This is from the book I’m writing, which will be called “When Tears Can’t Save Them: Why The Pro-Palestine Movement Failed To Stop A Holocaust, & How It Can Still Win.”
Something which has handicapped the left in its ability to rally Americans against Zionism is the widespread belief within today’s progressive spaces that the Zionist lobby doesn’t matter. This is what’s been argued by Noam Chomsky, who’s essentially concluded that the interests of U.S. imperialism make the Lobby’s role redundant:
The US-Israeli alliance was firmed up precisely when Israel performed a huge service to the US-Saudis-Energy corporations by smashing secular Arab nationalism, which threatened to divert resources to domestic needs. That’s also when the Lobby takes off (apart from the Christian evangelical component, by far the most numerous and arguably the most influential part, but that’s mostly the 90s). And it’s also when the intellectual-political class began their love affair with Israel, previously of little interest to them. They are a very influential part of the Lobby because of their role in media, scholarship, etc. From that point on it’s hard to distinguish “national interest” (in the usual perverse sense of the phrase) from the effects of the Lobby.
The problem with this analysis is that it frames the question of the Lobby’s influence in binary terms: either the Lobby and the Zionist entity are at the head of U.S. policy, or “Israel” is completely subordinate to Washington and therefore the Lobby isn’t a real driving factor. To truly understand the Zionist entity’s role within U.S. policy, and therefore know which stance America’s workers movement must take towards the Lobby, we must look at the ruling ideology that defines Washington’s global actions. This ideology being Atlanticism, the worldview in which the USA’s national interests are seen as being synonymous with those of the transnational, financial empire that our government is tasked with serving.
When we investigate what Atlanticism stands for, and where its material interests are based, it becomes even more apparent that the JQ comes from fallacy; there are attempts to depict the word “Atlanticism” as being an inherent JQ dog whistle, but the word does not actually refer to a theory in which Jewish interests are the core driving force. It refers to the objective reality that monopoly financial interests dominate our government, which refutes the JQ argument about how changing the racial character of our institutions would solve society’s problems; the crises we’re experiencing come from the imperial system, which would continue to exist with or without any Jewish leadership.
This is what the JQers miss about Atlanticism when they refer to it as supposed proof for their position: Atlanticism isn’t about subordinating America towards Jewish interests, it’s about negating the American nation in service of international finance. Which is absolutely not synonymous with Jews, and isn’t dependent on Jewish leadership for its survival.
Another important thing to know about Atlanticism is that there’s a difference between what finance capital’s objective interests are, and what the adherents of the Atlanticist ideology subjectively believe is best for these interests. It’s very easy for the Atlanticists within our ruling institutions to overestimate the importance of serving one particular imperial outpost, and then end up harming the empire’s interests in the process. We’ve certainly seen this with Ukraine, where the Atlanticist wing of our government has been caught up in fighting a war that undermines U.S. power in many areas. This proxy conflict has driven Russia closer to China, worn down U.S. and European military resources, compelled most of the Global South to outwardly disregard Washington’s wishes by refusing to support Ukraine, accelerated the decline of the dollar, turned BRICS into the force that it is today, and radicalized many Americans by massively furthering inflation.
It’s for these reasons that the right-wing nationalist wing within our ruling class has opposed the Ukraine war; this project has come with numerous severe costs for U.S. capital, so for those who care more about America’s local capitalist interests than the global banking apparatus, Ukraine is simply a liability. And an equivalent kind of inter-elite dispute is developing over the question of “Israel,” because the effort to prop up the Zionist state has entailed many of the same drawbacks.
Washington’s doubling down on support for “Israel” has multiplied all of the blowback from the Ukraine war; it’s added another costly arms committment when Washington is already spread thin, it’s provoked popular anger towards the war machine that can’t be satiated, it’s left Washington more isolated than ever as the world sees its monstrous endeavor in Palestine, and it’s been a crucial factor in the collapse of the Democratic Party, which at the least means the revolutionary forces have gained an opening.
It’s getting harder for the strategic benefits of “Israel” to outweigh these costs, because “Israel” isn’t as necessary for maintaining U.S. hegemony as it was prior to Arab nationalism’s defeat. When Nasserism was crushed in the 1967 war, and then the U.S. repaired its relations with Saudi Arabia following the 1973 embargo, this gave Washington much broader control over West Asia; control that “Israel” still helps the empire fortify, but that’s no longer so dependent on “Israel” as it once was. The full capturing of Egypt into Washington’s orbit was a critical part of this transition; unlike “Israel,” Egypt is geographically capable of controlling the trade through the Red Sea. (Though this control has been superseded by Ansarallah through its blockade of the Suez Canal, which was started directly in response to what “Israel” is doing to Gaza.)
The colonization of Palestine has been a critical stepping stone towards this imperial takeover of the region; but now that it’s gotten this far, there’s coming to be more disputes among our elites over whether to keep taking on all the liabilities which “Israel” creates for the United States. The main function that “Israel” actually serves is to wage Washington’s wars as a proxy, but Turkey does this just as well, if not better. It’s quite plausible that the empire will replace “Israel” with Turkey as the primary U.S. attack dog in West Asia, as well as receive increased backing in its efforts to coordinate jihadist attacks against China. The continued U.S. investment in “Israel” is in great part due to inertia; the inertia that comes from having a massive part of the ruling class which has long been genuinely in thrall to the cult of Zionist ideology.
The bulk of those within America’s ruling institutions believe their own propaganda about how “Israel” is absolutely and eternally indispensable to America’s strategic interests. They also truly believe the narratives about how “Israel” wants only the best for the Palestinian people, Hamas is stealing the aid, and all evidence of human rights abuses against Palestinians is “antisemitic” propaganda. This is the level of intelligence we’re dealing with when it comes to the typical pro-Zionist politician, religious leader, media producer, PAC head, or other figure who’s taken on a role as a stooge for the imperial state. Even a lot of the billionaires who fund the “Israel” lobby sincerely buy Zionism’s PR narratives, and believe “Israel” really is just defending itself. There are no doubt parts of the deep state that know how much of a liability “Israel” really is to Washington’s human rights image, because U.S. intelligence works in tandem with “Israel” and directly bears witness to its continuous atrocities.
It’s likely because of this that certain elements within the deep state have been working to boost the “dissident right”: when you know the victim narrative about “Israel” is a cosmically gargantuan lie, but your task is to defend the empire, it becomes apparent that cultivating a controlled opposition towards Zionism is necessary. And now that the Biden-era ultra-leftist brands of controlled opposition have needed to be de-boosted, the far right represents the main “dissident” politics our ruling class is pushing.
This is a politics that doesn’t even pretend to stand with Palestine’s resistance, because its motivation for opposing Zionism is based within pure racial obsession. And this is certainly damaging towards the Palestinian cause, but it also comes with that inescapable contradiction in every kind of “rightist” politics: the contradiction between claiming to want the defeat of liberalism’s excesses, while seeking to maintain the existing social order. The “dissident right” is going to remain ineffective at stopping the genocide, or at defeating capital’s other anti-human schemes. Which will leave our society ripe for the rise of a genuine revolutionary politics.
For our program to truly be revolutionary, it will need to take into account Lenin’s warning that “it is impossible to escape imperialist war, and imperialist peace…which inevitably engenders imperialist war, it is impossible to escape that inferno, except by a Bolshevik struggle and a Bolshevik revolution.” A Palestine supporter doesn’t need to identify as a communist to apply the lesson Lenin was conveying here, because whatever differences there are within the pro-Palestine coalition, the shared goal of our cause is to defeat the class interests behind the genocide against Palestine. Zionism can’t be defeated until capital is defeated, and this means the workers struggle is inseparable from the Palestinian struggle.
Once the class question is replaced with the “Jewish question,” and workers struggle is replaced with racial struggle, the movement stops being about freeing Palestine. The JQ movement doesn’t have to do with any kind of revolutionary or national liberation goal, it’s about rehabilitating Hitler. Which, despite what the JQers say, is a mission that’s completely compatible with liberal modernity. 21st century Hitlerism is just another part of the “dark woke” trend that’s coming to dominate ruling class politics; this is the trend where finance capital’s propagandists use the language of progress to promote genocidal ideologies, whether the particular ideology is Zionism or Nazism. The only answer to “dark woke” is the construction of an authentic working-class force that defeats the imperial state, and smashes its designs for expanded extermination.
Combating ultra-leftism is a critical part of this task, and though the PSL’s current within ultra-leftism has collapsed, we may soon need to confront a different version of this problem. What happens when the attempts at building a successful social movement have failed, and the state is on the advance in its efforts at crushing dissent? What happens is that the “ultras” within the protest movements come to be at the forefront of the activism efforts; which has already happened to an extent, but the next danger is that these wrecking forces will become the faces of the Palestinian cause. When leftists are being forced into a retreat, all too often they react by embracing adventurism, hoping that by lashing out they’ll suddenly reverse the course that history is taking.
We only need to look to the Weather Underground for an example of this; the Weathermen and other adventuristic groups were able to gain as much relevance as they did because even during the most triumphant moments in the 60-70s upheavals, the United States was fundamentally lacking in the workers power which it used to have. It was this deficiency that allowed the popular movements to be diverted back then, and that’s threatening to make them lose during our era as well. When the basis for a serious proletarian movement isn’t there, a movement’s participants will lack the direction they need, and they’ll be taken in by currents that play a negative role within the struggle.
Though Marxism-Leninism is the ideology that I espouse, someone certainly doesn’t need to be an ML to be part of the solution. By “currents that play a negative role,” I don’t mean “any ideology that isn’t Marxist”; I mean any political tendency that objectively harms the interests of the country’s popular masses, and by extension the interests of the Palestinian resistance. There are plenty of non-Marxist political actors who play a positive role, and part of being a serious Marxist is recognizing this.
I’ve devoted so much space to refuting the ideas of non-Marxists, and of seriously flawed Marxists, because these ideological actors who I’ve focused on have a particularly harmful character. They represent the political currents that either work to defend the genocidal campaign of our ruling class, or render our popular movements unable to defend against the state’s counterinsurgency. Combating these damaging forces is one part of what we must do; the other big part is to build up the popular organizational power which can end the Nazistic project our elites are carrying out.
The actors who’ve been perpetrating the extermination of the Palestinians are directly tied in with Silicon Valley, and everything they’re doing to Palestine informs their activities in the United States. Palantir is an example of this Zionist big tech connection that America’s masses have already become aware of. Now that Trump has approved a plan to build a Palantir-run mass surveillance network, the MAGA base has caught on to this civil liberties threat from the Zionists, perhaps more acutely than most other Americans have.
When it comes to the Lobby, or the Zionist-tied spying efforts, or the censorship against “antisemitism,” the masses have come to share a widespread consciousness about how Zionism is causing harm towards our own society. (Which is a secondary issue compared to the genocide, but is important to account for when seeking to bring in the masses.) There are opportunists who aim to turn this consciousness in the wrong direction by framing Zionism as an anti-“white” conspiracy, but their arguments will never be as effective or compelling as what a real workers movement can show the masses.
The parts of the pro-Palestine movement that have learned from history, and have investigated our conditions, will draw upon the unbeatable strength of the proletariat. They’ll build dual power, creating institutions that act independently from the capitalist class and provide the masses with the tools to fight back against capital’s attacks. They’ll do more than have the right form of organizational practice, where we say all the right things and argue against all the wrong ideas; their practice will also have the content which makes it actually mean something to hold the correct positions.
When it comes to rallying the USA’s people in particular, one of these positions we must take is that the Zionist lobby truly does mean something material. This is a lesson we must take from the persuasive successes of the JQers: the masses think of the anti-Zionist struggle in terms of their own government being controlled by a malign, transnational force, because this is in fact the situation that they’re facing. The American revolution has still not been completed, because the American people haven’t yet been liberated from the tyranny that monopoly finance capital has constructed. And the equivalent is the case throughout the rest of the countries in the imperial sphere, whose own masses are coming to similar conclusions.
Any confusion that these masses have about the nature of this control is our own fault, because it’s our responsibility to put forth the materialist alternative towards the JQ’s arguments. When we assume this responsibility, we will be in place to fulfill our part within the great struggle that people all around the world are waging. A struggle which, by connecting ourselves to it, will give us both the practical and spiritual guidance that can let us prevail.
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