With finance capital’s success at assimilating Trump into the U.S. imperial geo-strategic agenda, it seemingly looks like the deep state has gotten a victory. It’s proven itself able to keep the executive branch under the control of the intelligence centers and the war machine, even after the finance capitalists briefly worried in 2016 that Trump wouldn’t be a reliable arbiter of their foreign policy designs. Yet when you look at the entire picture, it becomes apparent that this “victory” for the deep state is a hollow one. Finance capital’s being able to control Trump hasn’t gotten rid of the imperial state’s deeper risk factors for collapse. Which shows how limited the new cold warriors are in their ability to maneuver this situation.
At this point, now that Biden has fully revealed his neurological deterioration, it’s quite possible that Trump is the preferred candidate for the forces advancing the Gaza genocide and the new cold war. Even though the Democratic Party is imploding following last week’s debate, Trump’s record of murdering Soleimani, aggressing against Russia more than Obama, expanding the occupations around China, and advancing a brutal policy towards Latin America puts the imperialists at ease. Trump’s statement earlier this year that he’ll effectively work to increase aid to Ukraine by getting the European countries to pay more confirmed he presents no true danger to the plans of the geo-strategists. There’s something the intelligence centers and think tanks have been doing lately, though, that indicates they view many of the people around Trump as threats, and that they fear much of the MAGA base could join in an anti-imperialist mobilization.
What they’ve been doing is naming the more isolationist actors within Trump world as being serious impediments to the Ukraine war effort. Last month, the Ukraine-based State Department outfit the Data Journalism agency published a report called Roller Coaster from Trumpists to communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it. In its section on Trump, the Agency says:
The core of the effort to decrease U.S. support for Ukraine consists of Trumpists—politicians, media figures, activists, and experts aligned with Donald Trump, including Trump himself. Members of Congress aligned with him obstruct bills aiding Ukraine, with the most vocal ones spreading their views to millions via social media. Though Trump has not directly opposed Ukraine post-invasion, he has noted that Russia "will eventually...take over all of Ukraine," frequently stating that Ukraine lacks the capability to defeat Russia. In April 2024, media outlets reported on Trump's "secret peace plan," suggesting that Ukraine should cede Crimea and Donbas to Moscow. On April 20, 2024, just before the House of Representatives vote on Ukrainian aid, Trump didn't endorse the bill but publicly recognized for the first time that "Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!" He criticized European allies for their insufficient support of Ukraine.
Despite his remarks, Trump remains a pivotal figure for those consistently against supporting Ukraine, according to our survey. In February 2023, a group of 10 Republicans led by U.S. House member Matt Gaetz initiated the Ukraine Fatigue Resolution, advocating for the cessation of military and financial aid to Ukraine. Mr. Gaetz has been a vocal critic of aid to Ukraine. He, along with co-sponsors like Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie (Kentucky), and Barry Moore (Alabama), in November 2022, pushed for a stronger audit of funds the U.S. provides to Ukraine.
Though this peace plan has continued to be relevant to Trump’s campaign, with Trump’s advisers having presented him with a new version of it last week, we shouldn’t trust Trump to implement it. Whether he does depends on whether he views doing so as in his best interests, which means the deep state can sway him towards abandoning the plan. It can do this by making an example out of the figures around Trump who support negotiations with Russia, a process that’s going to involve revivals of McCarthyist tactics.
The great danger the deep state faces is that these efforts to intervene within White House politics, to suppress all forces within the Trump government that challenge the neocons, will backfire. What happens if these political policing forces can’t keep control over the narrative? If they go too far, and do something like target the pro-negotiations officials with fraudulent criminal charges? This could strengthen the solidarity of the imperial state’s enemies, and provoke a backlash from the forces within the discourse that consistently support civil liberties. The stir that the fraudulent charges against Uhuru have been creating among media figures like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan could again appear, except in relation to these governmental deep state targets.
Even if the policing doesn’t take the form of legal persecution, the Data Journalism Agency’s list shows a growing unease over whether the imperial state can remain unified. There are emerging fissures within this state, ones that haven’t gone away just because Trump has capitulated to the new cold warriors. And these divisions within the ruling class are having effects on the consciousness of the masses, because the figures who’ve been leading or providing narrative support for Ukraine negotiation efforts have massive platforms. Tucker Carlson is named in the Agency’s report because of this.
Like the other right-wing political actors the report talks about, Carlson isn’t seen as a threat by NATO’s intelligence centers because he’s a revolutionary figure, or because he’s consistently antiwar; the bulk of these actors only challenge the war on Russia, while pushing for war with China and Iran. The trackers see them as threats because of the ways they’re destabilizing the discourse; because they’re swaying millions of conservatives towards a position that’s partially antiwar, which isn’t seen by the geo-strategists as acceptable. The types of conservatives the deep state has no problem with are ones like Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager, who take a pro-Ukraine stance. And the bulk of conservatives and libertarians are not compelled by the foreign policy arguments of these figures, a fact that represents a major ideological threat towards the war machine.
The way for communists to respond to these splits within bourgeois media and politics is not by tailing the selectively antiwar side of the bourgeoisie, but by taking advantage of the historical process that this inter-elite conflict is catalyzing. We need to bring in the parts of the MAGA base that are open to expanding their existing consciousness, and coming to support not just Russia but also China, Iran, and communism. A way we could do this is by vocally opposing the deep state during the next moments when the deep state acts against MAGA figures and supporters. This will be an opportunity to leverage the unstable situation that a second Trump term is going to create; the situation where Trump again fails to defeat the deep state at a moment when our economic conditions desperately require an end to the wars.
Should Trump give in to the pressure these attacks will create, and potentially even betray the members of his circle who support peace, this will create backlash. Backlash from elements of MAGA, and from MAGA-allied forces that care about peace. As Trump and the other top MAGA leaders act in an unprincipled fashion, communists need to show that we’re principled in the ways these leaders aren’t.
This effort to gain greater respect among the conservative and libertarian elements with revolutionary potential is a crucial part of how we win. If we can leverage the infighting among the ruling class in this way, we’ll better be able to reach the demographic that communists must focus on connecting with above all, which is the workers who’ve been alienated from bourgeois politics. This strategy of making connections with the disillusioned parts of MAGA is a crucial part of our larger mission: to win the broader masses, and thereby become in place to overthrow the state.
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