At the time that I’m writing this updated version of my latest essay, the “Israeli” settler state has just responded to Iran’s retaliatory strikes by carrying out a new provocation against the Islamic Republic. This action is suicidal, both for the Zionist state itself and for the U.S. empire which depends upon its existence. Because the Iranians, as well as the Chinese and Russian superpowers which back them, have become more than strong enough to contain the threats from “Israel” and ultimately from Washington. All they need to do is apply a policy of zero tolerance for fascist aggression, which they absolutely can enforce in a meaningful fashion. The rise of the globe’s anti-imperialist forces over the last couple decades is part of a larger historical trend that can’t be reversed, wherein the globe’s illiberal elements come together to make the liberal order extinct.
That’s the lesson we should take from these developments: to bring about the liberation of Palestine, and of all the other peoples who the hegemon has imprisoned, we have to unify all of our respective struggles. The Palestinians, the U.S. working class, and everyone else who our imperial elites are fighting share a common interest in one goal: the end of the rule by monopoly finance capital. This is the system that perpetuates austerity in the empire’s core, exploitation of the formerly colonized world, and warfare against all peoples who don’t comply with Washington’s global dictatorship. With these latest escalations, the U.S. empire’s strategists see that the forces opposed to this system have potential to soon gain an unprecedented series of victories. Victories that could change the power balance enough for finance capital to undergo a crisis it won’t be able to handle.
As White House officials try to manage this catastrophic scenario the Zionists have created for them, the intelligence centers are working to preempt the other threats to finance capital. These threats being the illiberal social forces within the U.S. empire’s borders, which could destroy the U.S. capitalist order from within during this moment of chaos. Just as important as preventing finance capital’s war machine from breaking itself in an unmanageable conflict is maintaining narrative dominance for this war machine.
Finance capital’s greatest concern is preventing the rise of an anti-imperialist united front, which would be able to create a clear dividing barrier between who supports and opposes imperialist wars. If the ruling class loses this domestic war against the resistance towards its foreign policy designs, its ability to maintain internal stability breaks down. This is why it’s necessary for communists to aid in the transition towards multipolarity: not because the coming of multipolarity in itself can defeat the power of capital, but because it represents a crucial part of how we can weaken our class enemies. Finance capital depends on the smooth advancement of its foreign policy designs; on wars which provide the material and narrative means for maintaining the liberal order.
These wars become untenable, and what’s considered “normal” within our present social system becomes no more. The USA’s elites will then need to enter into an open war against their own people, who’ve been empowered by capital’s weakening and provoked into action by the economy’s unraveling. We can already see a clear picture of what this escalation in the class struggle is going to look like, and how the coming of multipolarity is bringing it closer. Biden’s unwinnable proxy war against Russia has exploded inflation, furthering class contradictions and increasing mass disillusionment with our system of government. This economic crisis, exacerbated by the Houthi disruption of trade that Biden’s backing of the Gaza genocide has brought, is going to be made far worse if we enter into a war with Iran. And if a war of that scale doesn’t come about from the tensions with Iran, it could easily come from one of the empire’s other fronts of conflict.
The existential crisis that “Israel” finds itself in is a microcosm of the one that imperialism is experiencing. Like how “Israel” wouldn’t be able to militarily, economically, or socially survive a full war with Iran at the same time that it’s fighting its losing war with Hamas, the U.S. empire is going to implode if it takes on too many battles at once.
Even though the neocon think tanks have made plans to expand the hybrid war against Russia into the broader BRICS countries following Biden’s Ukraine defeat, Washington can’t start attacking every country which isn’t fully loyal to it. It needs to be selective in who it targets, and this need for caution gets greater the more the transition to multipolarity advances. Just last year, it was far more probable that Washington would pursue a war with Mexico. Then the Palestinian resistance made great gains, necessitating that the empire concentrate much of its attention on trying to save “Israel.” Its focus has since been split between “Israel” and Ukraine, the latter of which it wouldn’t be able to win in even if it could sustain the political will for speedy U.S. aid packages.
The architects behind the imperialist wars are scrambling and indecisive. They’re caught between considering the perilous costs of pushing forward within these conflicts, and viewing these conflicts as the only way to avoid further losses of U.S. influence. In addition to the fear over letting BRICS gain even more of a role, one of the big anxieties driving U.S. support for “Israel” is the prospect of seeing Washington’s Syria occupation fall apart. If the Zionist state falls, Washington will no longer hold the leverage to be able to trample on Syria’s sovereignty, and to steal its oil. What Washington has managed to gain from its hybrid war against Syria—which Assad overall won years ago by defeating the U.S. jihadist insurgency—is going to vanish.
The colonial extractive foothold that Washington has established within the region is fragile, able to be imperiled by a Gaza guerrilla movement and a relatively cheap Iranian missile strike effort. This is the uncertain strategic situation that the “Israeli” and U.S. oppressors find themselves in. For anti-imperialists, the crucial thing is to seriously prioritize the defeat of this great enemy, and to not let other battles impede this goal. The foremost tactic of the enemy, in fact, is to try to lure us into making just that mistake.
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To understand why finance capital is the core force behind this imperialist system, and why it’s therefore important to emphasize in our rhetoric and practice, we have to look at how finance capital became the dominant form of capital. The emergence of “money capital,” as Marx called it, represented the next stage following the evolution from feudalism to capitalist industry. First, capital became advanced enough to supersede the old feudal order, and could use primitive accumulation to gather the raw materials needed for capitalism’s industrial explosion. Then finance gained a kind of status far above that of industry. It could come to be the ubiquitous, decisive force within property relations, giving unparalleled wealth and economic leverage to the capitalists who lended to the industrialists.
This obviously created the perfect conditions for monopolies. Which led to the rise of imperialism as we now know it: an arrangement where monopoly finance capital exploits the peripheral countries by exporting capital, as opposed to the old imperialism where the exploiting countries exported goods. Since the latter part of the 19th century, this has been what imperialism is. Which not only shows that Russia, China, and Iran aren’t imperialist, as they lack the monopoly finance capitalist character which necessarily precludes modern imperialism. It also shows that not all elements within the bourgeoisie are equally invested in imperialism, which is a reality that the working class movement can take advantage of.
Because of how severely the imperial order is harming our economy, we’re now seeing the lower levels of capital increasingly view it as in their interests to support anti-imperialist efforts. This is why the Libertarian Party is opposing aid to Ukraine and “Israel,” and allying with communists on antiwar issues. Even though the faction that’s become in charge of the LP over the last couple years is further to the right on social issues, it’s based within a type of pro-capitalist ideology that’s antagonistic towards liberal geo-strategic goals. Industrial capital—which this ideology comes from—desires genuine market competition, as well as economic growth. Both of which are constricted by monopoly capital, especially during today’s era.
From the start of their rule, the monopolists have made true competition a thing of the past, dominating the capitalist game before anyone besides them can start. And now, as capital terminally contracts, we’re seeing them progressively destroy the productive aspects of capitalism. They’re explicitly pursuing “degrowth;” which capital has always used to keep profits up during times of crisis, but is now being outwardly marketed by the liberal technocrats as a supposed climate solution. And the “green” aspect of the degrowth agenda is only one part of it; we’ve been seeing manifestations of it for a long time.
The destructive lockdowns; the inflation (or rather price gouging); the concentration of financial power that’s made another 2008 crisis inevitable; the cutting off of the United States from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which would vastly improve the country’s economy and infrastructure; finance capital’s social engineering measures and cold war provocations are leaving us with a collapsing economy that’s due to get far worse. It’s all part of the design to degrow our society, so that the biggest capitalists can maintain their dominance.
BlackRock, the world’s most powerful asset management firm, is the most infamous example of how finance capital has been profiting from a hollowed-out economy and global conflicts. At the same time that BlackRock has been monopolizing the housing market, it’s been making investments in Ukraine so that it can profit from the devastation which U.S. provocations have brought to the country. Big tech and big pharma have been profiting from the recent crises in equivalent ways, gaining an even more hegemonic presence within American life throughout the pandemic.
The monopolists are able to build corporate and financial empires within a deindustrialized United States, while everyone else is left increasingly at their mercy—including the lower levels of capital. The lockdowns placed restaurant owners in momentary peril. U.S. farmers are under threat from Wall Street, which has been accumulating ever more rural land. The intelligence agencies have been carrying out political interference and COINTELPRO tactics so that MAGA, and the petty-bourgeois interests it represents, are made unable to institutionally threaten capital’s highest levels.
This is where the strategic intelligence of Marxists gets tested. Because there’s a great temptation to tacitly side with finance capital and its policies, under the belief that finance capital is more progressive than industrial capital. (An idea that’s as absurd as siding with the new imperialism because it’s more “progressive” than the old imperialism.) This impulse to back the Democrats in their inter-elite rivalry with the MAGA faction comes from the idea that liberals necessarily have the most revolutionary potential, meaning Marxists should signal to the liberals that we’re on their side. This has been leading to new sectarian conflicts in the socialist movement, with the socialists who advocate for liberal tailism attacking the ones who reject this practice.
That such hubris and division exists within radical spaces is by design. As my fellow traveler within this movement Jesse Wingert has observed, the leftists who seek to keep Marxism confined to a niche are a product of the same imperialist manipulation tactics which have made the Syria occupation possible:
Only the few organizations willing to step outside of the Leftists’ niche kaleidoscope of ideologies pose even a hypothetical threat to the State, and it's no surprise that these organizations have faced the brunt of the Cognitive Operations the State employs against the Left. Instead of large operations to isolate a portion of the workers on the Left, Imperialism has found ideologies that they can use to provide a screening force for their real maneuvers against genuine anti-Imperialist organizations, just as the Right had previously done for the State when Imperialism was strong, and they could plunder the world relatively freely. While these Leftists aren't directly aligned with the State in the same ways as the Democratic Party, they are nevertheless a force which the State has found to be compatible with its concrete aims at the immediate moment. In much the same way as the Imperialists were able to cooperate with tribal entities, semi-national factions, and religious and political groups which served as co-belligerent, circumstantial allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, such as Suni tribal militia, the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and “moderate rebels” in Syria, the State has also found ideologies which are not friendly to them, but who's separate interests are useful for the State.
The “Israelis” have now brought a great new escalation in the geopolitical conflict, which is going to catalyze escalations in the class conflict. The question is whether these “left” counter-gangs will succeed at sabotaging the people’s struggle throughout the coming tumult.
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The state is also cultivating counter-gangs on the right, and it’s been increasingly doing so since the escalation of the Gaza genocide created new urgency for ensuring rightists support “Israel.” These types of counter-gangs can be defeated, though, if Marxists reject the insular practice of the left counter-gangs, and work to bring conservatives and libertarians into the anti-imperialist cause. Not because conservatives and libertarians are the only elements with revolutionary potential; but because ideologically broadening the resistance towards monopoly finance capital is how we can make the class struggle effective.
The way the state is narratively targeting these conservatives and libertarians centers around appealing to their growing hostility towards the monopolists, and turning this proto-revolutionary sentiment in directions which aid finance capital. This is what Marxists must understand about today’s right-wing psyops if we want to combat them: they’ve been designed to try to neutralize the threat posed by industrial capital’s rising antagonism towards finance capital, and the revolutionary potential which this antagonism creates among the conservative-leaning workers.
The interests of industrial capital, which primarily drives today’s right-wing media and politics, are in finance’s capital losing its hegemonic control. (Therefore the right has been leading a backlash against the lockdowns, denying manmade global warming to try to prevent “green” degrowth, and entertaining skepticism towards NATO.) That the right is increasingly battling finance capital doesn’t mean we should support the right, or side with small capital against big capital. It only means we should take advantage of the disillusionment with finance capital which this political rift is creating among many conservatives and libertarians.
That false consciousness exists within this social base shouldn’t drive us towards liberal tailism. Cultivating false consciousness has been an essential maneuver by the industrial capitalists, who seek to disempower finance capital while preventing the emergence of socialism. And at the moment, finance capital is trying to blunt the rise of class consciousness among conservatives and libertarians by inserting psyops into right-wing discourse. This is what the controlled anti-woke backlash of the last year has been about: reinforcing our partisan polarization by keeping the conservative element entrenched within anti-communist paranoia, culture wars, and xenophobia.
Because the leftists Wingert talks about side with finance capital, they see these reactionary sentiments and conclude that all social conservatives are enemies. Yet this polarized way of thinking is just what these psyops are crafted to propagate, with the psychological impacts intended to be present on both the left and the right. “Their efforts to create new narratives and ideas are best exemplified by their rhetoric around Mexican drug cartels, and a need for US intervention,” observes Wingert. “While new domestic sources of critical resources such as Lithium and Nickel have made war with Mexico less likely, we see that they still push this idea that the Cartels (quietly supported by the United States), pose a problem that Mexico can't handle, and which demands US intervention. However these efforts are also specifically targeted at anti-Imperialist ideologies, with support of Milei and ideas such as those by ‘bronze age pervert’ and other anarcho-capitalists aimed at presenting a viable, Imperialist-compatible Ideology to replace Libertarianism's former role as a controlled opposition force on their right flank.”
Since October 7, the effort to manufacture consent for war with Iran has become as prominent within this propaganda campaign as the anti-Mexico psyop. The problem for the imperialists is that they’ve made this narrative pivot not because they actually want war with Iran at this moment (as they increasingly fear Iran’s strength), but because if they aren’t ready to back “Israel” in its renegade acts, their united front with the “Israelis” will be ruined.
It doesn’t truly matter that the White House doesn’t want the conflict to reach such a level, because the U.S. political establishment has already committed to unconditionally standing with “Israel.” It also hasn’t mattered whether the “Israelis” have listened to Washington’s calls for a restrained attack on Iran, because any attack that they were going to direct towards Iran was going to be answered with massive retribution. And now that they’ve done it, such retribution is imminent. Much like with their project to turn Ukraine into a fascist proxy war tool, the imperialists have created an unpredictable and erratic force by cultivating the “Israeli” settler regime. Now this regime is compelling them to direct their resources and narrative management efforts towards a conflict which poses immense risks.
The actors who’ve been most aggressive in pushing war propaganda about Iran are the types of conservatives which have a stake in Zionism, and in liberal geo-strategic goals. Tim Pool has been blaming Iran for the tensions using low effort one-sentence quips. Ben Shapiro, the Zionist influencer who closely aligns with the Republican Party establishment, has been making segments where he argues for aid not just to “Israel” but to Ukraine as well. When Iran retaliates again, these narrative managers will be ready with a series of talking points for why libertarians and U.S. patriots should back the war effort. But how effective are they truly going to be when they’re acting against the illiberal trend within the conservative social base that they’re trying to appeal to?
Plenty of conservatives, and even certain types of “libertarians,” will affirm their support for our imperialist deep state during this crucial moment. But plenty of others will grow further alienated from the agenda of figures like Shapiro, who aren’t even pretending to be dissidents. The same alienation could occur in relation to the rightist psyop agents who do pretend to be anti-establishment, like Milei. How effective is Milei’s rhetoric about the Zionist state representing “freedom” capable of being? For these actors to invest their discourse management strategy within marketing Zionism is not sustainable, because “Israel” isn’t sustainable. And when it falls, the subsequent efforts by these propagandists to construct a nostalgic mythology around it is going to clash too much with empirical reality.
“Israel” hasn’t just been committing a continuous genocide against the Palestinians for its entire existence; it’s been acting as a crucial asset for the U.S. war machine, a testing center for global innovations in surveillance and repression, and a haven for pedophiles. Anybody who’s supporting it, or its parallel fascist U.S. proxy regime in Kiev, has set themselves up against the effort to defeat the deep state—as well as against humanity’s broader effort to wage war on child sexual abusers. That’s why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has singlehandedly sabotaged the third party movement for the time being with his over-the-top pro-Israel lies. As much damage Zionism has been able to do to the effort at building an anti-imperialist united front, in the long term the anti-monopoly coalition is capable of winning. Because the “Israel” psyop, the Ukraine psyop, and the deep state’s other narrative constructs are ultimately untenable.
That’s why finance capital is increasingly working to purge dissent: it can’t afford to let the anti-monopoly forces keep operating. This great new provocation by “Israel” is going to accelerate this counterinsurgency effort, along with every other aspect of the class war. We have to get ready to keep our organizations going throughout this next stage.
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