Above: Iranians burn Baal, the child sacrifice god that Epstein’s operation was centered around.
For a way forward in the post-Epstein era, we must take example from the Palestinian struggle, and refuse to embrace normalization. Our rulers have used Epstein as a tool to instill apathy, and get rid of the old limitations on what’s supposed to be unacceptable. The files were released in a selective way that was designed to traumatize the masses, rather than give them the tools to fight back; and when the regime achieved this, it could launch an entire war without receiving the kind of blowback it would have in the past. Since that moment, America has ceased to have the kinds of national conversations that it did in every past moment of history. Discourse itself has become something managed by bots, to a degree that’s massive compared to just a year ago.
Overcoming this psychological operation, and unfreezing the political environment inside the empire’s core, is instrumental towards freeing the whole world. America’s people have an indispensable role in defeating imperialism. Not because America or Americans are exceptional, but because our government has a monopoly on global violence and financial power that can only be broken through an internal overthrow. By targeting us with traumatic shocks, our rulers have created a numbness whose function is to stop us from endangering this order. And the only way to break out of the numbness is by waging a struggle from below, independent of the regime’s duopoly, that forces our social order into a new era.
In undertaking this task, the main force we can take example from right now is Islam, along with its allies in the nationalist and communist formations within its anti-Zionist coalition. This is because during the present era, and for quite a long time at this point, Islam has been the primary force of direct kinetic resistance against imperialism.
After communism’s retreat in the 20th century, Islam was what took over as the biggest driver of revolutionary warfare. This doesn’t mean there won’t be new Marxist-Leninist revolutions, and socialist China represents the biggest economic threat to the hegemon. But the next workers victories, and the events that allow for China to fully “break free” from Washington’s containment strategy, will be fundamentally connected to the struggle that Islam is waging. All of the world’s liberation movements will need to account for the lessons from those who are at the forefront of this fight, or else fall into irrelevancy and be crushed.
Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, explained last month what kind of instruction we must take from these freedom fighters:
The Palestinian resistance has shown that determination, organization, and deep roots among the people can alter political and military realities even in the face of overwhelming military superiority. Palestine has therefore become a global symbol of resistance and a meeting point for the struggles of peoples confronting colonialism, racism, and domination. The Palestinian cause is no longer simply the cause of a people fighting for the liberation of its land; it has become a moral and political touchstone that reveals where forces stand in the broader confrontation between domination and liberation…
One of the most significant developments of recent years has been the growing coordination among these forces of resistance. In the face of divisions that have historically weakened peoples and liberation movements, they have developed increasingly sophisticated forms of political, strategic, and media cooperation based on a shared understanding of the nature of the struggle. They have recognized that Palestine cannot be separated from Lebanon, that Yemen cannot be separated from Iran, and that the defense of Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia is part of the same struggle against imperial hegemony.
The masses are highly capable of understanding and applying these lessons. With the developments of the 2020s, where our government has refused to rescue the people from the economic crisis while entering several new wars, the people are ready for revolution. For those of us in the Marxist-Leninist movement, the danger is that our intellectualization of liberation theories will hold us back during a critical juncture, and make us detached from the actual mass struggle.
There are a growing number of ultra-leftists who misinterpret what it means to apply the lessons from these Global South struggles, and believe we must embrace an adventurist practice. They see wanton violence or vandalism as the answers to today’s apathy, ignoring Lenin’s warnings against these practices. This relates to the deviations within our movement that view the modern white workers as settlers, or that view Russia and China as imperialist. Such dogmas have potential to soon become more prominent, because ultra-leftism will fill the vacuum after the DSA’s inevitable decline.
Ideologies that interpret our crisis through a dogmatic lens, whether they’re extreme liberalism or the far right, will gain traction as the post-Epstein confusion drags on. We’ve reached a phase where our institutions have been fully discredited, yet things are going on as normal. Not normal in the sense that our lives aren’t being disrupted—as the Iran economic shocks are just the beginning—but in the sense that the public continues to act passively. The reaction from those trying to escape the inertia, but haven’t come across political leadership that has clarity about our conditions, will be to embrace self-destructive solutions.
The practical experiences of the Islamic resisters and their allies show us how to escape the internal inertia that’s long held back the workers movement. Our problem is that since the last workers revolutions happened in the mid-20th century, and the Soviet bloc fell apart, “Marxism” has lost its purpose within all the places where Marxists aren’t well-established. The secret we’ve forgotten is that Marxism was never supposed to be an ideological thing, categorizable within some box of fixed doctrines. Marxism is a tool for understanding history, and for using this understanding to advance history. The world’s Marxists must take responsibility, and gain a truly active role in the class conflicts of our respective countries; Kenya’s communists have been doing this amid the country’s recent worker uprising, proving Marxism hasn’t been outmoded and is capable of leading the new popular revolts.
For Marxism to mean anything in the struggle that America’s people are faced with, it will need to take on the same role that Islam has. Marxists will need to become unifiers among the different forces that oppose our banking dictatorship, like the Islamic resistance formations have done through their global cooperative efforts.
A common accusation by today’s “Marxist” left imperial collaborators, one they’ve directed at Hamas and Iran in particular, is that these forces fight the left. This is pure projection by actors who themselves have been playing a highly sectarian role. Hamas has successfully unified with the communists in the resistance, and Iran is part of the same global resistance network that Masar Badil described. This has to do with how Iran is in many ways socialist itself; its very structure of government is greatly influenced by the gains of the working class. If Hamas gets into power, by necessity it will take on a similar model of governance; because Hamas is the leader of the Palestinian struggle, and the war on Palestine is part of the war on the working class.
By recognizing the non-ideological nature of our struggle, and becoming connected to the worldwide resistance effort that Islam has taken leadership over, we become capable of shattering the inertia. Islam shows us how to liberate Marxism from its self-imposed ideological prison, and therefore how to give Americans the means for destroying the regime.
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