Above: Julius Malema, leader of South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters party. Image: Twitter/EFFTanzania
U.S. imperialism has started to openly aggress against South Africa, as indicated by Elon Musk’s attacks on the EFF. There are several reasons why the hegemon is doing this. There’s South Africa’s resources that the U.S. monopolists wish they could have greater access to. There’s South Africa’s leading the effort at prosecuting the perpetrators of the Gaza genocide. But I believe the biggest reason is that South Africa is one of the “swing states” in today’s U.S.-China geopolitical conflict, with the country being one of the original BRICS members. And now that BRICS has come to hold as much sway as it does now, with Indonesia’s recent entry into the formation giving it massive new advantages, the hegemon is no longer holding back on attacking South Africa. An escalation has come in the new cold war, and Silicon Valley MAGA is leading the propaganda campaign against Washington’s latest major target.
Within the anti-EFF psyop, though, there is a major weakness: the audience Musk seeks to target is increasingly disillusioned with the Trump administration’s pro-imperialist politics. Right after the election, when Trump began picking neocons for his cabinet, there came to be outrage among many vocal parts of the MAGA base. And their upset wasn’t just about the cabinet picks who were specifically neocon; a large part of the backlash was directed at the Trump appointees who were simply Zionists. This was a sign of things to come.
In January, when both Musk and Trump showed support for the H-1B immigration work visa program, there again appeared a revolt within MAGA. Many who’d expected Trump to protect the interests of U.S. workers were now seeing Trump advance the neoliberal agenda of Silicon Valley, which seeks to bypass union rules by importing non-citizen workers. This split within MAGA didn’t have to do with foreign policy, but it clarified the nature of the divide inside Trump’s coalition. It was now apparent that there’s a Silicon Valley MAGA, aligned with the monopolists, the neocons, and the Zionists; and there’s the original MAGA. The MAGA of the popular working class elements, who gravitated towards the movement out of desire for real change. They want the wars to end, the USA to be re-industrialized, and the deep state to be defeated. Because of H-1B, more people had come to see that Trump is controlled opposition, and that the USA’s people must find an authentic form of anti-establishment politics.
Then Trump announced the plan to take over Gaza, and MAGA 1.0 erupted in unprecedented anger towards MAGA 2.0. The primary grievance simply had to do with how Trump was going against America First, but there were also explicitly anti-colonial sentiments. An example of this is the statement from political commentator Evan Kilgore, who gained traction for saying: “I’m a Conservative Republican and a Trump-Supporter…However, I do NOT agree with Donald Trump’s call to take over Gaza and condemn Israel’s efforts to genocide and ethnically cleanse Gaza. I stand with the Palestinian people. Yes, we exist…”
These kinds of views, in which Trump’s pro-imperialist nature gets openly recognized, are represented by conservative commentators with major platforms. As Nasim Ahmed of Middle East Eye observed about how Tucker Carlson responded to Trump’s Gaza plan: “Carlson interviewed Curt Mills, the Executive Director of The American Conservative. The discussion once again highlighted the neoconservatives’ fixation on perpetual warfare in the service of Israel. Mills described the neoconservative foreign policy elite as a political machine that had operated unchecked for decades, despite catastrophic failures. He pointed to the ability to adapt, rebrand and infiltrate successive Republican administrations, ensuring that the US remains entangled in foreign conflicts regardless of the electoral mandate against such wars.”
Carlson himself represents another type of controlled opposition, with his role being to criticize Trump for things like Gaza while promoting war propaganda against China. The fact that Carlson has been elevated to this role, though, shows just how much dissent exists within the MAGA base. There is an element within the conservative base that’s compatible with the goals of the pro-Palestine movement, despite how this movement remains tied to leftism for the time being. And anti-imperialists can ally with this element in combating MAGA 2.0’s operations against South Africa. We can build an anti-colonial united front, and translate the popular solidarity with the Palestinians into solidarity with South Africa’s Black liberation struggle.
Musk’s propaganda strategy is to market pro-imperialist, pro-monopolist politics as something anti-establishment. The way Musk and those in his camp do this is by appealing towards the white identity politics crowd, who view it as revolutionary to talk of a “white genocide.” This camp wishes it could win over the MAGA 1.0 crowd, and convince them to view everything through the lens of race; but MAGA 1.0 has too much class consciousness. And this isn’t good for the anti-EFF psyop when this psyop overwhelmingly relies on persuading the MAGA base. For the MAGA supporters who see the hypocrisy of Trump’s imperialist actions, it’s a small leap towards solidarity with the indigenous African people; for the ones who also outright stand with Palestine, the leap is even smaller.
We in America can rally mass support for the EFF if we show the USA’s people what the EFF’s fight is truly about. As Malema has explained, all the EFF wants is true equality, which the formal abolition of the apartheid system didn’t bring:
What we are calling for is for peaceful occupation of the land. And we don’t owe anyone apology about that. … Revolution is about making those who are comfortable uncomfortable. … Revolution is about disturbing the peace of those who are swimming in a peaceful environment through exploitation of the working class. … Our strategic objective is the defeat of white monopoly capital. And that defeat […] means the ownership of property must change and be transferred into the hands of the people. Their mines must be nationalized, the banks must be nationalized, the land must be expropriated without compensation. … But white minority be warned, we will take our land no matter what.
This position is correct from the perspective of anybody who truly supports the USA’s revolutionary gains, which have included a war against British colonialism, a fight against slavery, and a struggle against the apartheid Jim Crow system. That’s why we have the potential to bring many more Americans into the anti-colonial movement. We will expand the pro-Palestine movement into new demographics, and extend this into support for the Black South African struggle. Thereby, we’ll bring the USA’s people closer towards every other people who our government wants us to hate, from the Chinese people to the Korean people to the Mexican people. In its hybrid war on BRICS, the hegemon is employing tactics of racial division. We will combat these manipulation efforts, and construct a world where imperialism has become no more.
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