If our solidarity movements are going to survive, they’ll need to prepare for a scenario where the state has fully activated its tools for violence. Where the United States and the other countries that back the Gaza genocide have implemented the “Jakarta Method,” the model for political mass murder that was embraced by Indonesia’s U.S.-installed dictatorship. Gaza is the most substantial and dire form of capitalism’s violence right now, and we need to treat Gaza with the most urgency; but the prospect of an American Jakarta is something that we in the United States also must turn our attention to. These things are completely connected; if we can’t defend our organizations against what the state plans to do soon, the Palestinians will see some of their most important allies crushed, setting back liberation struggles worldwide.
We know that an American Jakarta now looms so close because during these last couple of years, the U.S. empire has gone into unprecedented crisis mode in its efforts at rescuing the Zionist entity. The U.S. ruling class, enamored with a worshipful obsession around “Israel” and desperate to continue this idolatry, has implemented a dark cultural shift within our ruling institutions; a shift where the government has taken on openly Nazistic rhetoric and practices. This shift was already well underway with NATO’s backing of Ukrainian Nazis, but even moreso in the Trump era, Washington has embraced a policy of openly assisting fascists around the globe.
Our government no longer cares about hiding anything, least of all the fact that “Israel” is a Nazi state; when the illusions of liberal “democracy” and “humanitarianism” have been completely exposed by Gaza, the imperial state’s next resort is to turn its own crimes into points of pride. The president and his cabinet members share videos of the U.S. bombing entire crowds of civilians; Trump says the plan is to ethnically cleanse Gaza, instead of pretending to have humane intentions; the State Department deploys actual Nazi groups, like the Infidels biker gang, to assist in the extermination of Gaza’s people. We need to be taking serious note of actions like these, and using them as references in our efforts to fight back against the state’s violence.
Our class enemies have put together an apparatus that would let them murder large numbers of political targets, just like Indonesia and other U.S. puppet regimes did. And with the normalization of open state violence that our rulers have carried out, a domestic version of these operations would no longer need as much of a narrative justification as used to be the case. This is the new level of danger for everyone that the Gaza genocide has brought about. There are still limitations on the imperial state, though; limitations that come from the blowback it may bring upon itself if it attacks the people. Our government is no longer concerned about looking righteous, but it has to consider how effective of a resistance the popular masses could mount. So for an American Jakarta to happen, its architects will need to find a way to break up any efforts at fighting back.
The strategy they’ve adopted for this is to give up the pretenses of bourgeois “democracy,” while using engineered terrorist acts to fortify support for this dictatorship. We are seeing ruling-class politics shift in a “trad” conservative direction, perhaps permanently; and this effort to freeze the political pendulum in place is being sold as a way to protect against left-wing violence.
In Portland and the other cities targeted by Trump’s National Guard deployment efforts, the White House is doing a trial run for this operation to crush the masses under the pretext of defending them. For this crackdown to be implemented without unifying the people in defiance, the state will need to orchestrate many more false flag attacks, with the violent acts all being blamed on “the left” despite whatever evidence to the contrary. This demagogic message, primarily designed to vilify the pro-Palestine movement, will need to be repeated endless times. When the people have become so disillusioned with both imperialist parties, the only way to prevent them from uniting is by sowing profound confusion. By convincing Americans that their neighbors are part of a movement to commit terrorism, so whatever retributions that come upon them are justified.
This was how Indonesia’s dictatorship rallied many regular people to participate in the killings of suspected communists: by fabricating stories about the communists engaging in sick acts, and putting out calls to combat this supposed threat. In modern America, though, the problem the Jakarta Method has run into is that the people aren’t nearly as polarized as they used to be. The bulk of the people have become united in their anger at our government, with much of Trump’s base becoming increasingly disillusioned and looking for an alternative. Most people have rejected the culture war baits, and have come together in opposing the violence that the ruling class is bringing upon our society. Only an anti-social minority are willing to start taking part in this violence. So for an American Jakarta to be viable, the state will need psyops that conflate its political targets with the anti-social forces; that depict communists or Palestine supporters as Antifa terror agents.
As we build up the organizational structures for surviving a purge, a role we must take on is to show the people that the struggle we’re carrying forth represents the opposite of the ultraviolent elements. We’re the force that’s here to defend the people against this chaos which our elites are bringing onto them. We’ll prove this by staying disciplined in the face of culture war provocations, and by expanding our efforts to aid the communities that are being impacted by the country’s collapse. The state will respond by trying to destroy us, but if we keep fighting for our democratic rights during every step of the crackdown, these attacks will be seriously impeded.
The key is that we warn the people about the threats to their freedoms, as well as organize them. The latter aspect is something that’s being neglected even by many of the biggest voices speaking out against the crackdown; for example, Tucker Carlson has been warning about the Trump White House banning free speech, but from commentators like him there’s a lack of clarity on how to fight back. We need to provide the people with the means for collective organization, or they’ll be helpless against the highly organized governmental assault that’s only just beginning.
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