The mission of the elites who rule our society is to circumvent an inescapable law of history: that every society experiences change. These elites can prolong the lifespan of their power structure by modifying it as time passes, and this is what they’ve lately been doing by making our ruling institutions come to look more socially and culturally progressive. These aesthetic shifts towards the appearance of inclusion and equity, which have mainly happened since the start of this century’s biggest economic crisis so far, weren’t going to prevent the next stages in capitalism’s decline. More and bigger contractions were going to come to our economy, which meant that our rulers would need to adapt further.
They would need to take the attacks on civil liberties from the War on Terror to their logical conclusion, and get rid of any pretexts for constitutional freedoms. Which is something that’s been done countless times under the dictatorships the U.S. empire has installed, but in the heart of imperialism, this task needs an extra measure in order to work: making the total destruction of democracy look like the only way to save “democracy.” Our capitalist dictatorship depends on a balance between oppression and “freedom,” where the rulers violate the rights of the people only enough that the people won’t revolt.
A government can get a population to lessen its standard for what conditions are unacceptable; the last half-century of increasing austerity has shown this. The engineered decline in living standards is creating growing dissatisfaction among the people, though, and this decline keeps getting faster. So if our government wants to fully take away our freedoms, it’s going to have to wage war against dissent in the right way.
The last century’s history of counterinsurgencies, and recent developments in our government’s domestic counterinsurgency activities, have shown that this war effort is going to center around the most insidious form of anti-revolutionary warfare: creating controlled opposition forces that gain the trust of aspiring revolutionaries. And in the imperial center today, this controlled opposition’s central mission is to dissuade developing radicals from embracing the strategy that can defeat liberal totalitarianism: an alliance among the illiberal forces that are compatible with the anti-imperialist cause.
Cultivating elements that divert revolutionary energy towards goals which help the existing power structure has been a strategy of the capitalist class ever since capitalism fully replaced feudalism as the dominant system. Bonapartism, where ambitious elements in the lower rungs of capital lead a revolt against the highest elites, is one of the oldest examples of this. The fascist movements of the early 20th century, which represented one type of Bonapartism, advanced this strategy’s methods. It created a program designed to take on the historical role that would otherwise be filled by Marxism.
The purpose of these movements was to provide an answer to capitalism’s contradictions that was anti-communist, selling an ideology of racial supremacy and intensified imperialist war to the elements of society that were becoming disillusioned with liberalism. By providing support to Nazis—something the U.S. is doing today more directly than ever—international capital could use illiberalism’s most reactionary forms to strengthen liberalism.
This paradoxical dynamic is what liberalism has always relied on to maintain itself. For example, liberal states have from the start utilized militaries, which are institutions with inherently illiberal characteristics. Liberalism needs a fighting force, and any fighting force that’s effective needs to include collectivist aspects. So liberal states have had to nurture illiberalism to an extent, building armed forces whose members are trained to reject the individualist habits that liberal society propagates. As the imperial order continues to decline, and capitalism becomes less stable, this is leading to a growth in the elements of capitalist militaries which are opposed to the goals of the elites. It’s these rogue military elements, along with the broader sections of the people that reject liberalism despite not necessarily being on the left, which are crucial towards defeating imperialism.
There can be no victory against the imperial state without these types of illiberal forces. If the communist movement is separated from them, the anti-imperialist movement will be too fractured to effectively oppose the empire’s counterinsurgency. Which is why the imperial state seeks to use its counter-gangs, both of the leftist and fascist varieties, to crush any projects to unite these revolution-compatible illiberals.
The conception of counter-gangs as a named strategy, and their expanded role within imperialism’s counterinsurgencies, came about through the need the atomic bomb created for new innovations in warfare. Now that countries could destroy each other as soon as one of them invaded the other’s territory, the hegemon needed to pursue more indirect ways of fighting. The model of cultivating faux-revolutionary organizations that claimed to be the true liberation forces was expanded on during the wars against anti-colonial movements in Africa. And it was at the same time being pursued in the U.S. itself, where intelligence agents created ultra-left “socialist” groups to attack pro-Soviet communists.
Ever since the state succeeded at crushing any substantial labor movement in the country, these types of counter-gangs have been able to guide practically all new potential revolutionaries towards a politically impotent path. This is because without a real workers leadership, these sources of controlled opposition have been the most visible avenue for radical organizing. They’ve acted as versions of the academic “Marxists” that repeat the anti-communist ideas of our ruling institutions, while gaining the trust of developing radicals by aesthetically appearing to be revolutionary. This method of managing dissent, where spontaneous outrage at the system gets diverted into counter-gangs, has been able to neutralize pro-worker sentiments for decades. But its effectiveness couldn’t be maintained forever.
When imperial decline combined with economic crisis to produce the next great wave of discontent, as is happening now, political forces would emerge that reject the ideology of the counter-gangs. These forces side with every country in the anti-imperialist bloc, embrace the strategy of an illiberal alliance, and seek to win the support of the broad masses rather than holding an elitist view towards them. Now that such genuine sources of dissent have resurfaced, the state needs to intensify its counterinsurgency. It has to further import its warfare methods from around the globe, consistent with how the American imperial project itself is being forced to retreat closer towards the core.
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The liberal totalitarianism that our elites are implementing isn’t the same as the tyranny which existed within the military dictatorships the CIA installed during the first cold war. Even in Latin America itself, the political model of these regimes is recognized by the U.S. government as no longer feasible. The State Department has filled the CIA’s old role in trying to overthrow governments, with the preferred model now being color revolutions rather than coups. And though an equivalent of these coups is guaranteed to happen in the core as our elites grow more desperate to maintain their power, here the counterrevolutionary coup isn’t going to be one where the military takes over. That would only create risk of an illiberal victory. Instead, the USA’s coup looks like an incremental takeover by the national security state. Like a process where civil liberties progressively disappear, and the intelligence agencies gain ever more control over our institutions.
Since the start of this century, every one of the power transfers that this coup method entails has already happened; the only stage left is the one where the security state comes to fully exercise its authority, which it’s getting close to doing. The final form of the American imperial state is one where its inhumane, reactionary nature becomes as blatant as imaginable, all while it remains in its electoral republican form of government. Thereby, it’s going to still be able to claim to represent progress, even as every part of what it does shows the opposite to be true.
This is the governmental model of the most inhumane regimes that Washington supports today. The Zionist colonial entity of “Israel”; Hindutva fascist India; Banderite fascist Ukraine; Australia with its island concentration camp for refugees; Canada with its ongoing genocide against the First Nations; all of these countries are considered within the liberal worldview to be democratic, and more progressive than any of the countries that oppose imperialism. The countries I’ve listed aren’t the only liberal “democratic” republics that uphold barbaric policies (Britain with its torture prisons is another example), but I’ve focused on these ones because they share a certain trait: their governments are all either trying to ethnically cleanse indigenous populations, or have already succeeded at doing so. Only Ukraine isn’t presently able to do this to its targets, those being the eastern Russian speakers. And that’s because Russia is preventing the Ukrainian forces from gaining access to these communities.
Annexing and racially cleansing indigenous lands is what the United States is founded upon, and as much as the U.S. tries to act like this part of history isn’t relevant to today, there are inescapable ways that it’s impacting the present. The outcome of the continent’s colonization is that the state which the U.S. imperialists built upon the stolen Native territories is now threatening to destroy itself. The colonial project’s economic system is based within extractivism and exploitation, which history has shown to be consistently unsustainable things to base a society off of. A civilization that’s built on stealing from other civilizations has no foundation of its own, which means it’s destined to go into decline. Then to keep their profits up, that civilization’s ruling elites will have to start consuming the society they rule over, leading to ever more instability.
That’s the situation our rulers find themselves in: a systemic crisis that’s more dire, and less able to be escaped, than the crisis which the European countries were in prior to World War II. Whereas there was a revival of capitalist growth following the war, the collapse we’re experiencing is going to bring either terminal decline or revolution. That’s why our elites are pursuing degrowth: they know that their system can only survive in a state of endless contraction, where the number of people with material comforts keeps being made to shrink. The colonial states are being threatened not just by the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, but by the vastly more ancient phenomenon where empires collapse. And in the countries that exist because of colonialism, like the United States, this collapse is the most chaotic and violent.
The more the breakdown of the U.S. progresses, the greater incentive the elites will come to have for invading Mexico, which would momentarily bring back up the rewards they get from colonial extractivism. That’s a plan the empire could pursue when its reach within Eurasia gets further reduced, and it has to abandon more of its wars. Shifting the wars so close to the core would create great risk of provoking the USA’s population, though. So in the likely near future where Mexico becomes the main target for war propaganda, the elites are going to need to have put in place sufficient measures for preempting a backlash from the people. The national security state has gained the authority to pursue these measures, and they’ll be modeled off the warfare practices of Washington’s two main proxies of today: Ukraine and Israel.
Ukrainian fascism aims to keep itself alive, even after losing a war that’s destroyed its economy, by implementing Israel’s methods for waging war against an entire population. The Zionists have developed these tools through decades of running a society that’s built on endless war, so they’ve been useful enough to get incorporated into numerous other U.S.-backed regimes. These Israeli repressive tools, especially the ones Ukraine has been adopting, consist of programs for putting a vast amount of people under occupation. This is where Ukraine’s coup regime has gotten the idea to insert the National Guard into daily life, creating the same atmosphere of intimidation for Russian speakers that exists for Palestinians.
Both regimes have forced a group of people into an underclass status, have criminalized the organizations that challenge this oppression, and have done so while being portrayed by the empire’s narrative managers as safeguarders of “democracy.” For the minds that have been trained in the pro-hegemonic worldview, these inconsistencies between narrative and reality don’t matter, because this worldview isn’t truly centered around promoting freedom. It’s centered around defending the material interests of the global minority that benefits from imperial extraction. And if these interests require that Palestine, Iran, Russia, China, or any other civilization be crushed, then the narrative managers are going to operate as if these civilizations represent an existential threat towards the “democracy” of the favored regimes.
The events of the last couple years, in which most of the U.S. public has come to oppose aid to Ukraine and then come to support a Gaza ceasefire, show that most in the core aren’t ultimately compatible with this ideology. Even in the empire’s center, only a minority have a primary material interest in maintaining U.S. hegemony. Most of them lack an incentive to keep defending the hegemon’s narratives once they’ve been exposed to the anti-imperialist perspectives. Which means the elites are going to need to use the Zionist counterinsurgency tools to try to preemptively suppress a revolt from this majority.
These tools have already been heavily incorporated into the workings of repression within the core. Since 9/11, U.S. police departments have been getting trained by Israel. And federal law enforcement has become “Israelified” to a degree where the national security state will be fully prepared to employ Zionism’s methods when the time comes for this. These counterinsurgency methods can be overcome, so long as those seeking to carry out a revolution navigate their conditions correctly. Which means rejecting the ideology of the counter-gangs, with their agenda of dividing the resistance against the state.
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Essential to the narrative that Zionism’s governmental model represents something “progressive” is the idea that the ones who this model’s repression targets don’t count as deserving of democratic representation. That only the ones who the imperial project favors—with in Israel’s case this being the settlers—are worthy of rights. This is the same view that the imperial state and its ideological adherents hold towards the elements of our society which threaten U.S. hegemony. Foremost among these targeted elements are the anti-imperialists who come from a colonized background, and who are working to help unite with other illiberal forces.
The members of the African People’s Socialist Party exemplify this element which the state sees as such a threat. The Uhuru organization’s nature as a Pan-African project, and commitment to doing whatever is necessary for fighting U.S. hegemony, are what have made it the first target of the state’s campaign to indict individuals on foreign interference charges. There are plenty of socialists in today’s United States who claim to be anti-colonial, but none of them have become as successful as Uhuru is. That’s because Uhuru is willing to do what they’re not: build a movement which exists outside the niche of activism, and ally with the same illiberal forces which are blacklisted within conventional socialist spaces.
This willingness by Uhuru to do what’s required for winning has not only made it come to be persecuted by the state, but made the left’s cynical elements lack a willingness to help it. They see Uhuru as a threat to their efforts at monopolizing organizing circles, which makes them unreliable sources of opposition towards the state. Solidarity with the indicted Uhuru members, and with all the others who the state is soon going to target, can’t be found within the predominant socialist organizations. It can instead be found within an anti-liberal alliance.
In a situation where our ruling institutions are continuously intensifying their efforts to destroy everyone who challenges the liberal order, the most important divide is coming to be the one over whether or not someone opposes the imperial hegemon. And this development is bringing the illiberal elements closer together; it’s driving communists to enter into coalitions with libertarians, and with communists of different tendencies. The emergence of this coalition has furthered the split within the socialist movement, revealing more ways that the conventional elements of today’s U.S. left are incompatible with a serious anti-imperialist movement. The primary divide among socialists is coming to no longer be over whether to support existing socialist states; it’s now becoming over whether an illiberal alliance is worth building.
For the vast majority of the people whose main interest is in defeating the empire, this dispute isn’t even something they’re aware of. When their government is working to drive down their living standards, and is trying to take away their freedom to speak or mobilize, it’s intuitive that working with any political forces which share their goals is necessary. Like Uhuru, their interests are in winning the struggle, not in gaining approval from the niche leftist circles. Therefore, if these broader masses are brought into the anti-imperialist fight, most of them won’t be susceptible to the anti-solidarity arguments of the counter-gangs.
That’s why the goal of these counter-gang elements within the left is the same as that of the state: to prevent most of the people from becoming politically conscious or involved. These forces want politics to remain something that’s engaged in only by a minority, because the imperialism-compatible “socialists” are hostile towards any project for expanding the antiwar struggle beyond this small space. That way, no sufficient opposition towards the state’s war on dissent can emerge, as the self-described socialists with the biggest influence lack an interest in practicing solidarity with this war’s targets. And without an effective opposition, the imperial state can wage its domestic war with impunity, extrajudicially eliminating its enemies in the core like it’s been able to do in its drone strikes abroad.
These drone operations, and Washington’s other recent imperialist activities, have been able to happen because of the absence of an effective anti-imperialist movement in the core. And such a movement has been absent because the core’s main socialists of today share the anti-popular attitude of our ruling class, where the majority outside of one’s insular circle is seen as untrustworthy and deserving of exclusion. This view of our conditions within modern leftism, where the people are seen as fundamentally reactionary, is what’s also going to enable the war which the U.S. government will wage against its own people.
It’s in this task of keeping the political realm small that liberalism’s tactic of utilizing certain illiberal forces to reinforce its own strength becomes useful. Because the opponents of the anti-liberal alliance rely on the narrative that any actors within the movement who they can’t control are fascists in disguise. And as our class struggle intensifies, the imperialists and their agents within the left are applying this characterization to more and more people.
For the partisans of U.S. hegemony, all one has needed to do to be classified as a reactionary is support Russia in its war against Banderite fascism. Therefore they’re seen as deserving of whatever the state does in retaliation for their supposed crimes, whether this is incarcerating them, torturing them, subjecting them to targeted harassment, or extrajudicially executing them. And the “socialists” who the state gives the most visibility to will reinforce this perception of them, or at least act apathetic about being in solidarity with these targets.
With the Uhuru indictments, this disregard for solidarity is letting the state intensify its war against colonized people, all while the main representatives of socialism act complicit in the state’s actions. As these attacks against dissent get expanded to the other parts of the anti-imperialist movement, they’ll find that their route towards survival isn’t going to involve gaining allyship from the ostensibly socialist elements which replaced the genuine labor movement. It’s instead going to involve building a united front with the other illiberal forces which show themselves to be committed to resisting liberal totalitarianism.
The left counter-gangs are able to obscure this practical reality by rhetorically exploiting the same systemic evils they perpetuate; they can point to the reality of colonization, for instance, and portray the members of the anti-imperialist united front as enemies of the anti-colonial cause. Uhuru’s embrace of the united front has proven this notion to be false, though. In reality, it’s the elements that fight against the illiberal alliance which are reinforcing the colonial order. By recruiting a current of developing radicals into the effort at attacking the anti-imperialist cause, the narrative managers are able to turn many of the people who could otherwise have become revolutionaries into reactionaries. Even if the ones recruited into these counter-gangs have every intention of resisting fascism, the effect of their actions is to strengthen fascism.
The liberals characterize the anti-imperialist front’s members as fascists, but the illiberal elements that are fascist tend to be the ones which the liberals themselves have cultivated. Washington has assisted the Banderites in creating an army of Nazi terrorists, who are being directed to pursue the assassination of numerous anti-imperialist individuals. The amount of U.S. citizens on their list of targets can only grow, and Washington’s federal agents are prepared to facilitate a purge in collaboration with these fascist paramilitaries.
Nazism won’t be the only ideological current that the state uses to mobilize its counterrevolutionary proxies. Another element among these paramilitary forces will be the types of anarchists who make up modern America’s predominant iteration of “Antifa.” The intelligence agencies have ideologically prepared these radical liberals for a war against both communists, and the other kinds of illiberals who many communists are increasingly working with. By making these illiberal forces be viewed as fascist within conventional leftist thinking, the parts of the left that have embraced ultraviolence are able to rationalize physically attacking members of the anti-imperialist movement. These radical liberal actors who the feds have radicalized are only waiting for the moment when their government gives them permission to carry out such acts.
The stronger the resistance to the imperial state becomes, the closer the counterinsurgency gets to reaching that most extreme stage. These intensifications of violence are going to be used in the propaganda warfare of the left’s counter-gang elements. They’ll try to exploit fears of “red-brown” collaboration, portraying all illiberals as synonymous with the Nazis who are carrying out the terror campaign. It’s a strategy for creating confusion, division, and paranoia, where the state facilitates acts of violence against anti-imperialists and then tries to link these acts to people who are truly friends of the anti-imperialist cause. That’s the goal behind the attempts to portray antiwar conservatives or libertarians as fascists, and to portray communists who don’t tail liberal identity politics as secret reactionaries. This narrative manipulation is going to convince some to join with the liberals in attacking the united front. But the anti-solidarity psyops of the counter-gangs are limited in their potential.
The majority of the people won’t be receptive to these psyops, because they’re detached from the insular political circles where these psyops are most effective. The more of the people we expose to anti-imperialist ideas, the more support our cause will gain. We simply need to guarantee that our operations can continue amid all of the attacks which the state, and its ultraviolent counter-gangs, are soon going to direct at us.
The same actors which call our anti-liberal coalition a “red-brown alliance” are themselves increasingly aligning with fascists. Those being the fascists in the Democratic Party. The more our class struggle intensifies, the more the opportunists in socialist circles are going to join with the state in attacking those targeted by the war on dissent. And the more these targets are going to be driven towards joining with each other in the fight against the liberal totalitarian state.
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