Above: Antifa putting the Soviet flag next to the left anti-communist “three arrows” symbol, visually representing the contradictions within pan-leftism.
In the counterinsurgency strategy the USA has developed, a central aspect is the cultivation of forces that can pseudo-independently govern the population the military seeks to control. Chapter 10 of the U.S. Army’s Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies discusses “generational engagement,” where the military sets up institutions that can provide the people with false representatives. The chapter emphasizes the need to make these structures appear indigenous rather than extensions of the occupying government, which is a trick we’ve seen countless times from the imperialists and their proxies. Washington did this in Iraq, the “Israeli” settler state did this by establishing the Palestinian Authority, and the imperialists hope to do this in many other places should they get opportunities for future regime change operations.
It’s a more advanced version of the counter-gang strategy, where the counterinsurgency against Africa’s decolonization movements set up false revolutionary groups to attack and divert support from the authentic ones. Right now, our government’s effort at fighting the people’s revolutionary energy is at the stage where it mainly utilizes counter-gangs, or at least proto-counter-gangs. Faced with the rise of the pro-Palestine movement, the ruling class has promoted many political forces that can act as controlled opposition, some of them easier to recognize than others. The ostensibly radical activist wing of the Democratic Party has been trying to funnel Palestine supporters into voting blue, like this wing did during the George Floyd uprising. The “pan-leftist” current within organizing, which seeks to keep communism tied into leftism, has been working to divert people in a different way. It’s carried out idealistic activities, like blocking roads or going on political rants to Starbucks workers, that only turn the masses away from the cause.
This is the role of the pan-leftist PSL: to maintain a monopoly over protest movements, and stop them from developing into something which can truly capture the masses. Because its practice is based in petty-bourgeois radicalism, it’s satisfied with only capturing certain elements of the people, and rally them around liberal identity politics. I’ve made this critique of the PSL and the other petty-bourgeois radical groups many times. But recent events have made me better understand the role which these forces have within the counterinsurgency.
Amid the direction our ruling class has taken since Kamala Harris got the nomination, with many more dissident figures getting arrested or raided, it’s apparent that the empire managers are anxious to crush opposition. The dominant wing of the bourgeoisie wants Harris to win so that its war plans in Korea get carried through, and so that it can better perpetuate the culture wars. The Trump assassination attempt showed that at least a large part of the deep state is willing to instigate civil conflict for the sake of advancing these goals. As the Korean-based People’s Democracy Party has concluded, the FBI was likely involved in the assassination plot, which is consistent with how the FBI knowingly let January 6 happen. This part of the intelligence apparatus can be expected to engineer more incidents of political violence during or after the election, with the main goal of these false flags being to justify further crackdowns.
Meanwhile, the empire’s proxies in Palestine and Ukraine face collapse, and Washington’s south Korean ally isn’t fully going along with its wishes for escalations. In all areas, our class and geopolitical conflict is accelerating. The counterinsurgency urgently needs to turn the power balance more in its favor, or things will get much further beyond the state’s control. That’s where the pan-leftists and the left counter-gangs come in.
Whereas the PSL’s role as an organization is to give influence to the NGOs, which doesn’t imply that it will take on any role in civil conflict, the ideological forces which are adjacent to it are ready to be used by the state in such a way. The new January 6-type unrest outbreaks which the feds plan to orchestrate are going to try to draw in both the right and the left, activating the Proud Boys and Antifa in tandem. That’s the nature of the color revolution network’s activities within the United States: to split the synthetic pseudo-revolts into two camps, one of them “trad” and the other one leftist. For the leftist side to be effective at diverting revolutionary mass energy, it needs to stand on its own within its part of the ideological landscape. It must meet no challenge from communists whose practice centers the broad masses, rather than the left. This is what makes the PSL so useful: it lets the left anti-communists and the Democratic Party NGOs infiltrate the communist movement, neutralizing potential challenges towards the left counter-gangs. “Marxism” can be kept fused with leftism, and therefore unable to pose a serious threat.
Or at least this is how things would go if all of these controlled opposition groups were the only political currents which exist. Unavoidably, elements have emerged to challenge the established left, and to build an iteration of communism that isn’t a liberal front. My org the CPI, and the other communist forces which reject the New Left radical liberal model, are gathering strength. They’re getting closer to restoring communism’s former mainstream status in the USA. These forces don’t necessarily have to embrace the “communist” label to do so; they’re bringing the people into a genuine effort at overthrowing our for-profit economic model, and that’s what matters. They’re challenging the counter-gangs which pan-leftism enables, presenting an alternative towards the synthetic “red” groups which the ruling class is setting up to sow controlled chaos.
This is why, as my friend within the movement Jesse Wingert has concluded, the left counter-gangs represent the main state proxies we’ll be facing. He compares the role of these proxies to that of the white nationalist “groypers,” observing that when it comes to the far-right counter-gangs…
…The primary threat to the Mass Movement comes from the timing of their deployment in concert with other threats from the Imperialists, rather than posing an objective threat in isolation; if employed without support, this reactionary section of the Right would be destroyed quickly and do little damage, but can force the Workers to divert critical forces away from the Imperialists themselves and expose us to other operational threats.
We must then be prepared for a period of time where we are not able to take the offensive in any major way because of objective external conditions, even though we might otherwise have a favorable balance of forces. The Groypers will almost certainly be kept in reserve, ready to disrupt the Anti-Imperialists or the Industrial Capitalists if either of our operations become too effective during the vulnerable period while the Financial Bourgeoise are consolidating power after a coup. While they may become more active in the leadup to the elections, in an effort to provoke and rally a flagging Left, it would be an operational mistake to see this as the [main] body of their forces; they are embedded deeper than a few protesters and memers, and we have seen no evidence of a strategic shift which would allow the militant reactionaries to replace the Left counter-gangs as the main proxy force of the State within the Imperialist’s overall force structure.
What should we do in response to these realities? In the short term, the wise thing is to refrain from drawing too much attention to ourselves from the state, and keep a lower profile as the election dramas intensify. We shouldn’t show up to any gatherings that could get steered in a chaotic direction, especially not at this moment. Now is the time to gather our strength for the confrontations that are coming next; for doing the many kinds of internal trainings our cadres will require, while showing the masses that we side with them against the deep state. We need to mobilize towards defending the Uhuru 3. We need to combat the Kamala Harris psyop, which is the narrative that’s meant to make possible the liberal fascist coup Wingert warns about.
The monopoly capitalists aim to use this week’s Uhuru trial as a precedent to go after numerous other anti-imperialist orgs, while distracting the people through culture war battles. Then the plan is to rig the election for Harris, create more January 6 events, and expand this proto-third world war into East Asia. The better prepared we are to defend from the counter-gangs, the greater chance we’ll survive the next attacks. And the more connections we make with the masses, the more support we’ll have during the class war’s most intense stages. The way to make these connections is by becoming active agents within the discourse, doing things like raising awareness on Uhuru and promoting a message of anti-imperialist mass unity.
These aren’t things the pan-leftists are willing to do, which is why we can further weaken their organizing monopoly. They aren’t the biggest long-term threat our movement faces; they’re only the ones who empower the actual counter-gangs, which are even more isolated from the masses but pose a physical kind of menace. If we navigate our conditions correctly, we’ll overcome both obstacles, and leave our class enemies without these crucial counterinsurgency tools.
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