Above: a beach in Sevastopol this last week when the U.S. facilitated a Ukrainian drone attack on the civilians there
What does it mean that the United States government is dominated by an element of the ruling class which can’t be talked down from its cold war escalation plans? That there’s an unelected series of intelligence officials who are loyal to monopoly capital’s geo-strategic goals, and who can go after anybody that challenges this agenda? Amid the unprecedented nuclear war dangers these actors have brought about, and the economic and civil liberties threats which relate to these conflicts, it means there’s a growing tension within our political system. Tension that’s going to bring the U.S. power structure to an internal confrontation of some kind.
During Biden’s term, there have been some signs of such disputes. In fall of 2022, General Mark Milley said that Washington needed to get towards negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, which visibly upset the White House. And though Milley retired last year, his break from the official position on Ukraine showed that these kinds of developments can simply happen on their own; military officials are often better able to recognize what the pragmatic course of action is, compared to the politicians and their fanatical pro-war monopolist backers. So it’s always possible that another military official could start bringing about these kinds of disputes in the future. The most immediate potential for the World War III drive to create a split, though, comes not from a dispute between different branches of the state but from within the government itself. And if the situation escalates enough, this could embolden whoever within the military may privately be hoping to end these nuclear perils.
This week, Donald Trump’s advisers presented him with a plan that’s essentially what Milley proposed: negotiate with Russia to partition Ukraine. Unsurprisingly it includes language designed to make Trump look tougher on Russia, with it saying Trump should increase aid to Ukraine if Russia doesn’t negotiate. But since Russia has shown it’s willing to do so, if this plan gets implemented then the war will be ended. (Or at least the parts of the war that don’t involve Ukraine’s burgeoning terrorism program.) Which is enough to give the deep state and its allies a reason for going after these pro-negotiation elements within Trump’s circle.
If Trump wins, we should expect a repeat of the Russiagate psyop. A propaganda effort that involves both retreads of the original psyop’s assertions, and a series of new narratives that are designed to discredit these people around Trump. The deep state and its monopolist masters no longer view Trump himself as a serious risk; they were once worried that he would go against their new cold war agenda, but then he acquiesced, and acted even more aggressively against Russia than Obama had. The parts of Russiagate 2.0 that get directed against Trump are going to be largely theatrical, like how Republicans have targeted Biden with a “Chinagate” narrative even though he’s quite reliable on attacking China. The main figures within the potential second Trump administration who the deep state will truly see as a threat are the ones which seek to push Trump in a pro-negotiations direction, or at least use their platforms and authority to weaken the deep state in other ways.
A major thing the narrative managers hope to do should Trump win is divide the anti-imperialist movement from these figures within the government who could advance this movement’s goals. They don’t want us to take advantage of the growing divisions within the ruling class, and the way they aim to stop us is by sabotaging coalitions or potential coalitions. The goal is to keep the discourse too trapped within the culture wars for us to mount an effective opposition towards the war machine; to divide the different elements which are against the wars, and use cultural battles to distract us from the struggle against monopoly capital.
At this stage, the deep state has fully committed to a version of this plan wherein the anti-woke psyop has become the main tool for creating such division and confusion. This is both because the country’s people have become thoroughly tired of what comes from the “woke” side of the culture wars, and because the anti-woke psyop is what the deep state will likely need to lean on following this election. Biden’s inability to articulate during yesterday’s debate has made Trump’s victory even more likely, as the voters can see clearer than ever that the “woke” side’s candidate isn’t neurologically functional. This development has made it quite risky for the deep state to try to meddle in the election, like it did last time; that Biden has become so thoroughly discredited means Trump’s election theft accusations would be convincing to even more people than they were in 2020. So by far the safest option is to let Trump win, then keep up the “Russiagate” pressure campaign on him while nurturing his anti-woke ideology.
The hope is that through amplifying anti-wokeness, the ruling class will be able to create the narrative precedents for a purge of anti-imperialists. We’re seeing this in how the main propaganda against the pro-Palestine demonstrations is that they simply represent “wokeness,” and therefore aren’t anti-establishment in any way. This is how the narrative managers aim to turn the conservatives who’ve gained antiwar consciousness on Ukraine against the anti-Zionist cause: by convincing these conservatives that Palestine and Ukraine aren’t connected, and that the people mobilizing for Palestine have bought into a liberal psyop. There’s a desire among the anti-woke psyop’s targets to defy the mainstream media, and to free themselves from the war machine’s ideological control. The psyop seeks to limit their knowledge, to only let them see one part of the picture.
This is why it’s crucial for communists to bring these people with a proto anti-imperialist consciousness towards a full consciousness, and to do this for as many of them as possible. In Hegelian dialectics, the word for this is “sublate.” To sublate is to change an initial idea by negating that idea’s incorrect aspects, while incorporating its correct aspects into a larger and more whole truth. That’s what we can do with many of the people within MAGA, within the libertarian movement, and within things like the pro-Palestine protests. We nurture the people’s anti-imperialist impulses, and we put ourselves in a better strategic place to take advantage of these emerging tensions within the state.
The crises our imperial system is creating are big enough to cause proto-revolutionary ideas to emerge, both among the masses and among potential rogue ruling class factions. Which is why the reactionary forces are working so hard to inject more apathy, chaos, and ignorance into the consciousness. If they can prevent a unified opposition from emerging, if they can stop a clear polarization between the supporters and opponents of these wars, then they can neutralize the threats towards the system. We need to thwart these schemes, and make such progress materialize.
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