese investment, it would be in the country’s interests to prove this statement isn’t hollow diplomacy:

India's huge market is attractive to global manufacturers. Over the past decade, many Chinese companies have been attracted by India's market and strengthened their operations in the country. Some have achieved great commercial success. Observers believe that India's eagerness to reap profits from these foreign companies through crackdowns has seriously hindered the development of these companies in the Indian market. If India repeatedly does this, it will in turn undermine its own market reputation. This means India will find it difficult to translate its market potential into economic and manufacturing development opportunities. It is hoped that India can seize the opportunities for manufacturing development, change its attitude toward Chinese enterprises, truly adopt an open attitude toward Chinese manufacturers, and provide a fair investment environment for them.

Such additional victories for Chinese global relationship-building are so far only hypothetical, yet the nature of the present trends prove they absolutely can happen. The western headlines may gloat about the fact that international wariness towards China still exists, but they have to leave out the ways China is succeeding at building the multipolar order. That’s all the information we need to conclude that the “Russiagate” psyop, whose ultimate purpose was to prevent the rise of BRICS, has overall failed.

The psyop that could only do so much for the empire

I bring up Russiagate because it’s the big psyop of the last decade; the all-encompassing conspiracy narrative that the empire’s propagandists have sustained following its refutation in 2019, due to how instrumental it is for justifying the new cold war. It’s solidified the American left’s preexisting trend towards neocon views on Syria; Assad has come to be viewed by liberals and lib-“lefts” as a leader who must be destroyed in order to counter the biggest villain Putin. Russiagate has also made the American left either supportive of the Ukraine effort; or inclined to denounce both sides in this conflict between anti-imperialism and actual fascism. 

The fact that plenty of these anti-Russia leftists at the same time claim to be pro-China has aided the narrative efforts behind the anti-BRICS hybrid war; if many of those who in theory oppose the attacks against China have become willing to oppose actions which further the transition to multipolarity, the war on BRICS is made easier. This isn’t just because these elements of the left are against Russia’s efforts to solidify the multipolar world order; it’s because they’ve also taken the stance that helping in the information war against imperialism’s psyops is optional. They’ve decided to be apathetic towards the fight against their own government’s imperial crimes.

By taking advantage of this hypocrisy and lack of integrity which defines the American left, the empire’s narrative managers have cultivated a discourse that makes the hybrid war possible. In domestic terms they’ve been able to sustain their victories, due to the help they’ve gotten from those who are supposed to represent a revolutionary opposition. It’s like how our ruling elites broadly continue to win the domestic class war, due to this war’s pro-worker side being led by unprincipled actors who appease the Democratic Party. 

Yet in international terms our situation, from a revolutionary perspective, is more hopeful than it’s been in a long time. In 2018, when Russiagate had just fully overtaken conventional “left” thinking in the United States, the commentator Caitlin Johnstone clarified that the psyop’s ultimate goal wasn’t to influence domestic politics; it was rather to influence global politics:

China has been collaborating with Russia to end the hegemony of the US dollar, to shore up control of the Arctic as new resources become available, and just generally build up its own power and influence instead of working to remain in Washington’s good graces as most western nations have chosen to do. Preventing this is the single most important goal of the US power establishment, not just its elected government but the unelected plutocrats, defense and intelligence agencies which control the nation’s affairs behind the scenes. This agenda is so important that in a letter to his successor the outgoing President Barack Obama made the “indispensable” nature of American planetary leadership his sole concrete piece of advice, and pro-establishment influence firms like Project for a New American Century have made preventing the rise of a rival superpower their stated primary goal. This is what Russiagate is ultimately about. Democrats think it’s about impeaching Trump and protecting the world from a nigh-omnipotent supervillain in Vladimir Putin, Trump’s supporters think it’s a “deep state coup” to try and oust their president, but in reality this has nothing to do with Trump, and ultimately not a whole lot to do with Russia either. When all is said and done, Russiagate is about China.

Five years later, after Washington’s capacity to inflict damage has gotten tested in Ukraine, it’s been proven that Russiagate never truly had hope for reversing the shift to multipolarity. After Russia’s clear victory in the economic war; effective victory in the military war; and consequential successes at advancing China’s BRI, Putin has been able to triumphantly declare at this month’s Russia-Africa summit: “Based on the principles of justice and equality, they [Africa’s fighters of colonialism and apartheid] firmly defended the independent path of development of their peoples, often at the cost of their own lives. These ideals of freedom, independence, sovereignty are very significant even now, in the current difficult conditions of international turbulence, when a truly multipolar world is being formed, and the era of hegemony of one or several states is fading into the past. But not without the resistance of those who are accustomed to their own exclusivity and monopolies in world affairs.”

By telling the people the truth about just how much hope there now is for the defeat of U.S. hegemony, we Marxists in the heart of the beast who haven’t abandoned our revolutionary principles can incentivize the people to rally against our government’s destructive schemes. We can build an effective anti-imperialist movement, and thereby free the workers movement from the Democrat Party’s control; as the Democrats depend on an environment of apathy and complacency on imperialism within radical spaces. By letting the cause to advance multipolarity inform our outlook and our practice, we can build an authentic opposition towards capital. One that’s capable of defeating the empire from within.

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The left doesn’t own the antiwar movement, and communists must accept this in order to be effective anti-imperialists

To say that the left lacks ownership over the modern antiwar movement isn’t even to make an ideological statement. It’s simply an observation about the objective conditions of today’s American political landscape. A realignment has been occurring within the consciousness of the country’s people; one where in response to the new cold war and its effects, tens of millions of individuals who aren’t on the left have permanently become part of the element that opposes our government’s militarism. This doesn’t mean they all consciously oppose U.S. hegemony, at least not yet; that will require a further advancement in their education. It does mean, though, that such an educational project would be successful when applied to this element of the people. 

And this shows that as communists, we need to advance our anti-imperialist agenda with an intent to reach more people than leftists; we need to build a relationship with the people in general, especially the most conscious element. That element includes anyone who’s so far managed to figure out that the war machine needs to be combated; a category of individuals who now are largely made up of political people that aren’t on the left.

This reality at first appears paradoxical; why are so many of those who lean to the right presently more inclined than apolitical people to oppose the war machine? Isn’t it the case that the more to the right someone is, the more they support existing institutions? Not necessarily, because politics and ideology aren’t determined by simplistic frameworks for categorizing who’s going to believe what; they’re determined by which material interests are either aligned with someone’s class status, or are behind the informational sources which influence the way they think. As communists, the class whose interests we seek to advance is the proletariat, unlike how the Libertarian Party (in terms of its economic stances) seeks to advance the class interests of the bourgeoisie. So we’re anti-imperialists for different reasons than they are; but why do we share such a significant trait? Why do we both want to end U.S. hegemony? 

Answering this can let us understand what motivates this new base of right-leaning people who are antiwar, including the element of it that’s working class. Thereby, we can become better able to bring these people to Marxist beliefs, including to the socially progressive values that modern Marxists uphold. A shared desire to end American dominance can be a highly effective starting place for somebody to become a communist, even if they identify with an ideological orientation that’s (supposedly) further from communism than the orientation of the liberals.

To try to find an explanation for this commonality between Marxists and many modern conservatives, I returned to an area of research that I was familiar with prior to having become a Marxist: Russiagate. This psyop, focused on bringing more liberals and leftists to the neoconservative view of world affairs, exposed America’s political realignment. It showed that whereas plenty of those on the “left” are willing to become obstinate pro-imperialists, plenty of those who these leftists would dismiss as irredeemable reactionaries are compatible with anti-imperialism. 

While writing about Russiagate’s nature as a narrative designed to appeal to liberal elites, Consortiumnews contributor Phil Rockstroh observed how many of the people outside these elite circles can be brought to progressive or even revolutionary ideas:

On a personal basis, liberals with whom I used to clash when I was a resident of Manhattan, almost to a person, were completely removed from and, worse, utterly incurious, about the lives of the working class. When traveling around my native South, for example, when visiting my wife’s family in the rural South Carolina Low Country, I found the people there far more receptive to a socialist critique of the capitalist order than that of liberals. Why? Unlike upscale liberals, the working class, on a day-by-day basis, endure perpetual humiliation under depraved capitalism. Why do liberals refuse to acknowledge class-based deprivation as a defining factor in the angst and animus of the laboring class?…there is a howling, class chasm between the cultural criteria that separates affluent liberals from the struggling laboring class. How could sneaky Vladi and his fake news-wielding squads of internet Cossacks be responsible for the neoliberal economy, comprised of low wage, no benefits, no future mcjobs, that plague the working life of the latter? Thus the Russiagate storyline holds little resonance for downscale working people.

Due to the different ways that the opposing class interests of the country’s demographic groups make them inclined to respond to the new cold war’s propaganda, it’s been comfortable liberals who’ve become more pro-imperialist, inverse to many working class conservatives. And because the Republican Party is incurably pro-imperialist in its structure, the Libertarian Party has taken the role as the representative of non-left antiwar sentiments. Even though the libertarians continue to domestically put forth an agenda that’s in the interests of the bourgeoisie, the global part of their agenda is in the interests both of the bourgeoisie’s antiwar elements, and of the working class. (Because the end of U.S. hegemony, due to its weakening the American bourgeois state, would necessarily represent a win for the U.S. proletariat.) As a consequence, the libertarians have become able to work with the communists on building the anti-imperialist movement, and on bringing anti-imperialist ideas to the people. 

Many of these libertarians, as well as many within the broader antiwar conservative element, are not part of the struggling laboring class; that doesn’t mean they haven’t been able to assist in the fight against U.S. hegemony, which is an instrumental part of the effort to defeat the capitalist state. It also doesn’t mean there aren’t many working class people who share ideas like libertarianism, and who are compatible with the anti-imperialist cause. 

Those within this category are particularly to be found within the armed forces, or within the population of veterans; that’s because even though the insular left rejects them as eternally untrustworthy, their upbringings and experiences have given them an incredible amount of revolutionary potential. They’re the ones who’ve joined the military due to the “poverty draft,” and who therefore don’t have comfortable economic situations to return to after they come home. This can easily lead them to class consciousness, as has been the case for all the past armed service members who’ve had essential roles in helping with history’s successful workers revolutions.

The conservatives from bourgeois backgrounds who’ve taken an antiwar stance are motivated by concerns that make practical sense for them, but that don’t pertain to desperate socioeconomic situations like is the case for working class people. They’re upset about their taxes funding wars, and about their government creating a danger of nuclear war. As a consequence, they often only oppose one half of the new cold war, rejecting the anti-Russia psyops while embracing the psyops against China. This shows the limitations on the anti-NATO coalition; because people often (with exceptions) need to come to communism in order to reject all of the propaganda against China. And the only bourgeois people that come to communism are the ones who make the extraordinary decision of becoming traitors to their class. 

The coalition is still worth joining though, because platforms like the one the libertarians have are our only realistic avenue for reaching everyone within the most conscious element of the workers. That being the element which has already come to the anti-imperialist perspective on issues like NATO, and which due to its class interests can then easily come to pro-Chinese communism.

Armed service members make up a great deal of those within this highly revolution-compatible element; they’re not just disproportionately working class, but have experienced things that often make them deeply disillusioned with the imperial order. They’re like the antiwar-minded Colonel Douglas Macgregor, except they usually have a proletarian lifestyle; and, therefore, can come to Marxism even if they start as right-wing. 

The insular, imperialism-compatible leftists act like America is exceptional; like exclusively in this country, revolutionaries can expect to win while not reaching out to the armed service members. They reject this historically proven practice, for the same reason they reject Lenin’s practice of entering into coalitions that focus on the moment’s most pivotal struggles. This reason is that these leftists seek not to win, but to stay consistent with a contemporary “left” orthodoxy. Marxists need to break from this orthodoxy, and act according to how the conditions prompt us to act.

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U.S. communists must choose: build an anti-imperialist united front, or align with the insular modern “left”

The strategy of the united front has always been instrumental to the task of winning power, and has always been superior to the modern American left’s default strategy of acting like only others within the “left” are worth reaching out to. Frederick Douglas and his movement achieved abolition by creating an anti-slavery power coalition; the Bolsheviks came to power due to their having worked in reactionary trade unions; the Panthers brought racist working class whites to anti-racism via outreach to them. Again and again, it’s proven that being insular is not the way to be effective. And with the political realignment that the United States population has been undergoing, the insular way of operating has become more foolish than ever.

This is a realignment where the country’s conservatives have increasingly become antiwar, unfortunately in contrast to how those who consider themselves on the left have become increasingly aligned with pro-imperialist views. We first saw clear evidence of this when throughout 2018, surveyors asked conservatives and liberals how they felt about the USA’s foreign military involvement, and the former group was where the most opposition to this practice could be found. What made this notable was how by that point, these wars which so many conservatives disliked had clearly gone from being Obama’s wars to being Trump’s wars; the antiwar conservatives felt this way not for momentary partisan reasons, but because they were overall becoming more hostile towards the idea of America inserting itself into global affairs. This makes it unsurprising that the left, due to its own failures on anti-imperialism and the liberal embrace of the “Russiagate” psyop, is now overall less enthusiastic to challenge NATO than conservatives are.

These things don’t make everything else the American right believes correct, they’re simply the facts about our conditions; now what are we communists to do with this information? If you listen to the actors who are still focused on appealing to liberals and to “left” spaces, we should in effect do nothing with it. They believe that regardless of how lacking in integrity the left is on anti-imperialism; and of how America’s political realignment has represented a spontaneous upsurge in mass anti-imperialist sentiment outside the left; we should stay with the old practice of exclusively trying to appeal to the left. 

And that’s the less damaging kind of advice these actors give about this. When they have a reason to become aggressive, they argue that we should not only refuse to build an ideologically diverse anti-imperialist force, but also actively try to isolate and censure the groups and individuals working towards that goal. We saw this when they became obsessed with attacking the Rage Against the War Machine rally and coalition; then the Cornel West campaign; and now the August 6 Humanity for Peace event, which RAWM is facilitating.

Their reasoning—at least according to the overt parts of their arguments—is that even though many who aren’t on the left have been becoming more anti-imperialist, these types of conservatives are still backward in their views on plenty of other things. To which we can say: why do you see this as a reason to reject the united front strategy, rather than to embrace it so we can expose these people to new ideas? If Marxists can find commonality with right-leaning non-Marxists on anti-imperialism, that represents an opportunity to introduce them to our movement’s theory. Plenty of Americans only presently believe they’re against “Marxism” because they’ve never had anyone honestly tell them what Marxism is; everyone is an ideological product of their environment. And if you change somebody’s environment, such as by letting them for the first time be in proximity to communists, they themselves can easily change.

The same argument can be applied to all the other ideas that we hold, but that many of the people don’t share as of yet; such as acceptance of trans folks, or maximally expanded tribal sovereignty. We can’t bring these ideas to the people if we refuse to engage with a large element of the people. Especially an element that’s showing itself to be compatible with one of the most revolutionary ideas in today’s discourse: the idea that U.S. hegemony should be ended.

This is where the insular left’s real problem with the united front strategy becomes apparent. Because these kinds of leftists show that they are willing to work with people and groups which have serious problems; their practice is to align with “left” orgs and activists which are disgracefully ambivalent towards the anti-imperialist cause. The true reason why contemporary leftist thinking is hostile towards the anti-imperialist united front is because within this thinking, the fight against U.S. hegemony isn’t viewed as intrinsically progressive. The only way an anti-NATO project can be viewed as progressive within this mentality is if that project is being carried out by a government, org, or person that’s sufficiently enlightened in their social and economic views. Therefore when China defies U.S. hegemony it’s rightly praised by these types of leftists, whereas when Russia takes such actions it’s condemned by them.

There’s a clear fallacy in this reasoning, as it acts like the globe’s primary contradiction (and the contradiction which we must sufficiently combat in order to resolve all other contradictions) is fundamentally less important than all other contradictions. We won’t be able to win domestically if we haven’t done enough to help defeat the hegemon; which is a task that’s absolutely doable, as changing mass consciousness towards anti-imperialism can render the war operations untenable. To say that this task is the most effective thing we can engage in at this stage isn’t a devaluation of the liberation struggles of oppressed peoples within the core; it’s simply a practical assessment of the situation we’re in. The reality is that to minimize the importance of fighting the hegemon is to undermine not only the fight of imperialism’s global targets, but the fight of these groups within U.S. borders.

The orgs whose members or adjacent individuals have been attacking the anti-NATO front are choosing this counterproductive way of operating because they view this front as a threat to their monopoly over the activist space. And the argument they’re using to justify doing this is that to join with the front is supposedly a betrayal of oppressed groups. This is only a way of disguising their own opportunistic motives. 

An org that’s trying to hinder serious efforts towards restoring the mass anti-imperialist struggles of 20th century American communism, and towards otherwise making communism mainstream again, doesn’t fundamentally care about the domestic liberation struggles. This is why the arguments against these efforts inevitably take on a nature that’s not based in fact; the consistent tactic is to equate the anti-NATO coalition’s non-left elements with fascists. Which relies upon the propaganda’s targets not making an honest, rigorous effort at investigating the coalition. RAWM and Humanity for Peace can only be “discredited” via criticisms that are fundamentally unprincipled, and made to advance an opportunistic agenda.

The effect of aligning with this agenda is to maintain one’s approval among the conventional authorities on what it means to be a good “leftist,” while in practice opposing the measures that can actually advance the progressive goals leftists are supposed to care about. Do you want to be accepted into a group, or be an authentic threat towards our ruling institutions? That’s the nature of the question of whether we should join with the anti-imperialist united front; or continue with the insular operating model that’s kept the class struggle inert for decades.

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