My fellow anti-imperialists who live in the heart of the empire: while you see our ruling elites carry out their next scheme, do not despair. This plan they have is wildly dangerous, and is going to bring out all the darkest and most reactionary forces within our society. But it’s also going to have great potential to backfire, and give us an opening to unite many more of the people in our society behind the anti-imperialist cause.
What the elites seek to do is rally as many political elements as possible around a proxy war against China, initiated by Washington’s newly elected Taiwanese ally the Democratic Progressive Party. It’s often the social democrats—or social fascists, as the Communist International described them—who are the most shameless and aggressive drivers of imperialist wars. Germany’s Green Party has been the leading force behind the country’s recent rearmament, and has done all it can to advance both NATO’s proxy war against Russia and prevent “Israel” from being held accountable for the Gaza genocide. The imperialists prefer the “leftist” parties as their vehicles for waging wars, because they’re able to make such projects appear disconnected from the openly sinister image of fascism. That’s what makes them so insidious and dangerous. And as Washington’s latest effort to pull humanity into a third world war develops, we can expect the U.S. State Department to make the best use of “left” imperialism’s deceptive nature.
This goes beyond merely getting social democrats to support the war on China. The empire’s goal is to rally support for the Taiwan proxy war among not just the right, or the liberals, or the Bernie Sanders “left” imperialists, but also the political strains that our government considers to be “extremist.” The narrative managers need the most radical kinds of libertarians to support the Taiwan conflict. Conversely, they need radical leftists to do the same. They’re trying to cultivate a layer of seemingly dissident political actors who’ve incorporated a fanatically anti-Chinese agenda into their ideology, which is already prone towards leading them in zealous directions. If imperialism’s propaganda can convince them that violently hating China is necessary for fighting the system, then the State Department can turn many people who would otherwise be threats towards it into its biggest assets.
The unfortunate reality is that plenty of these radicals, both left-wing and right-wing, are susceptible to such psyops. There are libertarians who can be brought towards white nationalist ideas. There are anarchists who can come to embrace the fanatical left anti-communism which dominates most modern “Antifa” branches. Javier Milei’s rise within the discourse has been diverting plenty in the dissident right away from being compatible with an anti-imperialist alliance, and towards seeing it as paramount to combat communism. Again, though, don’t let whatever reactionary developments you see throughout this process discourage you. Because the fact that the narrative managers are working so hard right now to co-opt radical sentiments across the ideological spectrum shows we have a great opportunity to expand antiwar alliances. And, therefore, to bring millions more people into participating in anti-imperialist activities.
Since the Rage Against the War Machine coalition between communists and libertarians held its first rally almost a year ago, there’s been a kind of counter-hegemonic movement building that we haven’t seen in decades. The disproportionate nature of the liberal backlash towards the RAWM coalition’s emergence has shown this. What these liberal movement gatekeepers now seek to do is perpetuate enough division among antiwar people for RAWM’s upcoming Defeat the Deep State DC rally to not make further progress, letting the Taiwan war drive proceed without any effective opposition.
The resistance towards the Taiwan proxy war of course doesn’t depend on Defeat the Deep State, but this rally certainty represents a potential way for us to make the resistance stronger. Even if you’re reading this after the rally’s February 17 date, it’s still going to provide a way for you to do damage towards the Taiwan psyop. Because at any moment in the future, we’ll be able to use this event and other events like it as evidence that true anti-imperialist coalitions are possible. That one doesn’t need to confine themselves to left-liberal circles in their efforts at combating the war machine.
The more aspiring antiwar activists we impart this lesson onto, the less the Taiwan psyop is going to be able to influence the discourse. A sneaky way that this psyop’s drivers are making their arguments more successful is by getting Marxists, even pro-China Marxists, to direct their attention towards attacking others who oppose Taiwan separatism. I won’t get into the many dramas that relate to this infighting, because it’s enough to simply say we need to be careful about which disputes we prioritize. U.S. hegemony is the primary contradiction at this stage in the class struggle, and everything we do needs to be informed by this. All criticism we engage in needs to be principled, and to not have the effect of aiding the hegemon. That’s essentially the point of the Rage Against the War Machine coalition: to do away with needless division among the hegemon’s opponents, and make advancing the anti-imperialist cause our primary focus.
The purpose of Defeat the Deep State, and of all the other future antiwar events which haven’t been co-opted by the Democratic Party, is to further reorient our organizing culture around this constructive way of operating. An idea this rally seeks to communicate to developing radicals, whether implicitly or explicitly, is that we can’t afford to sacrifice the interests of the struggle against the hegemon. That the danger of world war, and the imperative to free the globe from the rule of international monopoly capital, are too great for us to prioritize ideological purity or egotistical sectarian competitions.
Ever since the communist movement in the United States was successfully suppressed around half a century ago, these have been the things that define organizing in this country. Because when there isn’t any major authentic source of dissent, naturally the “left” becomes dominated by opportunism. Defeat the Deep State, and the coalition behind it, are part of an effort to rebuild what the people of this country lost when the Black Panther Party got crushed. That being the ability for social movements to get out of “the movement”—the niche of activists who aren’t capable of winning the class war on their own—and into the masses.
As long as antiwar discourse is dominated by cynical actors who seek to exclusively reach those who are already within those circles, or who are ideologically compatible with the Democratic Party, the masses will remain detached from the antiwar struggle. And it will be the fault not of the people, but of the ones who claim to be this struggle’s best leaders.
In the last year, we’ve already made great progress towards redirecting the antiwar movement so that it’s focused on winning the people. Now we need to build on these gains enough for the war machine to start finding its Taiwan plans seriously endangered. Whether the moment when this happens comes next month with the DC rally, or at a later point, we can be certain it will come if we keep putting in the work.
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