Pan-leftism’s crucial role in the counterinsurgency, & what kind of political force can truly win the class war

Above: Antifa putting the Soviet flag next to the left anti-communist “three arrows” symbol, visually representing the contradictions within pan-leftism.

In the counterinsurgency strategy the USA has developed, a central aspect is the cultivation of forces that can pseudo-independently govern the population the military seeks to control. Chapter 10 of the U.S. Army’s Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies discusses “generational engagement,” where the military sets up institutions that can provide the people with false representatives. The chapter emphasizes the need to make these structures appear indigenous rather than extensions of the occupying government, which is a trick we’ve seen countless times from the imperialists and their proxies. Washington did this in Iraq, the “Israeli” settler state did this by establishing the Palestinian Authority, and the imperialists hope to do this in many other places should they get opportunities for future regime change operations.

It’s a more advanced version of the counter-gang strategy, where the counterinsurgency against Africa’s decolonization movements set up false revolutionary groups to attack and divert support from the authentic ones. Right now, our government’s effort at fighting the people’s revolutionary energy is at the stage where it mainly utilizes counter-gangs, or at least proto-counter-gangs. Faced with the rise of the pro-Palestine movement, the ruling class has promoted many political forces that can act as controlled opposition, some of them easier to recognize than others. The ostensibly radical activist wing of the Democratic Party has been trying to funnel Palestine supporters into voting blue, like this wing did during the George Floyd uprising. The “pan-leftist” current within organizing, which seeks to keep communism tied into leftism, has been working to divert people in a different way. It’s carried out idealistic activities, like blocking roads or going on political rants to Starbucks workers, that only turn the masses away from the cause. 

This is the role of the pan-leftist PSL: to maintain a monopoly over protest movements, and stop them from developing into something which can truly capture the masses. Because its practice is based in petty-bourgeois radicalism, it’s satisfied with only capturing certain elements of the people, and rally them around liberal identity politics. I’ve made this critique of the PSL and the other petty-bourgeois radical groups many times. But recent events have made me better understand the role which these forces have within the counterinsurgency. 

Amid the direction our ruling class has taken since Kamala Harris got the nomination, with many more dissident figures getting arrested or raided, it’s apparent that the empire managers are anxious to crush opposition. The dominant wing of the bourgeoisie wants Harris to win so that its war plans in Korea get carried through, and so that it can better perpetuate the culture wars. The Trump assassination attempt showed that at least a large part of the deep state is willing to instigate civil conflict for the sake of advancing these goals. As the Korean-based People’s Democracy Party has concluded, the FBI was likely involved in the assassination plot, which is consistent with how the FBI knowingly let January 6 happen. This part of the intelligence apparatus can be expected to engineer more incidents of political violence during or after the election, with the main goal of these false flags being to justify further crackdowns. 

Meanwhile, the empire’s proxies in Palestine and Ukraine face collapse, and Washington’s south Korean ally isn’t fully going along with its wishes for escalations. In all areas, our class and geopolitical conflict is accelerating. The counterinsurgency urgently needs to turn the power balance more in its favor, or things will get much further beyond the state’s control. That’s where the pan-leftists and the left counter-gangs come in.

Whereas the PSL’s role as an organization is to give influence to the NGOs, which doesn’t imply that it will take on any role in civil conflict, the ideological forces which are adjacent to it are ready to be used by the state in such a way. The new January 6-type unrest outbreaks which the feds plan to orchestrate are going to try to draw in both the right and the left, activating the Proud Boys and Antifa in tandem. That’s the nature of the color revolution network’s activities within the United States: to split the synthetic pseudo-revolts into two camps, one of them “trad” and the other one leftist. For the leftist side to be effective at diverting revolutionary mass energy, it needs to stand on its own within its part of the ideological landscape. It must meet no challenge from communists whose practice centers the broad masses, rather than the left. This is what makes the PSL so useful: it lets the left anti-communists and the Democratic Party NGOs infiltrate the communist movement, neutralizing potential challenges towards the left counter-gangs. “Marxism” can be kept fused with leftism, and therefore unable to pose a serious threat.

Or at least this is how things would go if all of these controlled opposition groups were the only political currents which exist. Unavoidably, elements have emerged to challenge the established left, and to build an iteration of communism that isn’t a liberal front. My org the CPI, and the other communist forces which reject the New Left radical liberal model, are gathering strength. They’re getting closer to restoring communism’s former mainstream status in the USA. These forces don’t necessarily have to embrace the “communist” label to do so; they’re bringing the people into a genuine effort at overthrowing our for-profit economic model, and that’s what matters. They’re challenging the counter-gangs which pan-leftism enables, presenting an alternative towards the synthetic “red” groups which the ruling class is setting up to sow controlled chaos. 

This is why, as my friend within the movement Jesse Wingert has concluded, the left counter-gangs represent the main state proxies we’ll be facing. He compares the role of these proxies to that of the white nationalist “groypers,” observing that when it comes to the far-right counter-gangs…

…The primary threat to the Mass Movement comes from the timing of their deployment in concert with other threats from the Imperialists, rather than posing an objective threat in isolation; if employed without support, this reactionary section of the Right would be destroyed quickly and do little damage, but can force the Workers to divert critical forces away from the Imperialists themselves and expose us to other operational threats. 

We must then be prepared for a period of time where we are not able to take the offensive in any major way because of objective external conditions, even though we might otherwise have a favorable balance of forces. The Groypers will almost certainly be kept in reserve, ready to disrupt the Anti-Imperialists or the Industrial Capitalists if either of our operations become too effective during the vulnerable period while the Financial Bourgeoise are consolidating power after a coup. While they may become more active in the leadup to the elections, in an effort to provoke and rally a flagging Left, it would be an operational mistake to see this as the [main] body of their forces; they are embedded deeper than a few protesters and memers, and we have seen no evidence of a strategic shift which would allow the militant reactionaries to replace the Left counter-gangs as the main proxy force of the State within the Imperialist’s overall force structure.

What should we do in response to these realities? In the short term, the wise thing is to refrain from drawing too much attention to ourselves from the state, and keep a lower profile as the election dramas intensify. We shouldn’t show up to any gatherings that could get steered in a chaotic direction, especially not at this moment. Now is the time to gather our strength for the confrontations that are coming next; for doing the many kinds of internal trainings our cadres will require, while showing the masses that we side with them against the deep state. We need to mobilize towards defending the Uhuru 3. We need to combat the Kamala Harris psyop, which is the narrative that’s meant to make possible the liberal fascist coup Wingert warns about. 

The monopoly capitalists aim to use this week’s Uhuru trial as a precedent to go after numerous other anti-imperialist orgs, while distracting the people through culture war battles. Then the plan is to rig the election for Harris, create more January 6 events, and expand this proto-third world war into East Asia. The better prepared we are to defend from the counter-gangs, the greater chance we’ll survive the next attacks. And the more connections we make with the masses, the more support we’ll have during the class war’s most intense stages. The way to make these connections is by becoming active agents within the discourse, doing things like raising awareness on Uhuru and promoting a message of anti-imperialist mass unity. 

These aren’t things the pan-leftists are willing to do, which is why we can further weaken their organizing monopoly. They aren’t the biggest long-term threat our movement faces; they’re only the ones who empower the actual counter-gangs, which are even more isolated from the masses but pose a physical kind of menace. If we navigate our conditions correctly, we’ll overcome both obstacles, and leave our class enemies without these crucial counterinsurgency tools.

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Latest Zionist & Ukrainian invasions are futile attempts to undo the anti-imperialist camp’s victory

The Zionist entity’s genocidal invasion of the West Bank, and the Kiev fascist regime’s campaign of atrocities against the Russian people, are both attempts to reverse the irrecoverable strategic losses which these regimes have suffered. The patterns of behavior among the two are strikingly similar, because this is what the forces of reaction always do when they find themselves cornered: flail in desperation, murdering as many innocents as they can. 

The “Israeli” settler state has made it clear that as it continues to be beaten by the Axis of Resistance, it’s going to retaliate by killing civilians; that’s what it did when it carried out massive war crimes against Rafah refugees, which was a covert response to Iran’s successful act of deterrence this April. The Banderites have shown they intend to resort to the same tactic, invading Russia despite this being a great strategic blunder. The supposed purpose of this has been to distract Russia’s forces, but it never had a practical chance of working, so all it did was give Kiev an opportunity to commit more crimes against defenseless Russians. Strategically, it only hurt Kiev. It’s obvious that this was also done as a reaction to defeat; Ukraine is deep into a military catastrophe that Russia has been able to inflict with care and deliberation. 

The evils that Washington’s proxies are perpetrating cannot undo the shift which has taken place in the global power balance. This transition has made inevitable the victory of the Palestinians, and of all others who the empire targets. As we see these fascists and colonialists spiral downward, it’s speeding up the globe’s evolution away from U.S. financial hegemony. The World Anti-Imperialist Platform’s June 2023 organ, written by Patelis Dimitrios, observed how the Palestinian liberation struggle connects to this trend:

The rapid displacement of the US dollar and the euro from the position and from their role of world money and international reserve currencies marks the enormous changes taking place in the world economic system: A mechanism that operates largely via the violent imposition through the world currency of a peculiar system of charging other countries, e.g., the cost of the US budget deficit, through the authoritarian (paper or digital) emission of currency, i.e., by imposing a kind of peculiar “tribute tax” on peoples.

 

These changes are also linked to rapid political and diplomatic shifts. With the catalytic role played by, for example, by PRC and Russia, peace mediations and peace processes are taking place between countries with long-standing conflicts, methodically orchestrated by colonialism and imperialism, on the foundation of the principle of ‘divide and rule’, through bloody incitement to ethnic, racial, religious and cultural hate. This is what we are observing now with the peacemaking between Saudi Arabia and Iran (and therefore Yemen), with the recognition of the legitimate government of Syria and its reintegration into the Arab and Islamic community, with the rapprochement between Iraq and Iran, but also between India, Pakistan, and China, and so on. These all imply a rapid expulsion of the US from the region, reduction & cancellation of the position and role of the racist terrorist state, Israel.

That’s the context in which these horrors from the West Bank and Gaza are taking place. For as much pain and death the oppressors bring upon the people of Palestine, it’s the Palestinians who the future belongs to. It’s their nation that’s going to have a thriving place within the new world which will replace the imperialist order. As the establishment of a Palestinian state gets closer, we Marxists in the empire’s core must understand what this will mean. We need to unify with all the globe’s anti-imperialist forces, because that’s the only way our movement will be able to join with Palestine in constructing this great future.

As Zionism continues to collapse, and the day that a Palestinian state gets established becomes closer, communists are increasingly being tested over whether they’ll recognize this reality. Like how you can’t support Palestine while condemning Hamas, you can’t back the project of Palestinian statehood while opposing multipolarity. It’s China, Russia, BRICS, and the other forces within the emerging non-monopolist economy that are making this outcome possible. It’s the PRC that’s facilitated the Beijing Declaration, the agreement of peace and unity between the different Palestinian political factions. And following this achievement, Palestine’s ambassador has announced a plan to apply for membership within BRICS. China has also sided with Iran, while Russia and Iran have been assisting each other militarily. With Iran backing Hezbollah, the ties between these countries and Zionism’s most direct enemies are clear.

Essentially everyone who calls themselves a leftist says they’re in solidarity with Palestine. Yet the main parts of the left within the core imperialist countries ignore the implications of these facts about how Palestine is getting closer towards statehood. They deny how instrumental multipolarity is in bringing about this transition which can let Palestine rebuild and thrive.

This process of reclamation and justice will not be an easy one, because in both Palestine and all other fronts of imperialist warfare, the reactionaries intend to keep committing crimes for as long as they can. That’s why we need communists, and all others who are against this genocide, to be consistent in aiding all anti-imperialist efforts. Supporting Russia in its anti-fascist war is crucial to backing Palestine, both because solidarity with Donbass is morally correct and because these two things are part of the same great evil. 

The U.S. empire has engineered both atrocity campaigns, and is hoping that the ones who support the Palestinian people’s struggle will forsake the struggle of the Donbass people. It wants us to call Russia’s rescue effort in the Donbass an imperialist act, or to simply condemn it like how Palestine’s false allies condemn Hamas. It also hopes that we choose sectarianism over a united front, and let secondary issues deter us from building coalitions among anti-imperialist organizations. There are many more of these counter-hegemonic allies than the modern left admits, which is why as a Marxist I’ve felt the need to migrate out of leftism. The goal is not to please the left, but to do whatever is necessary for weakening the imperial structure. The ways the left has largely reacted to Gaza, embracing “lesser-evil” voting or adopting counterproductive adventurist tactics, further show why pan-leftism isn’t the right strategy.

The parts of the world that are behind Palestine will continue to make gains in this global anti-imperialist war, and they’ve adopted a highly intelligent fighting method. Both Russia and Iran have been waging their respective wars with patience. Russia’s method of fighting the Banderites has never been about flashy media victories at any cost, like is so often the case for how Ukraine fights. Now Kiev has revealed itself to be a paper tiger, launching an invasion that’s immediately unraveled. Iran is waiting so long to retaliate for the Zionist entity’s war crimes because it seeks to make “Israel” paralyzed with anticipation, instilling anxiety over the imminent strike and suffering even more economic harm. Iran has already shown it’s capable of deterring “Israel,” so it can afford to practice this restraint and thereby ensure its own stability. And because it will remain stable, it will continue to rise within the emerging Eurasia-centered economy. Russia, Iran, and those who fight alongside them have already won, so they don’t need to lash out in panic like their enemies are doing. 

The imperialists seek to instigate wars with China and Juche Korea next, but they can’t beat these countries either, and that gives us a better chance of preventing war in East Asia; the strategic balance has long shifted in the favor of the anti-imperialist states, so they could successfully deter future assaults. We within the USA’s antiwar movement will be there to hinder these aggressive maneuvers by our government. And should war break out in that part of the globe, communists will unapologetically side with the empire’s targets, like we’ve done with Palestine and Russia.

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Rage Against the War Machine’s next rally will present the people with a genuine anti-establishment force

Since the original Rage Against the War Machine event happened a year-and-a-half ago, the discourse has changed in certain ways. Ways that make this next rally, which will take place on September 28, have a role which differs from that of the first RAWM event. 

Back at the start of 2023, the established left was by far the biggest ideological force that stood against the RAWM coalition, and it thereby became the foremost element whose ideas the coalition’s supporters argued against. Today, these leftist sectarians are still a big problem for the anti-imperialist cause, but they no longer have as much ability to obstruct our united front’s activities, since this front has grown in its support and influence. So the “dissident right” has come to be a much bigger foe for our coalition than it was last time. Amid the organized left’s failure to stop the rise of an independent and mass-based antiwar movement, the imperial state has boosted the far right, hoping it will be what thwarts our efforts.

RAWM got so much backlash for the same reason it had momentum: because it brought together ideological groups which have potential to seriously advance the anti-imperialist cause if they unify. The Libertarian Party, the People’s Party, the communist formations that joined with the coalition, and the other figures or groups which had a part in it were enough to have a real discourse impact. When combined, they could substantially amplify ideas that most threatened the Ukraine psyop, as shown by the event’s visibly pro-Russian participants.

This was more radical in its anti-imperialism than the other biggest antiwar events were, and it challenged the idea that the antiwar movement should exclusively be a leftist thing. Since the established socialist orgs also want communism to be something owned by the left, these forces joined in on the media’s attacks against the rally. We’ll of course see leftist attacks against RAWM again during this next month, but in our new discourse landscape, another major source of hostility is going to be the “dissident right.” The online community of “groyper” Nazis whose presence and platform have massively expanded in just the last year or so.

These fascist agitators, with their “Jewish question” narratives and their efforts to appropriate anti-imperialist rhetoric, are ironically what the leftists who hate RAWM accuse our coalition of being. They seek to divert anti-establishment sentiments towards fascist ideas, arguing that the source behind capitalism’s crises is not capital but rather Jews. They tried to infiltrate RAWM and its member orgs, but they failed, because what they represent is fundamentally incompatible with any real anti-imperialist coalition. They’ve since come to be some of the primary ideological targets of the communist current that’s not invested in leftism; perhaps just as much as the “pan-leftists” who seek to keep communism controlled by the left, we’ve been working to combat their ideas. With this new RAWM event, the groypers find themselves further threatened by us, because we’re about to give major visibility to an authentically anti-establishment alternative.

The three-letter agencies hope to use the groypers to prevent revolutionary progress, both by funneling disillusioned Americans away from class consciousness and by weaponizing these Nazi trolls against genuine dissidents. They especially seek to advance the “dissident right” psyop at this moment, when an election is approaching and the ruling class is anxious to maintain narrative control. Another reason why the deep state backs the groypers, aside from a need for controlled opposition or a need for political attack dogs, is because the groypers make dissident politics easy to smear. When the groypers are highly visible, the liberals can shut down any anti-imperialist argument by pointing to these vile actors and saying “that’s what they say too!” 

We’ve seen liberals do this in the Ukraine debate, arguing that nobody should support Russia because certain elements of the far right fetishize Russian culture. Now, as “JQers” like Nick Fuentes and Lucas Gage get Twitter attention by speaking against Zionism, pro-genocide libs can better portray every anti-Zionist as anti-Jewish.

RAWM, and the coalition-building idea that it represents, are about constructing a force that can genuinely fight imperialism. That seeks to divert the antiwar cause towards neither sectarian and dogmatic leftism, nor ahistorical and bigoted conspiracies. The modern left is by design unable to connect to the masses, with it being led by petty-bourgeois radicals who hold an elitist view towards the people. So as long as the left owns antiwar organizing and the class struggle, the JQers will be able to fill the void within anti-establishment politics which the left creates. The only thing that can defeat the “dissident right” psyop, and give the people an avenue for advancing their anti-imperialist interests, is a united front among the forces which truly oppose monopoly capital. 

When this new rally happens thirty days from now, it will be another month into the latest phase which the counterinsurgency has entered into; the phase where the USA and its satellite states have greatly accelerated their repressive campaign. Since Kamala Harris got the nomination last month, and the ruling class thereby felt an urgent need to crack down, half a dozen high-profile individuals have been either raided or arrested on politically motivated grounds. By the time RAWM happens, there’s little doubt that more people will have gotten this treatment; the imperial state has even told us who some of its next victims could be. The trial of the Uhuru 3, who’ve been accused of acting as foreign agents for Russia, is scheduled to take place on September 3.

In this perilous climate that our class enemies have cultivated, where it’s considered a crime to simply talk to people from certain countries, RAWM’s organizers and supporters can expect more severe backlash than they experienced last time. Yet we have a good chance of turning this confrontation in our favor, because in the last couple years we’ve gotten much closer to “strategic equilibrium”; the stage where revolutionary organizations no longer exist in a purely defensive way, and can also operate on an even level with the mainstream political forces.

A crucial part of reaching strategic equilibrium is taking advantage of the divisions within the ruling class, which this moment presents us with growing opportunities for doing. The wing of the bourgeoisie that’s behind Harris is increasingly in conflict with capital’s lower levels, which seek an end to big capital’s degrowth schemes and are looking for allies in this fight. The dissident right psyop seeks to convince these rogue capitalist elements that the JQ, with its lie about how monopoly capital comes from a global Jewish conspiracy, is what they must invest themselves in to defeat the monopolists. Within this narrative, Marxism is another part of the conspiracy, with the driving force behind monopoly power being “Judeo-Bolshevism.” We must intervene in the discourse. Marxists must expose the lies of those who scapegoat the Jews, while illustrating how Marxism is what can build an alternative system to monopoly capital.

This is how the anti-imperialist front’s communist wing can unite the workers who’ve been divided by culture war issues, and unite the proletariat with its potential allies in capital’s lower levels. When our coalition acts next, it will show more of those we must reach why the correct path is to join with this united front, rather than accept the lies of monopoly capital’s fascist agents.

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The U.S. empire is arresting & raiding ever more political targets. We must prepare our orgs for what’s coming next.

The thing which all six of the people in the above image have in common is that since the start of this month, they’ve been either arrested or had their homes raided by the U.S. government and its satellite states. These targetings are no coincidence, they’re part of a wider trend. A trend that we must pay attention to in order to be ready for what the U.S. empire will do next.

Going in the order of left-to-right in each row of the collage, these people and their stories are as follows. First is Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram who’s been arrested in France for supposedly being an accomplice to things users of his platform have done. Second is Dimitry Simes, the Soviet-born political analyst. His home has been raided as part of an anti-Russian intimidation campaign, which potentially included pro-Ukraine activists who weren’t even in law enforcement. Third is Sue Mi Terry, a Korea analyst for U.S. intelligence who’s been arrested on “foreign agent” charges for getting too close with South Korea’s government. This has happened amid a growing rift between Washington and Seoul, wherein Seoul has refused to commit to fully escalating with the DPRK.

Fourth is Scott Ritter, the retired UN weapons inspector who was framed by the FBI for a fictitious child sex offense and now has had his home raided. Fifth is Richard Medhurst, the UK journalist who’s been arrested under Britain’s anti-“terrorism” law for doing reporting that wasn’t spun to smear the Palestinian resistance. Sixth is Kim Dotcom, who’s been approved to be extradited from New Zealand so that he can be imprisoned for his site MegaUpload. This site threatened the profits of the Hollywood monopolies by letting people download movies, which made him into an enemy of the imperial state.

The crackdown is intensifying more with each day. It was yesterday morning that I saw the news of how Durov got arrested, and my reaction was “of course this is happening now.” All of a sudden, half a dozen people have been added to the list of political prisoners or potential political prisoners, joining Ross Ulbricht, Chairman Omali Yeshitela, the persecuted U.S. government whistleblowers, and numerous others who the empire has gone after during the last decade. Except with these new cases, the persecution has sped up to a rate we’ve not seen during our lifetime.

Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder who’s been blamed by the government for the actions of his service’s users, was arrested in 2013. It’s now apparent that the campaign against him was about creating a precedent; a precedent for doing this to other lower-level tech entrepreneurs who’ve created businesses that challenge the imperial power structure. And it’s at this moment when we’re seeing the empire exercise this power. The precedent for Terry’s arrest was when Omali, and two other leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party, got indicted last year on charges of acting as foreign agents for Russia. And the empire has long been preparing to go after journalists and commentators like Medhurst or Simes. Notable moments in this process have been Julian Assange’s 2019 Ecuadorian embassy arrest, and Max Blumenthal’s getting detained later that year on false assault charges. 

It’s this summer when these elements of “turnkey tyranny,” where a government can utilize powers which it gained previously, have begun to be applied with a wild amouny of frequency. We’ve entered into a stage where the U.S. and its proxies have picked out half a dozen targets during a single month, with the rate being likely to increase from here on. All of this is only the beginning.

Why is August of this year the time when the new repressive stage has begun? It has to do with the 2024 election, and how our ruling class hopes to use this chaotic moment to further its schemes for repression, austerity, and war. East Asia is the next place where the imperialists want to expand their conflicts into. They need a big war in order to save their dying capitalist system, but Russia and Iran have shown themselves to be too formidable for them to win in eastern Europe or West Asia. So they seek to wage wars against China and the DPRK, with Taiwan and south Korea respectively acting as Washington’s proxies. It doesn’t matter that they wouldn’t be able to win on these fronts either; they must have these confrontations, and they don’t want this election to delay the process. They also can’t be facing a strong opposition towards this war drive, which means they’re looking for opportunities to justify crackdowns.

It’s long been apparent that the imperial deep state has sought to orchestrate new January 6-type unrest outbreaks; when the feds last brought about an event like this, it was highly effective at creating precedents for jailing political targets. It wasn’t until the Democratic Party settled on its 2024 nominee, though, that the counterinsurgency could progress towards this new wave of raids and arrests. Right when the Democrat elites managed to get rid of the liability which was Joe Biden, and replace him with the Clinton donor favorite Kamala Harris, the deep state made its big move. It started executing a plan to suppress all individuals who in any way threaten monopoly finance capital, a plan that’s begun with the most rich and well-connected among these individuals. The counterinsurgency’s strategists know that they first need to get rid of the lower-level capitalists (like Durov and Dotcom) who’ve challenged monopoly power, as well as the figures within the deep state itself (like Terry) who are connected to the governments Washington sees as unreliable allies.

What’s next in the crackdown? My first guesses are that RT contributors will be targeted on the basis that they’re “foreign agents,” and that many pro-Palestine activists will start being treated the way Medhurst has. How much success the counterinsurgency has will depend on whether we can save Omali, and the others in the Uhuru 3, when their trial starts on September 3. It will also depend on how the election goes. Because if finance capital can install its favored candidate Kamala Harris, it will be in the best possible place to expand Uhuru’s treatment towards other organizations. 

Keeping our orgs alive, and continuing to make gains within the class struggle, is absolutely possible; the crucial thing is to respond to these threats in a smart way. The feds want us to react to the danger by embracing adventurism, and showing up to the chaotic public gatherings that they’re about to organize. The right response is to avoid these traps and distractions, and focus on making sure we’ll be able to survive whatever the enemy does next. 

It’s going to need to be a combination of making connections with the people, creating the organizing structures that would let us go underground if necessary, and other things revolutionaries have historically done amid state crackdowns. I’ve written about these kinds of strategies and tactics, anticipating a situation like the one we’re in now. And though the repression is happening faster than I expected it would only a month ago, we have to be calm and measured in how we handle this. The struggle against our imperial deep state can succeed. If we maneuver things properly, the power balance is ultimately going to be switched.

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If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here. 

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Neocons want war in East Asia next, but this scheme is meeting opposition from growing amounts of Americans

During the Democratic National Convention, when Kamala Harris attacked Trump on the basis of him not being enough of a warmonger, this showed how much of a threat Harris poses. It was a warning that the wing of our ruling class which backs Harris seeks to expand the present series of conflicts, creating a new war in Korea that would likely lead to the deaths of millions. This is the only honest way to interpret Harris’ saying it’s a bad thing for Trump to want diplomacy with the DPRK. The extreme nature of this menace we face from the liberal fascists must bring about a front of unity between all who oppose their apocalyptic agenda. That’s the organizational mission which communists like myself have taken up in response to monopoly capital’s World War III drive. And breaking such a united front is what the Harris wing seeks to do through its increasingly severe repression. 

The ironic part about the Democratic Party’s unhinged campaign to bring a new Korean War is that Trump once shared their stance on the DPRK. In 2017, when he hadn’t yet become aware of how much leverage Washington has lost over the DPRK, Trump said that to socialist Korea he would bring “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” It must have been fun for him to make this statement, but then he needed to keep doing the job of president, and the only logical stance he could come to was that there needed to be negotiations with the DPRK. The time for preventing the country from getting nuclear weapons had gone, which meant that from the perspective of a leader like Trump, talks with Kim Jong Un had to happen. Within a year after making his genocidal threat, Trump had made history by becoming the first U.S. president to go into DPRK territory.

Liberals have decried this decision by repeating the lie about Kim Jong Un being an autocratic dictator, then using this to play into the “Trump is Hitler” narratives. Though most of the USA’s people have yet to be exposed to the information proving the DPRK’s deeply democratic political nature, most of them haven’t embraced the mindlessly aggressive stance the Democrats have on the DPRK. The majority of Americans liked how Trump established diplomatic ties with the country. They were not compelled by the arguments from the neocons and the liberals, because it’s intuitive to most people that peace is by default a good idea. 

This shows that there’s hope for combating anti-DPRK propaganda, because only a minority of Americans have gotten seriously invested in the manipulative atrocity narratives that our government presents about the DPRK. These narratives are designed to exploit the human capacity for empathy, which gives them emotional power. But to fully embrace them, you must first substantially embrace the ideology of U.S. foreign policy. And most folks in the U.S. can’t be bothered with this, as their bigger concern is what’s best for their own society.

As Trump says he’ll reestablish diplomacy with the DPRK, and the dominant element of the elites scramble to prevent this, they’re trying to take advantage of that popular detachment from geopolitics. The average American’s lack of investment in foreign affairs can make them tire on supporting wars, as most of them have tired on Ukraine, but it also keeps them away from the anti-imperialist struggle. Our job is to connect them to this struggle, which we absolutely can do. Anti-imperialist impulses are already there among the bulk of the masses. The big obstacle to mobilizing them against the war machine is the imperial state, which has a plan for trying to thwart our efforts.

This plan, which involves stirring up 2024 election political violence that gets used to justify repression, is about reversing the direction in which the USA’s people are inexorably going. The people of this country are experiencing the crises which imperialism creates. They’re seeing the explosion in the cost of living, the ravages of fentanyl, and the ongoing decline of our infrastructure, while watching our government refuses to rectify any of these problems. Instead, it’s focused on getting us into more wars, policing what we see online, and eroding our civil liberties. Monopoly finance capital, and the deep state that works to protect it, are acting against the interests of every part of society. So great potential exists for expanding our united front against the empire.

This united front’s next task is to make sure that the East Asia war drive becomes too costly for the neocons. That the actors who brought about the war in Ukraine, and are perpetuating the genocide against Gaza, find themselves unable to extend their destructive campaign into yet another part of the globe. If the empire gets set back in East Asia, then its efforts in all other regions will become all the more self-defeating. Washington will have invested itself in a series of psyops that prove to be ineffective, and that provoke a successful mass mobilization against the war machine. This could happen within the next half-year, if we’re able to recognize where our allies in the struggle can be found at the moment. 

Opposition towards war in Korea exists within many parts of Trump’s coalition; namely the Libertarian Party, and the MAGA supporters who hope for DPRK talks. It exists in organizations that communists may assume wouldn’t be willing to work with us, like the Unification Church, which seek to reunite Korea into one. The tasks of communists are to build networks between pro-peace forces like these, bring the broad masses into an antiwar mobilization effort, and translate the opposition towards war in Korea into an effort at combating all other imperialist war efforts. Because Trump has been pushed into opposing the neocon stance on Korea, the MAGA base has followed in this way of thinking, and has come to recognize the Democratic Party’s Korea stance as something which serves the deep state. Now we need to show them why war with China, Iran, and all other imperialist targets must be opposed as well.

Maybe the next Korean War will be prevented by Trump winning, and him being further steered in a direction that goes against the foreign policy establishment. We can’t rely on that outcome, though. Whatever the way in which the East Asia war plan gets defeated, it’s only going to happen if we build up massive strength for the anti-imperialist movement. This means avoiding the January 6-type traps that the feds seek to set for us during the election, and preparing our cadres to keep operating amid the next stages of repression. Our enemies are trying to use this turbulent moment to crush our efforts. We can use it to expose the drivers of the neocon agenda, and turn the people into our allies in this struggle.

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The wing of our ruling class that tried to kill Trump is working to install Harris, & spread global destabilization

As the Korean People’s Democracy Party concluded last month, the FBI was in all likelihood involved with the plot to assassinate Trump. It’s the FBI that’s headed by Christopher Wray—one of the Republicans who’s acted against Trump—and that’s closely tied to the Secret Service. The GOP’s anti-Trump wing had an incentive to let the Secret Service fail at stopping the shooter, and to use intelligence manipulations for priming the shooter into committing the act. This is because the old-guard, neocon elites within the Republican Party prefer for a better puppet than Trump to be elected. These neocons, and the other actors who share their foreign policy agenda, don’t view Trump as the ideal tool for exacting this destructive vision; he brought about a lot of death and chaos during his term, but he wasn’t as effective as they would have liked him to be. They want a puppet that’s easier to control, and more invested in the particular global destabilization model that they have in mind.

The attempt to get rid of Trump was likely about installing Nikki Haley as the nominee. At the time, this seemed like a solid plan for getting a better kind of imperialist puppet into office. It still looked like Biden wasn’t going to drop out, and therefore like a victory for the Republicans was guaranteed. Then the neocons would have been able to install a president who’s fully aligned with them, and who could maximally advance their goals for war and repression. Now, only a month later, their plan has flipped. July’s period of scrambling and arguing among the Democratic elites, where they were trying to figure out who their candidate should be, has ended with Harris replacing Biden. So the neocon Republicans that desire Trump’s demise have by default switched towards backing Harris, who embodies their cataclysmic global vision as well as Haley did. And these neocons, who entered into an alliance with the Democratic Party right after Trump became president, may soon have opportunities to assist the Democrats further. Since they control the FBI, they’ll be able to carry out a crackdown when the 2024 election produces new versions of the January 6 riot.

This is the nature of the alignments within our ruling class right now: the Elon Musk wing of monopolists is behind Trump, but the majority of big capital is against him, including the coalition of Republicans and Democrats that’s formed in the last decade. The bulk of Trump’s support within the bourgeoisie and the state comes from lower-level capitalists; as well as from the elements of the military which dislike the neocon drive towards unrestrained war escalations. 

If Trump wins, the backup plan of the new cold warriors will be to amp up the reactionary parts of MAGA, inflaming the culture wars, the Zionist anti-Muslim bigotry, and the anti-China demagoguery. Then the neocon wing will work to sway the Trump White House towards advancing the new cold war against Russia, as this wing successfully did the last time he was president. But what happened last month showed that these neocon elites, or at least a significant element among them, aren’t willing to accept this election not going their way. They’re willing to do anything to elect a fully neocon-aligned president, even if they need to plunge our society into violent chaos. That’s the character of the most dangerous enemy we face at this moment: a series of actors who are so desperate for advancing World War III, they’re willing to destabilize the United States. To do something like assassinate the leading presidential candidate, and thereby set off an explosion of unrest.

These parts of the deep state have taken such an extreme stance that even many of the other anti-Trump actors are likely wary about what they may do. The CIA—and its adjacent Democratic elites—were likely not in on the assassination plot, since the CIA and the FBI distrust each other. The FBI of course had plans for managing the social instability that would have followed if Trump died, but it’s doubtful that the entire anti-Trump element is comfortable with that level of upheaval. The deep state will only foment as much unrest as it believes it can control, and different parts of this state vary in how much chaos they think is acceptable. The prevailing strategy, at least for this next half-year, is to put together public gatherings that agent provocateurs can steer towards illegality. The feds are going to bring both the right and the left into these traps, with the goals being to escalate the culture wars, justify repression, and bring about the conditions for new war escalations.

What all the anti-Trump deep state elements can agree on is that there’s an urgent need to ensure these escalations happen. Though Trump’s record indicates that he can be easily turned towards provoking Russia, it also shows that he’ll restart diplomacy with the DPRK. This alone is enough to make the empire managers anxious. The other part of why they favor Harris is that Trump’s model of imperial aggression isn’t good enough; beyond the brutality that he had to offer during his term, there needs to also be a well-thought-out strategy for sowing global chaos. Arming Ukraine, murdering Soleimani, and striking Syria are all things the deep state is glad Trump did. But by the end of his term, U.S. hegemony was still declining, and the Hillary Clinton wing of the ruling class hadn’t seen the progress in destabilization that it wished it could have. Of course, the hegemon would have kept waning regardless, but the imperialists view such an expanded chaos project as the best hope for saving their decaying system.

So the deep state is aiming to install Harris, the candidate that’s been assigned to continue the destructive operation which Hillary Clinton represented. This project is distinct from Trump’s model of imperialist wars, and even from Obama’s, in that it consistently seeks to realize the most aggressive and unrestrained assaults on global order. Obama was pushed into carrying out a regime change war in Libya by the deep state agents which Clinton aligned with; this is shown by how Obama has since said he regrets the Libya operation, while Clinton is unrepentant about it. Clinton wanted to create a no-fly zone in Syria, making war with Russia inevitable; Trump’s Syria aggressions were mild compared to what Clinton would have done.

Now the Clinton deep state wing is seeking to use Harris for escalating in East Asia, and for creating a new wave of color revolutions. The foremost thing these forces seek to do is orchestrate a new version of the Arab Spring, except throughout the countries that Washington now wants regime change in the most. The African countries that have broken free from neo-colonialism; the geopolitical “swing states,” like South Africa and Brazil; the Latin American anti-imperialist countries; all these places are targets of the chaos-mongers. For this task of ending much of global civilization, they don’t want an opportunist who can be swayed only most of the time, like Donald Trump. They want somebody who’s fully tied into the regime change apparatus. And if they’re willing to destabilize the United States for the sake of ensuring Harris wins, imagine what they’ll do to the rest of the world if they get their way. 

We need to resist this scheme, which means not supporting Trump but rather building a mass movement which can combat monopoly capital. If we bring the balance of forces in the favor of anti-imperialism, then the imperial state will become more constrained than it is already, and we’ll get in place to overthrow it.

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If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here. 

To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.