Amid the release of the Trump White House’s fascistic “counterterrorism” strategy, the Democrats are signaling that they’ll assist in this crackdown plan. We know that this includes the “democratic socialist” politicians, because it’s these “progressives” who’ve been putting forth some of the most aggressive calls for expanding the Epstein regime’s third world war; AOC has said the Democrats need to go further than Trump in waging the assault against Russia, and in advancing the war on Venezuela. The “progressives,” neoliberal Democrats, and Zionist right-wingers are all unified in wanting to purge America of opposition towards the regime’s Hitlerite war goals.
The neoliberals have shown this unity through their recent campaign to character assassinate everyone with left-wing positions, including figures who the Democrats have been able to use as controlled opposition. (Namely Hasan Piker.) And the socdem leaders tacitly support these smear campaigns, because they fall on the side of those who want to ramp up Washington’s global aggressions.
When these Democrats attack Piker over his pro-China and pro-Palestine views, they’re advancing the first stage in a plan to set America up for massive fascist repression. A plan that’s been explained by the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, which demands for our institutions to kick out every person who holds any kind of left-wing belief. Project Esther is nominally about guiding the next actions of the Republican Party, but this anti-leftist purge by the Democrats proves that both wings of our ruling class have decided such a direction is necessary.
The decision to discard the compatible left was made right after October 7 happened, and Palestine became the primary issue; the Democrats wanted to destroy the pro-resistance left-wingers as much as the Zionist right did. The Democrats just needed to be less aggressive about it until after the 2024 election, which they lost precisely because they could barely pretend to be sympathetic towards the pro-Palestine movement.
With the coming of Trump 2.0, the liberals and the Zionist right have entered into a coalition, based around making sure that the opposition towards Washington’s genocidal offensive gets annihilated. During Trump’s time in office, this coalition works by having the Republicans primarily lead the repressive efforts, while the Democrats act to marginalize the targets through smear campaigns. In this last year, we’ve seen the House Oversight Committee launch an investigation into the PSL; then we’ve seen the Democrats use their media institutions to attack those who most visibly espouse pro-China and pro-Palestine views, which are the same views that have caused PSL to be persecuted.
Like Piker, the PSL has also served a useful role for the Democrats, drawing socialists into a fundamentally inert NGO left org that’s uninterested in activities outside electoral campaigns or protests. And appropriately, it’s the PSL that was the first to be targeted in this way, because left-wingers who help the enemy are the most vulnerable to the enemy’s inevitable betrayals.
The reason why the liberal wing had refrained from excluding many people with left-wing positions for a long time, up until that switch in 2023, is because such people are useful to the ruling class as long as they assist the Democrats. For over five decades, the Democratic Party’s role was to bring left-wingers under the same tent as the bourgeois liberals, and assimilate America’s social movements. As part of this effort to neutralize dissent, our ruling institutions have devoted great amounts of resources towards cultivating a left that’s fully state-backed, and that treats Marxism as just another one of bourgeois academia’s “critical theories.”
This strategy has been immensely useful to the imperial power structure, and maybe even critical to its survival during the last couple of generations. So when we see both wings of the ruling class pushing for the liquidation of the compatible left, we know we’re witnessing a shift that’s deeper than any other shift from our lifetime.
Our class enemies have agreed to get rid of the compatible left because they believe the social base for their next warfare plans can stand on its own, without a controlled opposition “radical” current being necessary any longer. They believe this because even though only a minority of Americans support Israel, the war on Iran, or the plans to abolish free speech, there are certain class elements that the empire can successfully bribe into joining this new fascist movement. These elements mainly exist among the urban workers who would benefit from the limited social reforms that the “democratic socialists” will realistically implement.
These politicians will only enact such reforms insofar as they don’t impede the expansion of the police state and the national security state. We’ve seen this in how even though Mamdani has enacted paid family leave, he’s only helped the NYPD. As the regime intensifies its terror against the bulk of the American people, certain Americans will receive new imperial bribes, and will be brought into the base for this Hitlerite project. This matches with the principle about social democracy that Stalin described, where the social democrats are sure to play an essential part in fascism’s efforts:
There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended for combating the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie cannot retain power without such a bloc.
In response to Stalin’s conclusion from this, that being “Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism,” certain Marxists have argued we should view the socdems more charitably in order to unify against the fascists. They point to how during the years before Hitler took power, the Comintern held a position which was largely hostile towards working with non-communists, and then the anti-fascist forces failed to stop Nazism. This is a true view of that historical moment, but not for the reason these Marxists think.
Indeed the communists made idealist errors during this time that caused unnecessary division; particularly with their embrace of red unions, which needlessly split organized labor. They were not wrong to treat the social democrats as fascists in disguise, though. Because as we have seen throughout history, and continue to see, the socdem leaders reliably assist in capital’s warfare against the working class. When Germany’s Social Democratic Party murdered Rosa Luxemburg, this gave the communists clarity about what they could expect from socdem politicians whenever the workers came to seriously threaten the ruling class.
This does not mean that communists should cut ourselves off from the workers who’ve been tricked by the socdems, as exemplified by purity fetishist practices like red unions. It means we need to bring these masses into a unified front by exposing the treachery of the socdems. By showing how these “democratic socialists” are in support of the Epstein regime’s third world war, and how this war depends on suppressing dissent, we can make the socdems unable to separate themselves from the fascist repression. We can alert the workers to the attacks that our class enemies are preparing for, and warn them of the betrayals that will inevitably come from the “progressives.”
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