Khamenei’s ideas will win. The question is how big a price the world will need to pay beforehand.

When I talk about how important it is for anti-imperialists to share the Ayatollah’s commitment towards resistance, my intent is to address anti-imperialists everywhere. This includes those in the core of imperialism, where I live. Nobody can define how the liberation struggle goes in countries besides their own, and those within the core must be especially conscientious in avoiding chauvinistic hubris. It’s the United States government that’s at the center of the aggressions towards nations like Iran, and the primary job of U.S. citizens is to combat our government. This does not mean, though, that we can’t be critical of the foreign political elements which obstruct the anti-imperialist struggle. And such obstruction is occurring right now in Iran, where the U.S.-friendly Pezeshkian faction is hindering Khamenei’s resistance efforts during a crucial juncture.

In early September of this year, when Iran’s president Pezeshkian was holding Khamenei’s faction back from retaliating for Haniyeh’s assassination, Khamenei made a befitting statement. He didn’t say he had Pezeshkian in mind while he was making it, but he repudiated the Pezeshkian camp’s argument that Iran’s enemies are too strong for the nation to fight back. When Khamenei got blocked from responding to the Haniyeh killing, he found himself limited by actors who didn’t want Iran to handle the U.S./Zionist threat; who sought to induce a collective state of paralysis. That’s what Khamenei helped combat through this effort to assure Iranians of their own fortitude:

In the political field, exaggerating the enemy’s power causes people to feel isolated, weak, and incapable of handling the situation. The outcome of this is that they will surrender to the enemy's demands. When instructed to “do this,” they comply, and when told “don't do that,” they readily agree as well. As we see today, there are various types of governments with both large and small nations that act in this manner. They say “yes” to whatever they are told and have no will of their own. Now, at the diplomatic table and in diplomatic negotiations, there are definitely certain protocols and conditions. That “yes” can be expressed in various forms. However, the truth is that it’s the same “yes” that you see. But if those same individuals rely on their own people and domestic capabilities, if they recognize the true nature of their enemy, and if they understand that the enemy isn’t as powerful as they portray themselves to be, they can refrain from saying “yes.” But they don’t pay attention to this and say “yes.” That is the situation in the field of politics.

It took the assassination of Nasrallah—an event that Pezeshkian’s false promises of “peace” directly led to—for Khamenei to gain the political momentum he needed. And though we then saw an Iranian counter-attack, as well as a legislative effort for Iran to create an atomic weapon, the reformers continue to impede progress. When it was revealed that the “Israeli” aggressor attacked an Iranian nuclear facility on October 25, an action that was supposed to constitute Iran’s red line, this essentially confirmed that interference from Pezeshkian continues to happen. Even though many Iranians mobilized against Pezeshkian’s pacifist activities following the Nasrallah killing, and the reformers had to retreat for a time, they’re still able to obstruct the resistance.

As I’ve said, we in the United States aren’t capable of driving the struggle within any other country, nor should we try to. Our task is to build a movement within the USA that can mobilize the country’s masses towards overthrowing the imperial state; which means obstructing our government’s war efforts. And to do this, we must understand that the reformers and their allies within the U.S. media are setting a trap for us. 

They want us to solely look at what’s happening on the surface—where Iran’s president is seeking friendship with the Trump team—and uncritically support this. The reality is that if the Trump White House establishes a partnership with Iran, it will only happen through further disempowering the anti-imperialists. It’s a scheme to turn Iran into a neo-colony; or to at least keep its military operations perpetually hindered, letting Washington do as much damage as possible to the Axis of Resistance countries.

The propaganda that our media has been using to sell this deception is quite bizarre, because it involves liberal outlets rooting for Trump to succeed. In one AP/PBS article—which draws from reporting within Iran’s enemy the UAE—Trump is essentially framed as an advocate of reason and peace. And Khamenei is painted as the fanatical villain who’s trying to stop him:

On Thursday, Pezeshkian appeared to remain open to talks with Washington — even in the wake of Trump’s victory — saying that “it doesn’t matter who has won the U.S elections.” “We will in no way have a closed and limited approach in the expansion of ties with other countries,” he said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. That leaves open the possibility for negotiations…“Because Trump is a showman he might announce that he wants to talk to Pezeshkian in person,” said Zeidabadi, the analyst. “Unfortunately, the problem is that (the government) can’t accept that. Even if some people in the government are interested in doing that, the majority of hard-liners won’t let that happen and this can make Trump more angry too.” Still, some feel Iran already is at its breaking point. “I think Iran has no choice but to make peace with Trump, considering the situation of the dollar (exchange rate) and the livelihoods of people and the high prices,” said Sina Khaledian, a 32-year-old nurse. “There is lack of medicine and health care. They have to do this. I think the country’s capacity to endure has been exhausted.”

That last statement is a clear instance of the exaggeration Khamenei warned about, where the enemy convinces its victims that it can’t be beaten. Making a deal with Trump to end the sanctions is not Iran’s only path towards improving its living standards, because there’s a factor within Iran that’s been greatly worsening the effects of these sanctions: neoliberal policies, implemented by the reformers. These opportunistic forces have been taking away the gains from Iran’s revolution, enacting privatization and ending price controls. This has both amplified the damage from the sanctions; and prevented Iran from having a war economy which could handle full confrontation with its enemies.

With the decision by “Israel” to immediately break the Lebanon ceasefire deal, the reformers and their global allies have experienced a narrative defeat. Earlier this month, Pezeshkian said that a ceasefire deal between Lebanon and “Israel” would make Iran retaliate in a milder way; which was his tactic for justifying a permanent delay of counter-action. Now the Zionist entity has demonstrated the futility of trying to negotiate with it, leaving the world disgusted. Of course, a scenario like this one has happened thousands of times already; “Israel” lying and committing crimes is the rule. I believe, though, that we’ve entered a stage in the anti-colonial fight where these acts come to have more of an impact every time. The pressure to resist this genocide can now only keep growing, in Iran and everywhere else.

All of Palestine will become free, and imperialism will meet its final defeat; but these things will only happen through the will of those who share Khamenei’s ideas. Every day, more lives are lost because the USA and “Israel” are allowed to continue operating. And every day, the philosophy of self-defense gets further vindicated. The forces are building for justice to be exacted, and for the globe to be freed from the imperial order. How much more harm our enemies get to do depends on which actions we all take.

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NGO-industrial complex seeks to de-center Palestine, divert anti-Zionist struggle’s focus towards Trump

Above: the page for the PSL’s planned Inauguration Day rally

The greatest threat to the pro-Palestine movement comes not from state repression, which it can survive, but from the forces that seek to dilute the movement. Even if the crackdown reaches extreme levels, there will still be an active struggle to end the genocide and free Palestine; the mass will to combat this injustice is simply too strong to crush. But should the movement remain monopolized by actors which seek to de-center Palestine, and divert the struggle towards opportunistic endeavors, then the struggle will be left without sufficient organizational support. This is what could truly make the movement fail: the liberal efforts to co-opt it, and turn it into something different.

This effort is being facilitated by the NGO-industrial complex, which over the decades has perfected a method for funneling activists into counterproductive activities. Part of this operation involves promoting reformist faux-solutions, wherein the Democratic Party’s “radical” wing promises that Palestine will gain liberation if we vote blue. This aspect of the manipulation connects to the “harm reduction voting” ideology, with its idealistic notions about “pulling the Democrats left.” But the results of this last election have proven, even more so than the 2016 election did, that these narratives have limited potency. Gaza was what made the younger generation not just alienated from the Democratic Party; but hate it with the rageful passion of somebody who’s just witnessed deliberate violence against children. 

There’s a large group of people who are both anxious about the things Trump could do, and actively angry at the Democrats. And these people can be brought into an anti-imperialist mass movement; but the NGOs are working to divert them towards fighting the culture wars, which would truly doom the pro-Palestine struggle in this country.

The PSL, the “communist” wing of this NGO network, has already done major damage to the antiwar movement. In 2022, when Americans across the ideological spectrum turned against NATO’s war on Russia, there was an opportunity to bring the MAGA base into the anti-imperialist struggle. And that’s what the PSL would have done if it cared about strategy. Instead, it invested itself within the abortion fight, which is a culture war trap. When a communist organization fails to truly differentiate itself from the Democratic Party, and directs its followers to essentially copy the protests liberals put on, then it’s not functionally communist. It doesn’t matter if it also puts on antiwar protests, because these protests will only appeal to those within the liberal element PSL devotes all of its outreach to. This is a reliable way to make a movement fizzle out, and it’s what the PSL will do during the second Trump term; this is shown by how on January 20th, the org plans to hold an event not about Palestine or any other particular issue, but rather about opposing MAGA.

The only way to stop these activities from killing the U.S. Palestinian struggle is by building an alternative organizational force; that’s what the anti-NATO movement did by creating the Rage Against the War Machine coalition, hence why radical liberals smeared this coalition. It’s because of the efforts of those who acted independently from the NGOs that 2023 turned into the best year for the antiwar movement in decades. And we’ll gain this kind of victory again, on a much bigger scale, if we build a movement that can navigate our new political era. If we can keep our operations going amid the coming repression, and bring in the growing revolutionary elements.

To achieve this, we need to internalize an extremely important lesson, one that I learned through my disillusionment with PSL: every time the circumstances change, our practice must change along with it. The essence of why PSL failed to take advantage of its initial momentum, wherein it attained a leadership role within the anti-Bush protests, is because it’s kept pretending like our conditions are the way they were back then. 

The org acts as if liberals still have the same war-skeptical role that they once did. But today, liberals are the element which primarily pushes for war; especially after this last year, when they’ve rushed to defend not just wars but actual genocides. The same goes for how liberals have reacted to monopoly capital’s coercive medical policies, or to online censorship; it’s the left-wing within bourgeois politics that’s embraced these anti-human measures. In this era, it’s conservatives who’ve taken on the populist role; and because their leader Trump isn’t truly willing to fulfill their antiwar, anti-monopoly mandates, much of the MAGA base could soon become disillusioned. Which will give our movement much more room to grow.

This is a point I’ve made many times: communists and anti-imperialists must welcome these Americans who could lose enthusiasm for MAGA during Trump’s second term. What I’ve come to understand, though, is that if we look for shortcuts, we’ll end up repeating the errors of those who’ve followed the opportunistic PSL leadership. Leftists aren’t the only ones who can think mechanistically, and overlook important realities about their conditions; even people with ideological stances that are far superior to PSL’s can do the same.

As we work to win the MAGA crowd, we must account for how the Trump camp’s pro-imperialist elements are capable of assailing our movement, and advancing the empire’s war escalations. Despite what the PSL crowd tends to believe, the 76 million Americans who voted Trump are not all fascists; most of them aren’t. And Donald Trump himself isn’t truly a fascist; when you look at the things he’s actually done, he’s nothing more than a standard Reaganite conservative. The permanent security state has potential to use Trump’s White House for facilitating a massive purge against dissent, though; and the narrative tool for this effort will be the anti-woke psyop, which can be used to manipulate large parts of the population. The plan is to use ultra-left groups, such as PSL, to stage a provocation that can be used for demonizing Palestine supporters. The worst elements of Trumpism will say that China is behind these activities, precipitating a major crackdown, a proxy war over Taiwan, or most likely both.

These events will occur regardless of how much pressure we try to put on the Trump White House, or who Trump puts in his cabinet. Attacking mass movements through anti-wokeness is the best option the deep state has at this point, so it will ensure that the Trump government carries out such an operation. And this effort will be assisted by many of the same actors on the right who’ve stood against NATO, because though they don’t think the Ukraine proxy war is worthwhile, they’re violently anti-Palestinian and often anti-China. They’re still against the Ukraine proxy war, which we can use to our advantage; but in this new stage, they’re going to be the ones who our security state assigns to purge dissent. Our movement can survive this purge, and we have a great opportunity to connect with the masses; but we can’t act complacent.

As we work to gain tactical victories from the divisions within our ruling class, we must keep in mind that there’s a bipartisan plan to criminalize our efforts. For the struggle to live on amid the crackdown, we must prepare for the crackdown’s next stages. The era we’ve entered into has much promise, but just as much peril, and we have to recognize both.

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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 pressures amid 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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Fewer Americans are accepting liberal demonization of the MAGA base, bringing us closer to workers unity

A future where the USA’s people unite against our monopolist system, and build a new society that works for the collective, is becoming easier to see. During 2016 and 2020, the ruling class was still quite successful in dividing the masses; but today, there’s a much greater willingness to come together against our capitalist dictatorship. And a major sign of this is the collapse of the Democratic Party. I’m not just talking about the electoral devastation the Democrats have experienced; I’m talking about the decline in their ability to steer the discourse. Less Americans are interested in the culture wars than they used to be; the national consciousness has become much more focused on our declining living standards, and how our government has engineered this decline.

The Gaza genocide has caused disillusionment among many people who used to be in the Democrat camp; and the inflation crisis has provoked a reaction from people all across the ideological spectrum. This growth in mass awareness has ultimately doomed not just the Democrats, but also MAGA, as Trump will most certainly betray his base’s wishes for change. He won’t end the wars, nor re-industrialize the country; monopoly capital’s degrowth schemes will continue, and the new administration will appease the new cold warriors like how Trump did in his first term. 

Yet the prospects for building a mass anti-imperialist movement are greater than ever, because with the Democratic Party’s collapse has come a massive growth in proto-revolutionary consciousness. So many of Obama’s voters went to Trump because they saw that the Democrats weren’t willing to end our ongoing depression, nor take on the big banks, nor end the neocon foreign policy paradigm. And today, there’s more concern about these things than ever. As Trump repeats his pro-imperialist behaviors from last time around, MAGA is going to lose momentum. Which will create new opportunities for an authentic anti-imperialist movement to gain a presence among the masses.

How many of the younger MAGA voters we’ll bring in depends on how well we can combat the anti-woke or “red pill” influencers, who’ve won over a great number of young men especially. Another major opponent of ours within this arena will be the far right, who sell more extreme ideas like the “Jewish question.” These actors, which are heavily backed by the algorithms, represent an obstacle to be taken seriously; but they can’t stop the construction of a strong revolutionary institutional force. If communists do actual work for their own communities, as they increasingly have been doing, then we’ll win a kind of mass support that stands apart from online politics. If we build cadres that are well-disciplined, and trained both theoretically and physically, we’ll be prepared for whatever attacks come to us. If we master secret work, the state’s repression will fail to halt our operations.

This is the great strength that communists, and the other anti-imperialists who communists ally with, are able to gain if we work for it. And during this moment, we have the additional advantage of being in a society where the old hegemony is unraveling. If liberals can no longer funnel as many people into Trump Derangement Syndrome, then more will be willing to focus on the class struggle. And since this liberal weakening is part of a larger decline in the relevance of the culture wars, then the far right is also going to encounter a problem.

The far right have been trying to substitute the stale old conservative culture war battles with other, edgier ways to divide people; they’ve been promoting the white genocide narrative, and the Jewish conspiracy narrative, and violent misogyny. But with Trump’s election, they’ve lost momentum. Had Harris won, the neo-Nazis would have exploited a massive surge in right-wing resentment; instead, they’re now trying to find their role within a landscape that gives their enemies many advantages. The trajectory of where things are going is for the communists and anti-imperialists to rise; and we will rise, if we navigate our conditions correctly.

The radical liberals in the PSL will gain something out of this too, but their progress will have major limitations. Trump winning was the best thing that could have happened to these actors who claim the “communist” label, while promoting Trump Derangement Syndrome and rejecting the masses. The PSL will grow, yet it won’t grow beyond the niche of alienated leftists. Its ideology is an extension of the Democratic Party’s ideology, which has been decisively rejected by the bulk of the masses.

Because the PSL can’t grow beyond the leftist niche, it’s not a threat in the way that the anti-woke grifters or the far right are; whereas the right is actually capable of drawing large mass energy away from the revolutionary cause, the PSL can only win over those already within the liberal bubble. However, PSL does pose a threat in that it can undermine the pro-Palestine movement. It represents a fifth column within this movement, created by the NGO-industrial complex, that’s capable of isolating the pro-Palestine struggle from the masses; as well as diluting this struggle by shifting the focus away from Palestine, and towards simply opposing Trump.

This is the thing PSL has done by planning its day of action on January 20th, which amounts to an Antifa LARP rally; the thing that makes it a detriment to the pro-Palestine movement is how it doesn’t center Palestine, but rather a general sense of outrage against Trump. PSL believes holding a rally about Trump on January 20th is more important than holding a rally about Palestine on the same day; which reinforces the Democrat narrative that Trump represents an exceptional evil. The message conveyed by this is that Trump, and the MAGA base by extension, are a bigger problem than the genocide in Gaza. This diverts precious resources and attention away from the genocide, as well as distracts from how our enemy is a system; not any one politician.

It’s a shallow attempt to appeal to the liberals who have an unhealthy fixation on Trump. And if PSL and its associated orgs get to define where the pro-Palestine movement goes, it will render this movement largely nonexistent, its energy turned towards shallow “ResistanceTM ” sloganeering. But most Americans reject this rhetoric, because they’re increasingly seeing through the psyops designed to keep them polarized. If we can build a movement whose goal is genuinely to do what’s best for the anti-imperialist cause, and for the class struggle which encompasses it, then we’ll reach these disillusioned masses. The NGO forces will then be left behind, and the state’s counterinsurgency will be rendered truly ineffectual.

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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 pressures amid 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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The Palestinian people’s fight to stay on their own land, and how it will break the entire colonial order

Above: an occupier tank being blown up by resistance forces in north Gaza, image by Islamic Republic News Agency

For this extermination effort to succeed in erasing the Palestinians, its targets would need to be extirpated from their land, and thereby be made much easier to neutralize. The “Israeli” Nazi entity wishes it could put the Palestinians in the same situation that the Native Americans or the Australian Aboriginals are now in; that Palestine’s indigenous people could be too numerically reduced, and too lacking in allies or physical power, to existentially threaten the state which oppresses them. 

Ultimately, all the states that subjugate their indigenous inhabitants will be overthrown; this process won’t look the same throughout each of the different locations, but it will happen. And perhaps the greatest point of vulnerability for this colonial order, both narratively and economically, are the lands in which Palestine’s indigenous people continue to fight. There’s no way to break their will, because they’re doing the only thing they can do. 

Should “Israel” succeed in forcing 700,000 Gazans from the north to the south, then those Gazans largely won’t be able to survive. The north is in great part where the Gaza strip’s vegetation exists, with the environment below Khan Yunis being far drier in comparison. So the struggle to keep this land isn’t just about avoiding even more overcrowding in the south; it’s about avoiding overcrowding that would happen inside a place where resources are already far too scarce. The Palestinians don’t just have every right to stay in their home; they have every right to live, which is what’s at stake here. For hundreds of thousands of people right now, it’s either fight for north Gaza, or die in a desert concentration camp. And this makes their drive to resist all the greater.

This is an essential factor behind the membership growth of Hamas since October 7: the only path forward is to fight back. And this is why the effort to paint the resistors as villains simply can’t succeed: when humanity sees this situation, it can easily understand which side is in the right. As the Zionist entity embarks on its effort to officially annex the West Bank, which would entail the same kind of ethnic cleansing project, those who counter-attack there will also be recognized as heroes. Outside Zionism’s insular propaganda bubble of lies and hatred, nobody can look at these developments and believe that “Israel” is an innocent victim. And this is a crucial reason why “Israel” has already died.

If “Israel” could cleanly expel the remaining Palestinians, reaching a kind of “final solution” that brings the colonial project to a new stage, this would afford Zionism greater stability. It would let the entity say to the world “we’ve reached peace,” and argue that the Palestinian question isn’t even worth thinking about anymore; “Israel” could become the more sustainable type of state that the USA or Australia are. But this is entirely a fantasy. Such a scenario of total victory for the colonizers is the only way the “Greater Israel” political faction could realize its goal for massive expansion, and the only way this could happen is through an insane number of wars. Wars that the entity isn’t capable of winning, because the indigenous peoples it seeks to annihilate are in far too strong of a strategic place. 

“Israel” can’t even subdue the guerrilla forces inside Gaza and the West Bank; it’s experiencing failure after failure in the fight against these resistors, which has demographically shrunken its small pseudo-empire. More than half a million “Israelis” left Palestine and didn’t return during the first six months after October 7, while a quarter of the remaining “Israelis” have considered leaving since then. And it’s increasingly likely that they’ll decide to flee too. As the “Israeli” economic, security, and even energy situations get worse, this is going to ensure that Zionism’s ethnic supremacist project unravels; because the entire basis for Zionism is to keep Palestinians a small minority inside the Jewish state’s territories. Faced with the prospect of losing this crucial advantage, “Israel” feels its only option is to keep expanding the conflicts, which ensures that all aspects of its crisis will worsen.

A Palestinian state will come into being; that’s the trajectory of all these events. And by that point, what remains of “Israel” won’t be able to survive. Every corner of the land will become free, helping catalyze a larger revolutionary transition; an upheaval that the colonial economic order can’t withstand.

Because the colonial genocides of North America were so successful, the ruling class within the USA and Canada managed to delay their own demise. Had their indigenous opposition been as strong as the one “Israel” faces, these states would long ago have been defeated; instead, they’ve been able to become core forces in the system of global monopoly finance capital. Though this has given them a much greater longevity than they would have had otherwise, they’ve still come to be threatened by an internal population which has an interest in their defeat. Our finance capitalists are imperiled by the existence of a post-industrial working class, increasingly large and discontented, that could throw off the capitalist dictatorship and establish a workers state. And when the Palestinians end Zionism, the monopolists will lose an indispensable strategic outpost, hastening the collapse of their system.

The original settler-colonial states could only survive by evolving to the next stage in their imperial development, becoming vessels for an international financial order which supersedes individual nations. The colonial economic structure still exists, but it’s now in a different form than it first was; during capital’s monopoly stage, the “core” countries now export capital rather than goods. As was the case during colonialism’s initial era, the peripheral countries remain exploited; but a shift in the power balance is now happening, and Palestine’s liberation will be instrumental in completing this process.

Palestine has been able to ensure its victory because the Zionist movement got delayed in when it could begin the war against Palestine. As historian Tony Judt has concluded, by that point humanity had reached a stage of development that made Zionism’s evils untenable:

One nationalist movement, Zionism, was frustrated in its ambitions. The dream of an appropriately sited Jewish national home in the middle of the defunct Turkish Empire had to wait upon the retreat of imperial Britain: a process that took three more decades and a second world war. And thus it was only in 1948 that a Jewish nation-state was established in formerly Ottoman Palestine. But the founders of the Jewish state had been influenced by the same concepts and categories as their fin-de-siècle contemporaries back in Warsaw, or Odessa, or Bucharest; not surprisingly, Israel’s ethno-religious self-definition, and its discrimination against internal “foreigners,” has always had more in common with, say, the practices of post-Habsburg Romania than either party might care to acknowledge. The problem with Israel, in short, is not—as is sometimes suggested—that it is a European “enclave” in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a “Jewish state”—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.

Less than a hundred years after 1948, these new strengths for the anti-colonial cause have made “Israel” enter into a terminal decline. The Palestinians have already won, letting all the other peoples who colonialism has subjugated gain the power to achieve their own victory. The Russian people’s success at combating imperialism in Ukraine helped inspire the Al Aqsa Flood Operation, catalyzing a whole new stage in the struggle; next, Al Aqsa Flood will help inspire many more to take actions that change where history goes.

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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 pressures amid 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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The utopian Trump-Musk promise, our genocidal reality, & the evils that our government will import

Our ruling class wants to make it so that the negation to liberalism is something which sets our civilization backwards, rather than bringing us to the next stage. MAGA came into being as a mass reaction to the liberal order’s evils. The engineered economic collapse, the wars that have now lasted around a quarter of a century, the foul play by pharmaceutical monopolies, the technocratic corporate efforts to police discourse; all of these things helped make Trump’s win possible. And what this last election showed was that the media isn’t capable of overriding populist sentiments in the way that the technocrats thought they could. Yet as Trump’s new cabinet gets established, and neocons like Marco Rubio get welcomed into the next White House, it’s becoming clearer that monopoly capital is fully capable of steering where this supposed revolution goes. We just saw another example of this when the anti-Ukraine Matt Gaetz got pressured into withdrawing his nomination for attorney general; the permanent security state is in place to define the new government’s character and actions.

To the Palestinians, the election’s outcome was always irrelevant; the extermination of their people was going to keep happening no matter what, and happen in essentially the same way. Now, as MAGA gets further revealed as controlled opposition, more Americans are going to be confronted with how voting can’t bring change. If the system gets its way, though, this will be just the start of a long dystopic cycle. A cycle where the technocratic liberal wing orchestrates a coup to “save democracy” from the MAGA-aligned wing, then the MAGA wing is assigned to return later on, and so forth. CJ Hopkins has warned that if we don’t intervene, this is the future we can expect:

The Musk Cult is growing. Its apostles are preaching the Gospel of Elon throughout the empire, paving the road to The Privatization of Everything! Verily, it is the dawn of a golden age of “Freedom” ruled by global corporations and beneficent oligarchs! However, before that golden age can begin, America must be made great again! And so the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP has to be repeated on the macro-level. The same conservative populist resistance to the evolution of the global-capitalist system that Musk corralled and neutralized needs to be corralled and neutralized…Once it is corralled, and neutralized, and whipped up into a frenzy over “Wokeness,” “Cultural Marxism,” and “Communism,” it can be unleashed on the remnants of the dying age of nation-states, national sovereignty, constitutions, and so on, which will prompt the Global Powers That Be to take extreme measures to “defend democracy,” which will prompt the Other Global Powers That Be to take more extreme measures to “Rescue the Republic,” which will prompt the Global Powers That Be to take even more extreme extreme measures to “defend democracy from fascism” and … OK, this time, I do think you see where this is going.

To avoid this path, we must confront what these psyops seek to hide. We must look at the things our government is doing to the peoples of Gaza, Lebanon, and increasingly the West Bank, because they reveal the true nature of the system we’re fighting. When you see that a genocide is happening, and that both sides of the inter-elite power struggle are facilitating this genocide, it becomes clearer who humanity’s real friends and enemies are. If our “anti-establishment” leaders assist in mass murder and ethnic cleansing, then it’s no surprise that these leaders are also willing to betray the USA’s people. Zionism’s crimes are proof that these figures don’t offer a bright future, they offer expanded suffering and death.

That’s one of the initial realizations somebody can come to when they’re approaching dissident politics from the right; and there are plenty within the conservative base who have gone down this path, where it becomes apparent that Zionism is not a good thing. It’s because of this that the ruling class is propagating a series of psyops specifically designed to steer these kinds of Americans towards false consciousness; there are narratives that seek to turn pro-Russian people against China, and ones that seek to make anti-Zionists conclude Jewish people are the source of capital’s contradictions. The latter psyop especially is dangerous, and we must work to combat such deceptions. But the fact that the narrative managers have found it necessary to intervene within the discourse in these ways shows an anti-establishment mass trend is emerging. 

What this trend produces will depend on which political and ideological forces get to shape our society during this new phase. Communists and anti-imperialists are in a better place now than we would be if Harris had won; the neo-Nazis have a deficiency in momentum due to Trump’s victory, the Democratic Party has collapsed, and the contradictions within MAGA are already being exposed. The USA’s political reorientation—where liberals become the primary warmongers, while conservatives seek to negate liberalism—is now being accelerated. As we welcome more disillusioned elements into our circles, a crucial part of our job is to prepare these masses for fighting back against the state’s attacks.

The next stage in this awakening is to realize what the genocide means for the nature of our power struggle; what it means that our government is united in believing that the populations which challenge capital have no rights. If the pro-Zionist liberals—and the MAGA leaders who collaborate with them on this issue—have no problem with deliberately slaughtering defenseless people, then they’ll try to do this in the United States. This isn’t happening yet; in the present stage, Palestine is the central issue. And in the USA, the best way to agitate for Palestine is by speaking of how the war machine is economically impacting Americans. In the long term, though, our rulers will try to bring the violence from abroad into our own communities. This is the ultimate consequence of acting complicit in the genocide: it will bring blowback.

Our government will try to get away with bombing U.S. neighborhoods, like it has in the past, and it will work to drone strike more U.S. citizens than it already has. This is the logical conclusion of the new bipartisan plan for silencing dissent. That this plan first targets Palestine supporters shows how anti-wokeness is now the primary imperial propaganda tool, and will remain so until wokeness again becomes the favored tactic.

The evidence that both sides of the ruling class are the enemy, and that they both aim to inflict tremendous harm upon the USA’s people, is already easy to see. Not everyone will change their politics because of this, but our immediate task isn’t to bring a universal consciousness shift. To overthrow the imperial state, we only need to educate and mobilize the most advanced among the masses; which entails an effort at bringing in as many people as possible, but only requires a certain amount of narrative success. The far right, the liberals, the ultra-lefts, and the revolutionary cause’s other enemies will continue to go on the propaganda offensive; and certain people among them, especially the ultra-leftists, will join with the state in trying to inflict violence upon us. Our only path forward is to do the equivalent of what past successful revolutionaries have done, and work with the people towards defeating capital.

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As the imperialists threaten all of humanity, we must learn from the Russian people’s determination to fight back

This is a moment of unfathomable peril, maybe more dangerous than any other time in history; but it provides us with a crucial lesson. It shows that if we want to survive, and win the fight for humanity’s future, we’ll need to understand there’s no appeasing the enemy we face. That any requests for the enemy’s mercy will only make it attack with more viciousness. The only language it understands is the language of the counter-attack, and the only way to be free from its violence is by making sure it can no longer operate. This applies to the geopolitical fight; to the national liberation struggle waged by the Palestinians and others; and to the broader class war. We all must internalize that there’s no compromise with a force which isn’t interested in peace; the sole way forward is to commit to the fight, whatever the costs. Because for as severe as the price of resistance may be, it can never be as big as the price of giving the enemy no consequences.

This is the reality that Russia is facing with the USA’s deciding to use long-range missiles for attacks inside Russian territory. When the U.S. used Ukraine to strike into Russia, the best way for Russia to prevent nuclear confrontation was by carrying out a massive strike upon Ukraine. That’s the view of inspector Scott Ritter, who’s said that he normally doesn’t favor violent solutions, but in this case sees such an action as the best method for avoiding nuclear war. “NATO only acts on weakness, the perception of weakness,” Ritter has observed.

A major non-nuclear strike has been Russia’s only sensible option because if Washington isn’t shown that Russia’s threats are serious, then it will launch ever-bigger attacks against Russia, which will force Russia to retaliate on a proportional scale. That would make a nuclear exchange all the more likely. Russia acting earlier on is the scenario where the deaths get minimized. And today, Russia did just that; it launched its new Oreshnik medium-range missile at Ukraine, conveying the essential message of warning. Whether that warning is enough to stop the aggressors from pursuing bigger attacks, we have yet to find out. The danger has not gone away; U.S. media headlines have falsely called the Oreshnik missile an “intercontinental ballistic missile,” a psyop that’s clearly meant to manufacture support for new escalations. But Russia has shown the political will to retaliate when the circumstances call for this. 

This action wasn’t unexpected from the perspective of the United States; by escalating, Washington was hoping to ensure that the war would continue, locking the Trump administration the conflict and keeping Europe on Washington’s side. The joke is on the imperialists, though, because the war lasting longer is not going to make them win the war. It will only further exacerbate the imperial system’s collapse, as the rest of the conflict has done. Even when Russia does what Washington hopes for it to do, Russia wins; as long as a counter-attack is measured, rather than flailing or indecisive, progress gets made towards bringing about imperialism’s final defeat. If Russia had reacted to this provocation by becoming paralyzed, and refusing to take any action, that would have all but ensured our doom; but instead it’s replied to Washington by saying “okay, I’ll play.” And it will without any doubt win this game.

These events almost exactly mirror the situation Iran has found itself in amid the Zionist entity’s strike against an Iranian nuclear facility, which happened almost a month ago. This was supposed to be Iran’s red line; that was communicated by the anti-imperialist political element within Iran’s government. But Iran still hasn’t retaliated, either for this crime or for last month’s other Zionist aggressions, because Iran’s capitulationist forces have too much control. These U.S.-friendly reformers have lost the cultural debate; their “ceasefire deal” with Netanyahu was fully exposed as fraudulent when the enemy murdered Nasrallah. Iran’s people have increasingly been turning against the reformers, and supporting Khamenei in his efforts to steer the country towards serious resistance. But the reformers maintain enough influence to hold back progress. 

By perpetuating this inaction, and starting on an effort to make friends with the new Trump administration, the reformers are sending the message that Iran’s enemies can aggress against it with impunity. The only thing the aggressors understand is force, so in the absence of that force, they’re now likely wondering how big of an attack they can get away with. Unless the Trump team intends to keep Netanyahu on a leash, which all signs show it doesn’t, its plan is in all likelihood to create a faux-reconciliation deal; one that gives an opening for unprecedented assaults upon Iran’s infrastructure, research centers, and civilians.

The reformers are such a stubborn problem largely because of the country’s class relations. Iran’s economy hasn’t yet been nationalized enough for the power balance to fully shift in favor of the proletariat, and therefore in favor of the hardliners. As of now, Iran doesn’t have a war economy, since neoliberal policies have been able to undo many of the Islamic revolution’s worker gains. The proletariat doesn’t have enough leverage, so those who seek to appease the U.S. empire and the “Israeli” Nazi entity can operate as if their position is the pragmatic one. 

Russia’s story shows that there’s hope for Iran’s anti-imperialist struggle; post-Soviet Russia was once a U.S. client state with a fully neoliberalized economy. Then Putin’s government came into being, and realized that unless it started acting in the people’s interests, the existing state wouldn’t be able to sustain itself. To survive, the bourgeois government needed to act more like the Soviet Union. Russia hasn’t become socialist again, but it’s increasingly been on the path back to socialism, and this has greatly weakened U.S. power. 

When Putin gave the following statement about the Oreshnik missile launch, he spoke to the Russian people’s desire for defeating imperialism and fascism; which was what pushed Putin to start the Ukraine operation in the first place:

We are testing the Oreshnik missile system in combat conditions in response to the aggressive actions of NATO countries against Russia. The question of further deployment of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles will be decided by us depending on the actions of the United States and its satellites. The targets to be hit during further tests of our newest missile systems will be determined by us based on threats to the security of the Russian Federation. We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow Ukraine to use their weapons against our facilities, and in the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond just as decisively and in a mirror image. I recommend that the ruling elites of those countries that have plans to use their military contingents against Russia also think about this seriously.

Russia’s philosophy of self-defense hasn’t come to dominate on all fronts of the global anti-imperialist struggle. Those in Iran who understand what Russia does have yet to fully defeat the liberal appeasers; and there are plenty of ostensibly “communist” or “anti-imperialist” organizations that do the equivalent of what these appeasers do. Opportunism, reformism, illusions about being able to avoid state repression through compromises; these illnesses pervade so much of “socialist” politics. We all must take example from Russia’s anti-imperialists, who’ve chosen the only path that lets you defeat a determined foe.

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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 pressures amid 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. 

To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.