The thing which all six of the people in the above image have in common is that since the start of this month, they’ve been either arrested or had their homes raided by the U.S. government and its satellite states. These targetings are no coincidence, they’re part of a wider trend. A trend that we must pay attention to in order to be ready for what the U.S. empire will do next.
Going in the order of left-to-right in each row of the collage, these people and their stories are as follows. First is Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram who’s been arrested in France for supposedly being an accomplice to things users of his platform have done. Second is Dimitry Simes, the Soviet-born political analyst. His home has been raided as part of an anti-Russian intimidation campaign, which potentially included pro-Ukraine activists who weren’t even in law enforcement. Third is Sue Mi Terry, a Korea analyst for U.S. intelligence who’s been arrested on “foreign agent” charges for getting too close with South Korea’s government. This has happened amid a growing rift between Washington and Seoul, wherein Seoul has refused to commit to fully escalating with the DPRK.
Fourth is Scott Ritter, the retired UN weapons inspector who was framed by the FBI for a fictitious child sex offense and now has had his home raided. Fifth is Richard Medhurst, the UK journalist who’s been arrested under Britain’s anti-“terrorism” law for doing reporting that wasn’t spun to smear the Palestinian resistance. Sixth is Kim Dotcom, who’s been approved to be extradited from New Zealand so that he can be imprisoned for his site MegaUpload. This site threatened the profits of the Hollywood monopolies by letting people download movies, which made him into an enemy of the imperial state.
The crackdown is intensifying more with each day. It was yesterday morning that I saw the news of how Durov got arrested, and my reaction was “of course this is happening now.” All of a sudden, half a dozen people have been added to the list of political prisoners or potential political prisoners, joining Ross Ulbricht, Chairman Omali Yeshitela, the persecuted U.S. government whistleblowers, and numerous others who the empire has gone after during the last decade. Except with these new cases, the persecution has sped up to a rate we’ve not seen during our lifetime.
Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder who’s been blamed by the government for the actions of his service’s users, was arrested in 2013. It’s now apparent that the campaign against him was about creating a precedent; a precedent for doing this to other lower-level tech entrepreneurs who’ve created businesses that challenge the imperial power structure. And it’s at this moment when we’re seeing the empire exercise this power. The precedent for Terry’s arrest was when Omali, and two other leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party, got indicted last year on charges of acting as foreign agents for Russia. And the empire has long been preparing to go after journalists and commentators like Medhurst or Simes. Notable moments in this process have been Julian Assange’s 2019 Ecuadorian embassy arrest, and Max Blumenthal’s getting detained later that year on false assault charges.
It’s this summer when these elements of “turnkey tyranny,” where a government can utilize powers which it gained previously, have begun to be applied with a wild amouny of frequency. We’ve entered into a stage where the U.S. and its proxies have picked out half a dozen targets during a single month, with the rate being likely to increase from here on. All of this is only the beginning.
Why is August of this year the time when the new repressive stage has begun? It has to do with the 2024 election, and how our ruling class hopes to use this chaotic moment to further its schemes for repression, austerity, and war. East Asia is the next place where the imperialists want to expand their conflicts into. They need a big war in order to save their dying capitalist system, but Russia and Iran have shown themselves to be too formidable for them to win in eastern Europe or West Asia. So they seek to wage wars against China and the DPRK, with Taiwan and south Korea respectively acting as Washington’s proxies. It doesn’t matter that they wouldn’t be able to win on these fronts either; they must have these confrontations, and they don’t want this election to delay the process. They also can’t be facing a strong opposition towards this war drive, which means they’re looking for opportunities to justify crackdowns.
It’s long been apparent that the imperial deep state has sought to orchestrate new January 6-type unrest outbreaks; when the feds last brought about an event like this, it was highly effective at creating precedents for jailing political targets. It wasn’t until the Democratic Party settled on its 2024 nominee, though, that the counterinsurgency could progress towards this new wave of raids and arrests. Right when the Democrat elites managed to get rid of the liability which was Joe Biden, and replace him with the Clinton donor favorite Kamala Harris, the deep state made its big move. It started executing a plan to suppress all individuals who in any way threaten monopoly finance capital, a plan that’s begun with the most rich and well-connected among these individuals. The counterinsurgency’s strategists know that they first need to get rid of the lower-level capitalists (like Durov and Dotcom) who’ve challenged monopoly power, as well as the figures within the deep state itself (like Terry) who are connected to the governments Washington sees as unreliable allies.
What’s next in the crackdown? My first guesses are that RT contributors will be targeted on the basis that they’re “foreign agents,” and that many pro-Palestine activists will start being treated the way Medhurst has. How much success the counterinsurgency has will depend on whether we can save Omali, and the others in the Uhuru 3, when their trial starts on September 3. It will also depend on how the election goes. Because if finance capital can install its favored candidate Kamala Harris, it will be in the best possible place to expand Uhuru’s treatment towards other organizations.
Keeping our orgs alive, and continuing to make gains within the class struggle, is absolutely possible; the crucial thing is to respond to these threats in a smart way. The feds want us to react to the danger by embracing adventurism, and showing up to the chaotic public gatherings that they’re about to organize. The right response is to avoid these traps and distractions, and focus on making sure we’ll be able to survive whatever the enemy does next.
It’s going to need to be a combination of making connections with the people, creating the organizing structures that would let us go underground if necessary, and other things revolutionaries have historically done amid state crackdowns. I’ve written about these kinds of strategies and tactics, anticipating a situation like the one we’re in now. And though the repression is happening faster than I expected it would only a month ago, we have to be calm and measured in how we handle this. The struggle against our imperial deep state can succeed. If we maneuver things properly, the power balance is ultimately going to be switched.
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