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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