Socialism with American Characteristics is coming, and the path to it only keeps getting clearer

We in the United States are on the trajectory towards building a communist organizational force that wins. We know we’re going in the right direction because more and more, this country is seeing the re-emergence of a type of communism that’s historically succeeded. This type can be described as “socialism with American characteristics,” where Marxists center their own conditions and advance their own people’s interests.

The way that the USA’s communist movement actually won the masses during the 20th century, rather than only winning over a niche, was by fulfilling the mandates which came from the masses. By looking at what the people’s needs were, and prioritizing the task of meeting those needs. In 1945–when the CPUSA had defeated Earl Browder’s dogma of tailing the Democratic Party—William Foster wrote about how this was taking communism in a triumphant direction: “The supreme measure of our new policy is its application in practice to the immediate demands and interests of the people. Only if we have successful practical mass policies and activities can we free ourselves from Browder’s revisionism, on the one hand, and avoid the pitfalls of ‘Left’ sectarianism, on the other.”

Foster’s faction had acclimated the party to the particular conditions of the society in which it operated; patriotism was an indispensable part of this, but even more important was the centering of the proletariat’s interests. That was how the Black Panther Party would build substantial power a generation later, and it’s how modern U.S. communist orgs like Uhuru are getting that success now. Over its decades of work, Uhuru has put together food programs, created businesses, and renovated buildings; because of this, it’s been able to earn a considerable amount of mass backing. The American Communist Party, which launched this summer, also deserves credit for the services it’s provided; its program to clean up garbage has contributed to the successes which ACP has so far had in winning over workers. This is the kind of work that causes regular people to see you as credible; that lets them start to become freer from the prejudices of anti-communist ideology. I’m not a member of ACP, but it’s something important to remark upon when talking about party-building in the United States.

As we aspire to build far greater ties with the masses, potentially the most important lesson for us to remember is that nothing must distract from that mission of fulfilling the people’s mandates. And there are no limits to the things that could distract us, so we constantly need to be vigilant for such pitfalls.

An example of when a communist party has been undone by having the wrong priorities, even though it’s nominally committed to rebuilding the old movement, is the PCUSA. Within a decade after Angelo D’Angelo started the Party of Communists USA in 2014, his project effectively fell apart. The bulk of its members left, and it lost major allies; allies like the Center for Political Innovation, the org that I’m part of. The catalyst for this collapse was when PCUSA got taken over by a group of labor Zionists, who got the party to take the position that a Jewish state in Palestine should exist. This was distinct from the tactical position Hamas takes, which is that a two-state solution must come about as a prerequisite for Zionism then being fully dismantled.

PCUSA had joined in on liberal Zionist efforts to gatekeep the pro-Palestine movement, which nobody in the org who had integrity could forgive; so most of the people who originally were with Angelo walked away. This Zionist shift was not where the problem started, though. It started when Angelo, who himself promoted the “Israel should be maintained” argument, designed the party in a fashion that lacked mass connections or solid organizational structure.

The PCUSA is worth studying as an example because though it was never big, it sold itself as an alternative to the insular leftism which dominates today’s “communist” politics; Angelo convinced many that he would re-create the successes of the past. The party talked about the problem of petty-bourgeois radicalism, where organizers exclusively focus on the students and the professional managerial class while ignoring the broader masses; for this reason, it looked like an answer to the idealism of the PSL and the modern CPUSA. It also took correct positions that almost nobody else had the courage to take, like supporting Russia’s anti-fascist war. The flaw that undid the party, as former PCUSA member George Gruenthal recently told me, was that “opportunism” drove Angelo. That’s the word Gruenthal used.

According to Gruenthal, right when Angelo started the PCUSA it was apparent that he didn’t think building a substantial structure was essential to being a communist party. Angelo wanted to call it a party right from the beginning, despite Gruenthal’s objection that you can’t claim this title unless you’ve already established a serious on-the-ground presence. ACP actually began with that presence; PCUSA did not.

The outcome of this presumptuous thinking was that the PCUSA kept creating groups which it called mass orgs, but which existed essentially all on paper. The leadership didn’t think it mattered that numerous PCUSA members didn’t know any other members in their own cities; it was satisfied with simply getting enough members to fill Zoom meetings. Because the PCUSA sold itself as a solution to petty-bourgeois radicalism, it attracted many serious people, but these people were left to try to build local cadres on their own without any help from the leadership.

The ideological rationale for Angelo’s opportunism was that as long as the PCUSA could do adequate educational work, and spread the idea of communism, then that would be enough. As Gruenthal also told me, Angelo’s goal was in essence “to rebuild the Soviet Union”; which sounds quite strange, since the PCUSA is in the United States. But it’s apparent that this was indeed Angelo’s vision, because he merely utilized Soviet aesthetics while neglecting to “build something in this country” as Gruenthal said he wished PCUSA did. Because Angelo thought it was enough to simply retread 20th century socialism, he uncritically repeated the pro-Zionist stance which the USSR and the CPUSA held in 1948. And that was when PCUSA’s serious members could no longer stay.

Angelo assumed that because the old CPUSA succeeded, the way for us to succeed now must be by replicating every part of the old CPUSA’s ideology, both good and bad. Which the PCUSA didn’t even truly do, because it didn’t implement Foster’s idea of acting in attunement with the people’s needs. From this failure, though, is emerging a series of projects that are bringing us closer to victory. Many of the people who left PCUSA immediately went into ACP, and brought with them the lessons from their experiences. It’s because of these mistakes our movement made in the past that we now have such a clear understanding about how to proceed.

At this moment, bad-faith actors are trying to divert communists like us away from what’s important; to bait us with their smears about “rightism,” and make us take on a perpetually reactive role. Lenin and Stalin were targeted with the exact same false accusations that these actors are employing now. And Stalin concluded that beyond the necessary efforts to defend oneself, the way to respond to such attacks is by staying on the correct path:

At the All-Russian Party Conference in 1908, when Lenin fought the Russian "ultra-Lefts" and utterly routed them, in our midst, too, there were people who accused Lenin of Rightism, of having swung to the Right. But all the world now knows that Lenin's position at that time was correct, that his standpoint was the only revolutionary one, and that the Russian "ultra-Lefts," who were then making a show of "revolutionary" phrases, were in reality opportunists. It should not be forgotten that Rights and "ultra-Lefts" are actually twins, that consequently both take an opportunist stand, the difference between them being that whereas the Rights do not always conceal their opportunism, the Lefts invariably camouflage their opportunism with "revolutionary" phrases. We cannot allow our policy to be determined by what scandal mongers and philistines may say about us. We must go our way firmly and confidently, paying no heed to the tales idle minds may invent about us. The Russians have an apt saying: "the dogs bark, the caravan passes." We should bear this saying in mind; it may stand us in good stead on more than one occasion.

This latest ultra-left scandal-mongering is about trying to make us unfocused, and therefore unprepared, as the state gets ready to crush us. The effort to purge anti-imperialists is speeding up exponentially; all that our enemies need is another January 6 moment, and the pretext will exist for many more raids and arrests. We urgently need to build the inner organizational mechanisms that can let dissident groups survive repression. We must expand our connections within the unions, which will let us continue with mass work in a scenario where we have to go underground. We are in place to do these things; if we follow Stalin’s advice about not letting disruptors define our actions, the state won’t be able to stop us.

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Iran’s next retaliation will intensify Russia’s fight with “Israel,” & make this conflict’s battle lines clearer

What does it mean that Iran plans to retaliate for the latest Zionist aggression, and that Russia is fundamentally connected to Iran’s military efforts? It means that when Iran’s counter-attack comes, and this conflict reaches its next level of escalation, the pro-Palestine movement will be at a decision point. Everyone who’s against the genocide will need to decide whether they want to back the most substantial material forces which are fighting Zionism; or whether they want to embrace the State Department’s demonizing narratives about Iran and Russia. If the principled anti-imperialist stance gets to define the pro-Palestine movement, then we’ll be in place to take advantage of imperialism’s next crises.

This new ideological conflict will be an extension of the debates that occurred when Russia intervened to stop U.S.-backed jihadists in Syria, and when Russia acted to rescue the Donbass from ethnic cleansing. In both of those cases, the outcome was mixed; many leftists repeated Washington’s propaganda when it came to Syria, and even more of them opposed Russia’s operation in Ukraine, but anti-imperialists were able to bring our arguments to a substantial audience. During this next stage, where these military powers will be intensifying their anti-Zionist actions, the anti-imperialist position will have potential to resonate with even more of the masses. That’s because the enemy which Iran and Russia will be fighting is one that’s already widely recognized as a source of great evil. Almost everyone has seen the “Israeli” settler Nazi state’s crimes; the bulk of the world is against the Zionist entity, and even in the imperial center most people understand that the entity’s “war” is not justified. 

Most Americans have yet to process the more terrible truth that this “war” is in fact a genocide, but it’s intuitive to them that their government’s justification narratives about “Israel” are not honest. They see a powerful army deliberately murdering civilians from a nation that doesn’t even have its own army; that’s enough to create profound unease among most people. So when the Eurasian military powers increase their efforts to weaken the aggressor army, the U.S. public’s sympathy for “Israel” is going to be limited.

Imperialism’s propaganda can portray Iran and Russia as doing this for the wrong reasons, but that vilification tactic is limited in its effectiveness. How many of the people who’ve found out about Zionism’s crimes can be made to also internalize a fear and hatred towards these other countries? Given the failure of the Ukraine psyop, the majority of them can’t take such imperialist war propaganda seriously; not enough that they’ll make it their mission in life to help destroy Washington’s adversaries. 

Within a couple of years, most Americans became tired of the Ukraine proxy war, and came to wish for negotiations that could end it. Most of them didn’t need to discover the real context behind the war in order to come to this conclusion; they just had to see how counterproductive their government’s involvement in Ukraine is. The prevailing attitude in this country is that more foreign wars would be the last thing we need; which is another reason why our government wouldn’t be able to inspire enough support for a dual war against Iran and Russia. 

It’s this widespread resentment towards the U.S. war machine that makes the conflict’s next stage a moment of great revolutionary potential. The imperial state is already apprehensive towards fully confronting Iran; every semi-rational person within the foreign policy establishment knows that this kind of war would explode the economy. And if the USA’s people are already becoming alienated from the imperial project, then such a conflict would existentially endanger the system. This is why I believe the dominant wing of the deep state doesn’t hope for a total war with Iran, and will try to manage the coming escalations. There’s no guarantee that this wing will succeed at keeping the exchanges minimized, but that’s what we can expect it to attempt to do (it’s already been working to keep “Israel” on a leash throughout the latest confrontations). 

If full war happens regardless, Iran and Russia will be able to subdue Washington and its Zionist proxy, like how Russia has subdued NATO and its fascist Kiev proxy. If full war is avoided, then Washington will have effectively surrendered to the anti-imperialist united front, letting Iran and Russia damage “Israel” without getting serious U.S. pushback. In the latter scenario, the full extent of Washington’s imperial decline will be on display, as it will be unwilling to substantially act against its challengers. Whatever Washington does next, Russia’s anti-fascist war in Ukraine will effectively be expanded to Palestine, with Iran being the main one to prosecute this war but Russia having an important role. And this dual effort to subdue the “Israeli” Nazi state will absolutely succeed; it’s only a question of how much force Iran and Russia will be compelled by Washington to utilize. The empire is cornered. That’s why its preferred plan is to instigate a big war in east Asia, while carrying out a wave of color revolutions: it needs to compensate for its double defeats in Ukraine and west Asia. 

Perhaps Washington will pursue an expanded conflict in west Asia, but that will only be an attempt at delaying its final defeat in the region, which is coming no matter what. The last year’s U.S. effort at propping up “Israel” hasn’t even been part of the hegemon’s previous plans; it’s been an interruption of those plans, created through unexpected actions by the Palestinian resistance. What the foreign policy strategists are anxious to do is pivot towards assaulting China, and towards destabilizing China’s economic partners.

As part of its attempts to manage the situation, the imperial state is fueling left-wing pro-imperialist ideology, with its culturally based hostility towards countries like Iran and Russia. The imperialist media and its allies within the left are smearing principled anti-imperialists as “rightists,” seeking to divide the pro-Palestine movement over social issues. This psyop’s larger goal is to proliferate neoconservativism under a leftist cover, letting the empire target countries for regime change on the basis that they’re “reactionary” and “fascist.” If any organization or state doesn’t conform to American leftism’s cultural sensibilities, it needs to be eliminated; that’s the mindset of this ideology. And that’s going to be the narrative foundation for the remaining parts of this grand imperial war, whether this war will come to center around west Asia or east Asia. 

Our only path forward is to build a domestic united front against monopoly capital, one that can keep organizationally operating amid the state’s crackdowns. As our allies abroad finish the job of crippling imperialism, we need to defeat it from within, and the global conflict’s next stage will bring us many more allies in this task.

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Lula’s backstab of Venezuela is meant to precede new imperial war escalations. Get ready to fight back.

As imperialism and fascism self-destruct, they’re going on a rampage that’s soon to become even more aggressive than it already is. And there are actors, like Brazil’s president Lula, who assist in this assault while portraying themselves as allies of justice. This week, the Brazilian government blocked Venezuela from joining the BRICS economic grouping, going against the wishes of Russia and the other genuinely anti-imperialist states. The betrayal hasn’t just let Washington keep economically strangling Venezuela’s people; it’s also extended the lifespan of the Zionist industrial slaughter machine within Palestine. The lesson to take from this is that BRICS, though absolutely worthy of support, is not alone capable of defeating the imperial beast; the economic aspect is only one front within this struggle, which also requires military resistance. This is what forces like Russia understand. 

Now that Lula’s faction within BRICS has revealed its capitulationist and obstructionist agenda, we need to adopt a posture that goes against the pacifism which this faction represents. There are plenty of people who’ve been successfully tricked into believing Lula is a source of hope, but the contradictions within such thinking are now being exposed. The anti-imperialist forces cannot triumph while putting their faith in leaders who’ve shown themselves to be compromised; the logic that figures like Lula operate by, wherein supposedly one can build a separate economy from the USA while appeasing the USA, falls apart in practice. BRICS will continue growing stronger, but that will be in spite of Brazil’s capitulationism, not because of it; committed anti-U.S. members like China, Russia, and Iran are the ones carrying it forward.

Those countries are also the ones which have been materially aiding the Palestinian struggle; they’ve been hosting unity negotiations for Palestine, and militarily backing the resistance. There are many actors in the empire-aligned camp that say that they support Palestine, but their “support” is utterly hollow. The Democrats, the Saudis, Erdogan, and the king of Jordan have all been claiming they’re against the genocide. Yet like them, Lula and his political faction provide crucial assistance to the mass murder. No matter how strong his words are while he denounces the extermination of the Palestinians, he’s acted to sabotage the struggle against Washington’s domination, which equates to prolonging Gaza’s slaughter. 

The longer the empire lives, the longer Zionism lives, which is what makes Brazil’s betrayal all the more heinous. The price of this setback is the loss of more souls, in Palestine and in elsewhere. We must keep this reality in mind as the hegemon tries to expand the destruction into a new big war, with the empire’s preferred next opponent being China.

The dominant wing of our ruling class in the USA aims to install its favored candidate, Kamala Harris, and then advance the same destabilization project that Hillary Clinton pursued. If the election goes the other way, our deep state will implement a plan for pushing Trump in the same direction; the most important factor is the balance of forces, which isn’t yet enough in our favor. Not enough to prevent things like the genocides that “Israel” is carrying out, or to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice.

Washington’s proxy wars have failed, and China continues to weaken its economic grip, but this week has shown that the empire maintains important assets. In addition to Lula, it has Modi, who vetoed the entry of Pakistan and Turkey into BRICS. Russia and China remain the more powerful forces inside BRICS, we can’t forget that; the significance of Washington having Brazil and India on its side, though, is that this makes the hegemon better positioned to do more damage.

This damage won’t be enough to defeat China, nor the empire’s other next big opponent Iran; the coming war maneuvers will certainly backfire on the imperialists, like how it backfired when they picked a fight with Russia. The danger is in how many lives the hegemon may take during its collapse. There’s no doubt that the anti-imperialist united front will be able to subdue the hegemon, but in their desperate attempts to survive, the aggressors hope to bring a catastrophe larger than World War II. They’re already in place to take hundreds of thousands of more lives in Palestine, though Hamas has ensured that the plan for settling Gaza won’t be fulfilled. 

The main factor that could increase the death count is the actions of traitors. Not just Lula, who’s been easy to recognize as a false ally; but also the numerous political actors around the globe who promote an imperialism-compatible version of “communism.”

These actors include the many communist parties that have opposed Russia’s operation to rescue the Donbass from ethnic cleansing. The dogmatic opportunists in Greece’s KKE; the pan-leftists in America’s PSL; the European CPs that functionally act as social democratic parties; the CPs throughout the broader globe that adhere to a hardline Trotskyist view of geopolitics; all of them have abandoned the Donbass people by vilifying Russia’s action. These forces remain a problem, since they have potential to lead Palestine supporters in a fundamentally imperialism-compatible direction. They’re being challenged, though, by the communist parties which are principled on anti-imperialism. And ultimately the principled elements will win against the opportunist parties, like how the Bolsheviks defeated the opportunists in the Second International. 

To prevail, though, we must avoid the underlying error that’s been behind all of this recent opportunism and idealism; this is the error of mechanistic thinking, where it’s assumed that the struggle must unfold only according to one fixed formula. When leftists have believed Lula to be trustworthy, despite his record of militarily occupying Haiti on Washington’s behalf, that unwarranted trust has come from a mindset of viewing this struggle as a straight line. Surely BRICS couldn’t include actors that will fold to U.S. pressure; surely we can rely on the multipolar transition process to complete itself without taking any further action. That’s the kind of passive attitude which is far too prevalent in our age of social media fandom consumption. The imperial enemy is not going to stop its violence due to the actions of BRICS alone; physical resistance is indispensable, so countries like Russia and Iran have committed to such resistance. 

Will the empire get its new big war by the end of this year? If it does, Iran will be in place to severely cripple the U.S. war machine. China and the DPRK will also be ready to subdue the hegemon, which Russia and the Axis of Resistance have already greatly weakened. So monopoly finance capital will intensify its war against the USA’s own people, using the election as an opportunity for creating more January 6 events and suppressing dissent. 

None of this can reverse the decline of the dollar. Despite Brazil and India’s sabotage, BRICS is going to keep building on its progress; Cuba and Bolivia have just joined it, and BRICS has launched a blockchain currency that weakens U.S. sanctions. That’s the extent of what our global allies can do: weaken the empire outside its borders. We in the empire’s core can’t expect BRICS or any other external force to rescue us; not even the great Eurasian military powers can negate the power of the USA’s violent domestic counterinsurgency. We also won’t be shielded by pseudo anti-establishment domestic figures like Trump, who’s likely to put the neocon deep state agent Mike Pompeo in his cabinet again. 

The only thing that can let us survive the state’s next assaults, and then overthrow this state, is a project for mass mobilization which has actual strength behind it. We need to build substantial connections with the unions, and with the other revolution-compatible mass elements. We need to expand our united front with the forces inside the existing structure, from military personnel to lower-level capitalists, which have reasons for turning against monopoly capital. We need to master secret work, and train our cadres for defense against whatever attacks our enemies direct at us. Only a practice as broad and diligent as this can let our organizations stay operational amid extreme repression, and to fulfill our part in imperialism’s downfall.

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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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Washington’s support for Gaza ethnic cleansing is about buying time to wage hybrid war on BRICS

At the end of his excellent 2018 book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, the historian Rashid Khalidi speculated that the “collective west” might stop supporting the Zionist entity if it attempted a new ethnic cleansing campaign. He concluded that as of the time when he was writing this, it was unlikely for the “Israeli” settler state to embark on such an ambitious forced removal project; and even though this expectation is now being proven wrong, it makes sense why Khalidi felt such relative optimism at that point.

In 1948, the last time the Zionists expelled Palestinians on that level, the United States could distance itself from these actions. It could also hide the genocidal nature of “Israel” from Americans quite well, as the USA’s pro-Palestine movement was at first highly marginal. There was a lack of scrutiny on what the imperial powers were doing to Palestine; the world’s focus was on the crimes which had just been committed against Jews throughout Europe, so the U.S. could position itself as the country which was supposedly rectifying these crimes through backing “Israel.” 

Since then, though, more and more of the globe has come to see that “Israel” represents a continuation of the Holocaust, with the mass murder campaign being redirected towards Palestinians. The U.S. has also since married itself to “Israel,” making whatever “Israel” does impact Washington’s image. So Khalidi figured that the past likely wouldn’t be repeated.

Six years after Khalidi’s book came out, and over a year into the expanded new phase of the Palestinian genocide, that worst-case scenario has come about. The entity is orchestrating a forced transfer that can absolutely be described as a new Nakba, and is happening on the same scale. After “Israel” has murdered at least 200,000 Palestinians, it’s working to coerce 700,000 people in northern Gaza to flee under threat of murder. The short-term goal is to turn the north into a military zone, and the ultimate plan is to establish settlements; that’s what the most extreme Zionist faction is pushing for, and Netanyahu has every reason to grant this faction’s wishes. As Gazans are pushed into an even smaller space, “Israel” hopes that they’ll all leave, die, or become permanent captives within the entity’s concentration camps.

A nightmare that once seemed improbable has become reality. But the defeat of Zionism and imperialism is closer than ever. Washington and its imperial partners have continued to support “Israel,” despite this making them further isolated, due to how desperate they are for control. Washington’s Ukraine proxy war has backfired, and turned BRICS into a force that can seriously weaken the dollar. In reaction, the imperialists are scrambling to begin a series of destabilization campaigns, directed at the countries that have been falling into China’s orbit. And to increase this plan’s chances for success, they’re doing all they can to extend Zionism’s lifespan; to hold onto their “Israeli” west Asian strategic outpost for as long as possible, and gain more time to cause global damage. Among the imperial strategists who understand which direction history is headed, this is the primary motive for backing “Israel.” 

The Zionist project’s demise can’t be stopped. Its actions have brought about such global momentum for Palestine that a Palestinian state is unavoidable. “Israeli” society is undergoing such internal crises that many more colonizers will certainly leave. The technocratic wing of the imperial apparatus sees this self-destructing fascist state, and views it as a tool that can be used to advance the hybrid warfare goals, even though this tool’s time is limited. It’s because of this desperate will within the empire to prop up “Israel” that the Zionist leadership felt it could get away with doing another Nakba. Netanyahu saw that his Washington backers were increasingly leaning upon “Israel” as U.S. hegemony declined, so he knew the White House would keep assisting him no matter how far he took the depravity.

Beyond delaying the loss of Washington’s most important Eurasian strategic asset, there’s another goal the hegemon aims to fulfill by assisting this genocide: making Gaza the new normal. The empire will replicate the Gaza genocide in many other places if it can get away with doing this; it’s already expanded the devastation into Lebanon. This is supposed to be a way of telling countries: “this is what we’ll do to you if you challenge us.”

It’s not a plan that has serious chances for success, because everyone knows Washington can’t actually do this in most places. The hegemon needs to be discerning in which targets it goes after next, because it can’t simply declare war against every BRICS member. There’s an apprehension even to start full war with Iran, since that would create an unprecedented economic crisis; this was just shown by how Washington pressured “Israel” into only striking Iranian military targets, economic apocalypse for the time being. The empire’s range of damage is increasingly limited. Moreover, the Palestinian resistance is in place to make the Gaza ethnic cleansing project fail. Hamas has grown in its membership since October 7, and the ideas driving it hold more power than ever; that’s why, as reported by Press TV, Hamas has put out a statement declaring it will make the new Nakba unsuccessful:

It said the plan sought to tighten the regime’s siege against the area, cut off humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians inside, and label those who remain there as combatants so it could target and kill them…So far, the campaign has killed more than 342 Palestinians, most of them women and children, the group noted. “All of this confirms that we are facing one of the most degenerate, brutal, and Nazi military plans known in modern history, devised by fascist generals devoid of any human morals or military honor, in a blatant violation and disregard for all international laws, treaties, and humanitarian norms.” Hamas, however, asserted that the plan “will shatter against the rock of the firmness, will, and steadfastness of our patient people, and the valor and courage of our heroic resistance.” The failure would mirror the collapse of the other plans that the regime had intended for Gaza, through its genocidal war against the coastal territory.

Hamas and the other Axis of Resistance members will defeat the entity, creating the conditions for Palestine’s statehood and accelerating Zionism’s downfall. The hegemon will intensify its offensive against the China-aligned camp, which is going to speed up Washington’s own demise. To make this final victory arrive sooner, and to save as many lives as possible, we must take example from those who’ve been winning against the imperial beast.

Hamas, Iran, Russia, and the other triumphant anti-imperialist forces have succeeded because they’ve embraced an active role in combating the enemy. On its own, BRICS is not necessarily something that can take on this role, and it has members which are in many ways aligned with the United States; Brazil just did some of Washington’s sabotage work for it by preventing Venezuela from joining the grouping. We must support BRICS against the hybrid attacks, while struggling against the capitulationist ideas of the actors who seek to weaken BRICS from within. This is what the genocide has made apparent: we can only get justice by treating our enemy like the savage aggressor that it is.

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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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“Israel created Hamas” is a liberal Zionist argument, designed to maintain a collapsing settler entity

Anti-Netanyahu protesters within “Israel,” photo by AP

At this stage within the collapse of Zionism and imperialism, liberal Zionists play a particular role: making it easier for the hegemon to pivot towards its next hybrid warfare efforts. There is no saving Zionism; the entire project of “Israel” is unraveling, experiencing economic, energy, and demographic crises as global support for “Israel” keeps declining. This means the hegemon’s best option is to invest within a big new campaign of destabilization, seeking regime change in the countries that have been joining with China and BRICS. It’s obviously still useful for the imperialists to back “Israel,” though, despite its being unsaveable; so the narrative managers are promoting the liberal, “moderate” types of Zionists, who seek to extend Zionism’s lifespan through arguments like “Israel created Hamas.”

By “Israel,” these liberal Zionists specifically mean Netanyahu, who they argue is the sole reason why “Israel” is committing evils; they act like if only the Zionist entity were to get different leadership, peace would come, and “Israel” would somehow stop being inherently colonialist. Their narrative about Hamas being nothing more than controlled opposition for Netanyahu is an idea that’s attractive to many sincere anti-Zionists, because it seems like an effective way to argue against the genocidal “Israeli” military action. But the truth is that it’s an insidious and ahistorical piece of ideological poison; a manipulation that acts to assist Zionism’s liberal wing, and to divide anti-Zionists worldwide. 

Because the liberal wing in all likelihood will never come back into power within “Israel,” and the extreme right is only going to keep speeding up the entity’s demise, the real usefulness of the “anti-Netanyahu, anti-Hamas” arguments is in how these sentiments weaken the anti-imperialist struggle. If the hegemon can turn Palestine supporters against Hamas, the anti-imperialist movement will be confused and fractured, making the war on BRICS easier. This is the effect when some elements of Zionism decry Netanyahu; it doesn’t help the Palestinians, it only acts to prolong the genocide and strengthen the U.S. destabilization apparatus. These elements may try to portray themselves as friends to the Palestinians, but in practice they usually don’t even talk about the genocide; that’s why the most visible types of anti-Netanyahu Zionists are the protesters who’ve exclusively focused on the hostages. These are the ideological forces behind the “pro-Palestine, anti-Hamas” arguments.

This effort to mislead pro-Palestine people about the role of Hamas relies upon lies of omission, ones which originate from a distinctly liberal Zionist perspective. This becomes clear when you look closely at the logic behind these arguments. When the “moderates” talk about how Netanyahu preferred for Hamas to gain power so that Palestinians could be divided, they act as if Netanyahu totally overrode the agency of Gaza’s people. The context these arguments leave out is that voting Hamas was the best way for Gazans to show their dissatisfaction over Fatah’s corruption, and over its complicity in the occupation of the West Bank. (Which is an injustice that liberal Zionists don’t have any real problem with.)

These arguments also leave out how since the election in 2006, Netanyahu’s plan for taking advantage of this development has backfired; Hamas has joined with the communists and the nationalists in a resistance coalition, one whose other members directly participated in October 7. And the strategic success which that operation has brought about, wherein “Israel” is falling apart and Palestine is closer than ever to statehood, dispels any narratives about October 7 being a false flag. The reality is that “Israel” failed to stop the operation because it had become complacent and overconfident in its perceived security strength, relying upon fancy surveillance technologies that had hidden weaknesses. October 7 wasn’t a plan by Netanyahu to create the pretext for military action, he was genuinely caught off guard. And when he enabled Hamas, he unknowingly helped ensure Zionism’s demise. The decision came from a place of overconfidence, an assumption that there was no way Hamas could ever truly threaten the settler project.

On the narrative about Hamas being a secret tool for “Israel,” Noel Bamen writes: “it has become a sort of article of faith, and at issue is whether one is willing to question it: Do I believe that relationships can change or not? Do I believe that there is some kind of ‘original sin’ that cannot be washed away? Do I believe that Western imperialism or Zionism are all‐​powerful and control everything and everyone, regardless of the facts on the table?” When Bamen talks about how the relationship has changed, he’s referencing how the predecessor to Hamas—the Muslim Brotherhood—was at one point favored by the Zionist entity. Since then, as Bamen points out, the establishment of Hamas has reversed this situation:

To begin with the Muslim Brotherhood: as far as I know, there are certain indications, but no evidence, that it has received direct support from Israel; in my view, however, this point is of secondary importance. The toleration or even direct or indirect support of the Muslim Brotherhood by Israel was based on two grounds : 1. divide and rule — and this can hardly be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, as Baumgarten also emphasizes. 2. This support was essentially based on the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood did not resist the colonial regime — this in turn can and must be held against it. But the founding of Hamas was precisely a radical break with this earlier policy, which had served the Zionists…the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine had become a tame movement from the 1950s at the latest, which therefore enjoyed a certain benevolence from the Zionists and was even pragmatically supported in the spirit of a divide‐​and‐​rule policy. Hamas marked the end of this relationship and became the bitter, mortal enemy of Zionism as a result of Oslo and the Second Intifada.

The Zionist voices which seek to discredit Hamas have since put forth an updated version of this theory, where they point to how Netanyahu tried to use Hamas for those same “divide and rule” tactics. They assert that this means Hamas is a synthetic force which Netanyahu controls, or at least that Hamas is unwittingly playing into Netanyahu’s game. But this is not a serious analysis, and Palestine supporters harm their own cause by promoting it. It’s tempting to try to counter pro-“Israel” arguments by saying that the Zionist entity’s enemy in Gaza is fake, but to do this is to fall for a trick by Zionism’s more “respectable” element. In addition to creating distrust and infighting among the pro-Palestine camp, this narrative reinforces the logic of dogmatic pacifism, where Hamas and its partners are seen as necessarily wrong for utilizing armed struggle. 

If Hamas is a false opposition, then it must be employing a strategy that’s hurting the Palestinian cause. Its methods must be a deviation from the right methods, the peaceful ones. This is not how national liberation movements work; throughout a struggle against an occupier state, the conditions call for peaceful tactics in certain areas, and armed struggle in other areas. The conditions required the resistance to carry out the Al Aqsa Flood military operation on October 7; this has been proven by that operation’s massively weakening the entity.

The way to argue against “Israel” being justified for perpetrating this genocide is not by smearing a crucial part of the Palestinian resistance. Not only is this divisive and inaccurate to the facts, it’s also wholly unnecessary for making our argument. That the military action isn’t justified is evident merely within its genocidal character; it’s a genocide, therefore it’s wrong. And therefore it’s right for a militant group to resist the state that’s committing genocide. Hamas has done what’s strategically correct within the mission to end the “Israeli” Nazi state, which means history will judge it as having made a vital contribution. This credibility that Hamas has gained is part of why it’s held a role within the Beijing negotiations for Palestinian unity, wherein it’s successfully united with Fatah and its other former enemies. If Hamas were Netanyahu’s tool, it wouldn’t be on its way to holding a place within the coming Palestinian state, and it wouldn’t be willing to participate in talks which bring that state closer. 

Recognizing these things means adopting a different view of anti-imperialism than “war is bad, so both sides are bad,” which is the idea that such anti-Hamas smears implicitly promote. To be effective as anti-imperialists, we need to understand when it’s necessary to resist imperialism and fascism through military means; which requires doing more work when it comes to research. We need to diligently investigate each given strategic situation, and come to an honest judgment about which tactics are called for. The conditions within each place are always fluid, which makes this intellectual mission a constant challenge. And taking on this challenge is the only way to fight the empire in a competent fashion; to advance beyond merely reacting towards the things we see, and become skilled in the art of power struggle. 

The impulse among the left to call Hamas controlled opposition comes from a reactive mindset, where it feels like everything must be a lie including the resistance. When you investigate further, it becomes apparent that the Palestinian cause has more allies than Zionists want us to believe, and the path to victory becomes so much clearer.

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Holocaust Harris, the ever-expanding genocide, & what we must do as pro-Palestine speech gets criminalized

Should the dominant wing of our ruling class fulfill its next major goal, and steal the election for Kamala Harris, liberals will use this to shout down the pro-Palestine Americans who’ve spoken out against the Democrats. They’ll portray this “victory” for Harris as proof that the Democratic Party has gotten beyond its recent tensions with Arabs and Muslims, and that these groups now overwhelmingly trust Harris to reach a ceasefire. That’s the goal behind the supposedly pro-Palestine rhetoric Harris has been putting forth; Harris’ deep state handlers want to construct a narrative of unity and reconciliation, where the many Muslims who’ve said they’re boycotting Harris have suddenly changed their minds.

It’s a totally fabricated story, one that the empire will use to expand the genocide should Harris “win.” There’s also a plan for doing so should Trump win; it will involve nurturing the pro-imperialist aspects of MAGA, promoting anti-Muslim bigotry and culture war divisiveness. The preferred plan is for Harris to be the next president, though; that’s what the neocons want. So the focus of our psyop machine right now is on getting things ready for a new turn within the Democratic Party; one where its militarist, McCarthyist shift from the last decade produces a more aggressively pro-Zionist liberal culture.

This is why Harris has called Iran the USA’s greatest adversary: after the election, our ruling class will help the Zionist entity accelerate its extermination campaigns under the guide of “defending itself.” The fake ultimatum that the White House gave Netanyahu last week, where supposedly Washington would cut off weapons supplies unless more aid gets to Gaza within 30 days, will be fully abandoned. All that needs to happen is for the “Israeli” Nazi state to construct a new narrative about it being victimized by Iran, and the U.S. will stop pretending to consider any weapons restrictions. 

The U.S. war machine, and the deep state officials who keep it in operation, are working to create the conditions for carrying this Palestinian holocaust towards its next stage. A stage where the White House, no longer concerned about an election, assists “Israel” in re-creating the Armenian genocide. The USA’s bipartisan murder machine has decided to endorse this agenda because even though the unrestrained slaughter further isolates Washington, it’s seen as strategically beneficial to leave the Zionist entity towards its own devices. 

The pro-Harris wing sees Ukraine as the bigger priority compared to “Israel,” which doesn’t mean the Democrats will cut off funding for the genocide; rather it means they’ll try to divert attention away from the topic of Palestine, and pursue their plan for a new wave of color revolutions. A hybrid war on BRICS was always how the neocons were going to react to their loss in Ukraine, but with October 7, this backup plan got interrupted. Now the Harris wing is working to make up for this lost time within their global destabilization projects; which will mean redirecting the discourse towards domestic issues, and giving “Israel” all the equipment needed for fulfilling its own goals. 

These goals are to push Gazans into an even smaller space within the south of the Gaza strip, to establish settlements in the north, and to ultimately make the rest of Gaza’s people either die or leave. As the extermination accelerates, the U.S. government will work to silence anyone who speaks out against it. The feds are going to instigate post-election violence via agent provocateurs, and then criminalize anti-genocide speech under the guise of “counter-terrorism.” 

This Hitlerite project will also involve greater assaults on the West Bank and Lebanon, with the justification being that it’s all necessary for countering Iranian “aggression.” There are two major obstacles to this, though: the new reality that Iran has nuclear deterrence powers, and the unavoidable backlash from a U.S. population that largely won’t stand for the genocide to continue. 

Iran’s acquiring nuclear capabilities has left the U.S. and its Zionist proxy much more restricted. At first, Netanyahu’s government was filled with bluster about how it would supposedly punish Iran; but soon Washington talked “Israel” into settling for symbolic counter-attacks, because it was now apparent that seriously provoking Iran would be unfathomably stupid. The American-Zionist regimes have been outmaneuvered, and made limited in their range of possible damage throughout west Asia. Will “Israel” actually pursue a full war? It’s unpredictable how the desperate Zionist regime will act. If it does commit to such a conflict, though, this will be at its loss; Iran has just gotten strong enough to make that kind of war far too costly for its enemy.

“In June Iran informed the IAEA that it was installing some 1,400 advanced centrifuges at its Fordow facility,” Scott Ritter has written about these developments. “Based upon calculations derived from Iran’s on-hand stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium hexaflouride (the feedstock used in centrifuge-based enrichment), Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium (i.e., above 90 percent) to manufacture 3-5 uranium-based weapons in days. All that is needed is the political will to do so. It appears that Iran has crossed this threshold, meaning that the calculus behind any Israeli and/or U.S. attack on Iran has been forever changed.” This is why the imperialists can be expected to lean more onto their genocidal projects: they can’t harm Iran in the ways that they used to be able to, and this has ensured the success of BRICS.

In response to the empire’s next campaigns of violence, the people of the United States are going to keep applying more pressure. The domestic upsets that this genocide has created for the U.S. ruling class will not cease; the pro-Palestine mobilizations will continue, and support for “Israel” will keep shrinking among the U.S. public. This means that the methods being used for managing the election—censoring authors the Harris campaign doesn’t like, manipulating the algorithms to promote Trump Derangement Syndrome—aren’t enough to win the war with the USA’s people.

Rigging an election is almost infinitely easier than making a counterinsurgency succeed; though a counterinsurgency can easily gain short-term victories, whatever successes a state achieves in suppressing its people could always lead to greater backlash. The “Israeli” counterinsurgency has gotten numerous victories over the decades, yet now the resistance is successfully bringing Zionist society towards collapse. If our ruling class succeeds at using this election to divert the discourse, and to justify repression, it will be a victory for our enemies. But it won’t be a final victory, and it will come with a price. We’ll have a route to defeating our imperialist dictatorship, even in the worst-case scenario.

The thing that I encourage every dissident organizer to ask themselves right now is: would my operation be able to continue if our work got fully illegalized tomorrow? Do I have a local cadre that’s mastered secret work, is prepared to defend itself, and can maintain connections to the masses while functioning in a clandestine fashion? We cannot react to the threats we face by retreating into our own circles, and there are ways to keep expanding our mass connections amid extreme repression. One of our indispensable resources is the unions, which have historically acted as front groups for secret revolutionary organizations. I don’t expect the repression in the United States to include a shutdown of the unions, but I do expect our government to criminalize speech that’s anti-imperialist; which will lead to the pro-Palestine elements within the unions being targeted. 

We must find those elements, and build networks with them; this will let us keep our inner organizational work concealed, while making allies out of the most advanced among the workers. Our ruling class is reacting to its geopolitical defeats by going on the offensive, which means we face an ever-more violent menace. By navigating this situation correctly, though, we’ll bring the empire’s final defeat.

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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.