Above: Antifa anarchists with the “three arrows” symbol, which Germany’s social democrats used to rally support for violently crushing communists.
With the coming of our modern paradigm, where socially progressive values are now culturally dominant, fascism has taken on a new ideological nature. It’s no longer expedient for the ruling class to make the far right the main element from which it recruits fascist paramilitary fighters, because that would alienate the people too much. Today, the primary fascist state proxies instead come from the radical liberal element. From the militant anarchists who’ve been radicalized towards an ultraviolent left anti-communism, in which the communists who support Russia, China, and Washington’s other geopolitical challengers are seen as “fascists.” And though these anarchists are foremost among the left counter-gangs, they have plenty of enablers outside of anarchism. Their efforts to terrorize anti-imperialists are tacitly supported by other wings of the “left” which share their hostility towards the supporters of multipolarity.
Upon observing this shift, I’ve thought of a historical trend among declining empires: they become more and more reliant on non-state proxy forces. On finding opportunistic elements, and bribing them to fight the empire’s battles for it. This was what Rome had to start doing as its parasitic gains decreased, and it lost control of its army: turn towards groups that were poorer than the Roman state, and paying them to defend Rome’s remaining centers of exploitation. Washington has been doing the same amid its decline, as we’ve seen with its growing use of private mercenary companies throughout the last several decades.
This is only the start of the U.S. government’s embrace of proxies. The recent rise of mercenaries has mainly been in response to a decline in super-profits, which has incentivized greater privatization. The next step in the empire’s decline is for mercenaries to replace the armed forces out of total necessity. The U.S. empire is getting to a point where it can no longer sustain enough of its armed forces to fulfill its foreign policy goals, which grow more ambitious as Washington continues to lose influence. So many young people in today’s United States are addicted to drugs, overweight, or mentally unwell that the majority of them aren’t eligible to serve, and a growing number of the ones who are eligible simply aren’t interested. The ruling class knows it can’t bring back the draft, as this would throw the social order too much out of balance. Therefore, its best option is to increase its use of non-state actors.
Abroad, this looks like expanding the role of hired soldiers. In the war that our government aims to fight at home, where the enemy is internal revolutionary forces, this looks like expanding the role of the lumpen and left counter-gangs. The petty-bourgeoisie, and the right-wing political elements that are connected to it, used to have a bigger presence in the effort to inflict violence on the forces of dissent. But now the government’s most culturally palatable allies are the “anti-fascist” militants, and the lumpen elements that hold a greater connection to such groups.
Realizing this shift in the primary character of American fascism has been crucial for my development, as it’s let me realize that radical liberals fundamentally aren’t on the side of the anti-imperialist cause. The only way they can join this cause is by unlearning pro-imperialist dogma. Which is something that average people (including many conservatives) are far more likely to do than somebody who’s been assimilated into radical liberalism. Even MAGA voters have mostly come to be against U.S. involvement in Syria; in contrast, it’s from radical liberals that we’ve seen some of the most fanatical efforts to attack those who even critically support Assad. This is just one example of the numerous imperialism-related issues which the “left” has mainly taken the wrong side on, and which even many among the right-leaning parts of the broader population have taken the correct side on.
Because of how solidly these leftists have adopted a pro-imperialist orientation, it’s becoming increasingly clear that anti-imperialists can’t in the long term make tactical alliances with them. Those kinds of alliances are becoming less and less common as our class conflict escalates, and more people get forced to choose which side of history they want to be on.
These “antifa” leftists, like the other ideological agents of the ruling class, pretend like our primary political divide is one between left and right. This is how they try to pressure Marxists into allying with them, and rejecting all alliances with those beyond the “left” circles. The logic behind this comes from a view of ideology, and of history, which isn’t reflected by reality. The divide that truly matters is the one between the friends and enemies of international monopoly finance capital. Between the actors who’ve aligned with the liberal order, and the ones who seek to end its rule. Once you understand this, you see how strategically backward it is to prioritize winning over the “antifa” types. If you’re someone who’s assumed “antifa” is a progressive force, this knowledge can bring you to a new mindset: the mindset of scientific socialism, where one is constantly investigating what the conditions call for us to do in order to advance history.
At this moment in the United States, the forces which affiliate and associate with “antifa” have a reactionary role. They promote opposition towards multipolarity, which is a crucial step in the transition to global communism. They also hold tens of millions of people who have revolutionary potential in contempt, dismissing them as fundamentally reactionary. And ironically, these same “leftist” forces draw from the most reactionary social class aside from the bourgeoisie: the lumpenproletariat.
Due to their postmodern, philosophical irrationalist view of the world, they don’t see it as important to enforce discipline within an organization. So they provide an ideological cover for the most destructive habits among the lumpen—drugs, paying for sex, impulsive violence—often with the effect of rendering orgs dysfunctional, aiding federal infiltrators, or enabling abuse. The only way a group can maintain relevance while operating in such an irresponsible way is if the state sees that group as useful. Which it is simply by virtue of claiming to advance radical politics, while in practice working to undermine and discredit our liberation struggles.
The material factors behind these sources of ultraviolent left anti-communism are intertwined. Because the lumpen lack attachment to the means of production, they’re less likely to feel incentivized to contribute towards the proletarian struggle, and the bourgeoisie can more easily bribe them into becoming informants. Because of this disconnect between lumpen and proletarian material interests, by romanticizing the lumpen, ultra-leftists effectively renounce the struggle of the workers. These leftists promote the fallacy that socialism means not the transferring of the means of production to the proletariat in particular, but simply a broader lifting up of those on the economy’s lower rungs. A “lifting up” that doesn’t take into account the distinctions between the lumpen and the workers, assuming the two can be treated as interchangeable because they’re both dispossessed. To recognize that these differences matter would supposedly be to commit an injustice against the lumpen, who are implicitly framed as being more valuable than the workers simply because they’re of a lower economic level.
It’s a moralistic, emotionally driven way of thinking. One that can easily lead somebody to overlook the importance of proletarianizing the elements which have been pushed out of the productive parts of the economy. Of implementing socialist growth which brings abundance to all, and thereby makes it so that no one is pressured to turn towards gangs, prostitution, or drug running.
These “left” forces have a fundamental hostility towards such practical, constructive policies, in part because much of today’s “left” believes not in growth but in the Maluthusian notion of degrowth. Even if they deny supporting degrowth specifically, in practice degrowth is what they advance. Because by denying the revolutionary potential of vast amounts of the people, while fetishizing the lumpen, they’re in practice aiding the austerity goals of the ruling class. The only thing that comes from these practices is to weaken the workers struggle, and to thereby strengthen the highest-level capitalists. Which means they’ve effectively made a deal with these capitalists to act as agents of destabilization within the working class, taking the proletarian character out of socialism and therefore turning “socialism” into a tool for assailing anti-imperialists.
We can overcome this problem of the synthetic left, however insidious its ideas are. In fact, the prominence it’s gained in the counterinsurgency is evidence that our government is in an increasingly weak place. Because if our enemies need to resort to bribing people on the capitalist economy’s margins, and on radicalizing disaffected kids towards obsessively hating anti-imperialists, then what does that say about how strong the power structure behind this is? It means our enemies can no longer fight their own battles, at least not without creating great strategic risks for themselves.
If the best option of the reactionaries is now to substitute their actual armed forces with these disparate, mostly untrained potential vigilantes, then we’ll have a great chance at winning should we overcome the counter-gangs. We must make our cadres increasingly disciplined as the struggle intensifies, proceeding resolutely amid all the attacks these proxy forces direct against us. We must internally train our cadres to defend against whatever violence which comes from those proxies. That way when the counter-gangs lose their effectiveness, and the state resorts to a crackdown, we’ll be in a better place to take advantage of the narrative blowback this will create for the state.
Our enemies have come to prefer counter-gangs over direct state violence because under today’s conditions, where inequality has brought massive disillusionment with our ruling institutions, a full state crackdown has unprecedented potential to provoke mass outrage. The stability of the liberal order, and the survival of monopoly capital, depend on whether these counter-gangs are successful at frustrating the forces of progress.
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