The NGO left is attacking Burkina Faso, but it won’t convince the masses to hate Traoré‘s revolution

Washington’s regime change network has launched new attacks against Burkina Faso’s revolutionary government, with LGBT rights being the focus of the propaganda. To defend the revolution, we should avoid trying to prove that Burkina Faso is a woke haven; that would be falling into a trap. Instead, we must use this moment to galvanize the global workers, which have already shown they aren’t susceptible to the culture war propaganda of the imperialist NGOs.

That we continue to see major propaganda campaigns from the NGO-industrial complex, even after the steps the Trump White House has taken to dismantle this wing of the empire, shows how our ruling class remains divided in important ways. When the Trump wing has attacked African revolutionaries, it’s used the narrative that these anti-colonial figures are anti-white racists. The NGO left does still exist, though, so we’re now seeing a renewed effort by it to attack these revolutionaries from a pro-LGBT angle.

Throughout social media in these last few days, there have been heavily boosted rumors about Burkina Faso’s president Ibrahim Traoré having condemned gays; which is a false story, as Traoré has not made any statement to this effect. The story that the propagandists have seized on is one where Burkina Faso’s Justice Minister made an anti-homosexuality dictat, which Traoré has not so far signed the approval for due to the controversial nature of the issue. This doesn’t mean Traoré is pro-LGBT; Burkina Faso’s 2024 constitution banned same-sex marriage. It does mean, though, that the liberal pro-imperialists are taking events out of context to try to reverse the Sahel’s triumph over neo-colonialism. 

To combat these schemes, we don’t need to prove to the liberals that Burkina Faso is actually woke; we only need to defend Traoré on an anti-imperialist basis, and show how he’s working to save his country from imperial sabotage schemes. Burkina Faso’s revolution must be discussed on its own terms, not on the terms of the liberals who seek to re-subjugate the region’s people. As Thomas Sankara said about the independent nature of his country’s anti-colonial struggle:

If our revolution worries some, it's primarily because of the example it can set, and not just in our sub-region. We didn't import our revolution, let alone decide to export it. It is the result of a historical process - scientifically verified and inevitable - in the transformation of the struggles that the social classes have to wage against each other in order to achieve this form of revolution that only asks to be perfected, the same causes producing the same effects no matter the skies under which one finds oneself.

The hope of these NGO propagandists is that they’ll be able to destabilize the Sahel’s revolution from within, and rally the liberal elements inside of it towards a successful color revolution. Historically, the imperialists have done this by nurturing discord inside the revolutionary structures themselves, using the help of left opportunists who claim to be the liberation struggle’s real representatives. While discussing the Committees for the Defense of Revolutions, the entities that the country’s 1983 revolution was relying on to keep gaining strength, Sankara recognized the presence of such left-wing reactionaries inside the movement’s own ranks:

It's true that you find a little bit of everything in the CDRs. You encounter reactionaries, who have cleverly integrated themselves, as well as left opportunists. The problem isn't limited to these two categories. It is essential to understand that the CDRs constitute the main weapon, the frontline shock troops in the battle that will allow our revolution to triumph. So we are working to purify them, that is to say that we are working to get rid of counter-revolutionary elements. This can only be done with the patient but determined development of the democratisation of our structures.

Whether Burkina Faso’s new revolutionary government overcomes the modern equivalents of these infiltrators will depend on how well Traoré can suppress the traitorous elements, compared to how well Sankara’s government could. Sankara was overthrown in a military coup, where an opportunistic faction that claimed to represent the revolution’s goals came to power; the one who assassinated him was Blase Compaore, who’d been pretending to be Sankara’s friend. With the NGO network’s use of propaganda around the LGBT issue, it’s trying to create another internal rift such as this, where the pro-LGBT side is pitted against the country’s anti-imperialist project.

The way we can assist Traoré in fighting back against this plot is by pointing to how he’s objectively advancing the material interests of the people. The State Department propagandists who’ve been assigned to discredit Traoré assert he’s leading a “cult,” and say we must not support a leader just because they’re anti-western; yet we can point to many, many ways in which Traoré has improved his people’s conditions, beyond the most overtly anti-western acts like banning French troops or banning British colonial symbols. Which proves that when a leader is anti-western, that’s indeed a good indicator of them also caring about their people.

Earlier this year, international development analyst Sang N. wrote about Burkina Faso’s economic and infrastructural achievements since Traoré’ came to power. Sang N. reported that in these last two years…

Burkina Faso’s GDP grew from approximately $18.8 billion to $22.1 billion. He [Traoré] has rejected loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. He said, “Africa doesn’t need the World Bank, IMF, Europe, or America.” He reduced the salaries of ministers and parliamentarians by 30% and increased the salaries of civil servants by 50%. He paid off Burkina Faso’s local debts. He established two tomato processing plants, the first-ever in Burkina Faso. In 2023, he inaugurated a state-of-the-art gold mine to enhance local processing capabilities. He stopped the export of unrefined Burkina Faso gold to Europe. He built Burkina Faso’s second cotton processing plant. Previously, the country had only one. He opened the first-ever National Support Center for Artisanal Cotton Processing to assist local cotton farmers…

He prioritized agriculture by distributing over 400 tractors, 239 tillers, 710 motor pumps, and 714 motorcycles to boost production and support rural stakeholders. He provided access to improved seeds and other farm inputs to maximize agricultural output. Tomato production in Burkina Faso increased from 315,000 metric tonnes in 2022 to 360,000 metric tonnes in 2024. Millet production rose from 907,000 metric tonnes in 2022 to 1.1 million metric tonnes in 2024. Rice production increased from 280,000 metric tonnes in 2022 to 326,000 metric tonnes in 2024…His government is constructing new roads, widening existing ones, and upgrading gravel roads to paved surfaces. He is building a new airport, the Ouagadougou-Donsin Airport, which is expected to be completed in 2025 with a capacity to handle 1 million passengers annually

It’s these realities which destroy every talking point that the enemies of Africa’s liberation are using. Because this revolutionary project has demonstrated that it’s effective, and has successfully been lifting the people out of the poverty which colonialism engineered, it will be embraced by ever-more of the world as an inspirational example. The overwhelming majority of the globe’s people do not share the anti-human ideology of those who would hate Traoré based on his social policies; they understand that to condemn an anti-colonial movement or government is inherently despicable.

The NGOs are only able to appeal to a monumentally privileged part of the world’s population. A subset which benefits from neo-colonialism, to a much greater extent than even the majority of modern Americans or Europeans do. The bulk of the masses in the imperialist countries have been proletarianized by declining living standards, so whatever “benefits” they get from imperialism are overshadowed by the ways that capitalism harms them. This means the only elements that align with the color revolution agenda are the bourgeois or petty-bourgeois liberals, who of course hold outsize power but find themselves increasingly isolated. 

As the imperial order collapses, not only are more of the masses coming to be aligned with the anti-imperialist forces, but the different capitalist wings are fighting among themselves with ever-greater ferocity. The recent developments with USAID, where the empire has vacillated between fully supporting the NGOs and cutting them off, is an example of this inter-elite conflict. Traoré’s movement, and the global revolutionary struggle, have an opportunity to take advantage of these squabbles between our enemies.

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Russia’s long march to victory over Ukrainian fascism, & the test it’s created for all anti-imperialists

The start of Russia’s military operation against the Ukrainian fascist regime represented a test for the communist movement. This test has compelled the movement to make new breakthroughs, but our period of trials has lasted longer than many expected, because the operation’s conclusion has been delayed. The capitalist forces within Russia have worked to frustrate the effort at fully defeating Kiev’s fascist state, and this obstacle is bringing the operation’s supporters to a crossroads: either we stick with the movement’s old forms, or adapt to our reality in which multipolarity has shown itself to not be enough for defeating capital. This means taking example from the Global South revolutionary movements, with their mass-centered way of operating.

The military operation that broke the old forms of socialist politics

Between the moment when the Soviet Union ended, and when Russia began its military operation to denazify Ukraine, the socialist movement was essentially just talk. It wasn’t doing much of substance at all, and didn’t have any openings to make a major impact. This was especially the case within the imperialist countries, particularly the United States with its heavily crippled workers movement.

The communist and worker organizations needed to rebuild themselves amid the 20th century’s defeats, yet they had already been taken over by opportunistic forces; it’s because opportunism gained so much influence within socialism that the USSR fell in the first place. The movement had been in a state of inertia for a full generation, unable (or rather unwilling) to build up a new mass workers movement amid the post-2008 depression. Then in 2022, when Russia’s communist party successfully pressured the country’s bourgeois government into fighting back against NATO, this established paradigm was broken. Communists now had an opportunity to play a pivotal role in history, if they chose to align themselves with the right side in this conflict.

Many communist or “socialist” organizations tried to maintain this inertia, and opposed the anti-fascist operation. But for those that made the right decision during that moment, new possibilities came their way, as well as new challenges that are unique to revolutionary political actors. The organizations which supported Russia during that moment had come to have a more serious revolutionary role, but to maintain this role, they would need to do so much more than take one good position. 

They would have to live up to the traditions of Marxism-Leninism, and work to build up a new international workers movement. This would need to go along with an effort to put Palestine at the center of their practice, and combat the opportunistic forces which have sought to direct attention away from Palestine’s holocaust. When you take a correct stance at a critical moment, you’ve elevated yourself to a certain standard, and will rise or fall based on whether you live up to that standard. This was the commitment that the pro-Russian orgs had all made by taking this stance; but how many of them would fulfill this commitment was yet to be determined.

There are countless factors that can derail a movement’s progress, and tempt its ranks towards abandoning the revolutionary path. At the moment, the biggest of these temptations is right “populism,” with its promise that you’ll be able to defeat the system by adopting the practices of the bourgeois right-wing politicians. Our struggle against this kind of opportunism parallels the struggle that Russia’s communists are having to wage; this is the fight against the capitalist ruling class within Russia, which has consistently worked to obstruct or confuse the goals of the Ukraine operation. 

To assist the Russian communists in this battle, and win the revolutionary fight on our own fronts, we must reorient our practice. We must truly discard the old forms of organizing, and act in accordance with the realities of today’s conditions.

No way forward other than to learn from those who’ve succeeded

The great lesson from Russia’s operation is that the emergence of multipolarity alone is not enough to win the class war; the only thing that can defeat the imperial forces is renewed proletarian power. It was always apparent that this is the case; but it’s hard to truly understand something until you’ve been able to see it demonstrated. And the developments we’ve seen since the Ukraine operation’s start have shown what it actually means when the proletariat isn’t strong enough. The delays which Russia has experienced in its military progress have proven just how easily the capitalist elements can undermine our movement’s gains, at least as long as the workers haven’t sufficiently built up their strength.

When the main change we’ve experienced is that the world has progressed beyond unipolarity, and the international workers movement still hasn’t recovered, we’re going to see obstacles like the one that’s appeared within Russia. This is the obstacle where an entrenched national bourgeoisie has prevented Russia from waging this war with the decisiveness and boldness that a socialist state would have; as the World Anti-Imperialist Platform’s Dimitrios Patelis observed this spring, this capitalist interference has led to stagnation in many areas of the operation. It’s an outcome of when those in charge of an anti-imperialist war still have a desire to reach “peace” with the imperialists, as a large faction within Russia’s ruling class certainly wants to do.

Putin originally wanted to join NATO, and he waited eight years to start the Ukraine operation; this was because while Kiev’s U.S.-installed regime bombed the Donbass, Putin still held out hope that Washington would warm to Russia. The ideological and class forces that were behind these imperial collaboration efforts did not simply go away when the operation began; they’ve continued to try to weaken Russia’s commitment towards fully defeating the fascist state. 

Russia’s National Security Chair Dmitry Medvedev recently affirmed that Russia will not negotiate until the operation’s goals are fulfilled, and this is a good thing; it’s an outcome of Russia responding towards the Trump administration’s obstinately neocon policies. For this conflict to truly be concluded, though, the proletarian forces will need to gain much more power. Which is something that every one of us within the global anti-imperialist struggle must take an active role in bringing about.

This is why I speak of the anti-fascist operation in terms of it being encompassed by a worldwide movement, rather than just something that Russia is connected to. We all need to build up the united front behind the struggle against Ukrainian fascism, like we must do for the Palestinian struggle, for the effort to defend China, and for every other front in this fight. And to do this beyond what we’ve accomplished already, we’ll have to fully escape the old paradigm which has held back our progress.

We partly did away with this paradigm when we got behind the anti-fascist war, but we have to know what the next step is beyond that. The next step is to take example from the liberation struggles that have been waged by the peoples of the Global South, adopting the same mass orientation that’s allowed these struggles to get so much further than our movements in the imperialist countries have.

Since the USSR’s fall, Latin America has seen the emergence of multiple new socialist or anti-imperialist countries, and Africa has seen multiple countries break from neo-colonialism in the last five years alone. Many of the movements behind these victories share the trait of supporting Russia, as well as supporting the Palestinian resistance; and taking these correct stances is important, but we must understand that the correctness of the ideological positions within these movements is downstream from the real source of their success.

The essence of why they’re succeeding so much, and why they’re willing to act so principled, is that they draw power from the popular masses; not from tailing after the right, or from merely imitating the form of a communist movement, but through acting according to what the people need. The left opportunist forces which have opposed Russia or the Palestinian resistance view themselves as above the masses, which is why they’ve lost the relevance they had during the Biden era. That many in our movement have recognized the backwardness of these left forces has allowed us to transcend leftism, with its particular type of inert opportunism. Now is the time for us to take the next step, and not just recognize the problem but find the solution to it.

This solution exists within the lessons from the Global South movements, as well as from the historical revolutionary theoreticians who analyzed our own conditions as Americans. We need to read more from not just Global South heroes like Fanon and Sankara, but also American revolutionaries like William Z. Foster. This is the only way we can gain the direction to win the fight we’re faced with, where we’ve been shown that it’s not enough merely to cheer on positive historical developments. We must insert ourselves into the class struggle, and shape history ourselves.

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The perils of revolutionary overconfidence, & the urgent threats our popular movements face

The rise of BRICS, China, and multipolarity is a major reason to celebrate; yet there’s a risk that this optimism will lead to hubris. For those of us in the United States, where the imperial enemy’s forces will ultimately become concentrated the most, to overestimate the strength of the revolutionary forces is particularly foolish. However, if we study the lessons that have been left behind by past American revolutionaries like William Z. Foster, our path to victory will become far clearer. A key thing Foster’s experiences teach us is that to defeat American fascism, one must truly commit to the proletarian struggle, and put their faith into the power of mass organization.

The biggest threat to the American anti-imperialist movement is the widespread lack of awareness about the threats which it faces. The greatest danger towards our cause is not any of our enemies, but our own potential to commit fatal errors. And the erroneous thinking that’s pervaded throughout far too many dissident or antiwar spaces is the thinking which encourages hubris. Which tells us that our victory against the imperial system is assured, just because the international situation is increasingly in favor of the anti-imperialist forces. The great peril in this attitude is that it will leave us unprepared for when our enemies strike inside the United States.

The coming war against the USA’s people, & its basis in historical repression

The reality is that the more wars the U.S. loses, the more of the imperial state’s resources will be redirected towards crushing dissent within the U.S. itself. We must support the defeat of our imperialist government in all of these wars, as that’s both the only morally correct position and an essential part of how we’ll get revolution. But this revolutionary defeatism must come with a serious program for defending the American people against their government’s violence, or the outcome will be that we truly do get crushed. Our ruling class is going to attack America’s popular movements on the same level that it’s waged war against such movements worldwide, and the weaker our organizations are, the further our enemies will be able to take their offensive.

To understand how to fight back, we need understand how instrumental it’s historically been to center the proletarian struggle while resisting American fascism. As William Foster wrote in 1922, what we know doesn’t work is to try to win the favor of any wing within the capitalist class, which was the strategy of the opportunistic union leader Samuel Gompers:

All over Europe the workers have been able to wring one political concession after another from the capitalists, whereas here the capitalists have stripped the workers of many of their most fundamental rights. Free speech and free press have been largely abolished by the multitude of anti-syndicalist laws, and hundreds of labor men, arrested merely for expressing their opinions, have been given prison sentences so severe as to shock the civilized world. The right of assembly has degenerated into little more than a privilege, dependent upon the whims of the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan, or corrupt local officials. The right to strike has been abridged by Esch-Cummins laws, industrial courts, and the injunction abuse, which flourishes now as never before…Almost any one of the workers’ political rights may go next. And in the face of all this disaster, the labor movement flounders around helpless to stop the rout. Mr. Gompers’ pet policy of rewarding the workers’ “friends” and punishing their “enemies” has made a political nobody of American Labor.

The great mission of the ruling class was to make it so that this reformist, class collaborationist strategy won out within the labor movement, as well as the organized left. The U.S. government felt the need to go so far in attacking the people during those decades because it hadn’t yet managed to sufficiently neutralize the working-class, revolutionary forces; the Gompers camp was strong, but so were the genuine sources of proletarian power. So the USA experienced the Palmer Raids, the deportation of political troublemakers, the imprisonment of antiwar citizens like Eugene Debs, the deployment of armed forces against the workers, and many other aggressive counterrevolutionary measures. 

These kinds of policies have only been relatively absent since then because of how good our ruling class has gotten at mowing the grass of dissent; and certain old practices have been making a comeback, as we’re seeing with the recent deportations and raids of Palestine activists. We can probably expect this next wave of repression to go further than the ones from a century ago, because now our ruling class is desperate in a way it wasn’t back then. U.S. capital has staked so much into the project for continued American hegemony; this is because the U.S. is now the center of global capital, and therefore the only true modern imperialist country.

The shift away from unipolarity imperils capitalism’s future, so our rulers are intensifying the repression in ways that are preemptive; it’s not like today’s U.S. has revolutionary orgs that are as strong as the old workers movement, yet the system is preparing for unprecedented attacks on the USA’s people. This is because our government will need to fight multiple, long-term wars in order to keep the USA’s status as the hegemon, and these wars will require the successful crushing of dissent. 

These developments present many opportunities for the revolutionary forces, as they mean our enemies are dependent on a risky plan and are frightened of a renewed proletarian movement. To bring about such a movement, though, we will need to forsake all illusions of being able to win through reform, or through gaining the favor of bourgeois “populist” figures.

The peril of rejecting class struggle, & the strength that comes from embracing it

The modern equivalent of the Gompers strategy looks like trying to appeal towards any of the imperialist politicians who claim to be on the side of the people. The Democratic Party tailists who vote blue out of hope for “pushing the Democrats left” are an infamous example of this; there’s also a version of this opportunism that seeks to appeal towards the right-wing “populist” leaders, though, and this version is more able to gain mass momentum. It’s the type of politics that aligns with the vulgarized types of dissident thought, and it majorly overlaps with the kinds of wishful thinking which promise imperialism will be defeated merely by the onset of multipolarity. The underlying problem is a lack of understanding about the class nature of the antiwar struggle, or the fight against the deep state, or any of the other battles we’re engaged in. 

Foster and the other principled U.S. communists of his time were faced with the same kinds of problems, where the “right” tendencies within populist or labor politics would work to obfuscate the class struggle’s importance. A key part of the problem, concluded Foster, was the myth about America existing above the rules of historical conflict: “Lenin, in fighting for a correct political line, fought on two fronts. That is, he combated both the right danger and all forms of pseudo-leftism. This two-front fight was particularly necessary in the United States, with its ingrained historical right weakness of American exceptionalism and its long affliction of ‘left’ sectarianism.”

Foster knew that to combat these errors, there would need to be a serious effort at educating Americans about the nature of imperialism. Something we need to clarify, wrote Foster, is the fact that imperialism isn’t a policy choice; it’s an inseparable part of the global capitalist system, and therefore won’t be ended until the capitalist state is overthrown:

Highly important from the American standpoint was Lenin's scientific analysis of imperialism. With powerful emphasis, Lenin pointed out the qualitative differences that develop within the whole structure of capitalism with the growth of monopoly. Previously, without clearly differentiating itself from the right wing on this question, the left wing had tended to consider the growth of monopoly as merely a quantitative development of capitalism, and its "expansionism" (imperialism) as simply a secondary policy manifestation, instead of a basic expression of monopoly capitalism. This error led to a profound underestimation of the aggressive character, reactionary aims, and war-making potentialities of imperialism. Lenin cleared up all this confusion. Lenin also made clear the road of all-out political mass struggle to socialism. In so doing, he annihilated for Americans the prevalent De Leonite, syndicalist ideas that the workers would win their way to power by "locking out the capitalists," or by means simply of a general strike, and other kindred illusions.

Today, one of these kindred illusions is the idea that we can end the wars, defeat deep state corruption, and win other major victories if we support the “right” populists, or try to push these populist leaders in a better direction. The only thing that can come from this is the de-mobilization of our popular movements, to the effect that our government can advance its schemes with even greater impunity. This is the cycle our ruling class aims to maintain by propping up right populism, and the long-term goal is to leave us helpless amid the security state’s clampdown. It’s likely that Washington will lose its present wars, like has happened with essentially every other U.S. war for several generations now. But without an American popular movement that stands on its own, these developments are going to mean a strengthening of our enemies on the domestic front.

The positive aspect is that even if this is where we’re headed, the international anti-imperialist forces are guaranteed to keep growing in their power. This is where the truth can be found within the hyper-optimistic “multipolarist” analyses that are so prevalent throughout alternative media. These arguments get their strength from how movements like the Palestinian resistance, the Yemeni resistance, Latin America’s proletarian struggles, and the Sahel revolutionary project have been making great gains throughout this last generation, adding an additional level of impact to the Eurasian economic explosion. What these analyses miss, though, is that those victories have only come because of the efforts by those who’ve engaged in collective mass organization. They haven’t come simply because of the emergence of BRICS; if anything, the successes of BRICS are downstream from the gains made by these popular struggles.

Everything truly positive that we see in today’s global anti-imperialist struggle is a product of revolutionary fights across the Global South, and of the historic gains communists have made throughout Eurasia. For one example of this communist connection, Russia is fighting NATO because of the anti-imperialist movement that the country’s Marxist-Leninists have built; yet the right populists who speak positively of Russia hate Marxism-Leninism, and ignore its role in the recent victories against finance capital.

If we want to win against our imperialist dictatorship, we’re going to have to do away with the concepts of dissident politics that disregard class, and that pretend we can reform our way out of this dictatorship. The realities that a capitalist state exists to prevent the people’s victory, and that America’s capitalist state will always be imperialist, are going to keep being proven to catastrophic effect. We can expect Washington to continue expanding its genocidal destruction, and we can expect our own society to keep becoming destabilized as the economy gets worse. We must not expect these catastrophic events to bring revolution on their own, that kind of thinking has always been a cope. Our only option is to provide the people with the means to overthrow the imperial state, building up the collective organization which makes for dual power. There are prominent actors who seek to obscure the need for class struggle, but we can overcome them by showing what a real dissident movement looks like.

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Foster clarified we can only win the masses on a class basis. This is how MAGA communism will succeed.

One of the most important lessons William Foster provided is that the American masses are not going to be won through a cultural struggle. The notion that the people of the United States or anywhere else are simply driven by religious or cultural values, to the effect that we should place culture above class, is a fundamentally bourgeois way of thinking about the people. The ruling class seeks to divide the people, so it’s cultivated a mentality where the people’s different religious or partisan affiliations make them separate from each other. 

This is the belief that Foster warned against when he was pointing out the folly of the “dual union” strategy. With dual unionism, organizers would create alternative unions to try to bypass the necessary work of agitating amongst the already unionized workers. As Foster concluded, this came from a lack of faith in the people’s ability to be convinced on the basis of class struggle: 

The workers organize in the industrial field not because they hold certain elaborate social beliefs jointly, but because through united action they can protect their common economic interests. Labor unions are built upon the solid rock of the material welfare of the workers, not upon their acceptance of stated political opinions. In the very nature of things labor unions at present must consist of the many sects and factions that go to make up the working class, Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, Syndicalists, Catholics, Protestants, etc., etc. The natural result of the dualists’ attempt to organize labor unions around their theories was a whole crop of new labor movements. 

As fast as new conceptions, political and industrial, developed, their proponents organized separate labor unions to give expression to them. In some industries there were as many as five of these dual movements, each representing a different tendency and each engaged in the hopeless task of converting the masses to its particular point of view. Dual unionism, with its program of labor organization along the lines of fine-spun theory, not only devitalized the trade unions by robbing them of their best blood, but it also degenerated the revolutionary and progressive movement into a series of detached sects, out of touch with the masses and the real struggle and running off to all sorts of wild theories and impractical programs.

The dual unionists represented the leftist deviation within communism, because they had the goal of being the most radical and pure. There is another version of this culturally fixated thinking, though, that instead draws those within this struggle to the right. And this other deviation is even more dangerous; because when somebody embraces it, they can easily go so far as to give up worker organizing entirely, and to reject the very concept of class struggle.

One example of cultural beliefs superseding class consciousness, even when the thinker in question seeks to reject liberalism, is the Fourth Political Theory of Alexander Dugin. Dugin has written that “the Communist theories regarding historical materialism and the notion of unidirectional progress are inapplicable to our purposes. We have previously talked about the racist element, which is embedded in the idea of progress. It looks particularly revolting within historical materialism, which not only prioritises the future ahead of the past, brutally violating the ‘rights of the ancestors’, but also equates the living ‘human society’ (Richard Thurnwald) with a mechanical system operating independently of humanity, according to laws that are monotonic and uniform for all. Materialist reductionism and economic determinism comprise the most repulsive aspect of Marxism.”

I don’t bring up Dugin because I believe the western media narrative about how he’s “Putin’s brain.” Dugin is also a lot less of an anti-communist than “dissident” anti-China hawks like Tucker Carlson, who are the real problems at this moment when it comes to the right. I think Dugin is significant to this debate because he’s representative of a larger trend within modern anti-liberal thought. One that’s in conflict with the goal of rebuilding the international proletarian movement, and that therefore we need to reckon with even if many of this tendency’s propagators still have major value (as Dugin does). Understanding where he’s coming from helps us win over the many individuals who’ve become disillusioned with liberalism, but have been misled by anti-communist arguments.

Dugin made the statement above in the context of responding to the real errors that the Soviet government had committed in regard to the cultural question, where religion was too often treated as something inherently antagonistic towards the project of building socialism. Dugin’s response was to question the very idea of progress; which is a perspective that we must be able to understand, but not embrace. It’s the logical conclusion of the idea that the masses are fundamentally driven not by material need, but by culture. So when we treat the people as if they’ll be reached if we simply signal cultural conservatism to them, the class struggle gets demoted in importance, when it has to always be central to our practice.

We cannot respond to the left-wing errors within the communist movement, and to the other kinds of liberal bourgeois thinking, by conflating the working class with the most stereotypically conservative among the working class. Not even the MAGA communist strategy was ever truly about doing this; MAGA communism’s purpose was to free communism from ultra-leftism, which doesn’t equate to tailing the right. The liberal caricature of MAGA communism is that it’s just rightism, but none of the people who are putting MAGA communism into practice have adopted a position like that. What we must make sure to do is truly apply Foster’s advice, and continue reaching the people on the basis of their class interests.

This is how we can reconcile MAGA communism with the reality we’re facing today, where aside from the MAGA base, the biggest revolutionary mass element is the radicalized Gen Z members. These Gen Zers are definitely leftists, but this doesn’t make them less compatible with communism than the conservative base is. They’ve been radicalized in large part by witnessing U.S. imperialism’s crimes against the Palestinian people, and a very large part of them already support Palestine’s armed resistance. Communists are absolutely capable of winning both the MAGA crowd that’s grown so alienated from Trump over Epstein, and the Gen Z Palestine supporters; to do so, though, we’ll need to reject the idea that the masses can be won by simply appealing towards one of their political or religious affiliations.

This is how bourgeois politicians relate to the masses, but their goal is not actually to win the people; they only want to bring in select groups among the people, while furthering polarization along cultural lines. The goal of a communist is the opposite; we seek to unify the masses behind the revolutionary struggle. When we center that mission, our task becomes a lot simpler, as we see that it’s not necessary to tailor our messaging and outreach to either a “left” or “right” aesthetic. What we must do is build a movement that advances the material interests of the people, which is something that will guarantee us all the popular support we need.

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Gaza, East Timor, & the popular struggle we must sustain in order to stop Washington’s extermination efforts

The East Timor genocide of 1975 to 1999 is what happens when the balance of forces has been successfully tipped in favor of the capitalist class. The genocide could only come into being, or last as long as it did, because the era when it happened was a time of retreat for the globe’s revolutionary forces. Which teaches us that if we want to end the extermination effort our government is facilitating in Palestine, we will need to prioritize the rebuilding of the workers movement, which was largely destroyed during the late 20th century.

The imperial hegemon had created the conditions for the East Timor holocaust in 1965, when the CIA overthrew Indonesia’s anti-imperialist government in a military coup. The dictatorship had already murdered hundreds of thousands of Indonesians before East Timor became a target. And because of Indonesia’s strategic significance, it was this extermination campaign that gave Washington the advantages which would let it win the Cold War. One of the outcomes was that the dictatorship could use the military as a tool for slaughtering East Timor’s people, while not being met with sufficient opposition until a full generation later.

During the Gaza genocide, the revolutionary elements have advantages that they didn’t with East Timor. Today, the anti-imperialist countries and movements are overall on the advance, with China building up an alternative economy as popular struggles make new gains across Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. It’s this empowerment of the multipolar and proletarian forces that Washington is reacting to when it doubles down on supporting the Zionist occupier; the empire hopes that if its proxy inflicts enough violence on Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and other nations, then the world will view the United States as strong, and continue to appease it. This accelerated phase of the Palestinian genocide started as a response to the unprecedented strategic victory the resistance gained on October 7, which was partly inspired by Russia’s successes in fighting NATO.

If these factors alone were capable of winning the fight against imperialism, though, then the Gaza genocide would have been stopped a long time ago. The slaughter and torture of Gaza’s people is happening at a rate that’s much faster than was the case for East Timor; yet this is supposed to be the era when anti-imperialism is on the upswing, compared to when it was on the retreat during the time of the East Timor slaughter. Our movement is on the upswing; the problem is that just because the revolutionary side is making gains in one area, or even many areas, doesn’t mean our enemies won’t be able to keep committing the very worst of crimes.

They will act to eliminate entire peoples as long as they have the means to do so; they can also make advances of their own, and bring their barbarism to countries that have seemed secure. This is what’s happened with Syria since October 7, and it will keep happening to more places unless we make a more serious change. Unless the political actors who care about stopping this genocide, and about rectifying the horrors our government is inflicting on countries like Syria, take the initiative in reconstructing our lost proletarian power.

This project can not be merely about re-creating the institutions that the workers had during the peak of communism’s 20th century strength. It wouldn’t be feasible to re-create the past, because this is no longer the past; moreover, even when that peak moment came at around 1970, the hegemon had already succeeded in bringing the political genocide to Indonesia. Which was an event that made way for numerous other anti-communist coups and genocides, where Washington used Indonesia’s “Jakarta method” to carry out anti-communist purges in numerous countries. This was what let monopoly finance capital crush the revolutionary movement in Chile, and use Chile to experiment with the neoliberal policies that would soon be imposed worldwide. It was something that helped catalyze the downfall of the Soviet bloc, and the subsequent crippling of global workers movements.

These developments proved that the old workers movement was itself not nearly strong enough; which doesn’t mean we should abandon Marxism-Leninism, but in fact the opposite. It’s because not enough of the world’s popular movements applied dialectical materialism that the reactionary forces got their great triumphs throughout the 20th century, and became in position to commit the present holocaust. 

Indonesia’s communist party failed to sufficiently warn or arm the masses in preparation for the coup, because it had become enamored with the idea of making the national bourgeoisie into a partner. This great error came from the Khrushchevite trend, where as part of his campaign to “de-Stalinize” the USSR, Khrushchev tried to reach a “peaceful coexistence” between the Soviets and the imperialist bloc. Not only did this idea start off the internal unraveling that brought the USSR’s fall, but it proliferated the ideology of class collaborationism, which is the logical conclusion of the notion that workers can live in peace with capital.

The new international workers movement can either learn from these errors, or perish before it even gets built. A popular struggle can only have hope for surviving capital’s violence if it rejects all reformist, class collaborationist illusions, and decides to stand on its own. That’s why though this is an international project, we need to treat our local connections as the most important ones, with our international ties being second. Unless we master the “secret work” aspect of revolutionary struggle, and build networks that can keep operating even if we’re forced underground, then we’ll be vulnerable in avoidable ways. When we neglect the question of how to survive once our enemies use all of their weapons, we will be defeated, even if we’ve already largely won the masses like Indonesia’s communists had.

The other essential lesson is that no revolutionary effort can survive without a serious project to go into the masses, even when its members themselves are well-ordered and trained. In the absence of a real campaign to connect with organized labor, to lead the worker struggles, to build actual organizations that sustain a presence within their communities, whatever else we do is going to fizzle out. Focusing only on the internal training and structure, while ignoring mass work, can only produce insular social clubs that wage self-delusional battles; this is a scenario that we need to consciously avoid, because it’s materialized countless times within radical politics.

For those of us in the United States, this risk of becoming detached from the people is acute, because we’re having to rebuild a workers movement that was thoroughly crippled a long time ago. We’ve been separated from the practical experience that a strong mass movement allows for. To overcome any potential hubris that this condition of ours could create, we need to take example from the struggles of those from the Global South and occupied Palestine, who’ve been forced to confront state violence in its most extreme forms.

Our ruling class will no doubt try to bring the Jakarta Method to where we are, and this is something that I personally have been speculating about for a while. In these last couple years, though, as we’ve all witnessed an actual, modern mass killing take place, these anxieties about hypothetical worst-case scenarios among U.S. radicals have been redirected towards a different place. A place that’s more productive, because now we’re being made to stop thinking about ourselves so much and instead fully account for the evils our government is inflicting upon others.

Gaza has shown us what the worst potential violence of capitalism looks like, and proven that a people can successfully resist this violence. It’s driven many people outside Gaza to become connected to this struggle against annihilation, and therefore start getting a better sense of what popular struggle entails. When the Jakarta Method does come for us, we’ll have Gaza in mind, as will the millions around the globe who’ve also been taking part in this fight against the 21st century holocaust. Our ruling class will try to bring this holocaust to more places, because it sees Gaza as a testing ground. But those of us within this struggle are building a worldwide counter-force against this scheme, and the genocide’s perpetrators are not going to be able to act with impunity. They’ll have to reckon with the collective might of a global mass which has been compelled to unify, and to fight back in ways that are unprecedented.

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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.