To understand what the ideology of our ruling class is, and what form this ideology will take as we enter into the next stage of imperial collapse, look at the two cultural trends which monopoly finance capital is backing. There’s the “woke” side, the side of liberal cosmopolitanism that views the masses as being fundamentally backwards; and there’s the anti-“woke” side, which reduces society’s problems towards a cultural struggle and thinks the answer is restoring a romanticized past. Both of these belief systems work to obscure the class struggle and keep the people divided, which is part of why our rulers promote them. There’s another purpose behind this synthetic culture war, though: to make it so that both the right and the left represent something fundamentally pro-imperialist. And as the evils of the imperial project get more widely recognized, we’re seeing the left side of this hegemony reveal its true character. It’s a character that’s essentially Hitlerian, whatever this ideology’s propagators say otherwise.
This is clear from how the left has been the primary ideological base of support for Ukraine, and how the left has worked the hardest to help obscure the genocidal nature of Ukraine’s coup regime. Kamala Harris just made it further apparent by showing commitment towards continuing the genocide against Gaza. Not all of the people on the left are pro-Ukraine, and most of them are even against aid to the Zionist entity. But what Marxists need to understand is that these good signs are in spite of the character of today’s default American left, not because of it. When somebody from this element goes against imperialist foreign policy, they’re defying what’s supposed to be the default mindset of those on the left.
This is how we should interpret the reaction of the country’s wokeist elements towards Gaza. Given how many pro-imperialist sentiments we’ve seen come from this element, with the left being crucial in not just the Ukraine psyop but also the Syria and anti-China psyops, it feels anomalous that it’s now produced so much of a push against U.S. foreign policy. But it makes sense from a dialectical materialist perspective, in the same way it makes sense when you use diamat to analyze the recent conservative antiwar trend. The bulk of opposition towards the war in Syria has come from the MAGA base, even during the time when Trump was overseeing this war. Conservative skepticism of the Ukraine proxy war, and sympathy towards Russia, have also represented a narrative threat towards the war machine. These developments have occurred due to objective reality clashing, in different ways, with the pro-imperialist indoctrination that the left and the right are both subjected to.
Parts of the masses are prone to choosing the right side of history during certain moments, because imperialist wars are inherently based on deception and will inevitably alienate people who aren’t invested in all of the lies all of the time. This is why only a minority of Americans have been willing to keep supporting both Ukraine and “Israel.” Faced with this reality of pro-war propaganda’s limitations, the empire managers are consolidating their remaining ideological power. They’re working to nurture an ideology that superficially appears split into two sides, but functionally works to unite the different cultural wings of our ruling class ideology. They’re bringing Democratic Party loyalists, neocons, radical liberals, and the far right into a joint counterrevolutionary effort. This effort involves confrontations between the different sides of the culture wars, but these clashes are between forces that come from the same intelligence operations, and therefore advance the same goal.
The goal is to have all of these ideological elements face off against our society’s anti-establishment forces during the class war’s future battles. The next big battle is going to take place over the narrative around the 2024 election, and it will be one where the anti-imperialist forces are on the defensive. Monopoly finance capital is going to increasingly mobilize its far-right and radical liberal proxies as the election gets nearer, seeking to intensify the culture wars while creating justification for state crackdowns. It’s an operation to pit the two ruling class cultural ideologies against each other in a controlled domestic conflict, exacerbating divisions and strengthening the police apparatus. But if we maneuver this moment correctly, and make allies out of more of the people, we’ll come out of these tumultuous events with more strength.
Caleb Maupin has predicted that if Harris wins, it will “be followed by a series of protests and unrest from Trump supporters, who will see the results, in light of the unpopularity of the Biden administration, social media manipulation, etc., as fraudulent. It is likely that under such circumstances, a number of provocations much like the January 6th, 2021 Capitol Riot would take place. Labeling Trump supporters as violent extremists has already begun, and opposition to Trump from agencies like the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service is already obvious.” If Trump wins, Maupin expects that the intelligence centers will mobilize the militant wing of the imperialism-compatible left, trying to reinforce anti-communist caricatures in the minds of the MAGA base.
He observes that there have lately been “operations of creating what amount to ‘red flag provocations’ utilizing Cold War communist aesthetics without political substance, all as Trump supporters are being psyched up to hate Communists.” If our class enemies can keep communism married to the left wing of the culture war, then communism’s pro-growth, antiwar, and anti-deep state character will be obscured. Ultraviolent “Antifa” left culture warriors will remain the only types of “communists” who average Americans see.
Both types of counter-gangs are simultaneously going to be made more active, and more heavily boosted by the media, regardless of which candidate wins. The empire managers always have a plan for how to shape the narratives around a new presidential administration, even when their more favored candidate loses. This time, the candidate finance capital most favors is Kamala Harris, because she’s the puppet that could best be used for furthering the culture wars. Trump winning would allow him to fail at draining the swamp again, which would take the momentum out of MAGA. Harris winning would keep alive the myth that MAGA is anti-establishment, making it harder for us to create a clear dividing line between the establishment’s friends and enemies.
As long as the ruling class can keep the proto-revolutionary mass elements sufficiently divided from each other on cultural matters, we won’t be able to turn the culture war into a class war. Even though Ukraine has woken up the right, while Palestine has woken up the left, as long as the culture wars dominate this progress won’t be built upon. These different types of antiwar people will continue being invested in the left-right dichotomy, not building coalitions among each other or deepening their consciousness.
As of now, this is the main obstacle to the class struggle’s advancement: the dynamic our rulers have cultivated where mass energy gets redirected towards woke vs anti-woke infighting. Rejecting the woke side of this discourse psyop is most important for Marxists, because Marxism has been thoroughly captured by the New Left. Ukraine and Gaza must teach us that the New Left’s view of fascism, where being socially progressive necessarily places somebody in opposition towards the fascists, is a total fallacy. Today under our conditions, fascism’s primary wing is on the “progressive” side. This reality couldn’t be clearer; we see a modern Hitlerism right there in what Zionism is doing to the people of Gaza. If the left wing of bourgeois politics is standing with this Hitlerism, then we should combat it like we combat the far right.
We don’t act like the white supremacists are an essential demographic to make inroads with, and treat their “white genocide” lie or “Jewish question” narrative as acceptable points of disagreement. We need to have the same clarity about liberals, with their support for Nazistic foreign policies. The white supremacists and the liberals are two parts of the same reactionary united front; the coalition we must build is one between the groups of people who share a revolutionary interest.
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