To keep waging war against the Palestinians and the Russians, our government needs to keep intensifying its economic attacks on the people of the USA. And the reverse is true as well, because the rule of capital depends on imperialist wars. Since the 1970s, when capitalism reached a point in its decline where perpetually increasing austerity became the way to keep profits up, we’ve been seeing this process advance. Our ruling class has been progressively sacrificing the people’s living standards in the imperial center, while redirecting ever more funds towards slaughtering peoples abroad.
With this week’s package for $95 billion in aid to Ukraine and “Israel,” though, this two-pronged war which our rulers have been waging has reached an unprecedented stage. A stage where the people of the United States are feeling the injustice of the situation more acutely than ever, and there’s therefore come to be an unprecedented risk for the rulers in carrying on this destructive project.
That most of the country’s people are now against the Ukraine and “Israel” proxy wars is one sign of how much the war machine has lost its dominance over the narrative. Another indicator is the evidence that our society feels increasingly upset about the austerity which these wars involve. The inflation crisis, which Biden’s proxy wars have greatly exacerbated, is a major reason behind why the Democratic Party’s working class base has been abandoning Biden. Another development that shows the people’s growing disillusionment is how the right has been able to capture mass momentum simply by talking about inflation, our declining infrastructure, and other obvious realities the liberals want to ignore.
These trends, wherein more people are becoming either politically apathetic or receptive towards rightism in reaction to their conditions, are set to accelerate as the public reacts with disgust to the $95 billion package. And as long as things stay the way they are now, with there being a lack of a popular and highly visible united front against monopoly capital, then these trends are all we’ll continue to see. This is why our ruling class feels confident enough to pass this bill at a moment when most of the people are against the proxy wars, and are showing clear signs of disaffection. The elites have sources of controlled opposition, both on the right and the “left,” that are capable of redirecting revolutionary sentiments and keeping the system safe. The danger they’ve created for themselves with this new step in war austerity, though, is that it’s created greater potential for the authentic sources of opposition to gain serious mass support.
We’re seeing one of these genuinely revolutionary groups, the Uhuru org, get a growing amount of attention—ironically because of the civil liberties outrage brought about by the effort to illegalize Uhuru’s operations. Americans across the ideological spectrum, from far-left to rightist, are coming to be aware of this imminent threat towards our constitutional freedoms. And with further work by Uhuru and its allied orgs to build an anti-imperialist movement, we’ll be able to take this consciousness shift to its next step: a dynamic of mass solidarity between Americans, and all the peoples who are resisting imperialism abroad.
The gatekeepers on the “left” side of the controlled opposition say this goal is unrealistic, deciding instead to disavow Russia’s operation against Ukrainian fascism and U.S. imperialism. We shouldn’t listen to this argument, because in addition to its denying the American people’s capacity for international solidarity, it acts to divide the anti-imperialist movement. These two proxy wars depend on there being a dominant element on the “left” which supports Palestine but not Russia, and a parallel element on the “right” that supports Russia but not Palestine. We can overcome these discourse manipulations, if we properly navigate the conditions we’re facing.
These are conditions where our government is, in terms of economic warfare, police militarization, mass surveillance, and psychological operations, intensifying its assaults upon us. And where not in spite of the growing peril, but because of it, there’s growing potential for us to unify our domestic workers’ struggle with what the globe’s anti-imperialist forces are doing. Which is something that the ruling class has a great desire to prevent from happening, and is devoting great resources to ensure doesn't become reality.
Right now, this country’s people are reacting to not just the manufactured economic crisis, or the evidence that their government is facilitating mass murder in Gaza, but also to the growing threats towards their liberties. As knowledge of the Uhuru case spreads, Biden has signed a bill that lets the NSA spy on any business or individual it wants, giving the president the ability to go after journalists and political opponents with impunity. Like with the persecution of Uhuru, this is something the majority of Americans are capable of rallying against, should they become informed about it and connected to avenues for revolt. And that’s going to continue to apply regardless of which party is in power, because neither major party is liked by the majority of the country.
As we keep building the movement towards educating and mobilizing people around these grievances, the international aspect of this struggle is going to hold an instructional role. Because the American people can learn from the ways the empire’s foes abroad have succeeded. Why do the empire’s propagandists try to portray Iran’s recent retaliation as a failure, Russia’s anti-fascist Ukraine operation as imperialistic, Hamas’ October 7 action as unjustified, etc? Why do they keep pretending like the Kiev fascist regime and the Zionist settler state can win against Russia or Hamas, when in both cases the USA’s proxies have long been trapped in a cycle of military futility? It’s not only to justify U.S. foreign policies, it’s also to demoralize the people who seek an end to our capitalist dictatorship.
As the communist Andre Vltchek has written about this element of the effort at smearing China, which often includes portraying the PRC as not truly socialist:
The Western demagogues know: China robbed of its essence – and the essence is “the Socialism with Chinese characteristics” – is China which cannot inspire, cannot offer alternatives to the world. The most effective way to smear China, to silence it, is precisely to convince the world that it is ‘capitalist.’ Such techniques were used, for instance, by German Nazis who claimed that resistance against their occupation actually consisted of a bunch of terrorists. The U.S. is known to do the same. Or the British Empire, which christened rebellious local people in its colonies as “hordes of savages.” Just reverse the truth and win! Twist things shamelessly, turn them upside-down, repeat your lies thousands of times, print them in all your mass media outlets. Chances are, your fabrications would be eventually accepted by billions of people. In the case of China, West is trying to convince the world that PRC is the same type of gangster states like the United States or Great Britain, France, or Canada. It is doing it by calling China capitalist, by calling it even imperialist. By ridiculously equating China’s behavior to the behavior of the Western colonialist powers. By declaring that China is oppressing its own minorities, as the West has been doing for centuries.
These lies, the ones designed to manufacture a narrative about China committing a “genocide” in Xinjiang, have lately come to prominence again as the empire has scrambed for a distraction on Gaza. And this has failed to direct attention away from the actual genocide that the United States is perpetrating against the Palestinians. With further education, the people who share anti-imperialist impulses could gain a complete understanding about the deceptions our rulers are employing. Many of them could come to be in solidarity with not just the Palestinians in general, but with the leaders of the anti-colonial movement Hamas. As well as with the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and all the other peoples who share our need to end U.S. hegemony. Our fight is the same, and the sooner we in the USA start acting like this, the sooner we’ll win.
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