Throughout the last couple of years, as the Libertarian Party has driven away its old conservative big donors by picking the right side of history on Ukraine, we’ve witnessed an example of what Hegel was talking about in his analysis of how historical forces undergo transitions. No matter how mighty and entrenched a power structure is, the contradictions within it are going to produce an antithesis to its thesis; which is going to bring about a struggle between these two forces, leading to the creation of a synthesis. The antiwar iteration of libertarianism that’s emerged from the libertarian-leaning element of American conservative politics represents an antithesis to the outmoded old thesis, which was the intelligence-aligned, Zionist, pro-imperialist Reaganite free-market political brand. The purveyors of this brand have long tried to keep the antiwar libertarians under control by funding the Libertarian Party, but as of recently they’ve had to abandon this project.
The position that the late 20th century’s dominant wing of American conservatism put forth, in which U.S. imperialism was seen as essential for the preservation of “freedom,” simply wasn’t tenable; some form of resistance towards it had to appear. And it would have to come not from the left, which has failed the anti-imperialist cause, but from the libertarian-leaning conservative element itself. That’s how we’ve gotten today’s version of the Libertarian Party, which is too consistently antiwar for the right-wing donors to any longer view it as a viable way to advance their interests. It’s also how we’ve gotten the elements of the MAGA movement that have embraced MAGA because they see it as a way to end the most visible excesses of the modern U.S. empire; namely the forever wars, the anti-liberty intelligence centers, and the persecution of political dissidents like Julian Assange or the Uhuru 3.
The next logical step of this process; wherein those among the traditional base for American conservatism turn against the most powerful institutions of the U.S. empire; is a scenario where these types of libertarians and MAGA people come to oppose the wars which are being primarily marketed towards the right. Namely the proxy war against Palestine, the coming war against Mexico, and the potential wars against China and Iran. Should communists apply Hegel’s analysis; and work to expand our anti-imperialist outreach into these elements which have been growing hostile towards imperialism; we’ll be able to build the first iteration of the pro-Palestine movement that’s actually effective.
For decades, the U.S. empire has been able to rely upon a vast religious base within America to support the Zionist colonization project; but if the trend toward mass anti-imperialist consciousness that Ukraine helped nurture reaches its next stage, then the empire won’t be able to sell the Israel proxy war, nor any of the other wars which it hopes conservatives will unite behind. That’s why Caleb Maupin is doing something important by having his anti-imperialist organization the CPI increasingly focus on reaching religiously minded people: not everyone who’s compatible with anti-imperialism is an atheist like I am, and we need to bring more religious people into the fight against U.S. hegemony.
Not everyone within this element is going to make that shift from merely opposing the Ukraine proxy war to opposing all imperialist wars; many of the same right-wing figures who’ve opposed aid to Ukraine have over the last month reaffirmed their support for aid to Israel. If enough within this element join the most principled among the libertarians in opposing the Israel proxy war, though, then the war machine will have lost the most important narrative battle that it’s fighting at this stage.
The empire has already lost the narrative battle over Ukraine, precisely because so many conservatives and libertarians have joined with the principled socialists in opposing the war on Russia. Should enough people among these elements extend this into an opposition towards waging war on Palestine, then the war machine’s operations will be handicapped; not just when it comes to Israel’s colonial war, but when it comes to the wars it wants to wage next. Which, due to the process of U.S. hegemonic decline and Washington’s defeat within Eurasia, are inevitably going to be wars which take on a more localized and explicitly colonial character; once Ukraine has to be fully abandoned, the empire’s best option will be to shift the war into Mexico, and revert back to the traditional kind of colonial extraction in its plunder of that country’s resources.
It’s because so many conservatives are materially invested in that localized old colonial model; wherein the lower levels of capital use primitive accumulation to build wealth off of indigenous resources on this continent; that so many of them insist on backing the Zionist colonial project. And the same ones among them who are obstinately supporting Israel today will undoubtedly be supporting the idea of invading Mexico tomorrow; plenty of Republican leaders already support both. That so many within the libertarian element have come to oppose both the Ukraine and Israel proxy wars, though, shows these leaders may find themselves unable to rally enough conservatives towards supporting Israel in the long-term; or towards supporting the Mexico invasion plan.
The right-wing big donors who thought the Libertarian Party would remain compatible with their pro-imperialist agenda may be able to cut off funding for the antiwar actors who now dominate the party; but they won’t be able to halt the anti-imperialist mass consciousness shift that this split is a symptom of. Should we keep building the anti-imperialist united front that the Ukraine conflict has produced, this shift is going to keep accelerating.
That’s because within a growing amount of the conservative-leaning base which the empire wishes were still solidly on its side, the individuals among this element are experiencing the kind of transition that Hegel said often happens to people: “Each individual is the child of a people at a definite stage of its development. One cannot skip over the spirit of his people any more than one can skip over the earth. But only through his own effort can he be in harmony with his substance; he must bring the will demanded by his people to his own consciousness, to articulation. The individual does not invent his own content; he is what he is by acting out the universal as his own content. This universal content everyone must activate within himself.”
That an increasing number of libertarians have been breaking from the pro-imperialist orthodoxy of the right-wing elites doesn’t mean these elites have ceased to hold any power, at least for now; should the anti-imperialist movement that’s come out of this ideological rift keep gaining strength, though, those pro-imperialist forces will indeed go extinct. The highest levels of capital see that this trend is bringing us in such a direction, and that’s why they’ve shifted towards primarily using the Democratic Party as their instrument for advancing cold war maneuvers.
It wasn’t feasible to make the conservative base into a main source of support for the new cold war, so the intelligence agencies concocted the “Russiagate” psyop to bring more liberals and “leftists” towards supporting this war effort. And if the political reorientation that the country has been seeing throughout the new cold war continues, by the time the empire has made Mexico into its primary propaganda target, the liberals and “leftists” who’ve supported Ukraine are going to represent the main source of mass support for war with Mexico.
These left-liberals won’t fulfill this role by directly defending the idea of intervention in Mexico, because that idea is so obviously heinous and destructive that it will appall the rest of the world as well as vast amounts of Americans. These left-liberals will instead work to advance the war on Mexico by promoting an attitude of scorn and apathy towards the notion of resisting this war. They’ll try to discredit the only political project that’s going to be capable of effectively challenging the war effort; which is the united front between the communists, and the libertarians and conservatives who’ve come to the anti-imperialist stance.
That’s the narrative tactic these “leftist” agents of empire are already using to effectively assist in our government’s genocide against Palestinians: working to invalidate every anti-imperialist effort which has the ability to take on a mass character, rather than staying confined to a “left” niche. These actors hold a visceral hatred towards anyone who offers an alternative to their cynical, pessimistic, and nasty brand of aesthetic politics; who’s earnest about wanting to unite the people behind an agenda for peace, and advance our society to its next phase of development.
The Ukraine and Israel proxy wars have shown us who the anti-imperialist movement’s real friends are, and who its real enemies are; we have to build relationships with those who’ve revealed themselves to be our friends, or to have potential for becoming our friends. That’s how we can defeat the war machine: by rejecting the pessimism and division that the war machine seeks to perpetuate.
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