The primary ideological conflict that’s happening right now is one between the forces of collectivism, and the forces of individualism, with the latter being what the imperial system depends on. It’s a struggle between the ideology of class solidarity, and the ideology of neoliberal atomization; it’s a struggle between international solidarity, and national chauvinism. Whether the collectivist side is fighting against a sectarian ideology, or liberal hedonism, or political opportunism, the conflict is about whether somebody wants to prioritize narrow, ego-centric goals or the collective good. And the more someone can separate themselves from the interests of the collective, the better they can rationalize forsaking their duty to humanity. This is why a society like Yemen has such a strong current of revolutionary mass dedication, while the “western Marxism” of the core imperialist countries lacks such principles.
There’s been a concerted effort by the CIA to make U.S. communism detached from the actual working class, and instead connected to the professional managerial class, which lacks economic incentive for caring about the proletariat’s interests. The communist movement here wasn’t always like this, but since the 1970s it’s been under the control of petty-bourgeois elements. And it’s only recently that an authentically proletarian current has begun building a major alternative to the “red liberal” organizations.
As the conditions of the U.S. working class continue to get worse, and our individual experiences become more filled with obstacles, we must consider the circumstances that peoples like the Yemenis or the Gazans have had to navigate. How these peoples have been able to keep waging revolt against the hegemon, no matter how desperate their poverty has been or how extreme the enemy’s violence has become.
When you lack any options besides revolt, it’s so easy to become part of a revolutionary collective effort, as the members of Ansarallah and Al Qassam have done. It’s so apparent that the only path forward is through the sacrifice of oneself, if the cause demands it, for the sake of bringing the collective closer to liberation. This does not look like individual acts of self-destruction or violence; as a communist, I do not promote suicide, nor adventuristic political assassinations. Everything done by groups like Ansarallah and the Al Qassam brigades has the sole purpose of advancing strategic goals, goals which can only be reached through careful assessments and planning.
The more serious our situation in the empire’s core becomes, the more urgent it will be for us to take strategy into account, and forsake liberal notions of being individually “special.” The point is not to become messiahs, it’s to win a war that’s incomparably bigger than any one of us; and by acting according to this principle, we truly do the heroic thing.
The fighters of West Asia’s anti-imperialist battles are facing a situation so serious, it represents an actual apocalyptic scenario. There is evidence that Washington’s Zionist puppet has dropped a small nuclear weapon on Syria, with the blast from its “earthquake bomb” not just shaking the ground but leaving traces of radiation. This week, the Biden administration bombed Yemen’s capital, an act that the U.S. media didn’t even report on; the aggressors are trying to get away with as much as they can, testing how far they can take things following their Syria regime change success. They’re preparing for bigger assaults against Lebanon and Iran, which they’ve both recently crossed major red lines within; their hope is that no repercussions for this will come, letting them demolish even more infrastructure across the region.
That’s the essence of the empire’s mission in West Asia: to tear down as much as possible, rendering the local societies weaker. But no matter how effective it becomes in this, the motivation behind it is fear. The monopoly finance capitalists aren’t coming at this from a place of advantage; they see how unipolar hegemony is doomed, regardless of the imperial victory in Syria, and they want to make West Asia crippled before Washington’s power further declines. The USA, the Zionist entity, and Turkey have certainly been emboldened by Syria’s fall, and the human costs of this are incomprehensible; but the power balance remains such that in the end, the revolutionary forces have the advantage. History’s overall trajectory is on their side; multipolarity will continue to come into being, and Washington’s Syria maneuver has actually accelerated this transition.
Chinese strategic professor Wang Xiangsui has concluded that Washington’s decision to carry out regime change in Syria is not overall going to benefit the United States; instead, it will in more ways benefit the PRC, while creating blowback for the imperialists. In its summary of the arguments Xiangsui has put forth, Wave Media says that:
Israel’s opportunism in Syria will deepen U.S. entanglement in the Middle East, hastening the decline of U.S. hegemony. According to Al Jazeera, on December 8, Israeli forces occupied the Syrian-controlled area of the Golan Heights. This marks the first open entry of Israeli ground forces into Syrian territory since the Yom Kippur War. Such a military venture is bound to exacerbate tensions between Israel and the Arab world. In the next four years, this could trigger more conflicts, creating additional aid burdens for the U.S. as it supports Israel. Meanwhile, the White House will have no choice but to foot the bill, as the Trump administration has been dominated by pro-Israel officials…Prof. Wang points out that there will be no second “American Century.” What follows will not be a “Chinese Century” either but rather a truly multipolar world. What we are witnessing in Syria is an ulcer in the U.S.-led world order. With Syria now fragmented among various factions, we are witnessing the collapse of the old order, which has yet to give rise to a new one.
This is the true strategic situation, despite the recent assertions about Syria’s fall meaning the death of multipolarity. Because of Washington’s hubris in Syria, multipolarity is coming even faster than otherwise, and China’s economic victory over the empire will be even more total. The problem is that as of this moment, the imperialists and their proxies are in place to use genocide as a punishment for this defeat of theirs. Finding themselves endangered by the historic laws of imperial decline, they’re expanding their extermination campaign, preparing to increase this holocaust's death count from the hundreds of thousands to the millions.
China and Russia cannot prevent every death that Washington intends to bring upon West Asia’s people, no matter how great their victories are elsewhere. The only thing that can bring the region out of this is the power of collective resistance and construction, embodied by Ansarallah, Hezbollah, the Palestinian resistance, and Iran’s anti-imperialist elements. The enemy is engineering an apocalypse within West Asia, but even an apocalypse can’t stop this kind of power. The will to keep fighting is there, and that will is what’s going to define the future.
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