The U.S. ruling class is working to normalize the kinds of violent chaos that we’ve recently been seeing, and Ukraine’s fascist movement provides the model for this scheme. This is how the imperial boomerang—where an empire’s methods of inflicting destruction abroad come to be used against the empire’s own people—is manifesting in the era of our new cold war. Like the weapons from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were used to militarize U.S. police, the Nazi paramilitaries that our government backs in Ukraine are increasingly impacting our own society. And this blowback is happening in ways that few could have anticipated, even those of us who’ve been following U.S. foreign policies for a long time.
We are seeing the rise of an American Azovism, where our elites weaponize the anti-social elements within American society against the popular masses. The Azovites, the Nazi group that’s embedded within Ukraine’s armed forces, are part of a political current that fits well for the domestic ultraviolent mission our ruling class has undertaken. Because even though Azovism is of course far right, it’s at the same time compatible with the pro-imperialist actors who call themselves “progressive,” or even “socialist.” The left has been a major part of the political elements which support NATO’s proxy war on Russia; it’s in fact been the predominant pro-war faction of our era, when you consider how many conservatives have turned against not just NATO but also “Israel.”
There are plenty of younger left-leaning people who’ve been becoming seriously pro-Palestine, but they’re not part of the particular ideological force that I’m referring to here; our ruling class views these people as some of its biggest threats, and its effort to weaponize leftism against the anti-imperialist cause is part of its response to this mass youth radicalization.
The predominant role which has been served by the anarchist and other leftist movements during our era is one of attacking anti-imperialists from a “social justice” angle; and though these movements are no longer as relevant as they were in the Biden era, they’ve been coming to fuse with the forces the ruling class is now using as its main proxies. Those forces being the far-right, Azovite-adjacent actors which share ultra-leftism’s hostility towards the masses. The way this ideological merger has developed is that earlier this year, the Democrats started off the “dark woke” trend, whose purpose was to win back power for the “woke” side by any means necessary; then “dark woke” evolved into an amalgamation between leftism and the far right.
When I use the words “anarchist,” “leftist,” and “Democrat” somewhat interchangeably, I do so with deliberation; these elements are distinct, yet they’re all being used to advance the same goals. Those goals being the sabotage of the popular workers movement, and the reinforcement of the narratives our government is employing to advance its third world war.
These are the same purposes that the so-called “dissident right” serves, despite its posturing as something revolutionary. All of these forces represent the same mission to ensure capital’s victory over the workers, and to let the hegemon keep aggressing against the world’s people. Within this context, where anarchism and leftism have been so heavily utilized by the empire, whatever distinctions between them and the Democratic Party are not primarily relevant; functionally, they’re all within the same camp, which includes the far-right forces that Washington has made Ukraine into a hub for.
Between anarchism and Nazism in particular, there are overlaps that would seem surprising, but make sense when you understand the shared ways in which they’ve responded to certain historical contradictions. Anarchism is the historical basis for fascism; this is apparent in how the biggest fascist leaders got their views on what it means to be “revolutionary” from the anarchist aesthetic. This is an aesthetic which views the contradiction between the state’s interests, and the people’s interests, as something which fundamentally comes from a personal conflict. That sees the state as a personal thing, created purely for the conscious purpose of conspiring against the people, rather than what it actually is: the instrument through which a given ruling economic class maintains the present mode of production.
When you understand that the state is not a personal thing, and will inevitably continue to exist for as long as class distinctions exist, you can see why communists say the workers must create a state of their own. But both anarchism and fascism are opposed to this goal, because they share the perception that “liberation” can come from a personal struggle, and that we’ll only be “free” when we’ve upended all parts of the established order; not just capital, but every aspect of society. In essence, they view “justice” as only being attainable through the negation of order itself; which is an infantile form of rebellion. It comes from the mindset that because the world has wronged you in any real or perceived way, you need to take revenge against the world as a whole. This was the idea that drove Hitler, who naturally gravitated towards the narrative about entire races needing to be vanguished.
Anarchism itself is increasingly irrelevant in today’s activist circles. But Hitlerite ideas are right now being heavily boosted by the tech platforms that our ruling class controls, so communists like myself have taken up the strategy of exposing Hitlerism’s anarchist roots. When we show how Hitler came from one of the same leftist tendencies that the far right portrays itself as the response to, Hitlerite propaganda breaks down.
This counter-propaganda campaign is one part of the struggle that we must wage in the present moment. Another thing we need to do is steer the righteous anger that the masses are feeling away from the “vengeance against the world” mindset; from the attitude that we need to expand our wrath indefinitely, and negate every part of what’s established. The enemy we need to focus on is monopoly finance capital; if we divert our attention away from it, the monopolists will keep winning.
A large part of the masses have concluded that the shooting of a healthcare executive in December 2024 was not a bad thing; and this development in the popular consciousnesses is a revolutionary event. That the Luigi movement has found support among the broad working class shows the bulk of the workers care about the right things; the overwhelming majority of them don’t join with PMC liberals in cheering on every act of political violence, but unlike the PMC, they understand just how much of a foe the monopolists are. These workers are looking for direction on how to defeat this foe; direction which only the proletarian movement can provide.
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