The world-threatening nature of the menace that the U.S. war machine represents leaves no room for the needless divisions which bad actors perpetuate within the anti-imperialist movement. Internet politics, with its commodification of attention, exacerbates the tendency for different activist groups to split without good reason; it incentivizes the members of online cliques to endlessly find reasons to fight with each other, rather than look for things they can unite behind. There’s a lack of perspective within this mentality, where the urgent need for anti-imperialist unity which our circumstances have created isn’t perceived; the reality of our conditions isn’t seen as relevant, because all that truly matters in this game is winning the competition for who can dominate a little circle of influence.
With the last month’s escalations in the U.S. empire’s maneuvers towards a third world war, which come after the last two years of escalations over Ukraine, it’s become more apparent than ever that a united front among anti-imperialists needs to be our central priority at the moment; and that the only ones who don’t deserve our collaboration are those which insist on attacking the members of this front.
The architects of the Israel and Ukraine proxy wars depend on their opponents making foolish decisions, and opposing the effort to bring together the war machine’s opponents. They need there to be a repeat of what happened during the Iraq invasion; that was when the anti-Bush movement became defined by the movementist tendency of Brian Becker, and consequently couldn’t manage to sustain itself. Becker’s ANSWER is now trying to capture the latest spontaneous antiwar upsurge, exploiting Palestine by holding a Gaza march at the same time and place that Uhuru’s solidarity march will take place. (We shouldn’t give ANSWER the benefit of the doubt on this, because Uhuru itself has said what ANSWER has done is an attack on the African liberation movement.)
Should Uhuru and the other antiwar orgs that are pro-united front become successful enough, though, this time things will be different. This time we could see the anti-imperialist movement keep up its momentum, and outmaneuver the forces which seek to impede any serious efforts at challenging the imperial state.
The most effective psyops that these reactionary forces have now are the ones which focus on discrediting anti-imperialists; especially in the minds of people who are already sympathetic towards socialist and antiwar ideas. This is because both the pro-Israel and pro-Ukraine narratives have failed too much for them to be effective on their own; they need to be coupled with an intense effort at destroying the public image of all antiwar groups that aren’t controlled by the Democratic Party. The goal is to prevent these groups from expanding their reach into a large enough number of the people that these groups reach another level of success, and start posing a more direct threat towards imperialism.
The tactic the narrative managers are using to try to do this is one where they direct targeted propaganda towards the workers who are most likely to join the anti-imperialist united front; propaganda designed to convince these workers that this front is a “false front,” one which socialists supposedly have nothing to gain from becoming part of.
This argument is only able to convince the minority among the workers who come to care about fitting in within the “leftist” spaces, wherein anyone who joins an antiwar effort that’s judged not to be pure enough gets labeled as a traitor. Most of the workers are detached from this clique, and will never become part of it due to its nature as a small and exclusive circle. Which means that however successful the psyops against the united front are, they’re not capable of neutralizing the threat which this front represents; the front and its member orgs are going to keep growing, keep gaining more support. Which is something the imperial state can in the long term only respond to by launching a war against the American people themselves.
The majority of Americans have a primary material interest in defeating their government’s imperial project; most of them have turned against the Ukraine aid effort; and most of them may also turn against the Israel aid effort should the discourse keep going as it has. So the war machine can only remain viable by suppressing all independent elements of the antiwar movement. This doesn’t just mean that the legal logic behind the Uhuru indictments is going to be used to charge every other pro-Russian org; it also means everyone who so much as associates with these orgs is going to become a target for a state intimidation campaign. The gangstalking tactics that have been used against the communist Alexander Finnegan in retaliation for his resisting the Ukraine psyop are going to be directed at countless other individuals, and we could see another wave of assassinations by the U.S. intelligence centers.
The ideal outcome for the narrative managers is a situation where our government can take the lives of anti-imperialists within U.S. borders as easily as it can take the lives of the targets in its drone wars. In order for these atrocities not to bring about unintended developments, and provoke the people into an unmanageable revolt, the government is going to need to have already deplatformed all who threaten it. It’s going to need to be ready to neutralize any independent journalists who may report on its political murders.
That’s where the inter-elite rivalry that our ruling class is experiencing could lead to the defeat of capitalism in the USA. Because if the highest levels of capitalism got everything they wanted, they would have already banned all speech that challenges the narratives of the intelligence agencies; but the lower levels of capital, now represented by the Trumpian wing of the Republican Party, have enough leverage that speech is still more open. And there have lately been moments where the Trumpian wing uses its platforms to spread awareness of the evils the intelligence agencies commit; like when Tucker Carlson spoke out against the Uhuru indictments this year.
That doesn’t mean communists can trust all of the right to be reliable allies in the counter-hegemonic struggle; during this last month, plenty of the same conservatives who’ve opposed aid to Ukraine have supported aid to Israel. It does mean that the divisions between the different wings of the capitalists have potential to make the system weaker, though; these divisions have already been weakening the system throughout the Ukraine proxy war. The recent reaffirmation of Zionist loyalty that we’ve seen from so much of the right-wing has helped the empire; but it’s not been enough to get many other right-leaning people (especially libertarians) to align with Zionism. For this reason, the anti-imperialist united front hasn’t lost anything, it’s only gotten a better sense of who its allies are. Should we sufficiently do the work required for building this movement, and fighting the information war, we’ll be able to overcome the state’s attempts at crushing our movement.
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