Twenty years ago, conservatism was the main ideological tool of our ruling class. It represented the narrative basis for the War on Terror and the crackdown on civil liberties, because the Christian right had already been the dominant wing of U.S. politics for decades at that point. Then in the 2010s, the highest levels of capital decided to greatly inject neoliberalism and imperialism with “wokeness,” where the dictatorship of capital can legitimize itself by claiming to represent social progress. Its other function is as a weapon against dissent by labeling all who oppose the system as bigots, fueling the “cancel culture” of the social media age. Wokeness had already been present in things like the “liberate Afghan women” narrative, but now it was the main part of propaganda.
Wokeness remained big capital’s primary cultural weapon for a long time, until the escalation of the Gaza genocide prompted the narrative managers to pivot. It’s now best for them to engineer a controlled anti-woke backlash, where they send in fake dissident right-wing leaders to manage discontent. What these leaders are trying to do is crush the pro-Palestine movement, the broader anti-imperialist struggle, and the class struggle using the lie that all these forces simply represent “wokeness.”
This is where communists can take control of the narrative. The way we must respond to the anti-woke psyop is by making it clear to the USA’s people that we do not represent the insular, alienating brand of leftism which the ruling class has cultivated. These two opposing cultural forces, wokeness and anti-wokeness, are color revolutions which the psyop machine has pitted against each other. Investing ourselves in either of them means playing this game on the terms of our class enemies. And right now, a big way we can differentiate ourselves from the woke side of this proxy battle is by pointing to how communists are not “Antifa.” The reality is the opposite. Because what we today call Antifa is a ruling class fighting force whose targets ultimately include communists more than anyone else.
Among the pan-leftists who seek to keep Marxism invested in wokeness, a common defense of Antifa is that it’s not a formal organization, but a concept around which anybody can organize. Doesn’t this loose nature of Antifa make it all the more susceptible to federal infiltration, though? And in today’s political climate, where anti-imperialists get heavily attacked by the mainstream “left,” which types of individuals are the most inclined to carry out activities under the “Antifa” label?
Not the ones with the ideological training or integrity to resist the psyops which infiltrators proliferate within organizing spaces. It’s a recipe for the formation of left-wing counter-gangs, where the most sectarian kinds of anarchists have been radicalized towards destroying what they deem “fascism” by any means necessary. And if you have the fortitude to stand with the anti-imperialist countries that leftists often call “fascist,” or to enter into coalitions with anti-imperialists who leftists shun, you’re not one of the communists who these Antifa anarchists will accept. They see you as one of the fascists.
Beyond this ideological overlap between the typical “Antifa” worldview and the worldview of the State Department, there’s more direct evidence that the intelligence agencies are guiding Antifa’s activities. This evidence can be found in how Antifa anarchists have participated within the U.S. empire’s recent proxy wars. The ones who’ve fought for Ukraine have been native to that country, which means that though they fall under the “anti-fascist” label, they represent a more specifically Ukrainian category within this element. The ones who’ve fought for the YPG in Syria, though, have in great part consisted of foreigners.
This means that Antifa, including certain parts of Antifa within the United States, have been trained by the Kurdish fascists who NATO backs. They’ve traveled to Syria to fight for a Kurdish supremacist force that’s committing ethnic cleansing. And following this training, they’ve come back to the U.S. better equipped to carry forth the ultraviolent goals of the left counter-gangs. It parallels how U.S. white supremacists have been going to Ukraine to get combat experience, creating a greater risk of future far-right terrorism in this country.
Part of the anti-woke psyop’s purpose is to provide narrative cover for the violence that the far-right counter-gangs seek to commit. One wing of these counter-gangs, this being the organized Zionists, have already been carrying out such violence against the student protesters. And the anti-woke psyop has indeed been helping them, namely by shifting the conversation away from their crimes and towards “antisemitism.” This is the primary discourse manipulation tactic that the ruling class is now using on the broad masses. And like the wokeism of Antifa, this psyop is based within an anti-majoritarian worldview. Most of the USA’s people are opposed to the actions of “Israel,” meaning that when the anti-wokes call all who share this view anti-Jewish, they’re demonizing the majority of Americans.
This mass-directed hate is effective at rallying the extremist minority towards terrorist acts, but it’s not going to win the bulk of society towards siding with the Zionist counter-gangs, nor with “Israel.” So though these violent Zionists and their Nazi counterparts have a role in the counterrevolutionary terror campaign, Antifa is at least as important to this effort. Because Antifa has the narrative advantage of representing itself as the foil to the fascist counter-gangs. This deception can’t fool the majority of the people either, though, because the ideology of Antifa is one that condemns most of society for not adhering to “leftism.” That’s what communists must take advantage of.
As the class conflict intensifies, and the deep state increasingly mobilizes the radlib counter-gangs, we need to draw attention to how these ultraviolent left forces are most prominently arrayed against communists. I say that communists are their primary target, at least in the long term, because communists are the ones who pose a threat towards their ideological primacy within organizing. We represent the anti-imperialist, masses-centered agenda which they seek to keep our social movements separated from.
Islamic Socialist, a fellow traveler of mine within this struggle, recently explained why the anti-multipolar position of Antifa anarchists is opposed to the pro-Palestine cause: “You can’t support Palestine without supporting the Resistance who is protecting them, you can’t support the Resistance without supporting their primary allies who are the reason they are able to fight. No nation has provided arms and funds to the Gaza resistance like Iran has. Next to Iran is DPRK (North Korea), China, and Yemen. Every faction of the Palestinian resistance in both Gaza and the West Bank openly announces this. This is important to stress because it seems western pro-Palestine supporters aren’t tapped into the pulse of Palestine’s values or their resistance’s stances. Of course they aren’t, at least not most of them; because the only group today who is live updating on the values of Palestine and their resistance is the Resistance News Network on Telegram.” This need for consistent anti-imperialism applies to every other part of our fight against the capitalist state. We divide our struggle from the struggles of Washington’s other enemies, and we fail.
The goal of “Antifa,” and of the pan-leftists who defend it, is to keep us isolated from the global struggle in favor of a coalition with the left counter-gangs. Most of the country is alienated from these counter-gangs, which is what gives the anti-woke psyop its strength. We have to counter this psyop’s effort to conflate communism with Antifa, and align with the masses against the deep state’s terror campaign.
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