Victory won’t come on its own: the Axis of Resistance can only win if we wage a popular struggle alongside it

Above: Iran launching its missiles

There can only be a successful resistance towards Washington’s war drive if we build the international workers force which can actually change the power balance. If we create a global united front behind the Axis of Resistance, like the united front that was instrumental in helping Vietnam defeat the USA. This aspect of collective organization, of class struggle, is what’s been largely missing from anti-imperialist or “antiwar” politics in the present-day Global North.

The movement which opposes Washington’s aggressions has relied too much on the “alternative” media, which so often tells us what we want to hear rather than giving us an honest strategic appraisal; and this has kept the movement detached from the actual national liberation and class struggles. These struggles are the driving forces behind all anti-imperialist victories, and we must truly become part of them.

Because of this gap in experience and awareness, too often we’ve expected victory to come of its own accord. But every time our cause has gotten a win, it’s been the outcome of fights waged by the popular masses, whose interests wouldn’t be represented if not for collective organization and a struggle against the capitalist class. Iran became as anti-imperialist as it now is because of the proletarian influences within its revolution, which have made the country’s economy essentially socialist. The equivalent is the case for capitalist Russia, which wouldn’t have entered into a fight against NATO if not for the leverage the country’s Communist Party holds. 

Likewise, whenever the anti-imperialist cause has experienced a setback, it’s been due to the areas in which class struggle has been lacking; due to the ways the bourgeoisie have been able to maintain or retake power, and thereby corrupt the efforts at resisting the hegemon. 

Iran is socialistic in its economic structure, but in political terms it’s not a dictatorship of the proletariat; different class influences within its political order are still battling for control. Which has made it easier for the imperialists to undermine the revolutionary forces within Iran. Starting with Soleimani, Washington has been perpetrating a wave of assassinations against the revolutionaries in Iran’s leadership, one that they hope will ultimately take the life of Khamenei himself. With the assassination of President Raisi in May of last year, Iran’s liberal reformers got an opportunity for gaining power, and soon they managed to elect President Pezeshkian. When Haniyeh was murdered in July, Pezeshkian refused to retaliate; this move was part of a “peace” deal where the Zionist entity promised not to attack Lebanon in exchange for restraint from Iran. It was only after the entity started a new war on Lebanon anyway, and murdered Nasrallah, that the revolutionaries regained the leverage to carry out a retaliatory strike.

Since then, Khamenei’s faction has been able to get more influence in important areas. After Khamenei declared in March that Iran won’t seriously negotiate with Washington, Iran has inflicted damage upon the Zionist entity, to a more serious degree than it previously had the political will to do. These developments are good, but so many more things will need to happen before the resistance can actually start bringing its lines forward; the recent retaliations are defensive in nature, and to win, it will need to make up for its biggest recent losses. Losses that also came about due to lack of popular struggle, not just locally but in the empire’s core.

The fall of Syria’s anti-imperialist government came about from a combination of bourgeois sabotage within its political structure, lack of will from its allies to assist Syria, and refusal from the U.S. left to act in solidarity with the country. All of these problems stem from the same ill: a failure to rebuild the international workers movement. This is something that I especially want to convey to left-wing or antiwar people in my own country, because it’s those of us in the United States whose government is leading all of these destructive schemes.

It’s important to recognize the internal deficiencies that have made these countries more vulnerable to Washington’s aggressions. In the case of Syria, those deficiencies looked like a substantial bourgeois political presence that undermined the will to defend the country; and this is useful to learn, but our takeaway from it cannot simply be “imperialism’s targets need to act more ideologically pure.” Purity isn’t the point, class struggle is. The only practical way we can respond to these problems is by building up the international solidarity movement, which will have a positive effect in all areas. It will help the anti-imperialist rebels who continue to fight the Syrian jihadist coup regime, but that at present are far from victory; it will help the Iranians, the Palestinians, the Yemenis, the Lebanese, and every other people who are resisting the hegemon.

Doing that work to revitalize the proletarian movement is the only productive path forward. We can debate about how well these countries have been living up to the ideal of an anti-imperialist ally, and it’s necessary to point to the real problems with them. But for more progress to come in the fight against the hegemon, there is going to need to be a struggle from the bottom-up. We within the movement are going to need to construct the organizational outlets that the globe’s masses will require in order to assert their interests, whether that looks like weakening the imperialist governments, strengthening the resolve of the anti-imperialist governments, or undermining U.S. proxy states such as “Israel” and post-Assad Syria.

This work must become our central focus, and we have to treat it as an urgent task. Washington’s recent sabotages of potential peace efforts in Iran and Ukraine have pushed Iran and Russia in a more revolutionary direction, but this can only take our cause so far. When the struggle against the hegemon wins, it will happen not due to a reaction from the bourgeois states that have been pushed into conflict with the empire, but due to the advances from the international workers struggle. And those of us in the empire’s core shouldn’t act like we’re above the world’s other proletarians in any way, but we must recognize the unique role that our location gives us. Joti Brar has pointed out that “Ultimately, the system’s final death blows will be delivered by workers on the home front. Genuinely revolutionary parties must be built in the imperialist countries, and they must establish strong connections with the masses.”

It’s by learning from the revolutionary movements in the countries which imperialism targets that we’ll be able to properly carry out this mission. These movements are the ones that have already achieved great new progress following the USSR’s fall; they’ve managed to massively change the balance of power shortly after the liberation struggle experienced such a severe setback. If we follow their lead, we will bring the struggle to its next stage.

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The Dems seek to neutralize the mass movement behind Zohran. Only a pro-Palestine united front can prevent this.

The popular base behind Zohran Mamdani is real, and has great revolutionary potential; the risk is in how this potential could become misdirected. Mamdani was able to beat Cuomo because of how big of a pro-Palestine element there is within the masses, particularly Gen Z. And the idea that Zohran is a change-maker has gained serious traction in dissident circles, including ones that aren’t necessarily on the left; Jimmy Dore and his community have joined in on the excitement around Zohran. This is why when we point to the problems with Zohran, we need to take a different posture than simply saying “this candidate is bad actually.”

That would be like making it your whole mission to “stop Trump,” while denying the massive trend towards class consciousness that the MAGA movement represents. We should recognize the problems with the leaders of reformist movements that gain popular momentum, while not discarding the movements themselves; otherwise we’ll isolate ourselves from the masses. I see why Zohran has gotten popular support, like I see why Trump gained that support; there’s a reason why so many of the people see something in him. So my point is not that Zohran has contradictions, and therefore we should tear him down; my main point is that the system could take advantage of these contradictions, and use them to further an agenda that undermines the pro-Palestine movement.

When Zohran affirms the “Israel has a right to exist” idea, or condemns the Al Aqsa Flood Operation, these are certainly bad things; but the problems they present go beyond anything Zohran himself has the potential to do. The reality of Zohran’s situation is that if he becomes mayor, he’ll be navigating an environment which will no doubt force him to acquiesce; like with Bernie Sanders, the strength of Zohran lies not in what the leader is willing to do, or what they can do within the system, but in the mass movement that’s formed behind them. In the potential for the movement to become a force unto itself, break from reformist politics, and organize towards the defeat of the ruling class.

Many of the people who’ve gravitated towards Zohran would not have done so if they hadn’t seen him say a ton of things beyond the “I support Israel’s right” line; they know that this candidate represents a trend which was produced by the rise in pro-Palestine sentiment. So when I critique him for saying this, my primary concern is not that he’ll convince anti-Zionists to become Zionists; there’s a large section of the masses which have become immune to Zionist propaganda, and the narrative managers have been forced to give up on converting them anyhow. The risk is instead that the Democratic Party could divert the Zohran movement, and prevent it from becoming a force unto itself; which would enable the Dems to divert the larger pro-Palestine movement.

What our ruling class seeks to do with the Palestinian struggle is make it captured by liberal Zionist NGOs, more than it’s already been. The struggle’s enemies want to kill any potential projects at building popular organizational power, thereby making way for forces that claim to be “pro-Palestine” while promoting Zionism. A key part of this mission is to separate the concept of supporting Palestine from the concept of supporting the Palestinian resistance; which requires selling an idea of the “two-state solution” that’s compatible with the campaign to exterminate the Palestinians.

When Hamas says it wants a two-state solution, it means this in a fundamentally different way from how liberal Zionists mean it. The resistance seeks two states because that will be a necessary incremental step towards the ultimate full dissolution of the Jewish ethno-state. Realistically the occupier won’t disappear all at once; so creating a Palestinian state alongside it is how to build Palestine’s strength back up, until what remains of “Israel” becomes unable to continue. Liberal Zionists see two states as a way to preserve the existence of “Israel,” where the indigenous people can be made to permanently compromise with the colonizers. For this reason, as long as liberal Zionists hold decisive influence over the pro-Palestine movement we won’t even get a compromise. The only way we’ll ever get a Palestinian state, in any form, is if the resistance wins; the occupier will never willingly give away its territories, so it will need to be forced into that.

If the Democratic Party gets its way, the hope which Zohran has created for progress towards Palestine’s liberation will be used to placate the movement. To neutralize the forces that would otherwise keep organizing in solidarity with the resistance, giving more control to the “pro-Palestine” actors who seek to maintain the Zionist entity. Bernie Sanders and other social democrat spokespeople are the ones who fill this role within the anti-Palestine counterinsurgency.

When pressed, Sanders has refused even to endorse the BDS movement; which is indicative of what the NGO-industrial complex seeks to do. The liberal Zionist PAC J Street, which backs Sanders and is connected with the biggest Zionist “peace” NGOs, promotes a path of compromise and nothing else. The EU-tied Palestinian Peace Coalition, for example, seeks to “reinstill in the Israeli and Palestinian peoples the hope that it is possible to reach an agreement that will serve their respective national and personal interests and aspirations.” Which, in the absence of supporting divestment or the resistance, amounts to endless discussions that will never bring the occupation closer to ending.

This is the nature of “pro-Palestine” Democratic Party politics: a trap that’s designed to stop any real potential for defeating the occupiers. Even if Zohran is better than someone like Sanders, he’s functioning within the rigged game of reformism, and he’s already been pressured into conceding key parts of the argument to the Zionists. What the ruling class hopes Palestine supporters do is simply keep cheering on Zohran, or other reformist figures who are sympathetic to our cause, without building the organizational front we need. It will not be so easy to neutralize us, though; the mass energy for a pro-resistance movement is there. 

I understand why a Palestine supporter would support Zohran; it makes sense when he’s a representative of the Palestinian movement who has substantial momentum. And I welcome these supporters into the next efforts at constructing a united front for Palestine.

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Kash Patel’s war on dissent, & the “dissident” media figures who’ve sold him as an anti-establishment hero

The Kash Patel psyop has cost our social movements many months of extremely precious time in the fight against repression. It’s created hubris where there should be caution, complacency where there should be alertness. When you can get the bulk of the people who are disillusioned with the political establishment to place hope in the same figure who’s been assigned to crush dissent, all of the imperial state’s schemes will be able to go forward with impunity for the perpetrators.

This is why it’s no longer effective to simply speak truth to power: our rulers have become bold enough that they don’t feel a need to conceal their crimes anymore. And a crucial reason why they’ve come to feel so above consequence is that dissent has been thoroughly captured. Even though the majority of the U.S. masses see that our ruling institutions aren’t on their side, it’s easy for the state to create diversions that placate the people. And this is not the people’s fault; the primary ones to blame are the “dissident” figures who have agency to go against the ruling class, but choose to present the people with false solutions. In this case, the “solution” has been to cheer on Kash Patel for his supposed efforts to fight corruption, even though what we’ve seen from Patel is an acceleration of the deep state’s anti-democratic campaigns.

When Trump was trying to get his cabinet picks confirmed, this is the sentiment we heard from commentators like Candace Owens: we’ve got to support every Trump appointee who’s getting pushback from the major parts of government. The core problem with this strategy is that it’s by default a surrender of popular power towards the ruling class; and this is because the elite faction which Trump and Patel represent is inherently antagonistic towards the popular interests.

We’ve seen this when Patel’s FBI has raided the homes of relatively low-profile activists, like San Jose’s Alex Dillard; when it’s added onto ICE’s political persecution efforts by going after Michigan pro-Palestine organizers. Supporting Patel didn’t stop the wave of repression that the deep state had been planning prior to the 2024 election; this only aided the repression by taking attention away from it, and by promoting uncritical praise of Patel. Patel used this to carry out anti-liberty measures that were justified by the Russiagate narrative, which was the same psyop that the deep state once weaponized against Trump. That’s what StopFBI.org has reported in regard to the San Jose raid:

In April 2025, San Jose anti-war activist Alex Dillard was subjected to the execution of a federal search warrant. FBI agents raided his home and seized his personal electronic devices, seeking evidence of alleged ties to Russia and implying that he may have been acting as a foreign agent. We, as members of the San Jose community as well as the broad progressive people's movements in the U.S. and around the world, stand in solidarity with Alex against these attacks. We assert that these accusations are entirely baseless. They constitute a clear act of political retaliation against Alex's First Amendment-protected beliefs, activities, and associations. This incident is not isolated. It reflects a broader pattern of repression by federal agencies against activists, journalists, and organizers who speak out against U.S. imperialism, war, and systemic injustice.

Candace and the other alt media figures who’ve promoted Patel had an opportunity to bring serious public scrutiny upon the FBI; to rally the people against what the FBI is doing at a pivotal moment in the crackdown. And a majority of the conservatives in their audiences would have agreed that the repression is a bad thing. The modern conservative alt media represents a break from the old, unpopular War on Terror conservatism that the Daily Wire has to offer; Candace got the role in the discourse that she now has by splitting with Ben Shapiro over the Gaza genocide. Yet Candace has gone along with the “Kash Patel will change things” narrative, and so have Russell Brand, Tucker Carlson, and other conservatives who’ve sold themselves as transgressive voices. This expectation of a big shake-up due to Patel’s nomination became the default in many online political spaces, and big tech was glad to further boost that narrative in the algorithms.

The outcome of this false hope was that those targeted by the repression were left with far too few allies. There was massive attention on ICE’s persecution of Mahmoud Khalil, but when it’s come to the FBI’s attacks on civil liberties, the backlash has been marginal. Whereas Khalil’s detention actually did create some disillusionment among the MAGA base, the repressive campaign has gone largely unnoticed when it’s been carried out by the FBI, because the supposedly most radical and principled media sources have severely neglected that topic.

My argument is not that this problem will be corrected if these alt media figures learn from their mistakes, because we have no reason to trust them to learn from it. Their loyalty is to capital, and they’re concerned with advancing a business model; so whatever improvements they may make in their messaging, it will come as a reaction to preexisting trends in geopolitics and culture. It’s been an improvement for Tucker to go from promoting the War on Terror to encouraging sympathy with Russia; but he’s done this as part of an imperialist strategy to split Russia from China, which he still vilifies. It’s a good thing that Candace is calling out Zionism, but this has come with efforts by Candace to promote “Judeo-Bolshevik” anti-communist atrocity propaganda. These figures are not leaders of a revolutionary movement, but discourse actors who are trying to divert revolutionary energy. And to build a real movement, we will need to avoid any rhetoric that tails after them.

As Washington’s war on Iran gives the state a pretext for speeding up the crackdown, we have to orient ourselves around defending our orgs from these attacks, and around giving the people the means to fight back. This means applying historical knowledge about how people have resisted repression; how they’ve needed to create both a front guard and a rear guard, balancing the above-ground mass organizing with networks that can operate clandestinely. These are the kinds of things that the most widely visible “dissident” commentators never focus on, and it’s telling what kinds of actions they propose as a substitute. Since the election, when the crackdown has reached its new stage, these figures have at most advocated for siding with one wing of the deep state over another.

That’s what the push to get behind Kash Patel has been, and it’s likely to continue even after Trump has discredited himself through the Iran strikes. One of the narratives that’s become prevalent within alt media is the idea that even though there are bad elements in the Trump White House, there are also figures who could turn things around, and Trump is just being tricked by the bad advisors. Because of the Kash Patel psyop, Patel is still overwhelmingly viewed within these discourse spaces as one of the “good” Trump officials. 

There is great intertia and great confusion that’s come from these narrative manipulations, and this has happened at the worst possible time; this is when our government has launched a regional war to save the Zionist entity. The situation is extremely urgent in all areas, and the anti-imperialist movement has been crippled due to how much it’s relied on “alt” media and online politics. Any future our movement has will come from bottom-up organizing, not from appealing towards our rulers through internet campaigns.

The more that real change fails to come from the Trump wing of our ruling class, the more burned-out the masses are going to get on alt media. The danger will then be that dissident politics itself loses momentum, as it won’t have a clear path forward. What we must do is offer the people that path, in the form of a united front against this war drive; one which you don’t need to be a communist to join, but where communists are able to party-build and to propagate our ideas. That’s the role the American Communist Party, which I’m part of, seeks to have in this new antiwar movement. And if we navigate these conditions properly, we’ll be able to forge a different path for dissident circles. One that’s not reliant on any of the top-down forces which seek our movement’s destruction.

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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 Steve Witkoff “peace deal” psyop was what got us war with Iran. The antiwar movement must learn from this.

To understand how our government was able to start this war with Iran, we have to look at how the Trump White House sold a false promise of “peace.” And how certain voices from the “alternative” media have assisted in marketing this lie, even though these same commentators are now condemning Trump for attacking Iran.

The main figure I’m talking about is Tucker Carlson, who played a crucial part in providing cover for the Trump neocons as they prepared for this provocation. Carlson has denounced Trump’s strike on Iran, yet just three months ago, Carlson platformed the actor who’s been most instrumental in creating complacency over Trump’s Middle East policies: Steven Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. This March, Witkoff had an interview with Carlson where he articulated all the narratives the second Trump administration had been promoting about its foreign policy in that earlier stage. Witkoff asserted that Trump was genuinely looking for peace in Ukraine, peace in Gaza, and peace with Iran, and that by doing so he was mounting an authentic opposition towards the neocon establishment.

To craft this image of a Trump government that was standing up to the foreign policy elites, Witkoff and Carlson discussed how the media has targeted Witkoff, referring to instances where he’s been labeled an agent of Hamas or other foreign governments. Supposedly this meant he was standing up for real principles; but the reality is that whatever differences there are between Witkoff’s camp and the Zionists who’ve attacked him, these points of divergence are entirely superficial.

All that Witkoff and Trump have done to change Washington’s diplomatic posture is assert they’re open towards negotiations with these governments, which has actually served as a ploy for justifying more war and genocide. If Trump and Witkoff have been doing all they can to bring peace, then according to this narrative these foreign governments must be the ones who’ve undermined that goal. This is undoubtedly an idea that the advocates of war with Iran hope to promote as Trump escalates the conflict; and for the antiwar movement to resist this war, it will need to learn from the Steve Witkoff psyop.

The most destructive lie that Witkoff told in the interview, and that’s been propagated more widely by Trump’s apologists, was the notion about Trump having seriously intended to rescue the people of Gaza. Many of the commentators who’ve helped sell Trump as “fighting the deep state” recognize that what’s happening in Gaza is not a war but a genocide; so to deny that they’ve been narratively assisting this genocide, they’ve had to affirm the perception that Trump’s White House seeks to end the mass murder in Gaza.

This isn’t what Trump himself has said, with his stated plan being to ethnically cleanse Gaza; but Witkoff spoke as if there’s actually a chance that the U.S. will bring about economic development within Gaza, as opposed to engineering Gaza’s extermination like it’s actually doing. This lie was part of the cover which Washington managed to create for itself during that moment; a cover that concealed the plans for bringing the genocide into its next stage, and for instigating a regional war to save the Zionist entity.

If the antiwar movement wants to succeed, it will need to go beyond admitting that support for Trump was the wrong tactic. The movement will have to commit towards a united front with the forces that are resisting Washington’s aggressions; which means breaking out of online politics and “alt” media, and building an actual anti-imperialist front within the workers movement.

This is an essential question for all of the political actors and orgs that have spoken out against Trump’s Iran strike: are they willing to not just rhetorically oppose the war machine, but carry out the essential step of entering into class struggle? We’re not going to truly have an impact on our government’s war plans until we’ve prepared the proletariat to leverage their unique power against the war machine; to implement strikes across the core productive industries, ones designed to punish the ruling class for perpetrating these imperialist schemes. To bring about such a project, we will need to bring our orgs into the workers movement, and build up independent worker orgs. There is a viable route towards gaining the power we’ll need for victory, if we choose to take this route.

The Steve Witkoff psyop, and all other “dissident” ideas that involve appealing towards the ruling class, can only gain traction because our movement hasn’t pursued a truly revolutionary strategy. Because far too many “socialist” or “antiwar” orgs have avoided serious class struggle, and instead tried to win the favor of either the Democrats or the Republicans. This ruling class tailism is the easy path, the path that gets you boosted by the algorithms and keeps you relatively safe from repression. That opportunistic route is tempting, but anyone who sincerely wants to win this fight will reject it, and join in on the project for a workers struggle against the wars.

It’s this idea, the idea of class struggle, that can let the anti-imperialist movement truly make a compelling argument for why the masses should join it. The overwhelming majority of people who’ve been influenced by the Steve Witkoff psyop aren’t motivated by opportunism; they’re looking for answers, and the only answers they’ve found are ones which were crafted to keep them away from class struggle. When the movement for a workers revolt becomes stronger and more visible, it will gain much more mass pull.

This is how communists can intervene in the situation our government has created, and turn the backlash against the Iran war into an effective popular effort. The same applies to the backlash against the Gaza genocide, which is absolutely not finished despite the efforts to demobilize it. If we take the right lessons from what we’ve experienced, we’ll be able to end the antiwar movement’s cycle of defeats.

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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 antiwar movement will either side with the forces resisting U.S./Israeli aggression, or fail in its task

In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be any question as to whether those who want peace all support the forces which resist aggression. But it’s because we’re not in a perfect world that a peace movement is necessary; the reality is that the imperialists and the Zionists will never willingly stop aggressing, and they’ll use whatever tricks they can to try to weaken those who are against them. 

With the escalation of the U.S./Israeli war on Iran, one of the most insidious ploys they’re using is to pressure Iran’s potential friends into acquiescence. To make it seem like supporting the resistance, whether by militarily backing it up or by building a movement in solidarity with it, would come with too much of a cost. This is the narrative that’s being promoted by Russia’s capitalist ruling class, and a danger is that many parts of the global antiwar movement will follow in the example of that class.

Observes Paul Craig Roberts about the capitulationist turn that Putin has taken on Iran, and by extension on Palestine:

John Helmer reports that Putin said he supports the “unconditional security of Israel” and that the Russian-Iranian treaty “did not envisage military cooperation.”  Is this Putin’s green light for a US/Israeli strike on Iran? Why does Putin support the security of Israel but not of Iran?  Israel is the aggressor, not Iran.  Iran is a buffer for Russia.  Israel is a threat. Putin offered his ideas to Netanyahu and Trump on how to resolve the “problem.”  Putin said, “In my opinion, in general, such a solution can be found.” Putin does not understand that the problem is Greater Israel.  Iran is the last Muslim country with the capability of resisting the Israelization of the Middle East.  Israel has had a target on Iran for many years, and the American whore media has succeeded in demonizing Iran in the hearts and minds of the American people.

An important part of the context is that Russia has extended offers for help to Iran, but Iran has been hesitant to accept such help; which is indicative of how an imperial appeasement problem exists within both Russia and Iran. The issue doesn’t entirely come from Russia, but by making these declarations, Putin has shown how much he’s willing to contribute to this issue. The pro-appeasement faction within Russia is glad that Iran has remained indecisive in certain areas, and is using this as an excuse to take Russia’s policy in a more pro-Zionist direction.

We do not yet know how far the Trump White House will take its next escalations with Iran, or how far the Axis of Resistance will go in fighting back. But now that Russia has shown this is where it stands, it’s more likely that Washington will go through with striking Iran, and also that the Axis will have to stay in a defensive position throughout this conflict.

Even if Trump chooses the “peaceful” option of not striking Iran, the Zionist entity will use Russia’s complicity to further accelerate the genocide against the Palestinians, like it’s done every other time the balance of forces have at all shifted in Zionism’s favor. Whichever of these routes the empire next takes, it’s going to intensify its violence, and all throughout we’re going to hear a narrative that’s designed to keep us complacent. That encourages us to take a passive path in the face of imperial aggressions, like Russia’s pro-appeasement forces have, and forsake the resistance when it needs us most.

The great ideological threat we’re facing at this moment is social pacifism, the belief that “peace” is the most important and urgent thing no matter the context. The context that encompasses all of the wars our government involves itself in, and that social pacifism ignores, is the system of imperialism. As long as imperialism exists, the core capitalist countries will always be waging wars, or preparing for new wars. The monopolies need to maintain market control over the formerly colonized countries, so they’ll keep the capitalist state committed to war until the workers overthrow this state. This is what’s behind a growing ideological contradiction within the antiwar movement: the contradiction between the revolutionary side that wants to defeat capitalism, and the reformist side that believes war can be ended without defeating capitalism.

It’s the latter ideological current, the one which seeks to reconcile pro-capitalist ideology with an agenda of “peace,” that the pro-Zionist faction within Russia’s government aims to ally with. Russia’s pro-appeasement bourgeoisie doesn’t really believe in anything besides profit; it certainly doesn’t care about getting peace, or else it wouldn’t be siding with the Zionist instigators of war. But the reformist-minded actors within the antiwar movement do genuinely believe in the idea of peace, just in an idealistic way that’s led them to enable certain imperialist schemes.

Because of the prevalence of this “peace as soon as possible” worldview, the national bourgeoisie within Russia, Iran, or wherever else can undermine the anti-imperialist struggle without pushback from the “anti-establishment” or “dissident media” spheres. When a movement prioritizes “peace” above national liberation or anti-imperialist resistance, it will view appeasing the hegemon as a good thing, because at least this means “peace” has been achieved.

With the Russian bourgeoisie’s overtures towards the Zionist aggressor, the contradictions in this worldview are now being exposed. No longer can anyone say they truly support the idea of Russia becoming a partner to the imperialist USA, while claiming that this position is compatible with a peace agenda. The only coherently anti-Zionist position is to support the Axis of Resistance, which entails opposing all efforts by the Russian capitalists or whoever else to sabotage this Axis. The forces inside Russia that we need to be supporting are the ones which have been fighting against the pro-appeasement elements: the communists, the anti-fascist movement, the anti-imperialist workers. These were the forces that pushed Russia’s bourgeois government into rescuing the Donbass from U.S.-backed Nazi aggression, and with the right variables in their favor, they’ll also bring Russia into the anti-Zionist struggle.

Russia’s internal class power struggle has been getting closer to such a point. With Washington’s sabotages of all peace deals, Russia’s government has been forced to commit harder on Ukraine. What Russia’s ruling class is now trying to do is use that intensified Ukraine war effort as justification for abandoning Iran. The national bourgeoisie seek to keep the country’s economy from becoming more socialistic, which will keep Russia unable to handle a full war against imperialism; and using this rationale that Russia couldn’t logistically handle such a war, Russia’s capitalists can argue the country should avoid siding with Iran.

It’s the same ploy that Iran’s capitalist class has used to delay a proportional retaliation against the Zionist entity: keep the economy from undergoing further socialistic reforms, and thereby weaken the country’s war capabilities. Iran hasn’t yet gotten those reforms, but the country’s revolutionary forces have just gotten a major political victory. They’ve executed an operation against the Zionist colonizers that’s truly substantial, and this has forced all political actors to pick a side on the question of war against the Zionist entity.

The Russian ruling class evidently feels strong enough to outright declare its support for the entity, and this problem must be rectified. It can only be rectified by the international workers movement, which needs to build a united front behind the resistance. Then we’ll be able to change the balance of forces, and give the resistance the power it will need to push our lines forward.

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MAGA communism’s strategy has been vindicated by the Trump base’s revolt. The next step is mass organization.

This week, the account Texas Patriot made a tweet that’s gotten almost fourteen million impressions. It said: “F*ck it. If Trump takes us to war, I'm done with him and his administration. I voted for: NO WARS/Cheap gas/No taxes/Cheap groceries/MAHA…What of these things has actually happened? I'm pissed.” The evidence that Trump’s base largely agrees with Texas Patriot on this goes beyond the popularity of his post; surveys are showing that more than half of Trump voters don’t want the U.S. to participate in an Israel/Iran war.

For the communist movement to succeed during this next stage, we will need to connect with the large part of the American masses that’s been having thoughts along these lines. We’ll need to bring in the many people who are getting disillusioned with Trump, and by extension with all aspects of bourgeois political theater. To do this, we’ll have to embrace a strategy that goes beyond social media. Though online messaging is certainly important, every aspect of what we do must further the building of collective organization. Which is the only thing that can truly give the masses power.

This is the next phase of the MAGA Communist movement: a phase where it transcends the particular space from which it originated, and becomes something universal. MAGA communism began during the Biden era, when the imperialism-compatible left was the main threat towards the class struggle. At that stage, it was a top priority to separate Marxism-Leninism from radical liberalism, and that’s of course still important; but since then, the Democratic Party has collapsed in an unprecedented way, and the MAGA populist strategy has taken on a more widespread role in our politics. So the original progenitors of MAGA communism no longer necessarily use that label, as at this point that would be redundant.

Haz Al-Din, chairman of the American Communist Party, has clarified that MAGA communism is not part of the ACP’s program; MAGA communism isn’t the party’s official ideology, its ideology is Marxism-Leninism Unified Tendency. (Meaning a position which upholds all historical forms of existing socialism, while making all the necessary critiques of those forms.) This makes sense from both a theoretical and strategic perspective. Those within our tendency have always been Marxist-Leninists at our core, and advancing Marxist-Leninist theory does not require calling it something new.

MAGA communism’s purpose has been to break ML theory out of the “left-wing communist” circles which used to keep it confined to liberal academia; and orient it around a real project for going into the masses. And now that the conditions have become even riper for doing this than they were a few years ago, we have an opening to bring in great numbers of people. The important thing is that we stick to Marxism-Leninism, and orient our mass work around the Marxist-Leninist goal of institution-building.

All of the statements that MAGA communism’s theoreticians initially made about this movement still apply. It’s still the case that we will go where the MAGA movement goes, as Haz declared three years ago. What’s changed is that we no longer have to operate within the confines which the more challenging past conditions had imposed upon us, meaning that if we navigate this new age properly, we’ll be able to greatly accelerate our progress. We no longer need to address the left, at least not for the most part; the compatible left lost its former relevance along with the Democrats. The U.S. empire’s “progressive” NGO wing does still pose a threat, with its recent projects involving an effort to attack Mexico from a “decolonial” perspective; and we should counter this, but we must keep all of our antagonists in the proper perspective.

We need to pull away from the habit of regularly engaging ACP’s loudest critics, and intensify our focus on the task of organization-building; constructing the popular institutions we need is the pertinent task at this stage, as that’s what the circumstances have come to allow us to do. The end goal was never to win a debate, because communism does not have any end goal; there will never be a moment in history where communists say “we’ve done what we set out to do.” The present stage of organization-building will precede the phase where the masses have overthrown their imperialist dictatorship; but even that moment will be no closer to the “end” than the present moment is, however distant such a scenario feels today.

Embracing communism means coming to have boundless ambition, as communism reveals that the possibilities for building and innovating truly have no limit, And this is what makes communism compatible with the spirit of MAGA. Trump’s supporters came to him in the hope that he would take away the constraints which monopoly finance capital has imposed upon America, and let America live up to its developmental potential. Communism not only provides the route towards this, but doesn’t impose any constraints itself; all it does is identify the contradictions that are presently holding our civilization back. When we truly understand communism, we become able to embody that civilizational potential, which will never truly be reached in full; the potential is endless, because our task as innovators will never be done.

In his clarification of what Marxism truly is, Haz concludes that communism is actually the perfect answer to the oppressive conformity which anti-communists claim it represents:

The significance of Communism intervenes not in the need to create a new community, but on the contrary, to give expression to the precise indeterminateness and contradictions propelling the development of a given community. That is why it doesn’t refer to anything specific. Nothing is more anti-communist than Communism itself. Impotent intellectual wimps like James Lindsay and other rightist idiots cannot even dream of coming close: Communism alone emancipates humanity from its objective ‘communist oppression.’…Communists do not need to ‘abolish’ anything whatsoever - insofar as anything deserves to be abolish, it has already abolished itself in reality: Only in Communism, are the contradictions, changes, and aspirations of a people suspended into a single phenomenal horizon. Communism only gives expression to the ‘real communism’ already inherent in a given civilization or people, it simply NAMES this. Communism just names the excess of development, indeterminacy, and contradiction possessed by every civilization.

The entire argument that the James Lindsay types make relies on the perception of communism as being synonymous with wokeism. With the technocratic, uncompromising, and elitist ideology that’s most outwardly promoted by the Obama wing of our ruling class, and that the Trump wing evidently shares commonality with in important areas. This is ultimately the driving ideology behind the present war drive, because to justify their destructive machinations, the elites present themselves as the leaders of progress. The MAGA base, and the bulk of the broader U.S. masses, recognize how much of a lie this narrative is. Our ruling class has propagated the idea that their monopolist system is communism; but by building the organization that the masses need, we will show the MAGA base what communism really is.

The popular confusion about communism represents a contradiction; but because contradictions have already abolished themselves in reality, the correct response is not to treat the masses as our enemies. They are our allies, and they’ve already gotten behind the mission to free our society from capital’s constraints. Now we must enable them to gain that freedom.

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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.